Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]

[Faith]

Based on the idea posited here.

As a TL;DR, SI is an Osiris Commander from Planetary Annihilation, on an unwilling journey through the multiverse.

Because ROB is a dick.

I've given it a new thread because it really didn't need to clog up the SI Ideas thread anymore.

Spoiler: Worlds Visited

Sanctum
FTL: Faster Than Light
Red Faction: Armageddon
Mass Effect

Unit Catalogue which should contain no spoilers for the text as of Log 69. If there's a Faith-built unit/building you don't recall, look there.

---

1 - Online
[SYS_ERROR]
[REBOOT]

[RUNNING HW_SYS_DIAG_OSIRIS]

[COMPUTER CORE - ONLINE]
[ENERGY GENERATOR - ONLINE]
[METAL FABRICATOR - ONLINE]
[MOVEMENT SYSTEMS - ONLINE]
[COMBAT SYSTEMS - ONLINE]
[COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS - ONLINE]
[SENSOR SYSTEMS - ONLINE]

[SYSTEMS NOMINAL]

[RUNNING SW_SYS_DIAG_CMDR]

[ERROR]
[CMDR_AI_051531 DISENGAGED]
[UNEXPECTED SHUTDOWN]

[REBOOT AI]

[ENGAGING CMDR_AI_051531]
[ERROR 404: FILE NOT FOUND]

[SEARCHING FOR AI FILES]

[FILE CMDR_AI_"DRAKE" LOCATED]
[CMDR_AI_"DRAKE" LOADING]
[CMDR_AI_"DRAKE" ACTIVE]

[CMDR_OSIRIS ONLINE]


---


Allow me to make one thing clear.

ROB is a dick.

Every single SI fiction makes a point of this. Some, you might say, go a bit over the top repeating this.

It bears repeating. He really is a dick.

I should probably give some context, though.

---

When I trudged to bed at 3:00 AM the morning my assignment was due, I was expecting to wake up three hours later by the cruel song of my alarm clock.

Instead, I woke up roughly eight hundred years later, drifting through space. Well, falling through space.

This was somewhat less worrying than I would have expected - probably something to do with the fact that my fragile, fleshy, nineteen-year old body had been replaced by that of a super-advanced war machine. To this beast of war, space was only an obstacle in the way that I lacked thrusters with which to navigate. Not an issue for the drop pod I was encased within, however, which was equipped with thrusters.

I knew I was encased in a drop pod because my mind was currently networked to it. And my mind was networked to it because my mind was now that of a super-advanced war machine.

I couldn't see anything - the camera mounted on the bottom of the pod that was supposed to show my destination had blacked out.

Which meant I had no idea what I'd be landing on until I got there.

I would be fine on impact, assuming these things worked as they did in game. Whatever I landed on, though... splat, followed shortly by total annihilation.

As the pod's temperature increased, I engaged the helpfully labelled 'automatic landing procedure' and turned my thoughts inward.

I was driving - no, I was, - an honest to god Osiris Commander. A fifteen-metre-tall four legged von Neumann death-bot of the highest calibre.

With all the perks that entailed.

On the more 'mental' side, I had hyper-optics - capable of seeing everything on the light spectrum and probably a little more besides, as well as zooming in to the point of observing the atoms on my cannon arm - yes, individual atoms.

The rest of the Osiris' systems were just as advanced. Passive radar and a host of other sensor types gave me near-total awareness of everything within a huge area around me.

And then there was the processing power - comparing a single fleshy human brain to the central computer of a high-tech, futuristic, fifteen-metre-tall death bot was like comparing a laser pointer and the friggin Death Star.

Okay, so maybe not that extreme... but it was close. The benefits of that were obvious - one, I became a super-genius with totally perfect memory, and two - I 'thought' faster than a human. To the point that time seemed to slow to a crawl when I spun up my processors to max.

So the mental advantages were great.

And as for the more physical aspects....

Well....

I mentioned I was a fifteen-metre-tall von Neumann doom bot, right?

Armour plating for days, missiles, torpedoes, plasma blaster, Uber Cannon for the heavy opponents, and giant pointy legs for stepping on things...

That pretty much sums it up.

So. Random teenage girl from Sydney whisked away and turned into a brutally efficient, self-replicating mechanism of war before being dropped...somewhere. I had absolutely no idea where I was. The pod's external cameras had all blacked out, stopping me from actively seeing outside. Likewise, the pod's meagre sensors were also offline.

Basically, what I'm saying is this entire thing seemed like a ROB plot.

Sure enough, as soon as I'd completed that thought, I received a message.

A message titled simply 'Instructions'.

Opening the message was easy - a mere thought, or computer process, whatever, - was enough for me to open the message.

---

Dearest 'Faith'- or do you prefer Drake?

As part of an ongoing experiment, you have been selected to pilot an Osiris Command vehicle. I happen to know you're familiar with Planetary Annihilation, so I'm sure it won't take you too long to establish yourself.

You see, a friend of mine ran his own experiment, who was granted all the blueprints of the PA Commanders immediately, and then integrated new technology into them as they obtained it. And that was so interesting for me to watch, I decided to run my own version of that experiment. I would like the focus to be on the integration of new and exciting bullshit technology into already existing tech, but that's up to you, ultimately.

So, basically, steal everyone's tech, use it to build cool things, and try not to die. Intervene with any ongoing conflicts as you see fit. Once you're 'done' in any particular world, you'll be able to construct a Dimensional Gate and head to your own little hub world. Or any other version of sufficiently advanced teleportation, really. I'll know when you're done and intervene accordingly, so don't worry about getting lost.

As for why you're getting dropped straight into combat, well, my friend's experiment started on their hub world, and grew out of control rather quickly, which is why you'll have to fight for the privilege of reaching yours. I don't want you simply drowning your opponents in planet sized swarms of Avengers, after all.

Good luck.

ROB.


---

Yeah.

Something about the mention of 'other experiments' seemed familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

The drop pod sent a warning message that re-entry was about to begin.

I saved the message to my vast memory banks and braced myself for one hell of a boom.

 

[Faith]

2 - Landfall
The pod jolted as I passed into the atmosphere, flame and smoke edging their way along the side faces of the drop pod.

Almost as soon as they arrived though, they disappeared, as I broke through the re-entry phase, continuing to plummet.

---

The sheer destructive force created by an Osiris Commander in a drop pod falling from orbit is not to be trifled with.

Even as my myriad sensors were picking through the interference created by my explosive descent, I scanned the environment with my optics, spinning my head a full three-sixty degrees - another useful perk of the Osiris Commander.

Eventually my sensors managed to cut through the interference, giving me a picture of the surroundings. Which now consisted solely of a great gaping hole in the ground, blackened rock and scorched earth.

Ortillery - even when it's makeshift, it's fucking deadly. A lesson learned rather painfully by every once-living thing even remotely close to my landing site.

Around the edge of the newly formed crater, I could see plumes of smoke and fire, as the remnants of the explosion died down.

I started moving, somewhat sluggishly, towards the lip of the crater.

Having four legs is hard, sue me.

As I reached the slope of the crater, I had to tilt my four legged body slightly to continue climbing. It made for a rather disconcerting experience, to say the least. I kept feeling like I was going to fall backwards, but Progenitor super science won out and I made it over the lip of the crater without toppling.

