Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]

[Faith]

Double post but OH WELL

Be warned, I am tired and this chapter has not undergone the same rigorous mediocre bare-bones beta readings of indeterminate quality that my other chapters so far have, so expect mistakes and stuff.

31 - Split
Multitasking was an... interesting experience. True multitasking, that is.

I'd done multitasking before, to a degree, on Loek III, but it hadn't been real multitasking. I'd cheated by giving the first set of units five seconds worth of orders, then swapping to the second group and giving them five seconds of orders, and so on and so on, before looping back to the first set of units and giving them more orders. It worked to a degree, but had the downside of me only reacting to problems when I cycled through to the set of units that were having difficulty. It was almost like having dozens of tabs open in a web browser - I could have them all open and doing stuff, but I could only look at one at a time, and I could only flick through them so quickly.

Thanks to Progenitor hypertech, though, that was hardly the limit of my mental partitioning.

Indeed, the incredibly advanced AI core that functioned as my brain was fully capable of running literally billions of things at once. Low end. If I ramped it up...

I'm not very good at maths, but I know enough to say that if I pushed the AI core to the absolute maximum, I could be running an absolutely ridiculous and arbitrarily large number of streams of consciousness at once. Enough to be directly managing every single unit in a planet-sized swarm of nano-bots, and have threads left over.

Have I mentioned that Progenitors are bullshit?

I wasn't going to jump to such extremes just yet, though. That seemed like a good way to cause undue amounts of panic and confusion.

Instead, I simply spun up a second stream of consciousness. It was disorienting, at first, and that was with both threads 'looking' at my Commander body. Then I split the threads apart, connecting to Rider 06 with one and Rider 11 with the other.

Two separate ships. Two separate viewpoints. Two entirely separate and distinct streams of consciousness. Controlled by one mind.

Just this level of multitasking was screwing with me. It was... like seeing different images in each eye, but being able to react to each image as if you were seeing it, and thinking about it, with your full brainpower. And yet still being capable of seeing what was going on with the other eye. It was giving me a headache just thinking about how to explain it.

Although I'm not entirely sure why a hypertech AI would be capable of suffering headaches. Seems like a little bit of a flaw in the Progenitor's design. Unless, of course, it was in fact working as intended. Which had its own implications. Not that I was really fussed either way.

I had my two ships spool up their FTL Drives, jumping into the black towards their individual targets.

Rider 06 was on its way to a Zoltan science outpost nestled deep in the no-man's-land between the Zoltan territories and the Human territories. I had to wonder why - it wasn't close enough to either side to receive reinforcements in any timely manner, should they be necessary, nor were there any kind of interesting anomalies or anything that might be worth studying.

I guess it could have been some kind of bio-weapon facility - it would explain the isolation. And the Zoltan were energy beings - immune to biological infections. If it didn't completely go against their generally diplomatic ideals, I could almost have believed it. Rogue base, maybe?

Rider 11 emerged from FTL in the midst of a great expanse of space dust. The nebula was rampant with all kinds of interference, which dampened the FTL-verse sensors I'd recently installed. The Progenitor tech, on the other hand, seemed totally unaffected. They easily picked out the vast rounded constructs that marked the Slug star-city. A number of smaller contacts drifted around - the Slug ships going about their business.

Also known as my latest targets.

Rider 06 arrived at its destination, dropping out of the FTL bubble just a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres from the station. Almost immediately, two Zoltan vessels disengaged from the station and rocketed towards my ship, armoured panels sliding back and weapons unfolding.

Taking no chances, I see. Not really an issue for me. I doubted they had the firepower to punch through. I, on the other hand, didn't need firepower. My nanobots - well, actually, I wasn't sure how they'd react to the Zoltan shield. If they didn't pass through, then I'd have to open fire. I doubted they'd be able to shrug off much firepower from me. Based on what I'd seen, the Progenitors vastly out-gunned them.

Rider 11, on the other hand, was not approached at all. I guess the Slugs weren't too worried about one little ship.

The two Zoltan vessels didn't bother hailing, simply firing away with laser weapons and some kind of energy beams. Hard to tell from such a distance, but they looked like Glaive Beams.

I wanted it. Only because I didn't have one yet.

The newly installed shields soaked up the incoming fire harmlessly, and I didn't even bother trying to dodge. The volleys of gunfire burst harmlessly against the energy field. The Fabricator mounted on the ship's nose fired, a spray of green aimed at the larger of the two ships - a bomber of some kind, if my memories of the game were right.

It swept to one side, just a little slow to dodge the whole attack. Not that it mattered - the Zoltan shield proved totally capable of blocking the nanobots. Not much of an issue. I'd just need to pop their shields. Luckily, the turret mounts on the Rider meant I could do that without having to turn around.

The two ships, as I'd suspected, didn't stand a chance against the Progenitor weaponry. Just three shots was enough to shred the Bomber's Zoltan shield, and weaken the shield beneath. The smaller ship, the fighter, suffered much the same way.

They curved off, flying round to one side in a wide loop. Rider 06 turned to meet them, preparing another load for the Fabricator. This time, they wouldn't have the Zoltan shields to save them.

Rider 11 drifted close to the Slug station. As with the Federation mining facility, it seemed to rely entirely on first-come, first-served hangar bay occupancy. Again, I had the scout craft circle the station, lightly dusting every ship in range with nanobots. All their technology would be mine, one way or the other.

The two Zoltan ships were very quickly assimilated by the nanobots without their super shield to protect them, and soon I was looking at their internal systems with an almost childish glee.

Supershields - the first thing on my list of things to get. The bomber possessed two Glaive Beams, which I also quickly copied. There weren't any other systems of note, unfortunately, beyond the standard fare. Engine, shields, medical bay, sensors.

The fighter, somewhat surprisingly, seemed better equipped. I mean, its weapons weren't as powerful, it had a smaller reactor, and the shield generator was barely functional - it seemed to rely entirely on its super shield for defence.

Most notably, though, it had a Clone Bay.

Unlike the medical bay, of which I'd seen and copied several variants, the Clone Bay didn't repair existing wounds. Instead, it simply saved scans of the crew's brain and then, in the event of their death, grew them a clone, complete with perfectly copied brain and therefore all memories - well, not quite all, but most - accelerated the clone to the age they were at, and then released them.

In somewhere between five and fifteen seconds, if my memory was right.

That had some... serious potential for me. If I could get some cybernetics - well, that opened up whole new world of options.

Well, at least for the possibility of interacting with other people. It'd be better than an Avatar - they were, first and foremost, robotic soldiers, and it showed, despite my alterations to the design.

I decided to take that.

Rider 11 was having somewhat less luck with regards to cool technology. Although I'd infiltrated almost two dozen ships now, most were lowly civilian vessels, barely armed or armoured at all. I'd hoped to find a Teleporter, or a Mind Control unit, or something, but apparently not.

Unfortunately, Rider 11's flight was interrupted by seven heavily armed Slug Cruisers emerging from deep within one of the station's larger hangers, guns out and charged. Obviously I'd done something to piss them off. The lead vessel began to hail me.

At the same time as I was dealing with that, however, I was looking at the various files I'd stolen from the two Zoltan ships.

One of them made mention of the purpose of the station. Apparently I'd missed my guess. It wasn't any kind of bio-weapon station. No, it was something else, something far more painful for me.

 

[Faith]

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING PLEASE HELP

Actually, I have a pretty good idea what I'm doing. I'm just super stressed from IRL stuff and I think my writing quality has dropped as a result, but I wanted to do something other than stress about shit I can't do anything about, so I wrote this.

Anyway, enough of my problems.

32 - Competition
Officially, Zoltan station LDC-952 was nothing but a military communications relay, for the kinds of message that couldn't be transmitted on open channels. Troop deployments, espionage reports, etcetera. Not just for the Zoltan forces, but the Federation as a whole. Its main purpose was to prevent Rebels from just being able to intercept military communications at any old relay.

Which would have been fine, except, based on what I'd learned from the files on the bomber, the crew of the station had decided to switch to the 'winning' side. For six months they'd been leaking classified military intelligence to a fleet of terrorists.

Well, they might have been terrorists. Certainly they did some rather... questionable things, but... the game never really elaborated on the details. Besides the bit where they outnumbered the Federation by a massive amount despite being a human-only group, so far as I'd seen in the game.

Either way, the station had been feeding them intel with which to wage war against the Federation.

Which was bad enough, without taking into account the unofficial purpose of LDC-952.

