They pulled me out of the terraforming lab for this, and I can't say I see the point. Unless the OSG-38 is secretly tired of building defenses and worrying about other galactic powers and just wants our research funding to be our top priority? What's even the use if I can't be down there getting my hands dirty though - and then washing all four of them, one by one, in three different sterilizing media, along with the rest of me, just to be sure none of the experimental rapid-acting climate-transformation spores ever get out of the clean room in the laboratory. Those death spores we've been careful not to research all these decades? Well and good, but the relationship between them and our terraformers is a whole lot closer than the Psilon on the street would like to believe. That's why we have to be
very careful to use them
responsibly!
Oh - I guess I got distracted there. It happens when I get on the subject of my work down at the lab. I
live for that stuff, and this ... I mean putting me in charge of
war fleets? Of interstellar
diplomacy? What does
any of that have to do with
planetology?
...
...
Wait a minute.
Actually...
Okay, okay, so this is brilliant: It turns out the Meklar science bots worked out this retroviral survey and memory mechanism for repairing DNA and other molecules on the fly as they get damaged by radiation. It lets the biological bodies under their electromechanical shells survive even in running nuclear reactors without any permanent damage, and just go on living in their colonies! The way it works is just incredible, and it's going to have all kinds of applications we can look into once we figure out the latest terraforming project I'd be working on if I wasn't needed up here, and whatever you think of M5-35, those Meklar scibots are
brilliant, and all I had to do to meet with them and learn about this stuff was to teach them how to build and operate a repulsor beam!
No, wait, I know, but hear me out: This is really all strategic and
everything! The Meklar are at
war with the Silicoids, right? And so are
we! We'll find ways to work around repulsors if the Meklar use them against us - it's what we
do - but I'm hoping we won't
have to! Because my plan is to get to be
friends with the Meklar -
especially their scibots - and I figure that'll be
easy! I mean, relatively.
See, the
first thing I did before asking about tech exchange was to set up a trade agreement with them - the smallest they'd bother talking about, which at this point, with the size of our empires, means a good hundred fifty-five billion credits a year - and the
big thing about them being at war with the Silicoids like us is that they're sure to be happy when we attack our mutual enemies! Which will open the way, maybe, I'm hoping, to
more exchanges, where I can talk microbiological adaptations with
more of their science bots down in the laboratories! And here's the other totally strategic thing: Thanks to those genius scibots and their radiation-resistance retrovirus-spawning colony life support systems and everything, when we go after the Silicoids at Anraq and Reticuli, where their defenses are weakest, we won't have to just bomb them out and hold the empty systems against them! We can actually
land there, raid the places, find
new kinds of lab tech the Silicoids would never tell us about in a million years, and use their factories! I'm pretty enthusiastic about trying that out, honestly. First things first, though: That's still going to take years, and what I can do right
now is even more - ahem! - diplomacy!
No, seriously, check this out, it's brilliant: This Human science guy? He's getting the readings from his deep space scanner on the
inside of his eyelids by precision-acting microbioluminescent displays! So not only can he pick up ships five parsecs off in space, he can do it with his
eyes shut! I'm
loving it! This diplomatic stuff is
great! Oh, and we have their designs for deep space scanners now; I taught them how our old class-three shields work in return, just because the details of how the field interacts with itself are kind of neat. I mean, this isn't like the Meklar: These Humans are theoretically the Silicoids' military
allies, and when I asked Alexander to reconsider that, he turned me down flat, so it's not like we're trading anything close to the state of the art: Our improved scanners are already way, way,
way better than the deep space ones this guy taught us about, and like I said with the shields, our old class 3s are just neat little curiosities since their latest design is twice as powerful, and the ones we picked up from the Tao labs are close to that. It's just, why
wouldn't you learn new stuff while you've got the
chance? And who knows? Even if he wouldn't do it for me, maybe Alexander will realize the Silicoids aren't really on his side, and break the alliance on his own! We can hope so anyway.
