Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]

[Faith]

Double post but it's a chapter so meh.

As the number of chapters remaining in the FTL Arc approaches zero, the level of my satisfaction with the quality of the chapters also approaches zero.

At this point I'm churning out chapters just to get this over and done with, but I feel like the quality might be faltering because I'm kinda rushing a little. Hopefully once we get to Mars my muse will get out of this rut and I'll be back to mass producing chapters for a good reason. Else I might have to go start that quest after all.

---

50 - Infiltrator​

The Engi seemed to be staring blankly at me for a couple of moments before responding.

"Perhaps I should be more specific. Can you explain the technical process behind the deployment on nanobots with sufficient capability to serve as industrial construction units?"

"I can - well, the basics, anyway,- and I will, as soon as you tell me exactly how you got on my ship. I know you didn't just walk right on in - Dante would have seen you."

"I broke down into composite nanites and each nanite entered the ship individually through the walls and floor of your vessel."

Yeah, that'd do it. Not like I had sensors scanning the inside of my solid Bullshite-Unfairium alloy walls, or anything.

"I see. As promised, I'll show you the blueprint for the Faith Foundation nanobots, then."

Of course, I wasn't going to show the blueprints for anything else - giving the Engi a Fabricator blueprint seemed like a terrible idea at best. Well, actually, the Fabricator itself wasn't so bad. It was pretty much just a vending machine for nanobots. The stuff I didn't want them getting their hands on was the resource transmission technology or, worse, Resource Cores.

As I brought the Progenitor designs up on one of the bridge's many consoles, the Engi's single eye brightened, glowing crimson, and he… it? stepped closer to study it.

The correct pronoun for Engi was probably it, I realized. After all, it was fairly unlikely that a mechanical race would bother with gender pronouns. But then, what did I know?

After a couple of seconds of staring at the design - in contemplation, I hoped, and not confusion, because the diagrams didn't mean squat to me, - the Engi nodded once.

"This design is… not dissimilar to the more advanced theoretical designs of the Assembly. I note there is no marked power source. Is that information classified?"

Huh?

Oh, right. The nanobots all received power - and metal - from very short ranged resource transmitters, connected to the Fabricator that released them. Without them, the nanobots simply weren't useful. A built-in generator on that scale would be orders of magnitude less powerful than required for the kind of construction a Progenitor Fabricator was expected to be used for, and that was only counting the construction itself and not the flight from the Fabricator to the target.

"Power is supplied wirelessly to the system through the Nanite Fabricator. Individual nanites would be incapable of generating the required power with onboard systems."

The Engi rotated his… its head slightly, and one of its eyebrow plates raised slowly. For a bunch of robot… artificial intelligence… things, the Engi were surprisingly good at facial expressions.

"You previously indicated a lack of understanding of the technical operations of the Faith Foundation. This does not match current observations."

"My technical understanding is limited to the fact that I know the nanobots need a fabricator for power, and that's about it. Hell, I think just looking at that diagram is giving me a migraine," I lied, with a completely straight face.

The Engi seemed satisfied by that, which was strange because even I thought it was a weak excuse.

"You also indicated that your objective was to visit an existing Faith Foundation facility to present your Pilgrim vessels, yet clearly no such facility exists."

Ah. He had a point there.

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you this was just a little detour?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"No," came the rather quick reply.

"Mm. Thought not."

There was silence for a moment as I tried to think of something else to say, in order to stall so I could think of what I needed to do next.

I still wanted to pawn off my problems to the Engi or the Zoltan - I just needed a way to approach them. The overall fate of the Faith Foundation was largely irrelevant - once someone else took over I would be disassembling everything and leaving, hopefully never to return, so it wouldn't matter whether or not people noticed the random group appearing from nowhere and disappearing just as quickly.

My best chance, I figured, was to just visit their homeworlds and politely explain.

I mentally sighed and dragged my thoughts away from the future, turning my attention back to the present. I summoned two more of my 'crew', and Dante and Byron, both wielding Progenitor-upgraded versions of the standard Bright Foundation SMG, appeared in the doorway of the bridge in short order.

"Now," I said as the two NeoAvatars stepped into view. "You've explained how you got on and I've explained how the Pilgrims are building that base. Your business here is done. These two gentlemen are going to escort you back to the airlock, we're going to hop on back to Merridew, and we're going to kick you off."