Military grade artificial intelligence research. Apparently, this particular station had been responsible for the hacking and cyberwarfare segments of the Rebel Flagship AI. Which it was now calling to its location by way of what appeared to be a very long-range distress beacon.

Which was just my luck, really.

I noticed a single, low volume ping coming from the station towards Rider 06, and as soon as it arrived, everything went to hell.

---

The seven Slug cruisers were not very happy with me. I'd already gleaned that, though, by the vast and slightly terrifying array of guns they had pointed at me.

"Halt, unknown vessel! Stand by and prepare to be boarded! Your crew is under arrest on suspicion of vandalism, littering, and terrorism!"

Arson, murder and jaywalking in reverse, apparently. I guess they weren't happy with me going around firing military grade nanomachines at civilian vessels.

Based on how the Zoltan had reacted to Rider 06, I felt they probably wouldn't approve of me shooting nanobots at military vessels either.

Which was fair enough, I suppose. They had absolutely no way of knowing what the hell I'd been doing. I could have been layering the ships hulls with micro explosives, or something.

Unfortunately, they wanted to board my vessel. Which was a slight problem, for the reason of Rider class vessels not having anywhere to board, on account of effectively being a ton of sensors and generators with a couple of big-ass engines on the back. The amount of free interior space was measured in cubic millimetres, and most of that was because I was too lazy to expand far beyond basic cuboids in the manufacture of the various interior systems.

Depending on how I played my cards, it would either be a massive issue, or a total non-issue.

If I stayed, there would be trouble. No way around it. Either they'd try to board, fail, and shoot me, or I could shoot them before they got close, which would result in them shooting me. Dangerous - insofar as anything I'd seen thus far might have classified as dangerous, given the strength of my shield system, - but I would get the chance to nab some neat new toys.

On the other hand, I could cut my losses now, run like a little wimp, and not worry too much. I'd already obtained Glaive Beams from the Zoltan - and whilst the Bio-Beam would be nice, I could probably find it later. Mind control, too. If anything, I was likely to encounter that very shortly, in fact, if the Rebel Fleet was nearly as powerful as I recalled it being. I'm pretty sure the Flagship had a Mind Control device, anyway.

Choices...

If I'd learnt anything from the myriad video games I'd played, it was that superior firepower was almost always the best option, and, failing that, running away like a little bitch was a good backup.

So I spun up the FTL drives.

---

Rider 06 was not having a good day. In any sense of the term.

Firstly, it had been shot up by two Zoltan craft. Then, it had been shot at by turrets on the station.

Then, an enemy artificial intelligence, some kind of old prototype from the Flagship, had deployed a jamming signal, attempting to cut it off from my network. Luckily, Hypertech Bullshit was able to circumvent that, but it was almost a lot worse. If they'd gotten their hands on my tech...

Actually, I had no idea if they would even be capable of reverse engineering it. And most of the technology was compartmentalised inside big boxes of Hypertech Alloys, which had thus far shown to be pretty resilient to... just about everything thrown at them.

Either way, I didn't want them getting my toys.

The enemy AI sent another signal out, and this time, I have no idea how, it got through the various layers of cybersecurity, tearing into my network.

[DANGER-ALERT]

Tearing into me! The bastard!

[HOSTILE AI DETECTED]

It was like some asshole with a jackhammer was romping around inside my skull, throwing fireworks over one shoulder and blasting Skrillex from ten thousand boom boxes. Pain lanced through my head, and I felt as if my nerves were on fire - and let me tell you, that's a weird experience for someone who no longer has a nervous system.

[CYBERWAR MODULES ACTIVE]

Once I got my mind back into gear and realised what, exactly, was going on, it became much easier to deal with. The Rebel AI was somehow advanced enough to pose a threat to me - I could feel it, reaching through my mind. A push of... I want to say mental effort, but that would imply a more spiritual or magical force. Digital effort? It didn't help that, in this situation, there was nothing to 'see' - nothing but a blur of numbers, strings of code, and flashes of radiation. It was worse than the time I'd watched the Matrix whilst high - and that had been a hell of an experience in and of itself.

[ENGAGING HOSTILE]

Whatever kind of weak resistance I was putting up, it worked. Kind of. I could push back, drive it away, but it fought back, and it seemed only to get more stubborn the further I pushed it back. Reminded me a little of my sister. And all of a sudden, the AI was chewed up and torn apart by... something. A subroutine? I hadn't activated any, but an anti-hacking failsafe would make sense.

Then the AI did something really annoying. The shredded 'remains' of its 'digital corpse' split in half. And then again. And then again.

And suddenly I was under attack from all... sides? Describing a fight inside one's mind is difficult. Sue me. Desperate, I spun up a few more streams of consciousness - using its own tricks against it. In a matter of attoseconds, I had each of its minds blocked with one of my own.

If watching two separate events with two separate minds was confusing, watching one event from eight perspectives was fucking chaos.

Of course, the cheating bastard wasn't satisfied with me countering its bullshit with my own. It didn't have to do much to gain the advantage again, though, because at that moment three hundred ships, ranging in size from ten metre long 'fighters' to half-kilometre cruisers, appeared on the edge of the system and opened fire.

---

Well, I thought, as I merged the multiple concurrent threads into one stream. That was a rather quick loss.

At least it meant I didn't have to deal with the AI any more, since it was no longer linked to my network.

Additionally, it proved that humanity hadn't developed that much - their response to a single hostile had been to fire literally every gun in their three hundred and seventeen strong fleet at it - all seven thousand. Even with shields several times more powerful than a ship its size should have possessed, and armour made of alloys so bullshit it defied logic, superior firepower proved as effective as it always did, and blew Rider 06 into a lot of tiny scraps - which promptly broke apart into a swarm of nanobots which harmlessly dispersed and self-destructed, denying all potential assets to the enemy.

At least that was the only ship I'd lost thus far - Rider 11 had made it out of the Slug system fine, and none of the cruisers had seen fit to pursue. And I now knew where the Rebel fleet was. I didn't want to kill them, per-se, but if I wanted to do anything at all to them, I needed to know where to find them.

And preferably, I wanted to do it quickly. If the Rebels had that level of firepower... well. Not something I particularly wanted to mess around with. I didn't want them levelling any cities or destroying random space stations or anything like that.

I'd need something with non-lethal options that expanded beyond the Fabricator - the Ion weapons I'd stolen from the Engi would work well for that. But I didn't want to waste time fiddling around with the design of the Cavalier - that thing I wanted to keep as a 100% murder machine.

So I needed another new design. One loaded with Ion weapons, to disable enemy ships. And shields, and an FTL drive. Engines, sensors, and reactors were obvious necessities.

I mentally sighed and got to work again.

 

[Faith]

Real life struggles continue to be real, but I'm a little happier with this than I was with the last one.

33 - Preparation
Like the others before it, the Tracker was based on the Elysion Frigate design. Unlike the others, it wasn't armed with a single plasma cannon.

Instead, it was packing a number of Ion weapons - a heavy Ion Cannon on the nose, four Twin Ion Repeaters on the sides, and two missile pods. Whilst I hadn't stolen any Ion Missiles (nor was I aware of any even existing, although I was pretty sure there were Ion Bombs) it had been a fairly simple matter to build a missile with an Ion Emitter built in.

I mean, it lost the warhead, meaning it could only do non-Ion damage from physically hitting the enemy ship, but a homing, shield ignoring Ion weapon was too good to pass up.

And unlike the protagonists of FTL, I was not limited by such factors as ammunition. I could just fabricate more missiles pretty much ex nihilo, with the ship's on board Fabricator.

Of course, the Tracker was also equipped with the same shields, engines, FTL drive, reactor and sensors as the other ships. To do otherwise would be foolish. Although I wanted to get a signal jammer at some point, as well. Perhaps I'd have to revisit LDC-952 and steal theirs. Later.

Over the head of my Osiris, Rider 11 dropped out of FTL and reconnected to the network. It was the ship that had travelled the furthest, and thus taken the longest time to return to me.

As for why I was recalling my fleets, well.

I'd already almost tipped my hand just with the two Riders that had been out and about. The fact that I had an FTL Gate hanging around right near a local beacon was also a pretty big tip-off that something was up, but said beacon had nothing around it and generally didn't seem particularly populated. I'd just have to hope no one popped in for a visit.

Until I got cloaking, at least.