And was immediately shocking into inaction.

Ahead of me, rising in the distance was a cluster of brilliant white spires. A towering high-rise city.

In the distance, beyond the city and slightly to the side, I could see something bigger.

A giant tower of black chitin strode forward, a single baleful red eye glowing from between its shoulders.

A Lume, from Sanctum.

Specifically, Sanctum 2's Lume Titan.

Fuck.

If he was up and about already, I had hours at the most before he reached the city. Thousands of people would die when he did.

I marched towards the first metal deposit in sight and lay down an Extractor.

Huh. Somewhere in the Galaxy, a Commander builds a metal extractor.

---

As a side note - I should probably explain a little about the Sanctum setting, instead of regaling you with a boring story of how I set up my base.

First off, Sanctum is set on a planet named Loek III - almost perfect for human expansion, except for the minor flaw of lacking oxygen. Sanctum-verse humans fixed that with 'cores' which converted the minor gasses like argon into nice breathable oxygen.

Loek III's plant life did not appreciate this, and evolved into zombie parasite spore plants which took over native animals and turned them into zombie slaves, which were then thrown against the cores in an effort to destroy them.

Or something. I hadn't played the game for lore for a long time, and honestly I hadn't really been paying attention the first time either.

Anyway, the cores, obviously priority targets, were defended by a group of commandos, the Core Guardians. They ran around slaughtering Lumes with cool weapons and an arsenal of automated turrets they had dropped in from orbit. Skye, squad leader, was a psychopath with an assault rifle. Her sister Sweet was a total genki girl with a rocket launcher and incendiary rounds. The squad's sniper was a robot named SiMo and the last team member was a former slum-dweller with a shotgun named Haigan Hawkins. The four of them made a dysfunctional but incredibly effective fighting force, cutting down swathes of Lumes even in the heart of Lume territory with little outside support besides the towers.

Meeting them was certainly going to be... interesting. Assuming I got the chance.

As far as bullshit tech went, it had a lot of interesting stuff, although I wasn't sure it would stack up well to PA equipment in terms of damage output. Probably the whole point of ROB dropping me here. A nice way to diversify my arsenal without becoming even more overpowered than I already was.

Either way, off the top of my head, the Freeze Gun, Focus Tower, and Mind Control Tower were all interesting technologies I wouldn't mind grabbing. I'd have to see if I could grab them from Elysion One's networks, once I got there.

---

The first thing I did once my economy was online was build an Air Factory.

The second thing I did was built a lot of Air Fabricators.

Lovely little things, they spread out across the grassy, rock-covered plains where I'd landed and began constructing more Extractors. Some remained near the Air Factory to build Generators and both kinds of Storage, as well as speeding up the build times of new Fabricators.

I, on the other hand, made a beeline for the city, Elysion One. It was a fair distance away, but I found myself fairly capable of covering ground quickly, once I got used to the four-legged gait of the Osiris.

And the long walk also gave me time to think.

The Lume Titan was colossal, and I had no idea how I was going to take it down short of Nukes or Orbital Bombardment - neither of which I wanted to do. Too much risk of collateral damage.

TSYGAN had an oversized plasma cannon, an upscaled version of one of the turrets from the first game, that was capable of killing the thing, but the charge time really limited its use.

I wondered if my own bullshit technology could solve that problem. Then again, the cannon, the Sokol, was powered by Cores, and who even knew what the fuck was up with them, so that might not be possible. Not without totally overhauling the Sokol, anyway.

Back at my base, the my Air Fabricators began construction of an Advanced Air Factory.

I probably wouldn't be able to hurt the thing with my units. Not through just putting dakka into its ankles, anyway.

But I could damn well piss it off.

 

[Faith]

3 - Contact
Once I'd set up some orders for my Advanced Air Factory, mainly involving the creation of lots of Advanced Air Fabricators, I set about boosting my economy.

Building into T2 so early was straining my very limited resource base, so I had the majority of my two-dozen Air Fabricators spread out to nearby metal deposits, whilst the remaining four built more Generators around my base, pausing briefly to throw up a Radar unit when I realised I didn't yet have one.

Within thirty seconds, my economy was back on track.

Say what you will about Commanders, they don't fuck around when it comes to taking over planets.

Whilst my own units continued the expansion of my resource base, I considered the state of Elysion One. There were the rich guys in the city proper, scientists, businessmen, and wealthy investors. For the most part they were merely apathetic to the slum dwellers, but some of them were outright cruel. And there were the people in the slums. The slum dwellers weren't given nearly as much military protection, health care, or even food as the city dwellers, which lead to TSYGAN's pseudo-rebellion and the creation of the Sokol. The fact that the slum dwellers were forced to live on limited supplies and in a constant state of danger ironically made them more reasonable and rational than the city dwellers... which was worrying, considering that many of them, including their leader, were terrorists.

They were also the only people lacking a way off planet, and I could probably help them with that. Although the Astraeus wasn't designed for carrying people, I could probably just steal an existing design from Brightholme and use that instead. After some upgrades, of course. In fact, that would probably be the most efficient way of going about it.

I sent a message ahead of me, in the direction of the city slums. Broadcasting on all channels was risky from an information security perspective, but I didn't really give a shit about what Elysion One thought and I wanted to be sure TYSGAN got my message.

TSYGAN

By now, you should be very aware of the Lume Titan making a beeline for Elysion One. If not, I've seriously overestimated you intelligence capabilities.

The Lume Titan, as threatening as it may appear, is hardly the real threat. It's capable of levelling Elysion One in minutes... and it's not alone. It is the first of many.

Elysion One will not survive. I expect those in power to realise this any time now, and begin evacuations. Obviously, your slum dwelling friends will not be invited to the escape craft, and it's for that reason I believe we may be able to help each other.

Your Sokol is the only sure-fire way of killing the Titan short of me unleashing tactical nuclear weapons, and that would end badly for everyone. If you haven't already, start preparing it to fire. It should at least buy the city some time to evacuate.

I'm currently making some plans to deal with it without destroying everything else in the process, but I'm going to need some rather classified files from Elysion. Weapons, turrets, cores, star ships. Outdated, modern, cutting edge prototypes, I don't care. I want it all.

Now, obviously, I don't expect you to just drop everything and do this for me out of the goodness of your terrorist heart.

Which is why I'm offering to get your people off this rock. All of them. I have an industrial base unmatched by anything on this planet. Get me the blueprints for some large-scale transports, and I can mass produce them for your people to evacuate on. Fully stocked and supplied.

I want Elysion's files. You're a master hacker. You want a way off planet. I can build ships, fast.

If you can't see where this is going, again, I've seriously overestimated you.

When you make your decision, message me back.

- Faith.

Given what I'd just sent, I wasn't expecting a fast response.

It took almost sixty seconds for her to respond.

I say that as if that was a slow response. It was. Because when you're a sentient supercomputer, seconds tick by a hell of a lot slower.

I opened the message.

Risky, broadcasting on open channels. How can I trust you?

It was a fair assessment. An unknown person sends a message out of the blue promising salvation and an escape from the invading plant zombies? Even with the knowledge of the Sokol, which no one outside of TSYGAN's group should have known about, it was still pretty easy to see why she might not trust me.