"That is an inefficient procedure for maintaining operational security."

"Excuse me?"

"If I am left on Merridew, I will immediately request an investigation from the Assembly. The Faith Foundation clearly operate on a level previously considered unattainable for the next century, at least. In the event that you contest any evidence I may present, the Assembly will side with me over you. Which will lead to an attempted investigation of your operations."

I frowned, thinking it over.

"Are you… blackmailing me?"

"Yes," the Engi answered without a second's hesitation.

I had my NeoAvatar place her hands on her hips as I admonished the sentient nanite cloud. "Well, sugar it up some, why don't you?"

The Engi 'frowned' again. "I do not understand. How are soluble carbohydrates relevant to this discussion?"

"It… aw, never mind," I sighed, waving a hand dismissively. "I guess you guys aren't so great at the metaphoric stuff."

"No," Unit answered straight away.

"That was rhetorical."

Unit's eye blinked out and then flashed back into life.

"Understood."

I took a few moments - well, a few moments form Unit's perspective. It was several minutes, for me.

"Okay. If I kick you off the ship, you call the Assembly on me. I don't want to deal with them… not yet. So here's the deal. You're going to stay on the ship. You're not going to interfere with my crew, or the ship. You're not going to go wandering around on your own. Either Dante or I will be watching you at all times. You're not going to make any effort to communicate with the Engi, or anyone else on this ship. You are, for all intents and purposes, my prisoner right now."

"Understandable precautions for containing an enemy infiltrator," the infiltrator in question put in.

"If you want to chat, feel free to talk to whoever's with you, but don't get your hopes up for looking at more blueprints."

As I said that, I closed the still-open blueprints for the nanobots. Didn't need them at the moment, so it was just an admittedly negligible drain on power.

"Query. Why did you grant me access to the technical details of Faith Foundation equipment if I am to be your prisoner?"

"One - I wasn't originally planning on taking you prisoner. Like I said, I was just going to drop you back on Merridew, but since I don't want to deal with the Assembly just yet, I'm playing ball." After a moment's consideration, I added, "Also, I just really, really wanted to know how you got on my ship. Thanks for telling me - now I have an idea what to look out for later on."

The Engi nodded. "I presume I will now be escorted to a holding cell?"

"Yup. Dante."

I quickly spun up a second stream of conscious to remotely control the second NeoAvatar, reaching out to tap the Engi on the shoulder before jerking my head over one shoulder.

"Come on, buddy. Got a nice room for you to hang out in. Just don't try to phase through the walls or whatever."

The Engi complied without fuss, stepping out of the bridge and into the hallway. "That would be impossible. The level of technological mastery to utilize infantry scale Phase Field Generators is far beyond the Assembly. Also, I will refrain from deconstructing and infiltrating the walls of your vessel, as I suspect was the spirit of your instruction."

Smartass, both of my current mental instances thought as one.

---

Once Unit was settled into one of the empty crew rooms, I spun up a third stream of consciousness, mainly because I was starting to realise that I had some serious problems with my focus. One thread remained in direct control of Dante, watching over and occasionally conversing with Unit. One thread began reading through every scrap of data I had stolen, copied, or found online, searching for anything and everything relevant to the Engi Assembly - I wanted my dealings with them to be as polite, as cordial, and, most importantly, as quick as possible.

The third instance of my mind went back to finish the work that Unit had so abruptly interrupted.

---

By this point in time, Station LDC-952 was an absolute wreck. It looked… rather intact, actually, from the outside - there were no obvious signs of damage, until one looked through the windows.

Inside was a completely different story. Delicate equipment had been reduced to slag. Walls had begun to warp and melt, and there were points throughout the station where the ceiling was beginning to sag and droop.

My nanobots reported all that, and the rest of the damage, painting what would have been a grim picture had anyone been on the station at the time. Since I'd gotten them away beforehand, though, I was fine on that count. I'd even teleported out the two chimpanzees!

Despite the incredible interior damage, though, the station still looked intact. And I wanted to change that.

A couple of Progenitor nukes, in the right locations - and by that, I mean one Progenitor nuke, placed literally anywhere on the station, - would be easily enough to reduce the remains to statistically insignificant mass.

So I built six, basically bolting them to the exterior of the station. My ships retreated to a safe distance and then I observed through dozens of cameras and sensors as LDC-952 became, for a very short period, a miniature star, a blooming flower of red-orange fire ripping through space and vanishing as abruptly as it had appeared.