Anyway, I wanted to stay out of sight, for now. Or try to, at least. I figured, so long as the Rebels thought they'd destroyed my ship - for they probably wouldn't be communicating with the Slugs, who were allies of the Federation, - they probably wouldn't come looking for me.

Which meant I was free to build up my forces. From what I'd seen, the Rebels possessed three hundred ships ranging from fighters to cruisers. I wasn't sure if that was their entire fleet or just a fraction, but I was leaning strongly to the second - I hadn't detected the Flagship amongst them in the brief seconds I'd had to scan them, and it seemed improbable that a force with only three hundred ships could pose any sort of threat to an interstellar, multi-species Federation.

So, I figured I'd need to be ready to fight way more than three hundred ships. If I made, say... two thousand Trackers, that should be sufficient to deal with any number of enemy ships. Multiple target firing, ho!

Of course, just sitting around and waiting for two thousand corvettes to build would be boring as hell, and I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to steal more stuff.

So - whilst I waited for the ships to build, I had a bit of time to go scouting. But I didn't want to go out in a Rider or a Pioneer - since they looked the same from the outside, they'd attract the same kind of attention from the Rebels that I was trying to avoid.

If I made another new type of ship...

---

It was based heavily on the style of ships used by the Rebels and the Federation, inspired by their designs and following a similar ascetic. At about thirty metres long, it was smaller than any of my existing ships, but on the larger end of FTL-verse 'fighters'.

The perfect blend of 'disguised' and 'sufficient dakka'.

It was armed with two Ion Repeaters, two overhauled Glaive Beams, and a single missile pod on the roof. If it had been the weapons from the game, it would have been powerful. With my overhauled, upgraded weapons, it was flat-out unfair. Because I could, I also fitted it out with a large drone bay at the front - it wasn't like I was exactly strapped for space.

It packed the same shield, reactor, engines, sensors and FTL drive as my other ships, just in lesser amounts to account for interior design.As I didn't expect to have many people on board poking around the systems, I wasn't too worried about the fact that they were clearly far more advanced than most other FTLverse technology.

Then, I added in a few 'comfort' systems - life support (an Elysion Core, not the oxygen purifiers used in FTL), a medical bay, and a cloning bay (limits are for suckers), in terms of important systems, and a kitchen, recreation room, bathroom, and a number of bunks. A total of a fourteen rooms that existed entirely for the purpose of my disguise.

Again, not like I was strapped for space.

So. I had a ship. Armed, armored, and fully equipped. All it needed now was a crew.

Good thing I had a cloning bay.

---

Genetics is hard.

I had unfortunately few points of reference to start from - the medical records from a couple of the ships I'd stealthily assimilated, but none of the people I'd thus far robbed looked anything like me. Of course, I didn't need the people to look like me, but as a nineteen year old female, I reserve the right to be vain as all hell.

Alas, achieveing the results I wanted was largely to be a game of trial and error. Luckily, I had a lot of time to mess around.

Also, giant hypertech supercomputer. That helped. Just a bit.

Combined with the limited medical data stored in the Medical Bay, including the information on cybernetics they included as standard, and the Engi Medi-bots from the cruiser I'd looted, I had a fair bit of knowledge to go on.

Didn't stop it taking ages.

---

A green glow emanated from the glassy tube in the centre of the room, flakes of illuminated dust gathering in clumps before forming into a clearly recognisable shape - a vague facsimile of a human skeleton, all metallic limbs and chrome plates. Well, not actually chrome, but whatever. The bottom half of the 'skull' was hollow, everything above packed with delicate machinery. Two silvery-white orbs sat in the eye sockets, a very faint green glow emerging from within.

The first stage complete, the glow died down and the cloning bay's medical nanobots engaged, taking the place of my own fabricator nanobots. Layers of flesh and blood formed, wrapping around the robotic body, forming an incredibly realistic layer of skin that covered the entirety of the body, leaving only gaps around the eyes. Thin lips formed around the 'mouth', completing the skin and throwing the damn robot firmly into uncanny valley territory. Just like the rest. Except this one looked rather like my... old body, I guess. Well, I took a few liberties. Added a couple of inches to my height. Sue me.

The third stage was the fastest, woven strands of carbon fibre nanotubes anchored to the metallic skull and spreading out behind the cyborg's head. A quick flash of green light later, and each strand was covered in a layer of thin coloured silk.

It looked like hair, and felt like hair, but was far, far harder to break.

Finally, the fabricator bots returned to paste on several layers of clothing - a skintight vacuum suit, beige cargo pants, a loose black t-shirt and a grey bomber jacket, the entire ensemble trimmed with green stripes and decals.

Perfect.

And that bought me up to six cyborg crewmen. Good enough for my purposes. And it left me a couple of rooms extra in case I needed them. Certainly it would help with the disguise - not every ship in space was fully crewed.

As this latest cyborg was to be mine - hence why I'd based it on myself, I transferred my primary focus to the new body, reaching out with my arms and flexing my fingers.

Although, after being a four-legged death machine for so long, taking control of a human-sized cyborg was rather strange. I spent a while staggering about before I got back into the groove of walking around with two legs.

It took somewhat longer than I'd like to admit.

Once I'd gotten the hang of movement again, I turned to look at the rest of my 'crew'.

Five individuals, not including my body. Two more females, and three males. And, thus far, no idea how to control them. I could have 'driven' the bodies all myself with the separate thought streams, but I was worried some things wouldn't carry over well enough, or would carry over too well - mannerisms, vocabulary, even how they walked. I didn't really want to take any chances - not that it should matter, but nevertheless I wanted to avoid the risk.

But my other options were limited. Since they were robots, more than cyborgs - the only organic parts being the skin and a few organs needed to maintain it, - I could have programmed them with basic AI like any of my field units - but I wasn't confident enough in my abilities to do anything that level of complicated, nor did I want to give them Commander level intelligence - something I was apparently capable of doing.

Personally, the idea of creating a Commander level intelligence fucking terrified me. I had no idea whether I would have any sort of control over it, whether it would be willing to aid me or just fuck off on its own to wage war against everything that moved - and the things that didn't, too.

Too risky. The worst of three bad options.

But I still needed to pick one.

 

[Faith]

Well I'm glad you think so

I actually kind of forgot about the Nanoha Spiders. I'll have to revisit them at some point.

In the meantime, have a chapter.

34 - Crew
In the end, I decided that the best solution was the simplest one - simple AI.

I was nowhere near confident enough to create a realistic or even remotely human seeming intelligence from scratch - but I realized I didn't really need to. No one was supposed to be on the ship for extended periods of time anyway, so they didn't need to be particularly lifelike.

And even without copying the advanced AI software from the Commander level AI, designing a program to perform basic tasks and react to common stimuli was easy enough. A few changes to the Dox AI was all it took.

In this case, I developed the AI with a few simple routines. Each of the five AI was different in specifics, but they all operated roughly the same. They would sit at the operations console of their designated room, tapping away at the touch screen. It wouldn't do anything, of course, but it would look like they were doing something, so it was good enough. Besides that, they would also occasionally stand up, wander around the room or walk to one of the various comfort rooms - the rec room, the kitchen or the bathroom.

They were also programmed to acknowledge people they identified based on three categories - crew, friendly, and enemy. The automated responses were... minimal, at best. Nodding heads, exchanging a brisk "hello", etcetera. But it would be enough, I suspected. Not like I intended to let anyone on board long enough to notice anyway.

I assumed direct control of my body and made my way through the ship, admiring the smooth silvery white materials of the interior. I'd learned from the first Pioneers - the walls and floor were done up to look like panels, as opposed to being flat and textureless metals. The light fixtures looked like actual light fixtures, instead of exposed bulbs, and the doors had actual control consoles.

Admittedly, the Pioneers and Voyagers had those as well, but they'd been added afterwards when one of TSYGAN's Rats had asked how to lock the door in the toilets.

Each of the doorways was decorated by a nameplate and icon - the majority were icons ripped straight from FTL - two missiles for the weapons room, an engine for the... well, engine room, a camera for the sensors, and so on, with the nameplates identifying the rooms as well. The 'comfort rooms' as I'd taken to calling them had their own icons - a bowl of food, a toilet, a couch and TV for the kitchen, bathroom and rec rooms, respectively.

Once I was done admiring the central corridor of the ship, I set about looking for my new crew members.