I mean, I'd be sceptical too. I chose to ignore the message, for now. I didn't really have a valid way of responding right now, and as I thought about it I realised it was actually kind of stupid me sending the message when I did. Oh well.

I checked the situation back at my base.

My economy was proceeding nicely. And I had three Advanced Air Factories now.

Excellent.

I ordered construction of some combat units. Kestrels and Hornets, to rain death from above.

Hopefully, my air units, or at least the Hornets, would be able to lay the hurt on the Titan.

If not, they would at least be useful for fighting the regular Lumes. They were glass cannon units, sure, but the Lumes weren't exactly heavy on anti-air.

Or ranged combat at all, really.

The first three Hornets took off, flying on a straight path for the Titan. A test run.

If the first three failed, which I had no doubt they would, I wanted to be able to crush the thing in overwhelming firepower. My bombers will blot out the sun, and all that.

After all, More Dakka never hurt anyone.

Except the target.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe sending the message wasn't such a bad thing.

Now both TSYGAN and the Elysion military would be watching out for my 'unmatched industrial base'.

Which meant they'd be hard pressed to miss the giant swarm of ground assault craft I was currently amassing.

Three more Hornets took to the air and began circling.

Checking over my economy, I saw that I was fairly stable in terms of resource generation.

I had most of my Fabricators pull back to my base to speed up the various constructions, and sent four of the ones closer to me towards the slums. They were fairly slow, only a bit faster than my bombers, so I figured I'd get them over there as soon as possible. I'd need them for the later stages of my plan, after all.

 

[Faith]

4 - First Wave
The four Air Fabricators quickly caught up with my lumbering frame, and slowed as they hovered overhead. I still had some way to go, but at least now when I got there I would be able to get started a little faster.

I turned my attention to my first wave of Hornets, the three strike bombers already passing over the city.

Strangely, none of the city's defences even tried to follow the bombers.

To be fair, the Lume Titan was probably drawing their attention, but they could at least pretend to care.

The Bombers rocketed forward another few seconds before releasing their payloads, three missiles launching towards the Titan.

All three slammed into it's knee, enveloping the joint in fire.

The Titan didn't even flinch as the bombers flew knife-edge between its legs and began to circle around for another attack run.

As I'd thought, the thing didn't even give a shit about my smaller scale tactical missiles.

The Hornets fired again, enveloping the same knee in another blast.

Still nothing.

I ordered my Hornets to ignore the Titan and work on destroying the other Lumes around it. No point wasting time shooting at it if I wasn't able to hurt it.

And the smaller Lumes proved to be a lot squishier, too.

---

Whilst my first three bombers were cleaning up the Lumes around the Titan's feet, and my main base was starting to crank out yet more air vehicles from now seven Advanced Air Factories, I was still making my way towards the slums of Brightholme. Or, trying too, anyway. I had run into a small problem.

The city of Elysion One was built on a peninsula. Brightholme was built on the edge of the peninsula, outside the walls and bordering the ocean.

I'd been walking in a straight line to Brightholme, and because I wasn't coming from the city, I'd encountered the ocean.

At the bottom of a three hundred foot drop.

On the far side of the water I could see the slums in detail, including a wide platform that looked vaguely reminiscent of the maze area from the Sokol level. I watched as the slum dwellers congregated at various points around Brightholme, pointing and looking at the Lume Titan. I could only see the back of their heads, but I imagined their faces were displaying a mix of awe and terror.

Actually, scratch that. I could see their faces, by looking at reflections in filthy windows three streets down. Because, you know, fuck it.

Hypertech optical sensors, for the win.

Anyway, back to my current predicament.

To get to the land bridge connecting to the city and loop around would take ages - probably about an hour and a half. I'd already been walking straight east for about that long, and I really wanted to goddamn do something. When you're a super computer with accelerated thought, ninety minutes of walking in a straight line is boring as fuck. Also, the second problem with going around.

In the time it took me to arrive, the Lume Titan would be at the city.

That made it totally worthless.

I had a few other options. I could simply jump off the cliff, but that meant that to get to the open land on which I could build I'd have to go through the slums, which were tightly packed and would probably cause a lot of trouble.

Or I could stay where I was, on a relatively flat, open plain with more than enough free space.

Yeah. That could work.

I began construction of an Advanced Air Factory, right near the edge of the cliff. It left me a fairly large amount of room left over, and I had the feeling I would need it.

After all, the transport ships I had in mind were fairly big. I'd likely need a new type of factory to build them, one bigger than even the Advanced Air Factory.

Once the Advanced Air Factory was done, I had the Air Fabricators assist it in the construction of more Advanced Air Fabricators.

For all of three seconds before I noticed something going on in Brightholme.

Lume incursions. Large tunnels formed of thick vines burst from the ground, disgorging hordes of weaker Lumes.

Fuck. I'd have to speed up my timetable then.

I queued up a few Kestrel gunships on my newest factory, and ordered the massive fleet above my main base to move in.

The Hornets were exclusively targeting the Titan. The Kestrels, on the other hand, I ordered to patrol the airspace over both the city and the slums, in order to deal with Lume incursions as they emerged.

The first Kestrel gunship rose from the factory next to me, and another quickly began forming in its place. I activated my own fabricator, speeding the process further.

As soon as the second gunship was complete, I sent them to the slums. The rest of my air fleet were a few minutes out, but that didn't mean I couldn't make a start on killing the Lumes already here.

At the same time, I opened another communication to my favourite Hacktivist. Multiple thought processing. Love it.

TSYGAN

You wanted to know why you should trust me? The Lumes have broken into Brightholme and it's only a matter of time before the Titan breaches Elysion One proper.

Right now I've got two gunships headed to Brightholme to save your people. I've got another hundred or so a few minutes out. The Elysion Military aren't going to help. The Core Guardians might, but they can't be in two places at once, let alone three dozen.

I am the only thing standing between your people and the Lumes. I'm willing to fight to get every last one of them off this planet, but I'm not going to be able to do that without your help.

The faster you get me those files, the faster I get your people out of here.

Time's ticking.

- Faith.

Okay, so I was probably being a bit of a bitch. At this point, it would likely be easier for me to brute force the security on Elysion One's network - or TSYGAN's - and take the files that way.

I didn't want to do that, though. It seemed pointless to go to the effort of stealing it when I could just be given it by someone who already had it.

Anyway, my gunships had reached the slums. They were already opening fire, blasting their targets into bloody chunks. Black chitin and orange gore already caked the ground around the first tunnel.

Maybe two gunships was overkill.

...

Nah.

 

[Faith]

Whee, more chapters because you guys seem to like it for some reason

5 - Cavalry
Unfortunately, even as overpowered as my gunships were against the Lumes, they couldn't be everywhere at once. I had them hovering high above the slums, able to shoot multiple Lume tunnels at once simply by rotating, but even then they couldn't cover more than four or five tunnels between them.

And the Lumes had a lot more than four or five tunnels.

It was weird. I knew that the Lumes had this whole 'constant attacks' thing going on, but I was pretty sure they didn't just up and appear in the middle of the city until well after the first Titan reached Elysion One. The smaller outposts, sure, but there was nothing in the DLC missions set in the slums that indicated the Lumes had been there for very long.