Or, I mean, we can try conquering his worlds or something. That's also a possibility. I'll bet we'd get
much more interesting technology
that way then with low-impact trades like these. I'd just rather
not be at war with them if we don't
have to be! Obviously the Silicoids are a different story, with the way they keep trying to take over the galaxy. So here's the kind of diplomacy I'm planning to use with
them:
So this visitor to the office, famous for his wisdom and flying around in space - his buddies call him the Space Owl, I think, although you know how our Psilon names are with spaces and capital letters not always lining up the way other people expect - said we should wait until new technology comes in before we start designing new space ships. He was pretty sure we could improve on this thing and upgrade its battle computer to class 3! That's a pretty good idea, and I'd definitely agree if our research was where I wanted it to be. But. If I cancel all other projects and pour everything into research everywhere, the chance of getting new technology by next year is zero percent. And the chance of having working fusion beams by the year after that is pretty much the same. It would be nice to
do that and just head back down to the labs with all our new-found funding, but it'd be years, most likely, before we were ready to build anything, and the only up-to-date ships in our fleet right now are four unarmed Scouts that have nowhere to go. So I might take some of the Space Owl's
other advice, depending on what happens in the next few years, but I'll be taking it with ships we can actually
build, because we don't have a lot of
time! That means building a bunch of Meteor bombers, with our best engines and maneuvering thrusters, one fusion bomb apiece, and a class-2 battle computer - the best that'll fit. They'll be obsolete themselves pretty soon, at least a little bit, but that's what they're designed for: To make a bright light across the sky for a brilliant moment - just long
enough - and then be gone just as fast. Still, when I say a
bunch of them ... well, I really mean just at Uxmai, but still, I mean a
lot! We're scrapping all our old laser fighters, scrapping the four new scouts, and giving Uxmai as much of the treasury as it can handle all at once. Oh - and this is all just for Anraq, with the Ultimatum coming down to help out. The Silicoids' shielding is
very tough to crack! Tens of millions of Psilons are setting out from all around Anraq as we speak, so I'd better hope what I'm sending is enough!
Wait ...
she's not the admiral in charge of the new Uxmai fleet!
In fact, as it turns out, she's Mirana, ruler of the Mrrshan people, known to one and all as a ruthless diplomat. That might explain her military alliance with the Silicoids and the wars she shares with them against the Meklar and Klackon peoples: She plays hardball if she plays anything! Her people's expansion also didn't - quite! - stop after GNN trumpeted their first six star systems: They're now up to seven, of which the nearest to us is Rotan, a red star fully eight parsecs away from Proteus, our nearest colony. For a sense of where that is, here's a look at that part of the galaxy, together with just enough of our own empire to give a sense for the current state of the war with Granid and company:
In comparison with, say, the Meklar, Mirana's Mrrshans are running a tight, compact, and well-established empire, even larger than the machines', and broken up only at the edges by Silicoid incursions. Their hated Klackon enemies presumably live near, at, or beyond the left-upper-hand corner of the screen, in touch primarily through Dolz presumably, though with Mirana's newfound range, she has plenty of redundancy for contact with anyone - apart from the Humans, restricted as they are to a tiny corner of the galaxy - with whom she wants to conduct ruthless diplomacy.
On our side of the galaxy, you can see the preparations around Anraq, with almost our entire war fleet heading down there from Uxmai simultaneously with the arrival of transports from all over. There are also a couple of Silicoid attack fleets heading for Nature, as usual, but I'm not worried about them: We have a few fighters in orbit, and I can see what's in those fleets: They're bad, and they're slow. I still feel like I'm not committing correctly to any of our goals, but there's just so much we need to
do - and so much that can go wrong with everything! Just for instance:
That's our first target, Anraq, where we're trying to strike fast because it's still in the process of building its planetary shield. Right now, its bases are protected by a total of ten shield layers; in a few years - or a bunch of years, or
next year - they'll have finished the job, increasing that to fifteen layers, and be ready to start building more bases behind it again. The whole reason we have to strike soon with so many bombers is that we can't let that happen: Once they have those shields up, their bases are practically impregnable. Our Ultimatum, for instance, wouldn't be able to destroy even
one on its own! So we have to strike while the shields aren't finished. I
did send enough bombers that in
theory, we should be able to clear them even if they do finish the shield this year, but the losses in that case would be catastrophic ... and that's without figuring in the Silicoid fleet that'll be there: Not just the five Sharks in orbit now, but a Kraken battleship coming in! We're going to make our best effort, but it could be a very tall order.