Ajax, a dark-skinned male with a buzzcut, had taken the helm. Which is to say, he sat in the pilot's chair and pushed a couple levers back and forth. Every now and then, he would reach above his head and flick a series of three switches mounted on the overhead console. None of them did anything, but it reminded me of Firefly, and that was good enough for me.

Dante, aka generic video game protagonist number 130193, sat in the weapons room. A trench coat hung over the back of his chair and a heavy revolver - the designs for which I'd taken from the Bright Foundation, - sat on top of the console. The android didn't need the handcannon - he had an SMG of the same origin slung across his back, like all of the 'crew', but I thought it was a nice extra touch.

The final 'male' of the crew was Byron, designated engineer. He was dressed in cargo pants and a sleeveless jacket over his vacuum suit, a futuristic welding mask of sorts hanging from his belt. Short blonde hair stuck up from his head in tufts, giving him a distinctly 'messy' look about him. I'd have given him goggles and grease stains, too, but goggles were pointless with the mask and there was nothing on the ship that leaked grease, so that would have been dumb.

My next destination was the shield bay, crewed by a dark-haired lady I'd chosen to name Veronica. She sat silently in the swivel chair, alternating her attention between the shield console screen and the PDA in her hands. Both screens were covered with scrolling Lorem Ipsum style text, flashing past almost too fast to read. For Humans, anyway. Unlike the others, who wore at least roughly functional clothes over their vacuum suits, I'd dressed Veronica in a plain white sundress. Admittedly, the silvery-grey skintight suit underneath kind of ruined the effect, but it wasn't really much of an issue.

The last member of my merry android crew was Melissa, designated sensor operator. She was curled up on the seat in the sensor room, a hoodie and loose jeans disguising her figure. An (empty) coffee mug was held in the cup holder mounted on the side of the terminal.

Most of the minor details were totally unnecessary, in terms of functionality. And by most, I mean all. But they were the same 'little things' that made them seem more human, and I was hoping that it would stave off suspicion for the short periods people were to be boarding the ship.

Once I'd finished the rounds, checking all the rooms for anything that seemed out of place, I walked to the ship's bridge. Ajax was sitting in the front left seat, leaving one seat open looking out through the ship's front window.

Rather than sit in it, I chose to stand, lingering over Ajax's shoulder and resting an arm on the back of the chair to either side. And then I gave my first command as Captain Drake of the PCF Starsong.

Which also happened to be a Star Wars reference.

"Punch it, Ajax."

The android grunted and pushed the big blue button on his command console. The engines and FTL drive emitted a low whine, and a shudder ran through the ship.

Seconds later, we were hurtling away through hyperspace.

---

Meanwhile, back at my newly reinforced asteroid base, fleet building was really getting into motion.

The few ships I had were mainly focused on building more Orbital Factories. I had six, so far, and fourteen more on the way. Once those were all complete, then I could begin production of my Tracker Fleet in earnest.

It would be a thing of beauty - two thousand cutting edge Corvettes with shields, armour, engines, and weapons like nothing the Rebels had ever seen. I had no doubts that, once complete, the Tracker Fleet would have no issues in disarming the entire Rebellion. And once that was done, I could figure out a nice, peaceful way of sorting out their stupid squabble with the Federation.

Since I wasn't patient enough for that to finish, I was going to go ahead and do some other stuff whilst I waited.

Namely, spying on people. The Starsong had been designed to blend in - it was one of the larger ship types, but nothing particularly unusual. Some more tech-savvy people may have realised it didn't match any Federation designs, but frankly I didn't really care about that, and it was likely that the relevant authorities would care even less - after all, who gives a damn about one mysterious corvette flying around when the galaxy is embroiled in the midst of a devastating interstellar war?

Bloody no one, that's who.

---

The Starsong emerged from FTL about six thousand kilometres from the long range jump beacon, in the midst of an asteroid field.

Well, 'midst' made it sound worse than it was.

In movies and games, the asteroid fields all seem to be densely packed, with asteroids bashing into each other every couple of seconds, and fighters zipping through chunks of rock, bobbing and weaving.

In reality, the asteroids were scattered far apart - really far apart. It was less an asteroid field, and more a large number of asteroids in roughly the same vast empty sector of space.

The asteroids weren't the only thing my ship's sensors picked up, however. There was another ship, one approaching the beacon with its engines flaring. My shiny new FTL Sensor Tech told me that the ship's FTL Drive was charging to activate, and that it would be jumping imminently.

And it did, but not fast enough to escape a full scan from my full suite of hypertech sensors. I had a very good picture now of the ship's shape and size, and it was familiar.

The Kestrel.

The default ship for FTL players, and, if my guess was correct, the 'canon' ship, as far as this universe was concerned.

Well. If I wanted to spy on people and steal loads of cool technology, following the protagonist around at a nice safe distance seemed an easy bet.

Of course, as soon as I said that, I started wondering how long it would take for everything to go to hell for the both of us.

 

[Faith]

And now I've finished reading up to the latest release, I have some world suggestions: Star Ruler, Enders Game, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Borderlands, Space Battleship Yamato, and Homeworld.

Click to shrink...

Suggestions Noted, Researched, and added to...

THE LIST. *krakathoom*

---

35 - Infiltration
When the Starsong dropped out of FTL, the Kestrel was a good distance away, and moving rapidly. Obviously they were still worried about the proximity of the Rebel Fleet - and given what had happened at LRC-952, I couldn't really blame them.

Under my command, the Starsong followed, maintaining enough distance that I would ideally not be attracting attention.

Of course, attracting their attention was near-guaranteed in the long run, but that didn't mean I couldn't put it off as long as possible. Besides, there were only so many ways to navigate the sectors - if I followed them for three or four jumps, there wouldn't be much cause to be suspicious.

Unless, of course, they were jumpy about the whole 'being chased by the entire Rebel Fleet', and for that I couldn't really blame them. There had been enough ships there to decimate a small city from orbit, and that was without counting the missile racks they inevitably had but hadn't had a chance to use on the Rider.

The Kestrel shot off into the black, engines flaring bright. Just as my sensors pinged and alerted me to their charging FTL drive, another contact dropped out of FTL.

A small, wide-winged craft - perhaps seven or so metres across, and about half that from tip to tail. Two missile launchers protruded from the 'underside' of the wings - or at least, it looked like the underside. Hard to tell in space. The other face of the wings, which I was going to go ahead and call the top surface, each had different weapons equipped. One one side, a beam weapon of some kind, and on the other, a charge laser.

A Rebel Auto-Scout. Not particularly threatening... well, not to me, anyway. The Kestrel... well, it would be good to see how capable they were in a fight.

And I could always intervene if they needed saving. I had no doubts in the ability of my hacking routine to utterly annihilate whatever primitive AI ran the Auto-Scout.

The Kestrel rapidly changed course, tilting towards the Auto-Scout even as the automated ship began its own manoeuvre.

A torrent of red-white lasers shot from the Kestrel's nose, quickly crossing the void between the two ships. A pale blue shell shimmered into existence around the dark grey fighter as it attempted to perform a simple sideways roll.

The Kestrel's first shot passed well under the ship, vanishing off into the black harmlessly. The second shot splashed against the weak shield, which shimmered and burst, leaving the ship unprotected. The third struck the hull of the ship, creating a violent explosion that launched chunks of scraps flying. My FTLverse sensors detected part of the ship's CPU spinning down, the coolant systems taking damage. Almost at the same time, I detected a burst of nanobots from a small port on the Auto-Scout, which moved to the damaged hull and began fixing the torn components.

Hm. So that's how the auto-ship repair worked.

Like mine, but vastly less effective.

Another burst of laser fire followed the first, and this time the Auto-Scout was unable to dodge - if I had to guess, it would be because the CPU controlling the ship was currently on fire. That kind of thing tended to impact productivity.

The three laser bolts all struck true, crashing into the slightly thinner segment between the wing and the central part of the hull. Sparks and twisted shreds of metal flew burst from the ship, and I noted that the damage to the interior was far more extensive than the outside damage would have suggested - the entire shield generator was blown to pieces.

As before, little swarms of nanobots seeped from ports in the walls, slowly flooding through the room, repairing the damaged components.

Not nearly fast enough to be effective.

The Auto-Scout fired its first volley, four missiles spewing forth from the ship and racing towards the Kestrel. The Federation vessel 'dived' steeply, the first two rocket soaring past, both totally missing. The other thwo were able to correct, though, and moved to stay on target. One crashed into one of the engine pods protruding from the back of the Kestrel, and the second crashed into the Kestrel's rear which, if I remembered FTL properly, was where the engine system room was located.