Apparently the fire hadn't removed the entire atmosphere, then.

Unfortunately, whether because my catharsis had been interrupted or because just blowing up a shell was less interesting than a full, flaming station, the facility's complete and total decimation was not as comforting as I would have hoped.

Oh well. I sent the two Pioneers loaded with prisoners over to Erran. I wasn't sure of the exact arrangement between the Zoltan and the Federation, but since these particular Zoltan had sided with the Rebels, that's where I sent them.

That potential problem now rather thoroughly dealt with, I shut off that thread.

---

"Crewman Dante. There is something I wish to inform you of."

"Oh?"

"The Assembly's 3rd Reconnaissance Fleet will be arriving momentarily."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the automated routine responsible for dealing with sensor input began yapping away in my ear.

Warning - Engi ship detected. Warning - Engi ship detected. Warning - Engi ship detected. Warning - Engi ship detected. Warning - Engi ship detected. Warning - Engi ship detected.

Oh, for the love of....

"Why are they here?" I queried Unit.

"I requested an investigation from the Assembly," Unit explained with the same dull monotone as usual.

"You said you'd only do that if we kicked you off the ship!" 'Dante' exclaimed.

"Incorrect. I explained that if I was removed from this vessel, I would request an investigation. At no point did I state, or mean to imply, that I was not going to do so anyway."

God. Fucking. Damnit.​

 

[Faith]

Unfortunately, I haven't played any Saints Row games besides The Third, so that's off the table. Any appearances of anything related to SR are just going to be the easter eggs and callouts already found in the Red Faction games.

Also, apologies for the late post. RTXAU, followed immediately by a friend's party, means I've been up the better part of eighteen hours and yet had only 30~mins of free time, so I didn't get a chance to post this until now. Mea culpa.

--

51 - Arrest
To say that I was annoyed would be a rather impressive understatement. I personally prefer the term 'quite miffed'.

Six Engi ships - an air cruiser and five smaller craft, fighters of some kind, - were currently on approach to my own units, and I detected no small number of sensor sweeps of various kinds across both the Starsong and the Pilgrims.

They seemed rather content to remain silent, though, and for the first minute or two the two small fleets were simply drifting in the general direction of one another.

Well, they were drifting towards the Starsong, and the Pilgrims were ignoring them to continue their build queue. But the Starsong was still drifting towards them, so it counts, right?

Finally, as the lead ships of each fleet drew to about ninety six thousand kilometres distant, I recieved a hail.

Well.

Guess most of my totally-well-made-and-definitely-not-nonexistent plans were going down the drain. It would have been upsetting, if I'd actually had any plans I liked.

"Faith Foundation vessel. This is Metric of the 3rd Assembly Reconnaissance fleet. You are under investigation for intrusion into Engi space, illegal construction operations, and unlawful imprisonment of an individual of the Engi Assembly."

Aaaaand there goes the rest of my plans.

Wait.

What?

I flicked back through my memory, replaying what was said.

Huh. It was a bit… abrupt, and very blunt, but I couldn't deny his claims. Though this wasn't inhabited Engi territory, it did technically belong to them. And Unit was locked in Bunk 7, but I felt I had good reason for that.

"In addition, you have several crimes listed against the Galactic Federation including but not limited to; two counts intrusion into restricted space, two counts damaging military property, damaging civilian property, disrupting intragalactic communications, two counts damaging government property, opposing the government, consorting with terrorists, resisting arrest, defacement of a Galactic Federation territory, orbital bombardment of an inhabited celestial body, usurping the power of the Galactic Federation, unlawful occupation of Earth Orbit and Earth Satellite 1 Orbit, and littering."

Oh.

Fudge.


Either I accidentally stole the name of a prior terrorist group, or these guys have already figured out the connection.

Come to think of it, the Tracker and Pilgrim corvettes were both based on the same design, and from the outside looked very, very similar except with regards to weapons placement, so it wasn't too much of a stretch that the relatively advanced Engi had spotted the similarities.

That was kind of stupid of me, actually. I should have made different ships, instead of relying on the Elysion Corvette design again.

Ah well.