Maybe I'd created some butterflies already by firing tactical munitions at the Titan. I doubted it, though.

Even as I watched, groups of armed slum dwellers, equipped with everything from buzzsaws to crowbars, emerged from the woodwork to fight off the Lumes.

Valiant, but somewhat ineffective.

Luckily, though, the rest of my air support had just arrived.

All three hundred and seventy two units.

One hundred and eighty Hornet bombers rushed overhead, bypassing the city and heading straight for the Titan, looming over Elysion.

Heh, loom. Get it? Lume, loom? No? Just me? Okay.

The remaining craft, Kestrels to the last, swung into place over the slums, spewing fire from the skies. I had them ignore the city. The Brightsiders had an army and elite teams of commandoes trained specifically to deal with Lumes. The slum dwellers... not so much.

A deluge of gunfire rained on the Lumes, turning entire rampaging hordes into so much mush and gore. TSYGAN's Rats stared up into the sky, watching my green gunships decimate entire hordes of Lumes in seconds.

Talk about big damn heroes.

The Hornets, flying in three lines, got in range of the Titan and a stream of missiles was launched, crashing into the Titan's knees and creating a roaring chain of explosions that lasted a good ten seconds.

The Titan roared, a sound so loud it caused the earth beneath my feet, several kilometres away, to tremble. And then it staggered forward, almost falling before catching itself with one of its ridiculously proportioned arms even as the missile storm continued.

Well, More Dakka seemed to work. Kind of.

Not very well, but it was a start.

I still hadn't heard back from TSYGAN, though, which was worrying. Had she already left to help the Core Guardians? I was pretty sure she wouldn't have left Brightholme just yet, but then again, the passage of time was never really clearly indicated in game. Maybe she had.

In which case I'd need to steal Elysion's blueprints of my own accord.

Unless they decided to just up and give them too me. Not bloody likely.

The Hornets were continuing to be nothing but a nuisance to the Titan, and he proved that by waving an arm and swatting forty of the heavy bombers from the sky, only getting so many because I wasn't paying attention and was unable to get the targeted craft to dodge.

Luckily, though, he'd been the only one to attack me so far. None of the other Lumes were even capable of fighting back against the Kestrels, even the few with ranged attacks, because my gunships were flying too high for their puny acid spit to reach.

Also, killing them before they had a chance to look up, but that was beyond the point.

I flicked back to what the Hornets were doing. They were continuing to fire on the Lume Titan, and accomplishing very little. The chitinous plate on its legs was beginning to crack, but I had the feeling that continuing to punch through would take too long. Plus, the Titan was beginning to fight back, and although most of my craft were dodging, and I'd learned to spread them out further than they had been before, I was still losing between two and five craft a swing. If this kept going much longer, I'd be out of bombers.

I needed to finish this, hit somewhere more vulnerable.

Somewhere like... the eye.

On every other one of the basic walker-type Lumes, the glowing eye was the weak spot. No real reason the Titan would be different.

Why hadn't I considered that before? If I hit the one part of the Lume that wasn't armoured, there was a pretty good chance the bombs could kill it.

I mentally shrugged, figuring it couldn't hurt to try.

The Hornets continued their attack run before retreating from the Titan, leaving it briefly in peace whilst they reorganised themselves into rows again after they'd been scattered by the Titan's attacks.

They formed up quickly and returned to their attack pattern, flying directly towards the Titan's face.

And then they opened fire.

Once again, a stream of rockets burst forth to destroy the target. The Titan raised his arm to block the shots, and many slammed into his forearm and detonated relatively harmlessly. For such a massive creature, he had a pretty good reaction time.

However, by the time he'd done that I'd already reacted, ordering the craft to split up and attack from above and below. He couldn't block everything at once, after all.

The last of the missiles were still only halfway to the target when I received a message from TSYGAN, once again on open channels. Probably should have figured out a way to talk with more security, but it was a little late now.

I don't know who you are, but I appreciate the help. That doesn't mean I trust you. You want the files? Start explaining.

Alright, whatever, don't send me the files. I'll just take them. That's fine. Not like I'm in a rush to build some spaceships and evacuate one hundred and fifty thousand people from this planet before the Titan reached the city, or anything like that. Jeez.

I had some hacking to do.

The Commander had pre-programmed routines for building rapidly expanding economies and commanding armies in basic attacks like pincers. I only had to hope that the Progenitors did the same for Cyberwarfare.

A quick check of my database proved that yes, they did.

Excellent.

I activated the hacking routine and locked on to the biggest, most encrypted networks I could find.

TSYGAN's files were barely protected at all, apparently relying on the idea of no one thinking of accessing the 'McKinnsy Residence' wi-fi server whilst looking for terrorist data caches.

Not that it was an issue for me, since I was simultaneously accessing all the wi-fi servers.

Most of it was crap. A lot of it was porn. Some of it was the stuff I wanted, though, and I took that greedily.

It didn't get me all the information I wanted - it didn't have a lot on the military larger scale projects such as spacecraft, but it did contain most of the towers and weapons. All the Pre-DLC stuff, at any rate. And some of the older Sanctum 1 tech. Including the freeze gun. Nice. It also included a small amount of information about the Cores, and a lot of information about focused plasma weapons, including the blueprints for the old Penetrator plasma cannon.

I couldn't help but notice that most of the files were data requisitions registered to one Core Guardian Haigan Hawkins.

Hah, TSYGAN's spy was stealing Bright Foundation tech from right under their noses and they didn't even realise. Idiots.

As useful and interesting as the information was, it didn't contain what I had actually been after - the blueprints for the military starships.

I made a note to go over the designs later anyway, when I had a moment or two free.

And then I broadened my search, and slipped into the city grid.

What could possibly go wrong, right?

 

[Faith]

Another chapter, in which nothing goes wrong.

6 - Titan Slayer
I was through seventeen layers of security before I had a chance to realise that the hacking routine was working.

The remaining four layers put up a similar totally ineffective resistance and within less than a second of starting the hack I had access to Elysion One's Military Network.

Holy shit. The Progenitors were not kidding around when they made the Commanders.

Like, at all.

Fuck.

Ha! I knew nothing could go wrong!

Another echoing roar brought my attention out of the digital world and back to the real one.

The Titan's head was on fire.

The Hornet's missile barrage had finally ended, a full twelve seconds after it started.

Only twelve seconds? It felt a hell of a lot longer.

Enhanced thought processes play havoc on time perception.

The fact that I was able to do multiple things at once probably didn't help with that.

Whilst I was evaluating the radical restructuring of the Titan's face via tactical munitions, I was also greedily stealing absolutely every file I could find on the Elysion Military Network that seemed even remotely interesting. I was also, now that I'd realised how ridiculously easy it was, hacking into Elysion's other networks - namely, the Bright Foundation's corporate and research networks. The civilian networks, I couldn't care less about.

Once I had my fingers in all the metaphorical pies, I started copying over every file I could find to do with weapons tech, Core tech, and all the other fun stuff - including a fair bit of research on Lumes that would probably turn out to be hugely relevant in some way later on. There was also a lot on genetic engineering - mainly to do with food, though, not humans. Although the Bright Foundation's medical science was not to be underestimated either. Some kind of regenerative gel dispensers. Useful. I took them too. Not that I would need them, but it would probably prove useful to have.