Hm.

The Auto-Scout fired its other weapons, opening up first with a volley of five laser shots. The Kestrel kept flying, straight into the torrent of laser fire. A couple of shots slammed into the shields, popping both layers. One shot whizzed along the top of the Kestrel, narrowly missing, and the last two exploded against the Kestrel''s portside airlock. A huge gout of air began pouring forth from the damaged area, billowing out for a couple of seconds before abruptly ending.

I detected a single ping emanating from the Rebel's Auto-Scout, some kind of long range communication. Interesting. The message was just a string of co-ordinates followed by a protocol number - I wasn't sure what the protocol number meant, but it was probably along the lines of 'hey, the Bothan spies are over here!'

Except, you know. Not a Star Wars reference. Probably.

Before the Kestrel's crew had even the slightest chance to recover from the laser fire, the Auto-Scout fired its beam, carving a huge gash out of the Federation ship's top armour.

Drastically slowed but not stopped, the Kestrel retaliated with another volley of laser fire, and a missile launched from a tube on the underside of the ship's nose.

The laser bursts impacted the same part of the Auto-Scout as the previous burst had, annihilating what was left of the shield bay. Seconds later, the missile followed, exploding and ripping the entire left wing from the hull.

The Auto-Scout errupted in a burst of fire and twisted chunks of metal, and the Kestrel flew right into the debris, two small crane arms emerging from the top of the hull and moving around almost aimlessly, like when you were reaching for something on a table in the dark and you weren't sure exactly where it was.

It looked by all accounts to have taken a serious beating in the fight, but the ship's crew weren't putting out any distress signals, or anything. And, if my guess about the Auto-Scout's message was right, they'd soon be attacked by more Rebels.

I should probably warn them about that... nah.

My sensors pinged again as another ship jumped into the sector, already warming up its weapons.

It was flat and wide, with a rounded cockpit protruding from the left hand side. Four long, wing-like panels emerged from the corners of the ship, pointing forwards. Weapons were mounted on the foremost point of the wings, and ambient radiation sensing suggested that the ship's engines were mounted on the back of them.

I didn't recognise it immediately, until I took a full 3D scan and started playing with the perspective. A bird's-eye view made the shape much easier to recognise - a Rebel Rigger.

Mainly focused on drone usage, not likely to be equipped with anything I cared about. A combination of the FTL sensors and my own Progenitor Hypertech gave me a complete view of the ship's interior. There were five people on board, wearing orange uniforms marked with blue stripes.

One flying the ship, one in the engine room, one in the shield bay, and two in the weapons bay.

Still not wanting to give away my hacking ability yet, I left their systems untouched, instead charging up the Starsong's Twin Ion Repeaters. A flurry of Ionic energies burst forth, dashing across the void and splashing against the Rigger's shields just as it opened fire with two Burst Lasers upon the Kestrel.

The Kestrel managed to dodge the majority of the weapons fire, somehow, and the two shots that made it through were absorbed by the ship's now-recharged shields.

The Rigger didn't fare so well, its major systems dying out as a rapid stream of Ion blasts splashed against the hull, electricity arcing across the hull. The weapons were the first thing I wiped out, their control systems overloaded by massive power surges. The engines and shields followed, the consoles in the relevant rooms also exploding for some unimaginable reason.

With the systems disabled, I charged up the upgraded versions of the Glaive Beams equipped on the Starsong and fired, carving chunks of the Rigger off, including its weapons.

Thus disabled, I left the ship drifting, still occasionally firing Ion weapons at it when it looked like the engines or shields were about to recover. The Kestrel made its way closer, flying to within two hundred metres before hailing.

It was a human male's voice that came over the speakers, but they neglected to add a visual component. "Starsong, this is Kestrel. Thanks for the assist."

"Not at all, Kestrel. War's not good for anyone. Figure since their guns are gone, I'll just hack their engines and send them off to some random rock. Leave them to ponder the futility of war."

I heard laughter from the other end of the line - a good few seconds of it, which was odd because I didn't think I'd said anything particularly funny, before the Kestrel's speaker responded.

"Don't bother. We'll clean up."

The Burst Laser mounted on the Kestrel's nose flashed thrice, and three explosions rocked the disabled ship. I could detect power fluctuating throughout the ship before a series of small explosions tore apart the ship's engines. Seconds later, the drone bay detonated as well, and finally the reactor itself.

The entire ship lit up like a star for the briefest of seconds before the fireball died out and the light faded, taking five lives with it.

 

[Faith]

Spoiler: List of Worlds

• Red Faction
• X-COM
• Destiny
• 40K
• Achron
• StarCraft
• Warframe
• Command and Conquer
  • Tiberium Wars
  • Red Alert
• FTL: Faster Than Light
• Supreme Commander
• Pacific Rim
• Planetside 2
• Star Trek
• Space Pirates and Zombies
• Halo
• Star Wars
  • Old Republic
  • Clone Wars
  • Galactic Civil War
  • Yuuzhang Vong
• Endless Space
• Spiral Knights
• Sanctum
• Mass Effect
• Destiny
• Star Ruler
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
• Civilisation: Beyond Earth
• Ender's Game
• Transformers
• Fallout
• Iji
• Borderlands
• One Punch Man
• Shadowrun?
• Bolo?
• Battlestar Galactica?

Some of the settings are even likely to get multiple visits. Star Wars definitely will, because there're three different eras to play around in (that I'm familiar with, that is). Others might as well, depending.

Spoiler: Visited Worlds

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

 

[Faith]

Because Fusou kicked my ass into gear

36 - Conflict
I...

They...

"What the hell, Kestrel?" I practically screamed into the mic.

There was silence on the line for a moment before the crew member responded, sounding confused.

"What? Did you want to kill them yourself?"

I...

What?

WHAT!?

FUCKING WHAT!?

"I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!"

The man seemed almost perplexed when he responded. "Well... if you didn't want to kill them, why are you so upset?"

The gall. The fucking gall.

As if he couldn't comprehend why I could possibly be upset about the fact that he, or one of his crewmates, just killed five people.

"You just... you just killed them! You didn't need to do that!"

There was a long pause before the Kestrel responded.

"Yes, we, uh, we kind of did."

"Why! Give me one reason, just one."

"So, uh, not sure if you'd noticed, Starsong, but we're kind of, uh, how do I put this? Engaged in open war?"

He was snarking at me.

He just killed five people and now he's snarking at me. The utter fucking bastard.

"That... that doesn't mean you can just kill them!"

"In our defence, they were also trying to kill us!"

"They were totally harmless! They'd practically already surrendered!"

"Yeah, sure, but you were going to let them go! They would have just come back, and brought the whole fleet with them."

"So? By the time the Fleet arrived you could have been long gone!"

"Not worth risking. Besides, we were worried they might have been able to bring their weapons back online."

"WHAT WEAPONS! THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY WEAPONS! THEY WERE PHYSICALLY DETACHED FROM THE SHIP WITH HIGH INTENSITY LASERS!"

"Well... I mean..." Kestrel's pilot at least had the decency to sound taken aback, but that might have been more because of my yelling than the whole 'we just killed five people' thing, given he hadn't really been that fussed about it earlier. "They might have tried to, uh... tried to fight back anyway?" he supplied after a moment's silence.

"How? With their non-existant weapons? With the twisted remains of their drones? By glaring and thinking angry thoughts?"

There was another long bout of silence before the guy responded.

"Vika read their minds, he said they were already doing that. Look, it's clear you're upset about this-"

"Understatement of the fucking century." I cut in.

"But you have to understand, those people were just Rebels."

"Just Reb... no! They were people! Who they fought for doesn't change the fact that they were people!"

"Well... actually, since they stopped serving the High Council, in violation of the United Humanity Laws, that means they forfeited their Human rights and thus... weren't really people, I guess?" Kestrel's captain explained sheepishly. "Not counted as Humans, anyway."

I was too utterly in awe of his blasé disregard for Human life to pick up on the more worrying part of his sentence for a couple of seconds. I was disgusted for so long, in fact, that he just kept right on talking.

"Okay, look, Starsong, it's been... uh, fun, chatting. But we really have to go. If I were you, Starsong, I'd get out of here soon. Don't think the Rebels will take kindly to anyone sitting in the debris of two Rebel ships."

I couldn't even formulate a proper response at this point, only watch as the Kestrel turned and blasted away from the debris field before jumping into FTL.