Again, I couldn't exactly deny any of the claims levelled against me. I was assuming that either LDC-952 or the various Earth Orbitals counted as civilian property, the fleet and the stations were military and government, I'd shot at them - covering opposition, consorting with terrorists, and resisting arrest, - the Moon was… well, defaced was a bit of an understatement, and it had technically been inhabited, even if it was only by one team of scientists.

There was just one thing I wasn't sure of.

My priorities may have been a little skewed, here, what with the Engi fleet staring down my one combat vessel with weapons charged, but it wasn't like they were a threat, or anything. So I went ahead and asked my question.

"Littering? I don't recall-"

"On the 17th of December, Galactic Federation Homeworld Standard Calendar, two unidentified flying objects crashed into the Earth's surface due to ground-to-air weapons fire, and were not recovered by the offending party."

I ran a quick check of my fleets, wondering what the hell he was talking about, and quickly figured it out. Two of my Booster Drones had been shot down whilst carrying one of the ships down to the surface. The ship had made it down fine with the remaining six drones, which was good, but I was a little weirded out by the fact that they apparently expected me to go down to the surface of the Earth to clean up two drones barely bigger than the things they regularly fielded, and intended to deploy in the thousands during the Battle of Earth.

Even though they were the ones directly responsible for downing the Booster Drones anyway.

I guess they were colossal morons, from what I had seen, so I probably should have been expecting it.

"Alright, so, like, do I get a chance to dispute those, or…?"

"No. Please disable your ship's weapons and prepare to be boarded."

Now, I could have fought my way out. It would have been rather easy, honestly. The Starsong, whilst based on FTL tech, had a number of improvements and upgrades the Engi fleet couldn't hope to match, and I had the ships responsible for the destruction of LDC-952 just seconds away.

It would have been rather against the point though, since I intended to make peace of sorts with them.

Of course, just because I didn't want to fight them didn't mean I had to obey.

In fact, given the snarky traitorous lying bastard currently locked in Bunk 7, I was rather disinclined to do such a thing.

"Okay, look. Clearly, you're quite upset about this whole thing with me kidnapping one of your guys and trespassing on your land… space. Whatever. That's fine. I get that. But I'm going to have to refuse."

"If you do not comply willingly we will utilize force."

"Mmmkay, buddy. Good luck with that. Here, take your asshole spy back."

A couple of flicked mental switches later and Unit found himself torn from his room and onto the Starsong's teleporter pad. He was there for less than a second before the teleporter fired again, this time placing him firmly aboard the leading Engi vessel.

"Now, if you don't mind, I'm a very busy individual, and you have just disrupted a somewhat important plan of mind. I have much to do, and little time to do it in."

I noted power spikes throughout the Engi fleet.

"Stand down and prepare to be boarded, or we will open fire."

With a metaphorical sigh, I sent out a self-destruct signal to the asteroid base below. Now the Engi knew it was here, it wasn't worth keeping it around. They'd probably just keep trying to invade or destroy it, and I really couldn't be bothered to deal with that.

As the buildings began to break apart, reverting to clouds of nanobots before scattering and exploding into nothing, the five Pilgrim construction vessels activated their FTL Drives, slinking away before any of the Engi vessels could do anything about it.

The Engi apparently decided that that was cause enough to open fire, because the next thing I knew several dozen energy blasts were shooting across the void.

Starsong's shields tanked the majority of the fire without issue, deftly outmaneuvering the small volley of incoming missiles with a sudden burst of acceleration.

"Look, guys, I got rid of the buildings, I gave you back the prisoner, and I'm about to leave your territory. There. You have no reason to go after me now."

"As allies of the Galactic Federation, we are obliged to detain and extradite you to the correct authorities."

"Um. You realise that I totally obliterated their military capacity, right? What are they going to do, think angry thoughts - wait, never mind, I already used that line. Look, basically, I'm really busy and if you guys are just going to waste everyone's time trying to arrest me, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave."

"You will be brought before the correct authorities, regardless of your wishes. Surrender or we will continue firing."

Obviously, they weren't quite getting my point. Oh well, their loss.

"Guys, it's really cute you think you have a choice in this matter, but… nah."

And then the Starsong, too, jumped beyond lightspeed, leaving six Engi ships drifting over a barren and worthless hunk of rock.

---

Observation - Faith Foundation vessels possess technology far surpassing our own. Their air cruiser nullified the offensive power of our entire fleet. Construction capabilities also beyond compare. Nanite construction systems beyond our own - design noted in report.

