Mass effect
Log #4 (year 1 day 2)
Honestly had a productive month so far, nothings gone wrong yet. The portal opened without issue, wide enough to allow a command tank through with a bit of room to spare. More than enough to allow my tanks on the earth side to move to the Nauvis side, while letting a large chunk of Nauvis drones and power armor get added to the earth side's stockpile.
At this point earth is producing about a quarter of my production capacity, and with the lack of any major opposition on the majority of the planet I expect that to reach a full half of my production by Year 1 Day 20. (with the messed up nature of time across realities I've decided to operate on my own subjective time. So starting from the day I was 'born'). From there it will eclipse Nauvis side output within just a few days, and it'll keep growing that lead until I have the bugs purged from my continent and they stop draining all of my production capacity.
My earth production is focused heavily on increasing its own production capacity, while the Nauvis side is heavily skewed towards weapon production. Which while necessary does mean it can't grow as quickly. But having the earth production ready and waiting makes me far more confident on expending a significant portion of my resource supply and income towards a large scale purge.
Even If I start being pushed back and I can no longer make enough forces to maintain my momentum I can just shift a portion of earth's production towards war supplies. With the viability of portals I've even looked into using them to transport goods and units. Either by hopping through earth or opening a portal to the same dimension. Not resource effective for a planetary network, but point to point or you know, on a facility in an asteroid belt, it'd work.
I'll need to make a very large amount of capacitors to jumpstart the portal wherever I put it if I'm not willing to build a three mile wide station, but I'm more than capable of sustaining a portal with a weaker singularity generator, or just a plasma reactor really. A one mile wide station in Sol's asteroid belt funneling refined metals to both Earth and Nauvis through a portal… I like the idea.
Or Mars, but gravity wells are for chumps.
I already have ships that can get to the asteroid belt, but none of them are that fast. It'd take months to get there. The ships are actually the androids designs, as I had just been using the default rocket fuel design and systems I had. Which was capable of getting ships into space just fine, and then I'd break said spaceship down for raw resources.
Android ships can actually go back into orbit, which is a feature I never bothered designing.
Anyway the ships are far too small and slow to get the task done quickly, so I'm expanding Commander White's station to include a dockyard. It'll still need resources brought online to get ships built quickly, my energy to matter conversion is slow and spaceships be big, But I'll have the infrastructure to build a larger ship that can refine and fabricate materials. Basically a mobile space factory I can just chuck at the asteroid belts. I will be making twelve of them. Sending each of them to the largest asteroids I can find, and setting them to work hollowing them out and building factories inside of them.
And no, I definitely didn't make them giant space spidertrons. Any resemblance shown is inaccurate, and their limbs move more like an octopus's anyway. The sheer utility to just grab and drag the asteroids around into more ideal locations, as well as the strength to shatter them into smaller pieces isn't something you can discount. Add in the laser and projector arrays to melt the stones so it can be shaped easily by said limbs and you have one amazing tool for large scale building.
Does mean no one can ride in the ships, unless the cargo holds get an atmosphere added. But why would I? If an android needs to go to a station I can just put them in a metal coffin and ship them, it's literally how YoRHa androids do it. Atmospheres are for chumps. And I can't think of anything an android can do that a sentinel can't do, even if such a situation arises just remote control.
And transport becomes a non-issue once the portals open regardless.
So massive stone space stations maintained and built upon by one hundred meter space octopus. Not exactly what I had in mind when I thought, 'let's work on the space infrastructure' but the simulations show this is one of the better designs. Odd tools mean odd ways of using said tools.
The first … Starfish? Will be built by Year 1 Day 25, but after the initial production I'll stop to focus the needed resources towards developing earth. But once the first starfish has its station finished the production will be self funded by said station, by Year 1 day 110 I'll have the first station built and it will be making one starfish every fifteen days. Something every station will be able to do. Once all twelve are done I'll stop production and start sending the resources back planet side.
Not anywhere near quick, and it could be sped up if I was willing to slow planet side production. But there isn't really anything in space I can't get on earth, and my resources are better invested developing that for the androids, rather than mucking about in space. Sending out a seed and letting it grow is cheap but slow, investing in it would make it grow much faster.
That's the industry and development stuff though. The Nauvis purge is going…. Well it's going. The bugs are fighting for every millimeter of land I take but I am taking it. I'll have doubled my holdings by Year 1 Day ten at this rate. But most of that is what Balistraia kept clear and routinely patrolled. A place that served more as a no-mans land than as bug territory.
Once I hit their proper defenses and it's not just the mobile forms attacking me my pace will slow to as fast as the stationery defenses can be bombed to oblivion. Still at an average pace of five miles an hour averaged out but my god is this not cheap. I've already had three command tanks brought in for repairs and ones easier to replace than fix. I've already used twenty thousand pounds of munitions, and thirty three thousand pounds of bombs.
Nothing, and I do mean nothing, about this will be cheap. I'm officially using more munitions than I'd be able to make without earth. Even just the fact I can source more reliable resources from the place is more than enough. No worry my brand new factory is just going to get eaten.