Mother. Fuckers.

---

A quick hop to a nearby orbital habitat later, and I was soaking up massive amounts of information from the FTLverse equivalent of the internet, snatching up everything that might have been relevant.

Of most interest to me were the United Humanity Laws and the High Council.

Apparently, at some point after leaving Earth, some wisecrack had the brilliant idea of reinstituting a medieval-style hierarchy of nobles. Military officers, politicians, and other 'well respected' professionals such as lawyers became the 'noble' class, and everyone below that became 'working class'.

The working class had no rights, no authority, and were basically treated as slaves by the nobility. Most of them joined the military - the only feasible way to acquire more social standing was through promotions, since getting enough of an education to become a doctor or a lawyer was near impossible.

The High Council was a group of the most powerful nobles, and included the Lord Admiral, head of Federation Military.

Then the Federal Government of Humanity, henceforth the Federation, encountered aliens. And only the fact that the aliens had a huge multi-species alliance prevented the Federation from waging war against them and enslaving them.

Which lead to a weird situation where the Federation nobles treated other Humans like slaves or products, but, purely out of fear of being drowned in aliens, treated the assorted alien races as nobility on the same level as themselves, regardless of that alien's standing in their own culture, and eventually some alien governments were even adopted into the Federation, turning it from the Federal Government of Humanity to simply the Galactic Federation.

It was the biggest load of political bullshit I'd ever seen. And being an Australian, I'd seen a fair deal of that in the past.

What topped it off was the United Humanity Laws. Under them, anyone who went against the High Council was no longer counted as a human being, completely removing them from the protection of little things like the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Accords.

Ho-leeee shit.

No wonder there were Rebels. How could anyone stand this shit?

I'd been wary after the shit they pulled to capture Genisys.

I'd been pissed after the Kestrel vaporised that Rebel ship and five people on board.

Now?

Well.

Now I was furious.

---

The Starsong's retro-thrusters fired, four blue novas pushing against the ship's forward movement, and slowing it to a near halt as it slipped through the airlock into the hangar bay proper.

It was a simple place - a single airlock tunnel protruded from the wall, presumably for the ship to dock to. There were no fancy automated systems, but then, they weren't really necessary for such a simple parking job.

The Starsong drifted forwards easily on a number of smaller micro-thrusters, pulling to a complete stop just inches from the lip of the airlock tunnel.

My ship's own airlock extended, the flexible fabric sealing tight to the corridor with a hiss. As soon as the ship was linked, a number of robotic limbs descended from the ceiling, attaching wide metal disks to the ship. Magnetic clamps, if I had to guess.

The ship secured, I disengaged its engines and made my way through the hallways to the starboard airlock. By the time I arrived, the pressure had equalised on both sides of the door, making the airlock's double door system irrelevant. The outer door slid open noiselessly, and I stepped out, tugging at the hem of my bomber jacket nervously.

Two men and a Rock were waiting for me in the airlock tunnel. The two men were dressed in what appeared to be the time-honoured uniform of engineers across the multiverse - work pants, a dark jacket, a fluorescent vest and a hard hat. The Rock was dressed similarly, minus the helmet. Presumably he wasn't too worried about the risk of rocks falling on his head, although I didn't know why anyone would be worried about that possibility on a space station.

What shook me the most was his size - I'd been 4'11 on Earth, and the NeoAvatar stood a little taller at 5'3. Both men towered over me, standing at approximately 6 feet each, and the Rock in turn towered over them. The optical sensors I used as eyes registered him as being almost eight feet tall.

Luckily, the man in the lead spoke up before I got a chance to embarrass myself. "Starsong, right? Repairs, resupply, or just stopping by?"

I paused for a moment before responding. "Little bit of B, little bit of C."

"First time here?" the second dock worker asked.

I nodded affirmative, and the two men glanced at each other before looking back at me. "Since you don't need repairs, we'll leave your ship be. First six hours are free, after that, you'd better pay up if you want us to open up the hangar bay again. If you're planning on going shopping, there are cargo lifters you can borrow to bring your goods back to your ship," the bearded man explained.

"And, uh, if I were you, little lady, I wouldn't go wandering around without your crewmates with you. Plenty of unsavoury types here, especially down in the markets on J deck," his partner added.

My eye twitched, but I responded in a level tone as I reached behind my back and retrieved my SMG. "I'll be fine, I should think, but thank you for caring."

The two men shrugged and walked away, their Rock partner lumbering along behind them. After a moment's hesitation and a short internal debate over whether or not to drag Dante or Ajax along, I shrugged, told the androids to watch out for anyone trying to board the ship, and set out on my own.

After all, I was a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war - five foot three or not, I was capable of bench-pressing a tank one handed. If I got into a fight, I was certainly able to kick ass.

But I probably wouldn't need to. Right?

 

[Faith]

37 - Shoplift
I was still fuming as I wandered throughout J Deck's market stalls, though I tried not to show it.

It was just appalling to me that anyone could consider the United Humanity Laws as anything close to fair or morally and ethically acceptable, and yet apparently at least some people did. Enough that people were able to actually implement them. Across an entire race.

God, humans are such douche bags.

At least the markets gave me something interesting to look at whilst I waited for my fleet of Trackers to finish building.

Namely, cool technology everywhere.

Well, technology in general everywhere. Some cool technology.

There was a salesman advertising a Weapon Pre-Igniter module and a Defence Scrambler module, each for sixty tonnes of scrap.

Using a tonne of scrap as a unit of currency seemed... flawed, for a number of reasons, but apparently it worked. Or something. Whilst I took a closer look at the two horse-sized lumps of complex machinery, the salesman began a long winded rant about their features - one that fell upon deaf ears. The Hypertech optics I had standing in for eyes could tell me more about the devices than any Vince Offer knockoff, and faster, too.

The Weapon Pre-Igniter was nothing interesting to me. It was basically just a capacitor that drained the exotic energies created by an FTL jump to charge the weapon systems as soon as the ship exited FTL. My ships didn't have charge times even close to those of the FTLverse ships, and the one weapon that did have a charge time long enough for it to be worth it - the LiRoS, - was probably too big to be effected by the presumably relatively small amount of power.

That said, it was power harnessed from the ambient exotic energies of faster-than-light travel, and that had its own implications.

The Defence Scrambler, on the other hand, was far more useful to me, and also far simpler in construction. It basically targeted enemy Defence Drones and fed them so much white noise that they didn't know what to shoot at. Scaled up and improved with Progenitor Bullshit, it could potentially serve as a form of jamming device. It was simple enough in concept that I was surprised that the Progenitors didn't have them already - but then, Progenitor computers were probably bullshit enough that they wouldn't be effected in the first place.

Also, the Progenitors had apparently never bothered with energy shields, either, so there was clearly some precedent for forgoing certain technological paths for whatever reason.

I ran my hand along the outer casing of the Defence Scrambler, drawing lines in the dust whilst the MicroFabricator in the NeoAvatar's hand sending a small trickle of nanobots into the device. I repeated the process with the Weapon Pre-Igniter, if only because I wanted to find out how to harness FTL energy, and then thanked the fast-talking salesman for his time, told him I wasn't interested, and left.

He seemed a little disappointed, but when I glanced over my shoulder a couple of seconds later, I saw him chatting animatedly with a pair of... Mantis? Huh. They were short - shorter than me, even, which made for an interesting change. The two bugs had dark green chitin plates, covered in what looked like some form of leather armour.

Well, I guess the game was wrong. Not every non-human walked around naked.

And let me tell you, that was a relief.

I stepped around a corner, still keeping my eyes out, when I saw it.

It was a thing of beauty. Two Engi stood next to it, their green eyes widening and narrowing as they looked out amongst the crowd. Small plates atop their head - on their 'brow', as it were, - seemed to slope up and down, almost a pale mockery of human eyebrows. In a way, it almost reminded me of the Geth.

One of them met my eyes, and tilted his head. Obviously he didn't appreciate my staring.

Well, I didn't appreciate that they had a stealth drive and I didn't, so there.

I hurried over, darting through the crowd with a practised ease - dodging through crowds to avoiding getting trampled was a vital skill for young children who spent a lot of time in public areas like shopping malls, and short people such as myself often found themselves maintaining the practice.

The Engi and his friend were both staring at me as I stepped out of the crowd.

Without preface nor pretext, I pointed straight at the sign.

Stealth Drive for Sale - we will install it for free

"How much?"