Noted. Unknown Group now designated Faith Foundation additionally responsible for disarmament of both Galactic Federation and Human Rebellion fleets. Threat level severe. No mention of objectives in report.

Objectives Unknown. Further investigation required.

Negative. Faith Foundation severe threat to Assembly. Observed Cyberwarfare feats are beyond even advanced Engi operations. Priority is to remove them as a threat. Long terms goals irrelevant.

Affirmative.

---

So.

Engi fleet kinda screwed up my plans. Well, my Plan Bs, anyway. Seems they were pretty strongly allied with the Federation still, if they were willing to try and arrest and/or kill me over it.

In hindsight, I probably should have looked into the relations between the Federation and the Engi a little more - I hadn't realized that they'd be so zealous about it.

Not willing to make that mistake twice, my second fork, previously digging up everything I could on the Engi, switched targets, turning my attention to the Zoltan.

Every other concurrent instance had by this point finished their tasks - the offloading of Rebel and Federation personnel on Earth and Erran, - and so they, too, spun down. I sent the two FTL Gates the self-destruct command and recalled the majority of my fleet, leaving only a few dozen Stealth Avengers to keep an eye on things.

Hopefully I wouldn't screw up so bad with the Zoltan.

 

[Faith]

Sorry it's a little late, my train home from Lazer Team was delayed. Still Wednesday, though, so it still counts.

52 - Preparations
My entire fleet gathered once more in the desolate void between stars, occupying a huge area around the asteroids my base had long expanded across. The Astraeus that had been carting around my Osiris body dropped me off on one of the larger asteroids - a pointless act, but one I found somewhat appropriate. As it drifted off to rejoin the fleet, I strode across the surface of the asteroid to get a better look at it - an enormous cloud of green and silver ships, packing enough firepower to decimate entire armadas, in either lethal or nonlethal forms.

I wondered if it was possible to overcharge the Ion weapons to a level that made them actually deal damage.

I then put that thought aside, because I had shit to do.

First of all, I had to make a few considerations. The Engi apparently hated me now, because I totally screwed over the Federation. I could appreciate that, even if I thought it was stupid as hell. It was their fault for supporting a bunch of total asshats in the first place.

What the hell would they have done if the Rebels had won? I was starting to wonder if letting them do that would have been the better option.

But, I hadn't, which meant this whole mess was kinda my fault.

So, I needed to do something to get them off my back… or I could not, and just leave… I put that idea on the backburner. If I couldn't figure anything out by the time I was ready to go, I'd just ditch them. After all, I doubted they'd be able to follow me on my ROB-sponsored Multiverse Tour, and they couldn't exactly blame other people for something that was clearly my fault.

Well, they could, but they didn't seem the type to do that. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, the Humans were such a disorganised mess at the moment that they pretty much didn't count for shit at the moment, and I had no contact with anyone else - except the Slugs, but they didn't seem to be coming out of their nebulae any time soon, so I wasn't particularly worried about that.

The Zoltan, on the other hand… well, based on the files I'd dug up, they would either be totally willing to sit down and talk it over with me, or try to murder me.

Emphasis on try.

Given it was probably my only good option (that didn't involve conquering the entire galaxy and ruling as supreme commander) I didn't really have much choice but to go for it.

Second, I wanted to do some more ship designing. Not a new ship, for once, just finishing an old design I'd never bothered polishing off. The Cavalier - the dedicated combat corvette. Sure, the Wayfarers were scary, but the Trackers, which made up the bulk of my fleet, were only equipped with missiles as their 'lethal' options.

I loaded up the design in question and got back to work. A pair of Zoltan shield generators and a stealth drive bought the vessel up to scratch with my other Corvettes, and every other available space from that point on was covered in guns.

The end result? A lightly armoured, heavily armed corvette, perfect for annihilating swarms of small craft - it could engage as many as eleven targets at once with guns, and that didn't account for the missile pods.

In addition to the standard 32-Layer Phase Shield, 10-Layer Zoltan Phase Shield, and Phase Cloak, it was packing 4 Twin Plasma Repeaters (two on each side), 4 Friendship Laser emitter domes (one on each side, one on top, one on bottom), 2 Laser Cannons on the nose (capable of firing regular lasers or high-intensity IR for firey goodness), 4 Missile Pods (two on top, two below), and, of course, the Heavy Railgun.