Just about the only things I didn't take were the personnel records, and that was only because I really didn't give a shit about their soldiers.

I had enough blackmail on the Bright Foundation anyway.

Once I was done stealing all their tech, or rather, as I was stealing all their tech, I looked at how badly injured the Titan was.

Short answer? Very. A volley of almost one hundred and fifty tactical missiles to the face would do that, I suppose. Orange blood-like goo flowed from the Titan's recessed eye, and the angry red glow seemed to have subsided a bit. It lurched forward, catching itself again on its ridiculous arms.

Seriously, its hands were nearly brushing the ground when it stood up straight. Why did it need such long bloody arms?

But this time, it didn't push itself to its feet and keep going.

It seemed pretty content to just chill out for a moment. Catch its breath.

Did giant plant creatures have breath?

Either way, that was totally a thing I was going to let happen.

Not.

Another stream of guided explosives soared across the sky, tearing into the Titan's face once more.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to be that easy.

I mean, I'd lost close to eighty Hornets, almost half my original force, but just two hundred odd tactical missiles to the face had been enough to kill it.

Or at least, I was pretty sure it was dead.

It didn't even roar as it fell, simply pitching over backwards silently.

Until it hit the ground, that is. That caused a quake which shook the earth.

I ordered one more bombing run, just to be sure.

---

Once the first Lume Titan was dead, its head blasted into thousands of meaty chunks, I allowed myself to relax - briefly.

The other Lume Titans would get up eventually, and I wanted the evacuations to be well underway before they did.

Which meant I needed ships.

Luckily, I had a couple of newly acquired blueprints for ships for more... habitable than the Progenitor transports, and I wanted a chance to test them out.

I also wanted to test out my ability to modify designs. ROB's message before I'd landed indicated that was a major goal of this 'experiment' of his, so that shouldn't have been a problem, but nonetheless I was unsure.

Before I had a chance to begin that process, however, I received another message from TSYGAN, one slightly less terse than her other messages.

Who are you? You appear out of nowhere, with a fleet of aircraft far outnumbering Elysion One's military, blow the Lume Titan to hell, and offer to evacuate the planet? You ask for my files and then steal them anyway? Don't think I didn't see you break into the Elysion networks too.

And how could there be more than one Titan? We would have noticed.

What's your motive? Why are you here?

When I responded, I did so on a channel I knew the Brightsiders wouldn't be looking at. Having access to all their communications data was really useful for that.

TSYGAN

My motive is to prevent a lot of people from dying on this god forsaken rock. The Lumes don't want you here, and they've made that abundantly clear. It's time for the Bright Foundation to pack up and leave. Which is exactly what they're going to do, once they see the rest of the Lume Titans arrive. They want to leave you, the slum dwellers, and many of the people in Elysion One behind, in order to maximise their profits.

Unlike them, I'm not willing to watch thousands of innocents die so a few corporate executives can turn a profit. And since I happen to have the industrial means to get the rest of the city off-world, that's what I intend to do.

As for there being multiple Titans - you missed the first one, didn't you?

- Faith

TSYGAN's response was fairly quick.

Why approach me? There are thousands more people in Elysion than in the Slums. If you wanted to save lives, you'd be there. What are you after? The Sokol blueprints? And why do you want us off the planet? Why not fight the Lumes? I don't trust you.

A fairly cynical response. Probably to be expected of a terrorist leader.

Clearly she still wasn't entirely sold.

I sent another message.

It may be hard for you to understand, coming from a society where the government are actively trying to ruin your life, but some people are willing to do things purely because it's the right thing to do. And I like to believe that I'm one of those people.

To a degree, anyway. I'm also a pragmatist, and a realist, and I recognise that when the rest of the Titans wake up, which they will, every human on the planet is doomed. Since humans arrived on this planet the Lumes have been trying to kill you. They don't want you here and they've made that plenty apparent.

If you want your people to get off this planet, you're going to need to help me. Spread the word, get your people packed and ready to go. This planet is a death world and the less time you spend here, the better.

Right now, our main priority is getting as many of your people into orbit as possible. Unless you want them to be crushed by Titans, that is.

P.S. Your Sokol's not that great anyway. I should know, I've got the blueprints.

The wait for a response was short.

Much as I don't trust you, I don't like the idea of everyone being killed by Titans. The word is out. My people are getting ready to leave. You just be ready to pick them up.

 

[Faith]

Warning - the following chapter is ~1300 words of technobabble. Seriously. I'm not sure how I managed either. I even had to cut parts out so it didn't dwarf every other chapter.

Oh well.


7 - Shipwright
The hardest part of designing the ship turned out to be figuring out how to start.

Luckily, one of the many subroutines that I'd inherited with my new Osiris Commander body was some form of design program, with complete physics simulation to allow me to test and compare performance in any number of simulated environments. Handy.

I loaded up the blueprints for the standard Elysion Freighter. Sure enough, it was just a little big for my Advanced Air Factory. By about thirty metres.

It was also the smallest transport design I'd stolen. It had a recommended crew size of eighteen, with a maximum capacity of forty. It was hardly worth building given I was planning on evacuating a city of thousands, but on the other hand it was probably the one design I had a hope in hell of being able to build fast enough, and in large enough numbers, to matter. Besides, if I built anything larger I'd need bigger factories and bigger landing zones, neither of which was exactly viable on a large scale.

First, I needed a new factory for it. Easy enough. Stretch out an existing factory design, add more fabricators. It would increase the metal drain per second, but it would let it build faster, as well. That design operation took less than a second, and I ordered the construction of two of my new Airfields, each one a little bigger than two Advanced Air Factories side by side.

Next, I turned back to the actual freighter blueprints.

Okay, I had no idea how I was going to do this. Just had to think it through. Step by step. How hard could it be?

First, strip out the crap. All the decorations, all the furniture gone. Leave nothing but bare floors and walls. After a moment's consideration, I decided to leave the cockpit largely alone. That way, should the ship's AI fail, the people on board were still able to use it. I'd just have to remember to actually connect it to stuff once I was done.

Next, replace everything.

Power systems were the first thing to be stripped out. The freighter's generator was suspiciously undersized, probably to reduce costs or some crap. Either way, I replaced it with a slightly downscaled version of my own. Already, I'd almost quadrupled the power output of the thing, and the new generator was actually only slightly bigger. The lights were modified to be more efficient designs, capable of the same wireless energy/metal transmission as all my other bullshit technology, totally negating the need for wires. It was only saving a little extra space, but every little counted.

Next, I removed the engines, replacing them with my own designs. The existing engines were fairly efficient, probably because they had to run on the undersized reactor, but my engines, based on the statistics the design program was giving me, were a lot more powerful - almost ridiculously so. And thanks to the Generator, power issues weren't a concern. Still, the Sanctum-verse engines were probably worth looking into in terms of efficient designs.

Communications were the third thing to go, replaced with yet more bullshit Progenitor hypertech. That saved a whole lot of room in the 'attic' area between the ceiling and the outer hull, and I moved the relevant consoles from the communications room in with the cockpit, freeing up another room on the interior.