"We require scrap to repair our ship's engines. Approximately one hundred and twenty tonnes will be sufficient."

That... well, that translated to one hundred and twenty scrap in game, which seemed cheaper than I recalled, though I may have been wrong. Either way, it was a lot of scrap.

"Your engines, you say? What if I offered my crew's assistance in repairing them?"

The Engi turned to each other, their green eyes flashing brightly before they returned their sight to me.

"Perhaps we can make a more favourable deal. Follow me."

Hm.

---

The possibility did cross my mind, of course, that they could have been lying. However, that seemed unlikely. On a station such as this, one couldn't get by in public places through such blatant trickery. If anyone tried to scam or otherwise cheat a person out of their various funds, they would likely be forcibly removed.

After all, if Joe Trader scammed Jimmy Pirate, what's to say he wouldn't scam everyone else? No one wanted to take that risk, so anyone caught trying any less-than-legitimate business would find themselves removed from the station, possibly via airlock.

The same applied, of course, to people who started random fights, which is why I could walk around without being particularly worried about getting mugged.

Also the hyper-dense titanium-ceramic composite skeleton and the whole 'bench press a tank one handed' thing.

The Engi, as I expected, proved true to his - its? - word, leading me to a hangar not too far from my own whilst his friend, and a Zoltan colleague, packed up the stall.

The ship I stared down upon was not the Engi scrap-heap donut I was expecting, but rather a sleek, arrow-shaped vessel painted with, of all things, dark grey digital camo.

Well, hello!

---

The DA-SR 12 Stealth Cruiser was a sight to behold.

I don't know why it was here, in some backwater system, instead of in a top secret Engi facility, but since it was, and the crew were offering up the stealth drive in return for a chance to get the hell out of this area, I wasn't going to complain.

If I had to guess, I'd say they were some kind of harassing unit working for the Federation who got in over their head and decided to bug out - it explained the stealth ship, the damaged engines, and their reasons for being incredibly nervous about leaving.

It didn't matter much to me - I was here for the stealth drive, and anything else I could get was just a bonus. Luckily, my nanobots were rather good at the whole 'stealthy' business themselves, to a degree, and as I entered the ship in the guise of wanting to take a look at the damage, I tapped a finger idly against the wall, releasing a small cloud of nanobots into the ship's internals with the goal of locating and accessing the ship's databanks.

The Engi lead me to the rear of the ship, where another Engi and a Zoltan were kneeling amidst a pile of engine parts. Both were peering into the dark space between the engine room and the outer shell of the ship, where a large, torn chunk of twisted metal was visible.

"The bomb did not detonate inside our vessel. However, it caused serious structural damage. Subsequent missile impacts caused this section of armour plating to collapse on the engine, damaging the port compression coil."

I nodded, unsure of the importance of that particular component yet convinced I'd heard the name before. "Well, it does look pretty torn up, but... well, the Starsong has seen worse. I'll call down Ajax and Byron, get them to take a look."

Of course, it would still be me taking a look, but I had to keep up appearances. Also, bringing two people from the Starsong to here meant I could bring a crate of parts as well, and since I had the blueprints for engines identical to those installed on the DA-SR 12 (apparently a lot of components and systems are universally compatible - who knew?) I knew exactly what parts the Engi would need to complete their repairs. And, more importantly, I had the capacity to make those parts.

So, whilst I was busy talking engines with two knowledgeable cyborg nanite thingies and an energy being, I spun up the Fabricator in the Starsong's cargo bay and started building them.

 

[Faith]

38 - Phase
After spending two hours clambering around the space between the hull and the inner walls, bending panels back into shape with raw strength and patching up hull breaches and various other small flaws with the MicroFabricator built into 'his' hand, the dark skinned android pushed himself out from the crawlspace and turned to the Engi wiping the sweat from his brow.

Well, technically it wasn't sweat, it was just water, but I didn't know the chemical composition of sweat beyond 'mostly water, some other stuff', and I figured that the Engi wouldn't know or care either way. And if they had the capability to detect that kind of stuff by looking, they'd have probably reacted to the fact that all three people from the Starsong were androids.

"There you go, pal. All the hull's beat back into shape, the compression coil's replaced, I ripped out all the broken wires at the repeaters so you could replace them, and everything looks working." Sighing, I had the android gesture at the large pile of engine components, thick cables and mounting brackets that still occupied a corner of the room. "I take it you guys can take over from here."

The Engi nodded. "Affirmative. We will rebuild the main drive core and engines ourselves. Metric and Digit have uninstalled the Cloaking Device. You should assist your crew in returning it to your ship."

Ajax nodded, clipped his multi-tool back onto his belt and stepped out of the engine room, making his way through the ship to the port airlock.

---

'I' turned to look at my other body as it entered the room, noting once again how deeply entrenched the humanoid machine was in uncanny valley, and so glad that the aliens on board this ship were too... well, alien, to see it.

Seriously, I don't want to sound racist but Ajax looked downright creepy in the half-lighting of the vessel.

The two Engi, once they had confirmed that all three members of the Starsong's crew were present, gestured to the Cloaking Device and began to explain in a dull monotone.

"This cloaking device utilizes highly advanced phase manipulation technology, a more refined version of that which exists in the FTL drive, to shunt the ship out of phase with reality."

Wait, really?

Holy shit, that's even more overpowered than I was expecting.

"This allows the ship to bypass the majority of weaponry, although there is a small chance that the weapons will cause damage through the phase, and it also makes it difficult for the ship to be targeted by sensors."

Man, does this thing have any downsides?

"Do not operate this device beyond the fifteen second safety margin, as it may overheat or overload. Failure to properly install the device will compound these issues."

Oh, there it is.

"In the event that this does happen, attempting to activate the drive may result in failure, up to and including catastrophic self destruction and transdimensional scattering."

Oh.

I bit my lip.

"We will install it carefully."

Well. Thank god for that.

---

The two Engi stepped away from the doorway and performed an odd motion with their heads, some sort of Engi nod. "Thank you for assisting us with the repairs of our ship, and showing us your own. The design of your engines is most impressive. We hope you appreciate the Cloaking System."

I nodded enthusiastically. "No, it's not a problem. And thank you, I'm sure we'll get a lot of use out of it."

---

As the Starsong pulled away from the station and rocketed away into the black, four hundred and sixteen Tracker-class Corvettes received the instruction to engage self-repair protocols, and did so quickly, their internal Fabricators dispatching nanobots to make the required changes.

Of course, the Cloaking System wasn't the only thing they were equipping. I also added another technology I'd until now neglected to add to my units - Zoltan Super Shields. Powered by the exotic energies of FTL travel, the Zoltan Super Shield protected not only from asteroids, lasers, beams, and ion blasts but also missiles, bombs, teleporters, mind control devices, and hacking modules. Between the two technologies, that represented a huge increase in the survivability of my units. Nearly invisible, nearly indestructible.

Also, more as a fallback measure than for any real reason, a number of Mark II Friendship Lasers - hemispherical focusing arrays equipped with small-scale emitters and receivers, - were mounted on the top, bottom, and sides of all my Pioneer-chassis vessels, granting all vessel variants an extra form of incredibly effective point defence fire. And lethal capacity, in the case of the Trackers, as they had previously been lacking.

The Cloaking Systems got their turn, too, mounted into the ship sandwiched between the FTL drive and the shield generator.

The Engi had warned that overusing the device could cause it to overload or overheat - neither of those were issues for my Progenitor hypertech, which meant that my cloak-equipped ships were capable of turning invisible and staying invisible, so long as they had power. Which they no doubt would, thanks to another generous helping of Progenitor hypertech. Heat buildup and electrical overload were nearly nonexistant due to wireless transmission of energy, and almost 100% efficient energy usage, and even if they hadn't been, Progenitor alloys tended to be pretty resistant to that kind of thing.

Whilst the Trackers performed their self upgrades, I turned my attention to my economy.

I had almost fifty Advanced Orbital Factories lingering in the asteroids where I had made my base, and a number of smaller Orbital Factories as well. Up until now, they had been producing Trackers, for my upcoming war on human stupidity.

Now, though. Now I gave them different orders.

I'd been using the corvette because I hadn't wanted to make a ship that massively stood out amongst the FTLverse. That was... no longer an issue. I no longer had to worry about slipping under the Rebel's or the Federation's radar. I wanted them to see me.

I wanted them to be able to recognise me as a threat. And once I was done, they damn well would.