Basically, enough firepower to royally fuck up someone's day.

I was still hoping to maintain my pacifism, but obviously the people of the FTLverse weren't scared of me, yet, so I figured I would make a little show of force. Or, a bigger show of force. I'd need a lot of them, though. It would be hard to top carving a peace symbol into the moon.

But since they had rather more visible guns than the other designs, and actually lethal guns, to boot, I hoped that people might actually care about their presence.

I queued up a couple of thousand and turned my attention to problem number three.

The AI.

Thanks to the files I had… obtained, from LDC-952, I knew that there had been six backups of the AI. If the Rebels had made more, I had no idea where they were, but I don't think they would have had time - the Flagship's logs had pretty clearly indicated they'd gone straight from LDC-952 to Erran to join the fleet, and from there forward to Earth as fast as possible.

Which was good for me, because it meant I only had to go break a handful of computers, instead of potentially hundreds.

Whilst I waited for my new Cavaliers to undergo mass production, I rounded up a few dozen Trackers and sent them back out into inhabited space, reactivating their cloaks as soon as they appeared in the target systems.
---

Rebel-controlled Listening Post, Far Solar Orbit, Mirrakau System
"Hm."

"What, Jenner?"

"Thought I saw something on the edge of the system, sir. Scans aren't picking anything up, though. Must have been a sensor fault."

The officer shrugged, turning away from the ensign's desk.

"Any news from Earth?" The ensign called over his shoulder as the officer turned to walk away.

"No, not yet. Don't worry, though, Jenner. They don't stand a chance against the Flagship. Once it gets aboard their orbital command systems, their entire planet will be turned to dust."

The ensign nodded and stared out the window, overlooking the various relay satellites drifting near the listening post. There were dozens of them, almost always constantly sending messages back and forth between the front lines and the home front.

They'd been silent, recently. Obviously no one had time to send messages back. The Battle of Earth must have already started.

Satisfied, the ensign turned back to his computer readout just in time to notice one of the satellite icons suddenly blinking out.

---

Rebel Weapons Facility, Kamacha, Nurravil System
The peaceful silence of the night was shattered in seconds as a series of explosions rocked the facility. Bright flashes of light lit the mountainside, accompanied by three concussive blasts that threw snow high into the air and sent the facility's night guards tumbling.

Three pillars of smoke rose into the air, originating from some point behind the main building. The two guards picked themselves up off the snow, rushing across the base as fast as they could whilst knee deep in slush.

When they arrived, they could only stare blankly at the devastation. Where once a two story server farm and databank had once stood, there was now nothing but a smoking hole in the ground, almost six metres deep.

---


Computer Neuroscience Department, University of Noravin, Terros, Nurravil System
The long silence was broken by one of the students sitting at the back of the hall, who tentatively raised her voice, still shaking with fear. "What the fuck was that?"

The professor shrugged and finally turned away from his lecture, joining his students in looking out of the window in fascination at the scene of devastation on the far side of the campus.

The university's archive building had been totally flattened. Even from his classroom, the professor could see the rubble extending for hundreds of metres in every direction. Luckily, it was far enough from the rest of the university that there probably wasn't any damage - the shockwaves hadn't even shattered the windows here in the information technology building.

On the other hand… the archive building had contained every scrap of knowledge the university had ever pieced together - it represented decades of research and investigation, across hundreds of fields of study - millions of hours of experiments, results, and theories. Two million credits of dedicated server systems, data storage devices, and the most impressive liquid-cooling system money could buy.

Annihilated.

Ah, well. At least there was always the offsite backup.

---

Horizon Corporation Data Storage, Terros, Nurravil System
The two engineers stared into the smoking crater that was once the backup storage centre of the planet's biggest university.

"Aw, shit."

---

New Calidona Army Reserve, Laborne, Gerrus Sector
The ball of fire blossomed in an instant and vanished just as quickly, disappearing in a flash of orange light. The shockwave sent clumps of dirt and gravel flying high into the air, and the sergeant wisely ducked his head, allowing his helmet to catch the worst of the debris.

As the chunks of torn-up earth fell back to the ground, the sergeant turned to the three men manning the artillery piece.

"Excellent shot, team four. Keep this up, and you might get selected for Onager crew. You seen the size of the explosions those anti-matter shells make? They're huge. Big enough to dig a hole in the ground a hundred metres deep."