In the meantime, I'm going to try to work with Mirana here, hoping her diplomatic leanings - no matter how ruthless - will help her see her way to dealing with us as fellow beings instead of just as a war target chosen by their supposed allies. It might not get us anywhere, but it's better - so I think, or so I hope - than sitting around and waiting for them to declare war.
So I'm starting with the smallest trade package that would mean anything for our empires at this stage in history: At 150 billion credits per year, it's very slightly less than with the Meklar, because the Mrrshan worlds aren't as productive as the Meklar ones, unsurprisingly. It might also be more likely to end up as so much confetti and kindling if Granid demands that Mirana join it at war with me, but I'm willing to invest in it anyway, in the hope that it does something. And I
did ask her to break her alliance, but that didn't do any good; I didn't even get the chance to meet any Mrrshan scientists, the way I did with the Human and Meklar people: I
tried, but her prices were just too steep for me to justify any kind of exchange to the OSG. So I'm pouring the little that remains of our emergency reserves into Uxmai just to eke out some more Meteor bombers for the
next target I'm hoping we can actually claim. It's all kind of a mess since I'm trying to keep up our research budget at the same time - I mean, we
have to, don't we? - with all the technology we're trying to develop so vitally important, especially in planetology, and with every world already crammed with expensive factories, it's hard to find the population to invade efficiently or build up our newly-claimed worlds. I'm doing the best I can though for a novice out of the labs - and we've got to put first things first anyway: The battle for Anraq is next year!
This might look like a blow-out with our Ultimatum and almost three hundred fighters against just nine bases, but remember, this planet is
shielded now - not all the way to Silicoid standard yet, but plenty! - and our Ultimatum barely got through less than
half this many bases when we took Tao a few years ago. Alone, it would have no chance here, and then all the little Meteors have a problem of their own thanks to that Kraken's powerful targeting computers and masses of gatling lasers! And ... well ... they wanted
me directing the tactics for the fleet, and I guess I was a little too timid and put too much stock in the asteroids protecting our smallcraft from missiles, and then didn't call them off as soon as I should have if I knew what I was doing! It wasn't as bad as we were expecting it to be if they got their new shields up, but this
was enough bombers that we should have been able to do this with minimal losses - but I forgot some key points and mishandled the whole fight, and lost more than half of the bombers before the planet's defenses were gone, and I can blame the OSG for putting me in charge of anything with a gun or a bomb on it, but in the end, I'm the one who was giving the orders to attack, to hide behind asteroids instead of swooping in as soon as they could, and finally to bomb some more instead of knowing when the bombers at least could retreat. Ultimately, all those pilots' deaths are on me! So that felt bad enough already
before the Silicoids punched through our security grids. At least it was kind of funny that our reports pretended we didn't know exactly who they were!
They blew up fifteen of those expensive factories I was talking about - at our rich world of Uxmai too, where they're easier to replace, but also where they're most valuable, and where I don't see how we can spare the production to replace them anytime soon with all our shipbuilding needs! Especially, I fear, because of my blundering timidity in the battle for Anraq in space...
I still feel awful about all those brave pilots, and kind of hate to order another attack like it, even if I learn from my mistakes, but ... well, I thought nearly two hundred deaths were bad when I first saw what had happened, but it was about to get a whole lot worse in ways I had no control over at all!
I couldn't bear to watch the street-to-street fighting on the ground, knowing how many living people were inside the heavy battle suits getting carved up by laser fire right through their energy shields on both sides. I sent too few troops, for one thing, forgetting their equipment would be upgraded to Zortrium, but projections that did take that into account still had us winning handily, with more than a fifth of our forces to spare. Instead, we barely eked out a victory, the last tiny cadre of our forces finally pacifying the colony almost with their expiring breath! I didn't understand it, couldn't make myself watch the footage of the horrors perpetrated by and against us in the name of war, no matter how necessary, and so I didn't understand what must have happened until just now, when I got the report from our last, surviving assault corps: The 17th Engineers. It seems we must have learned early on where the Anraq lab complex was located, and risked everything to charge into it directly, straight through traps and ambushes to ensure the laboratories could be claimed intact - then dug in and did our best to defend not only our own lives but the labs we captured, to keep the vital information within them safe!