So, when I began construction on my latest ships, I based them not off the Pioneer but the Voyager.

Which, I noted, was large enough to carry Pioneers underslung. Which gave me... another idea.

Muwahahaha.

---

Like the Pioneer, the Voyager had been built with the idea of carrying passengers in mind.

Neither of my new ships, the Wayfarer or the Migrant, suffered such an issue.

The Migrant was a heavily stripped vessel, the vast civilian decks of the Voyager replaced by a huge assembly of Fabricators. Other crucial systems were compacted into the ship's spine, the entire ship effectively becoming an Orbital Factory, powered by cluster of eight Resource Cores embedded in the ship's bow.

Now, perhaps a bit of clarification. Resource Cores are pretty solidly in the high end of Progenitor tech - at least, the tech available to Commanders, anyway. It's one of the Commander's three most crucial components - up there with the AI Core and the Fabricator. It serves as both an Energy Generator and a Metal Generator, flat out creating matter from nothing (at an admittedly unimpressive rate), and is what allows a Commander to kick-start their Von Neumann economy.

The basic Commanders were equipped with one Resource Core. The things were prohibitively expensive, complex and time consuming to build, each one taking at least ten minutes to be constructed, and throwing more Fabricators at the problem could only speed up the complex task so much.

I set all of that aside and made a ship that had eight, in a 2x2x2 cube mounted at the rear of the vessel, surrounded by a large amount of armour, the vessels' other crucial systems such as shields, engines, cloaking, and sensors, and then yet more armour. If one of those things was hit, it would result in an explosion powerful enough to rival nuclear warheads. Which would, in turn, set off the other seven... I didn't want them getting hit, basically.

It would take almost an hour and a half for the first five Migrants to be complete, with my current facilities, assuming unlimited economy. But my economy wasn't limitless - building just one would drain almost my entire metal income, which meant that production would be even slower. For a full batch of five? Four hours, minimum. But once they were done...

Mobile factories. Factories with energy shields, FTL capable engines, a network of Mark II Friendship Turrets (which still needed a shorter name, gorram it), a cloaking device, and the same bullshit Von Neumann industrial and economic technologies that made Commanders so bullshit in the first place.

Ah, Commanders are such utter bullshit.

The Migrant wasn't the only project I'd been working on, though.

Where the Migrant was a more subtle support style ship, capable of building reinforcements or repairing existing ships, the Wayfarer traded support capabilities for raw, unrelenting firepower.

Where the Voyager had carried rooms for over a thousand people, the Wayfarer held guns.

Namely, four great, honking Mark II Friendship Lasers. Lasers with emitters almost as big as the Pioneer-class corvettes. And reactors big enough to power the whole lot going full bore.

Lasers that could form chains. Focused firepower from a single ship would be enough to carve through starships like a hot knife through butter. Clusters of fifteen or sixteen, combining fire? With other, smaller Mark IIs like those on the Tracker or the Migrant adding more fuel to the flame?

It was the kind of firepower you pointed at planets covered in Zerg.

I queued up twenty of them.

After all, I did want to make an impression.

 

[Faith]

Short chapter now, longer one at weekend.

--

39 - Merridew

The Starsong cut across the desolate black canvas of space. All around, civilian ships in various states of disrepair were making their own journeys, in the opposite direction.

After a couple of chaotic, barely legible calls, I learned that it was because a local habitat station had been found sheltering a Federation Cruiser - my money was on the Kestrel, personally, - and the Rebels had decided to destroy the Federation ship, collateral damage be damned.

Sixteen Elite Rebel Fighter craft against a civilian grade space station.

It was exactly this kind of bullshit I was no longer willing to allow them to get away with.

And so the Starsong engaged its FTL drive once more.

---

To say that Merridew Station was less peaceful than the last station had been would have been an understatement.

That is to say, a small Rebel fleet had engaged a single Federation ship, and both sides had apparently agreed on two things - one, space stations make acceptable cover, and two, it is acceptable to shoot through cover.

By the time the Starsong arrived in system, still cloaked, the fighting was over.

The debris of a Rebel Rigger formed an ever-expanding cloud roughly half way between the station and the nearest Jump Beacon, but the dozen or so other Rebel ships were still in one piece, patrolling around the edges of the sector.

The station itself was immense - a lattice of tunnels, hangars, and spires built into an asteroid that was likely now hollowed out from over-mining.

Even just a brief sensor sweep told of severe structural damage across the board. I wanted to help them, but there wasn't much I could do with the Starsong to fix damage of that scale.

If I had a bigger ship, though...

Well, I had been meaning to create a builder version of the Pioneer-class.

And so I did. It was largely similar to the Rider-class vessels, in terms of size and armament. Unlike the Rider, it had only the same level of basic sensors as my other ships - it wasn't a dedicated scout, and so didn't need them. The upper section of the hull was full of vital systems - generators, the FTL drive, both regular and Zoltan energy shields, and a cloaking device. Had I the time I would have implemented a Resource Core or two as well, but they were simply to expensive to be viable on what I hoped to be one of my more basic Orbital Fabricators - since that was basically what this ship was, at this point.

The lower section of the ship was where I mounted said devices - three rows of downwards-facing Fabricators giving it dozens of times greater Fabrication ability than any of my other options.

Brilliant.

I mean, sure, it was a very situational unit, and it was probably more efficient, in terms of cost-to-build-speed, to make regular Orbital Fabricators with FTL Drives attached, but they looked lame and I really liked the aesthetics of the Pioneer-class Corvettes.

In keeping with the loose naming scheme I'd been using, I named it the Pilgrim and saved its design, queuing up five from my various factories.

Designs done, I took the time to investigate the extent of the damage to the station. Three hangar bays had been blown open, presumably by some kind of missile, and one of the umbilical walkways looping around the outside of the asteroid was missing a huge chunk, which looked to have been carved out by some kind of beam weapon. A Glaive or Pike, judging by the length of the cut.

There were several areas leaking oxygen from smaller blast craters, likely caused by Burst or Heavy Laser weapons, and one of the station's larger protruding spires, a living block of some kind, was twisted and bent out of shape, dozens of chunks of torn metal plate and... furniture of some kind orbiting the site of the worst damage.

Some of the plating, I noted, was the bright orange typical of the Rebel Fleet.

Apparently one of the Rebel's ships had lost control - I could see no other conceivable reason they would crash a ship there, after all. Unless they were taking after al-Qaeda, but I hoped that wasn't the case.

The five Pilgrims finished construction, launching away from the Orbital Factories and pointing themselves at my location, several hundred light years distant. Their cloaking drives engaged and, a handful of seconds later, they engaged their FTL drives, racing towards Merridew Station and the ten Rebel ships guarding it.

Speaking of the Rebel ships, though, I wanted to know why there were still around.

Curious, I reached out with my myriad of hacking suites and set to work gaining access to the Rebel's communications network just in time to hear this little gem.

"-at ship should not have been able to escape!" The voice was gruff, and I couldn't shake the feeling of being somewhat familiar with it. "We had theKestrel dead to rights, and yet we lost the Semmi and theViravura and the Feds got away scot-free. If someone could please explain how such a thing was possible, then I might reconsider your punishments."

There was silence over the line and for a brief second I was worried they'd already noted my intrusion, but my worries were proven unfounded. On the bright side, successfully confirmed that it was the Kestrel that had been here.

"Well, sir," a young voice spoke out after a nervous silence, "We weren't expecting them to be packing that Glaive Beam. No one could have seen that manoeuvre coming - their pilot must be some kind of tactical genius to pull it off how he did. Getting the Semmi to crash into the Viravura in such a way that it launched the Viravura at the-"

"I know what happened, you moron! I saw it with my own eyes!" Gruff cut the soldier off angrily.

There was silence across the line.

"Alright, look. We lost the Kestrel. From here, unless they run out of fuel, chances are good that they're going to be able to make it all the way back to Earth. We have no choice but to fall back and rendezvous with the fleet. Helmsman! Get us back to Orrpal!"

The transmissions cut off and the ten Rebel ships all broke away from their patrols, heading back in the direction from which I had just come.

Hm. Rebels were pulling back to rejoin their fleet.

And the Kestrel was nearing Earth.

Earth was the seat of the Federation's power, and, I presumed, the location referred to in game as Sector 8 - The Last Stand.

The site of the final battle between the Rebel and Federation fleets.

It would be an absolute massacre.

But not if I could help it.