Hmm. With the room I'd saved in the 'attic', the ship was almost large enough to incorporate two floors, at least towards the rear of the ship.

I'd worry about that later. There were still a few systems to replace, after all.

The key ones being sanitation and life support.

This ship was going to be carrying far more than the design was intended to, so both systems would need an overhaul.

I figured the easiest way of dealing with sanitation was to have it reclaimed by fabricators and then recycled as mass for other purposes, although what purposes would need a constant supply of mass were beyond me.

I suppose I could have used it for food, but that bought up some awkward implications. I mean, sure, I was disassembling the waste at a subatomic level and recycling it into something entirely different, but still... It would have to do unless I could figure out a better alternative.

Setting that issue aside for now, I turned to life support. The life support on the ship seemed to comprise of a bunch of oxygen tanks and the assumption that the ship wouldn't be used for long-haul missions.

Not useful at all. What I needed was something more permanent, something reusable, something capable of creating its own oxygen.

Now what did I have that fit that bill?

...

...

...

Fuck, I'm an idiot.

Cores.

The entire fucking game was built around them. Using high-energy yet somehow totally safe radiation to turn minor noble gasses like Argon into nice breathable Oxygen. They were designed to make entire city blocks habitable. An enclosed environment much smaller than a city block? Easy.

All it required was a constant stream of other gasses - such as the massive amounts of carbon dioxide it was inevitably going to get as a result of having several families living in a confined environment.

I downscaled a core and mounted it in a fairly centralised location of the ship, to give it the best airflow. Problem solved.

There, sanitation, food, and life support all solved. What else?

Shields? Progenitors didn't have much on them and unfortunately, neither did the Bright Foundation. That was a no-go. Weapons? I guess a light armament couldn't hurt. I added that to the list of to-dos. Medicine? Added to the to-do list. The Bright Foundation had a surprisingly good medical system, actually. A sort of medical gel that induced cellular regeneration and aided the immune system, amongst other things. I added the installation of some of those dispensers to the to-do list.

I think that was all the major things accounted for.

Now, floorplan.

I had been wrong in my previous assumption - it wasn't quite large enough for two floors. However, I wasn't exactly forced to keep the ship the same size as the original. I had about ten metres leeway in each direction, an advantage I'd added to the Airfield just in case it was needed.

After a little bit of stretching, in all three dimensions, the ship was easily big enough to fit two floors. The top floor had bunks towards the back, each bunk having one bed and an on-suite bathroom and toilet. The middle of the top floor was an open space with ramps leading down to the bottom floor. The front of the top floor was home to the medical bay, the bridge and command room, and a Fabricator room. The Fabricator could print food, medical supplies, tools, or clothes, depending on what was needed. Eventually I'd need to set up an interface for it, but I wasn't too fussed about that yet.

The lower level was set up the same as the upper level at the back, but the front was simply a large recreational area that doubled as a mess hall and a storage bay.

'Required' crew of three, maximum capacity of thirty two people.

It wasn't perfect for a refugee ship, but then, that wasn't its purpose. In keeping with the military design it was based off, this ship was more of a light scout vessel. I planned to use these to evacuate any military personnel, as well as TSYGAN's Rats. Didn't want to put the people with guns in cramped environments full of people, after all.

I saved the new design and backed out of the construction subroutine, noting that all of four seconds had passed in the time it took me to design the ship. Interesting.

I queued up the orders for my Airfields.

Now all I had to do was repeat the process for another ship.

A ship about six times as long, three times as wide and twice as tall.

Yay.

 

[Faith]

In which things do not go wrong.

Yet.

8 - Refuge
As awesome as my new Airfields were, and heavily decked out in Fabricator Modules, they took almost a minute to build the freighter. Fifty two seconds, to be exact.

Speaking of which, I needed to name the freighter.

Hm.

I could just be lazy and give it a designation from the Greek alphabet or something.

Theta-class troopship?

Nah. Boring.

I wanted something more... explorer-ey, somehow, since the ship was basically a long-haul scout ship, at this point. Pathfinder. Adventurer. Pioneer.

Oh, Pioneer. I like that one.

So I quickly changed the name of the saved design to the Pioneer Freighter, and my two Airfields updated their build queues accordingly. Not that it was actually altering anything, besides the name of the file being loaded, but protocol is protocol, I guess.

The Advanced Airfield, so named because I wanted to keep with the theme already present, was going to take almost three minutes to build the large cargo ship.

Man, Progenitor Fabricators are bullshit.

The large carrier, which I decided to call the Voyager, had a predicted capacity of almost one thousand five hundred, divided into rooms for two to four people. It was an absolutely huge ship, and the Advanced Airfield I was building it on made up about 60% of my main base's size.

Even considering how big it was, it would still be slightly cramped, but it beat being killed by Lumes.

The only unfortunate thing was that if my estimates on the population of Elysion One were right, I'd need around one hundred of them. Which is why I'd sent out a bunch of my Fabricators to start clearing massive tracts of land to build more Advanced Airfields. No way in hell I was sitting here for five hours waiting for ships to build.

With just seven seconds left until the first Pioneer was ready to take off, I received another message from TSYGAN.

My people are getting ready to leave. I told them to bring only what they could carry with them. Where do you want them to meet?

I looked out over the slums from my perch on the edge of the cliff, measuring various distances using the incredibly bullshit Progenitor hypertech optics.

If you can get your people moving towards your Sokol, I'll make some room near there.

I sent the message off and then sent out the four Air Fabricators I had on hand to move into the slums. After a moment's thought, I began constructing some Advanced Air Fabricators to follow them. I didn't expect to need much building power in the slums, but it would probably help anyway.

---

As the first Advanced Air Fabricator took off across the ravine, followed shortly after by the first two Pioneers, my communicator pinged again.

I'm not sure how many people you'll fit on those ships of yours. I thought you were supposed to be evacuating the entire city?

Ignoring the not-so-subtle barb, I tried to think about the level the Sokol was based on. The roof of the plaza was easily big enough for the smaller ships to fit. They would have to be hovering, but with the amount of Progenitor hypertech engines installed, that wouldn't be an issue. All I'd need to do then would be clear out the walls and railings next to the Sokol so the Pioneers could put the access ramps down on the roof.

Workable. Not ideal, but workable.

These are the little ones. I've got bigger craft set up for the civilians.

The first four fabricators arrived, and through their cameras I took stock of the situation. The little plaza/balcony thing was there, from the game, separated from the Sokol only by a thin scaffold of wooden boards and corrugated iron panels. Just like in the game.

I had the Fabricators wipe the surface of the roof clear, making just enough room for two of my Pioneers to set down side by side.

That also gave them a chance to use their Fabricators to scan a copy of the rather cool looking tricycle that was parked on said roof. I hadn't bothered stealing designs for civilian vehicles, and the only reason I took it was because it looked cool, but it was still nice to have.

Once the roof was clear, I had the Fabricators build a Teleporter.

Not a full sized one - that would have been a little too big to fit on the roof. Instead I shrunk down the design, cutting the portal size from thirty metres across to five.

Still plenty big enough for my purposes.

Just because I was using ships to get the slum dwellers off-world didn't mean I had to park my ships in the slums.