You can see the smoking ruins through the window of other buildings in the city - it was like that on all sides, apparently! - but our troops, for their selfless and terrible sacrifice, accomplished something amazing: From this little world with its small lab complex supporting just seventy-six factories, they were able to recover samples, design specs, blueprints, and even manufacturing equipment needed to prototype and mass produce the same Zortrium armor the Silicoids themselves used against them, a battle computer far more advanced than our current state of the art and nearly as powerful as the one we're pursuing now, still well over a decade away - and, incredibly, to my astonishment and joy, the secrets of Silicoid terraforming technology! No, I admit, it won't live up to the promise of the climate-adaptation spores I was working on myself three years ago in
our laboratories, but it works along lines I had never even imagined, using thermally-activated geochemical reactions to precisely guide the shaping of land formations, without resorting to any form of carbonate biology - and with our own new technology still a long ways off, theirs complements our own existing state of the art, allowing faster and more-complete improvements to our planets' ecologies than we could have made before the battle: Not only at Anraq, but on every world we control! The price was still too great, but the soldiers who perished at Anraq at least didn't die in vain: They've made our worlds better places - safer, but also with better living conditions - for every Psilon in the galaxy.
Of course we're not allowed to hold onto good news long, even shadowed as this time in tragedy. Alexander showed up immediately to join in the wave of violence already consuming the galaxy. Mind, this was nothing new to him: When he declared on us, he was at war already, with the Meklar and - somehow - also the Klackons, though how he met them is a mystery to me. Maybe one or the other of them briefly held a colony on the far side of the galaxy from their homeworld, probably by virtue of a temporary alliance-of-convenience with Granid, only to see the place get conquered by one of their respective enemies.
With us, it's a little clearer: His other enemies are all so far away from him, out past a wide band of Silicoid space, that he can't actually fight any of them. No doubt the Silicoids demanded that he honor his alliance, and he was all to eager to agree. Granid will presumably make a similar demand of Mirana soon as well, but I'm holding out a little hope for the Mrrshan people, who certainly have enough targets closer to home and at least haven't been attacking us for most of the past century as the Humans have done regardless of their nominal relations with us, trade, or non-aggression treaties. For our part, I'm sending a scanner ship to investigate the Humans' Selia colony now, to see what we'd be up against there, but without many expectations: Just prosecuting our war against the Silicoids is taking more than enough of our resources!
This is a decent example of what I mean about the costs of prosecuting wars like these: When the OSG first pulled me out of the lab, little Reticuli up here, in the corner of the galaxy, had no planetary shield, but the Silicoids have been building one, and it's now at least half-way complete. Just by crossing that threshold, they've cut the the effectiveness of our fusion bombs against their bases to less than half of what it had been, and if I hadn't planned for this possibility, our bombers wouldn't be able to take down their bases next year, and they'd have shot down practically all the transports we have coming in. Fortunately, I
did plan for this, knowing how quickly everything can change, and the fleet I sent, due to arrive next year alongside our transports, should still be plenty to get the job done. Just to be clear though, going after a weakly-held world like this is a completely different proposition than something like rich Denubius with its full shield and fourteen missile bases: With that shield in place, our Ultimatum can destroy a total of zero missile bases even if it manages to drop its entire payload. We could crack it with enough Meteors, sure, but it would take
hundreds of them, and they'd be suffering heavy attrition! This is why it might be a better idea to go after the Humans ... if
they were standing in place and not improving their defenses any.
Sure, we can destroy more of their bases if we ever get a fleet that far, but unless their base counts are
tiny, we'd still need a giant bomber fleet: The Humans have jumped all the way from Hyper-V rockets to
Stinger missiles in the space of the three years since I took office - and possibly sooner; I don't have a definite record from last year. Thanks to their Class 6 shields and advanced ECM, an Ultimatum would be able to take out no more than five of their missile bases even if they could do it no permanent harm - but they're firing
stingers. With even as many as eight, they would shred an Ultimatum right through its autorepair and shields before it could destroy a single base. So, with Silicoid and Human defenses alike growing ever more impregnable, how are we going to make any headway? Well, we're going to try, but the answer may be that we
won't!