Also odd to note, because I'm pushing the bugs so hard none of them have even launched a raid. All of the ones that would have are instead on intercept duty. Dropped my building repair resource drain by so much. The lack of attacks and the fact the land is 'safe' after my horde of robots purges means building new mines and ammunition factories is easy. The bulk of the munitions used by the assault forces will be made by the factories it's building in its wake.
Each of them will be the standard factory layout. So even if the army is utterly destroyed somehow it'll take the bugs weeks just to cut back into the territory I have claimed. And that's without any reinforcement from Balistraia or any major defensive structures being built. Bulwark can put the work in and bloody the bugs just fine with only a utility building.
The offense is basically doing fine. Not great, but fine. And it's not consistent enough to get a proper estimate on how long until it's finished, or even if it will be. I have high hopes though.
Fallout
I didn't really want to do this, but the most efficient and moral plan should be taken, even if it was uncomfortable and ruined a few longer running plans. The radioactive hellscape that the alternate earth had become was something I needed to deal with, and I needed the androids to actually make revitalizing the world viable. The humans there were… savage, devolved. Some, in fact a fair majority just wished to live their lives with some semblance of safety. They could be rehabilitated but they needed an example, the androids would need to be that example.
And to make this plan viable… I needed to give a speech. I wasn't in my armor, my human form on full display. For most of the androids it was their first time seeing me, even just through a screen, my skin was still interlaced with gold and purple lines, my eyes still looked artificial, and I looked out on the crowd of androids watching me, in truth I looked less human than they did. But that didn't matter.
I started speaking in a calm but firm voice, my face's muscles tensed in way to convey determination, hope, and passion. Something I had Balistraia managing. "All of you here know me, I am the Engineer, the Maker. I came from the moon and left the rest of humanity to help end the machine war." The Androids were already cheering, only the speakers allowing my voice to be heard, but I leveled my gaze onto the loudest androids and they soon quieted allowing me to continue. "That is a lie, I am human but I did not come from the moon. I came from another reality and I am not one of your makers" The androids were stunned, but I knew the questions would come soon and so I pressed on, maintaining my momentum and staying ahead of the coming pandemonium "your makers are gone, they have been gone longer than the machine war has been waged. A great plague destroyed them, and the only thing left are a few scattered genetic records on the moon. Nothing capable of bringing them back.``
My gaze swept over the crowd, confusion was prevalent on the majority of faces but the few who had already internalized what I said had a gamut of emotions, from rage to despair to even some hints of vindication. And as the instants passed on more left their state of confusion and ran straight towards more problematic emotions.
"You may wonder if I could bring humanity back from said samples, no I cannot, you may wonder if I could bring humanity back from my genetics, No I cannot. And even If I could, I would not. Bringing back humans would not bring back your makers, you stand closer to them than any replacement could hope too. But they are gone and you are their legacy, and as I have seen time and again you are a grand one indeed."
By now I need to keep a constant shifting pattern of eye contact to keep the moral vocal androids from sparking a riot. But the weight of my gaze still serves to quell them, I doubt it will last long. "You may wonder why I sought to tell you this, there are a myriad of reasons, the greatest of which is that the machine war is over and it is safe to, another is that it is wrong to keep this from you longer than necessary. But a new reason has recently arisen."
"We have made contact with a new reality, another earth even. One that still has humanity present, but one that is far from what I hope your makers had been. They are living in a hostile wasteland and they have become hostile and primitive in turn, slavery, murder, cannibalism, human experimentation. I will not lie to you, most of the horrors humanity has always faced have been of their own making and this is no less true now."
"They ruined a world, and ruined themselves in turn. I seek to aid them, and I will need your help. I can heal a world, give them medicine, tools, and food. Build them grand cities and heal their bodies. But I can do nothing for their minds, for their morals and for their spirit." I was playing on the androids desire to help humans, but it was my hope this could shift that from serving to the care one felt for an equal. Well the care any moral android should feel for an equal.
"This will not be done by serving them, nor will it be done by ruling them. I will build a new city on this world, and you will teach them how to live as equals with others. YoRHa and the Resistance will go forth and kill the monsters and slavers that plague this world, and you will heal and restore humanity to its former heights. As their equals."
A final pane of my gaze, though I could already see the determination burning in the majority of the androids. My presence here was never so I could see them, but so that they could see me. An example of what a human should be, not what the humans they would see were. The androids would teach humans how to be human, and I would be there to keep all of them from failing.
"The portal is open, the city is being built. YoRHa operations have already begun. The first volunteers will be allowed through tomorrow. There will be no more than one hundred non-combatants allowed through until a more thorough security grid is established."
And with that I left, information had already been sent to every android device in the city. Explaining what had killed humanity, what the reality I had come from was like, and what we knew about this knew reality. One so tainted with the fallout of humanity's own actions.
I had no doubt there would be problems in the short term, and they would resonate for years to come. But they would weather this storm, as they had weathered far worse.
AN -
only got two of these done but I have been fairly busy. I imagine this'll be the second to last batch before I pick one though. and I'll probably continue some of them for a bit regardless of if they are the main story.
likes and reviews are amazing!