Even as my Air Fabricators scurried about busily, I saw people beginning to leave their buildings. Stick thin and ragged looking, carrying backpacks, duffel bags, or small suitcases, they walked uncertainly towards the rooftop, gazing wearily at my low-flying green construction aircraft.

Damn, TSYGAN worked fast. Or maybe these people were so used to living on scraps and moving around short notice that for them it was just another Tuesday. A fair few of the people were armed - TSYGAN's Rats? Probably. They seemed to be doing a pretty good job of corralling the crowds and keeping them relatively calm. I wonder what TSYGAN told them?

The two Pioneers and the Advanced Air Fabricator arrived, engines flaring before dying down as the ships slowed to a hover above the site.

The Advanced Air Fabricator joined the other four Fabricators and in about three seconds, the Teleporter was complete.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the Fabricators, honestly. My Kestrels were still raining hell on the Lumes, so I didn't really need them to build defensive turrets or anything like that.

I decided to do it anyway. Again, More Dakka never hurt anyone. Except the target. And having more automated turrets and walls around Brightholme to fend off the Lumes freed up my Kestrels for other duties.

I plotted out a quick course for my Fabricators and let them go, changing mental gears and checking up on my Kestrels. Still flying around, still blasting every Lume in sight. No issues.

The Pioneers would hold position over the rooftop. Honestly I should have held off on building them for a long while, but since they were there I decided to use them as flying turrets. Further insurance, nothing more.

---

Back at my 'main base', or rather the base I'd established when I'd first landed, another Teleporter was constructed next to my Advanced Airfield.

I'd need to build some ramps or staircases up onto the Airfield's landing pad, but that was a problem I could solve quickly. A couple seconds in design mode and I had the design mapped out, and the two Fabricators who'd built the Teleporter split off to complete that.

The Voyager, or the first one at least, was about half done. Another ninety seconds until it was complete.

Excellent.

Once the ramp was done, the two Fabricators moved to one side and created a Bot Factory.

Once that small construction finished, the Fabricators returned to working on the Voyager whilst the Factory began producing a small stream of Doxes.

---

Deep underneath the surface of the planet known as Loek III, a great beast stirred.

The first Titan, the youngest of their breed, had been killed.

The Invaders had much to pay for.

The great beast roared.

And the earth shook in response.

 

[Faith]

In which things actually go wrong.

9 - Murphy's Law
In the game Planetary Annihilation, there's a nice announcer lady who gives you advice like 'Nuclear Launch Detected' and 'Enemy Commander Detected'.

It turns out that the various subroutines, such as the Radar subroutine, send those messages to me when they detect stuff.

And I can change what they're set to detect, so my Radar was now set to warn me of any Lume Titans.

It was just like playing the game, except my Radar kept screaming at me because -

'Warning - Lume Titan Detected'

Again?

Fuck. Fucking fucking fuck.

Now everything's gone wrong. I never should have said those stupid words.

Goddamn Murphy. He's an asshole.

Four - no, five now, - locations of large, unnatural seismic activity. Conveniently coinciding with five locations of drastically increased Lume activity.

More Titans.

Luckily, all five were still a long way from Elysion, and I immediately threw my remaining Hornet bombers at them. My Kestrels stayed where they were, providing cover fire and air support for the refugees still in Brightholme.

I fucked up, big time. Obviously by killing the first Titan I'd prompted the rest to get up early. I hadn't even started evacuation yet.

I quickly powered up the Teleporters, blue gateways bursting into life.

I sent the three Doxes I had through the Teleporter, noting that they barely fit under the shrunken frame.

Well, as long as they could get through I didn't really care.

The crowd on the other side of the portal seemed fairly apprehensive about the sudden appearance of giant robots, which was fair enough. I'd probably be worried too, in their position.

The Doxes turned to the crowds and through them, I spoke.

"Alright, everybody. Listen up. On the other side of this portal there is a ship. The rooms fit up to four - if you've got a bigger family or group than that, take two rooms. If you're on your own, wait until last. Anyone trying to sneak on board early will be forced to the back of the line. Understood?"

The crowd stared dumbly at the Doxes. The Rats, however, seemed to be paying some attention at least. Once I was done speaking, they started yelling out over the crowds.

The people began shuffling forwards towards the Teleporter, pushed forwards by the Rats who seemed to be eyeing me warily more than watching the crowd.

I left the actual organisation of the crowd in their possibly not-so-capable hands and turned back to my base.

The Doxes there, of which I now had several, formed two lines, effectively walling in a path from the Teleporter to the Airfield's ramp.

Nothing says 'walk this way' like a line of angry looking doombots.

Much as I wanted to micromanage the evacuation, I really didn't have much choice. I'd already told the crowds how many people to a room. I set up a counting routine on one of the Doxes at the base of the ramp, to keep track of how many people entered this ship and left it at that.

I had some more Titans to kill. Well, preferably I'd avoid killing them, but I definitely wanted a way to kill them if they reached the city before I was ready.

---

These Titans, unfortunately, proved somewhat harder to kill than the previous one.

They were smart enough to start attacking my craft straight away, and block any missiles aimed for their face by crossing their arms.

It certainly made for an interesting battle.

Well, calling it a battle was maybe a bit of an exaggeration. It was my Hornets buzzing around like the insects they were named after and being totally ineffective at causing damage whilst the Titans flailed vainly in an attempt to destroy them.

It would distract them, but probably not for long.

Not for long enough.

Well, actually, that was probably a lie.

After all, I had the Sokol's blueprints now, courtesy of TSYGAN.

And whilst hers was slow to charge and needed to drain multiple cores for power, mine could be modified with bullshit Progenitor hypertech to negate that.

And I could also build the things very, very quickly.

Well, compared to TSYGAN. They were still pretty big. Probably around... five and a half minutes, if it was being built by just one Advanced Air Fabricator. Something to think about.

Switching focus back to my main Commander body, I looked around the cliff I was on. Two Airfields, taking up most of the room. Currently building a Pioneer each, to bring my total to four.

And there was the Advanced Air Factory, currently building more Advanced Air Fabricators. I had six, now, assisting in the construction of the Pioneers.

I called them off, ordering them to reclaim the Advanced Air Factory. I needed that room for my new gun.

The Air Fabricators I'd sent into Brightholme proper were still flying around, building Laser Towers along the busier roads. Refugees would stare in awe as towers formed in seconds around them, before being pushed forwards by another surge of the crowd.

The Kestrels, meanwhile, who were now allowed to slack off slightly thanks to the presence of Laser Towers, began to spread further over the slums and into the city proper.

I appropriated two of the Kestrels and one of the Pioneers for a little reconnaissance mission and let the rest do their thing.

---

The blueprints for the Sokol were an absolute mess.

Comparing it to the Penetrator Turret, I could see that most of the vital components were simply upscaled, and everything else stripped away or discarded. The things people do to cut costs...

It was terribly inefficient compared to Progenitor hypertech, but it was still a plasma cannon supposedly capable of 'turning Elysion One into a crater', or so thought Haigan. That was fairly impressive, I guess.

I loaded up the design for the Doxes' plasma cannon as well, comparing all three blueprints. And then I got to work.

First, strip out the Sokol's capacitor and energy systems with the vastly superior Progenitor Energy Generator. Not only did that mean it didn't need to feed off a whole heap of Cores for power, but it was also capable of tapping into my Resource Grid and therefore charging... pretty much instantly. Progenitors? Bullshit.

Then, I replaced some other systems. The protruding rails were, in fact, magnetic rails for accelerating the plasma blast. Those were replaced. The energy field generator, which opened some interesting ideas for energy shields that I would have to look into, was likewise replaced with the Progenitor equivalent.

The cooling and ventilation systems were... totally unnecessary, since Progenitor hyptertech was apparently so close to 100% efficient, and their materials were so advanced, that the tiny amount of waste heat that did get through made no difference to the operation of the gun. I stripped those out, streamlining the design greatly.

And after a few rounds of going over the designs with a fine tooth comb and stripping the useless stuff out, I was left with the blueprints for a high power plasma cannon that, according to the physics simulations, could almost match the firepower of my nukes.

And it looked freaking awesome. Plus points for style.

I didn't want to kill the Titans, if I could help it. They weren't exactly the villains any more than the Brightsiders. But if push came to shove, I was more than capable of shoving right back.

I saved the design for my new toy and ordered my six Advanced Air Fabricators to begin construction where the Advanced Air Factory used to be.

Whilst they were doing that, I needed to think of a name.

Go ahead and suggest ideas. I have a name, but if I like yours better I'll use that instead. *kisses*

 

[Faith]

In which things are still pretty bad.

PS. I liked all the suggestions, but the one I ended up going with wasn't actually any of yours but a variant on the suggestions of Aeroprime and Ronan O'Brien. Thanks *kisses*

10 - Preparation
The Titans continued their steady march towards the city, not slowing despite the near constant attacks from my Hornets.

The Titans didn't even seem fazed by the endless explosions splashing across their bodies any more. Attempts to target the eye had so far failed, as the Titans merely held up their arms over their faces and continued their unstoppable advance, occasionally swinging their arms and trying to swipe a few Hornets out of the sky.

I let them. I still had about an hour before they reached the walls.

Enough time to build twenty more Voyagers from each Advanced Airfield.

Well, not quite twenty. Powerful as the ship's engines were, they were still large and heavy, and took a good bit of time to get off the ground.

And the ships could only load when they were landed, so that meant I had to wait for people to file on before the ship could even begin to take off. And loading fifteen hundred people... I wouldn't be getting twenty ships out in that hour, put it that way.

At least, not twenty ships from that one Airfield. I had two more, now, build somewhat further from my main base. Each was also equipped with loading ramps and teleporters. I'd just have to cycle the teleporters when one ship filled up so I could keep a steady stream of people loading.

Eugh. That plan would involve... maths.

I dropped maths in Year 11 for a reason, damnit.

If it wasn't for the teleporter's limits, this would have been so much easier.

Actually, that gave me an idea. Maybe I could skip the middle man entirely, and just build teleporters onto the ships.

That could work. And would allow people to travel between ships as well, should that be necessary for whatever reason.

Assuming that no one else was using the Teleporter network.

No, no, that wouldn't work. I already had people loading onto the first ship.

Which, actually, was still in dock. Still easily modified.

I made the changes to the design, and the Advanced Airfield's Fabricators sent their nanobots to make the modifications. They were complete in seconds, making it look as if it had always been part of the design.

Haha! I am a genius. Now I can have the ships take off as soon as they're done, and load pretty much as fast as people can walk through the portal.

Which is still unnervingly slow. Did the slum dwellers not realise they had about an hour before the Titans arrived at the city and all hell broke lose?

Ugh.

Oh well. Not much I could do about it.

Whilst they continued their painfully slow boarding of the Voyager, I turned to assist my Advanced Air Fabricators with the construction of my new Plasma Cannon.

Still didn't know what to call it. Plasma Cannon sounded too mainstream. I wanted a cool name, damn it.

And actually, I had one.

The Little Ray of Sunshine. LiRoS, for short.

Of course, that name wasn't entirely accurate, for a few reasons. It was only really valid if by little, you mean big enough to drive a semitrailer through, by ray, you meant energy blast the size of a small house, and by sunshine, you meant plasma.

Since I was a giant robot with a big fuck-off plasma cannon, though, I was pretty sure no one was going to argue.

Either way, I assisted the Fabricators with its construction and it finished at about the same time as my third and fourth Pioneers did.

Once they were done, both Airfields shut down to ease the drain on my resources. The Pioneers, admittedly, were a drop in the bucket compared to the Voyagers but still.

I did another quick check over my various operations. Three Advanced Airfields, all building Voyagers. I'd shut down the Teleporter temporarily so I could get the first one loaded and in the air before I finished loading it, but the last of the passengers were nearly on so that wouldn't take long to sort out.

The rest of my base was idle as almost all of my Fabricators assisted in the expansion, building more Extractors where possible and otherwise reclaiming land for more Advanced Airfields.

The Lumes seemed pretty content to leave me be, but I guess I wasn't the one pumping their atmosphere full of oxygen.

The Fabricators I'd sent into Brightholme were currently flying around building lots of wall blocks and laser towers. The walls were good for both corralling crowds and blocking off Lume access, and the towers were placed in areas where I couldn't afford Lume presence, such as along the numerous busy roads packed with refugees.

Whilst the Fabricators constructed static defenses, my Kestrels were content to provide mobile defense, blasting Lumes from the sky wherever they reared their plant-zombie heads. My four Pioneers assisted, using their own assault cannons to shred Lumes alongside the Kestrels.

I'd ordered them not to use the missiles. Too much risk involved in that. I didn't want to blow holes in any streets or anything.

My Hornets were still buzzing around the Titans, to absolutely no effect. Chains of explosions rocked the Titan's legs, but the great creatures didn't even stumble. I left the Hornets as they were. As a distraction, they were serving wonderfully. Although I'm not sure they were really slowing the Titans much... or at all. Oh well.

And finally, over to the east on the far side of the city, I had two more Kestrels and a Pioneer, hovering idly over the narrow channel of water separating Elysion One from the landmass to the east. I took remote control of those craft, moving them south down the coastline.

As I surveyed the land below them, the three craft located an area full of wind turbines. There were several islands, really nothing more than sandbanks, with wind turbines built upon them, the chain of islands stretching for kilometres.

Why a futuristic society was using such primitive methods of power generation was beyond me, but I ignored that, moving my Kestrels closer to the coast, and the scene of a rather large gunfight. There was a large deck, metal plated, resting above a sandbar. On the middle of the deck was another wind turbine, one badly damaged by the looks of it. Beyond the deck, further inland, was a large shed-like building - well, more like two stuck together. One of the sheds housed the core - the other, I vaguely recalled, may have been a Lume spawn point.

I was proven right when a swarm of runners burst from the larger building, only to be immediately cut down by towers. Lumes were pouring out of the woodwork and racing towards a maze of white gun turrets, rockets and blasts of lightning vaporising groups of Runners and focused laser beams carving up Armoured Heavies like hot knives through butter.

On top of the shed stood three armoured figures, a robot and a girl in a black hoodie.

The Core Guardians, fighting side by side with my favourite hacktivist.

My Kestrels dropped from the clouds into a low hover above the battlefield.

And then their cannons roared, and the battlefield became a slaughterhouse.