And then the earth below began to suddenly shudder, accompanied by a blinding flash followed by an abrupt darkness, casting the firing range in shadow.

Turning around, the sergeant and his four artillery battalion recruits found themselves staring at an enormous mushroom cloud, a pillar of smoke, fire and ash that blocked out the sun.

"Yeah, kinda like that," the sergeant belatedly finished.

The sergeant dubiously held up one thumb against the mushroom cloud, wincing as he did so.

"Well, I hope that's not radioactive."

And then the shockwave hit.

---

Of all the locations I needed to hit, this would be the hardest. Unlike the others, located in isolated and barely-populated areas, in deep space, or buried sixty metres underground, this one was hidden in a different way.

Hidden in plain sight.

This was what the LDC-952 documentation referred to as their 'fragmented offline backup'.

There were four parts, in four separate data drives, spread across the city.

Under normal circumstances, this would have been a problem. Infiltrating the city and locating them would have been rather difficult, even knowing the approximate locations from the documentation. I couldn't get the exact location, because the agent who planted them was long dead.

Fortunately for me, everyone else in the city was long dead, too.

Tends to be the result when the Federation decide the populace are getting to uppity and virus-bomb them. Although I had to wonder which bright spark decided to send their fragmented copy of the AI to a spy on the front lines. He hadn't even been in an ideal position to use the damn thing.

Either way, the AI was here, in four separate devices spread through the city. I could have gone out and looked for them, but that was rather too much effort for a lazy layabout like me.

Two Progenitor nukes neatly solved that problem, and I moved on to my next task.

---

Avis-Murrd spun on his heel as soon as he heard the door slide open, turning to face his aide.

"Yes?"

"They're here. They haven't opened fire yet, so..."

Avis-Murrd turned back to the window, overlooking the vast skyline of the Zoltan's primary city-world, tinted purple in the dwindling light.

"Good. Are they responding to hails?"

"They're acknowledging, but not responding in a meaningful way."

"Interesting. Invite them down, please."

 

[Faith]

So, uh, sorry this didn't go up yesterday. Really heavy storm in my area knocked out power for a good chunk of my suburb. All sorted now, though.

On another note, one completely unrelated, today is the first anniversary of Monty Oum's death. In a way, that makes this almost the first anniversary of Faith in Superior Firepower, because whilst I didn't post it for several months (and after several revisions) it was Rooster Teeth's request that the fans do creative things to honor Monty's memory that made me start this project in the first place - otherwise it would simply have languished in the back of my mind like so many other of my projects.

So, uh. Yeah. Have a chapter. One of the last FTLverse chapters (thank god).

---

53 - Zoltan
The Zoltan Home Fleet were surprisingly fast to acknowledge my presence - before my entire fleet had even emerged from FTL, the lead ships were already receiving messages.

The first dozen or so were requests for identification, but after a brief period of radio silence - well, not radio silence because they weren't using radios, - a second wave of messages came through.

And by messages, I mean invitations.

Coordinates, a time, promises of peace, and a request not to blow anything up once I arrived.

Given I'd arrived in a fleet of almost two thousand Cavaliers, each armed to the teeth with enough firepower to tackle a small fleet, it was a fair assumption on their part that I had come to destroy their entire pathetic planet.

They were wrong, but it was a fair assumption nonetheless.

Luckily, it played right into my plan. Sort of.

I mean, I'd been intending to meet with them, and they were offering, so…

I sent them a short, terse reply indicating my agreement and sent a quick command to my fleet. The Starsong and four Cavaliers departed from the rest of the armada, flying sublight the eighty million or so kilometres towards the Zoltan capitol.

---

The ships drifted between huge spires of glittering silver and green glass tinted purple by the light of the setting sun, deftly maneuvering through spaces that seemed far too small for it to fit - say what you will about the Progenitors, but their pathfinding routines were excellent. Simply feeding it the blueprints of the unit gave it everything it needed to know about its capabilities, and it was using that knowledge to the fullest now.

Eventually, the air cruiser arrived at the location the invitation had indicated, a wide open platform marked with flashing orange lights and purple painted lines.

The landing pad wasn't big enough for all of my ships, so I had the Cavaliers tilt back and fly up to hover in low orbit, whilst the Starsong moved down for landing.

The Starsong's boarding ramp had barely touched the floor when a pair of Zoltan, both glowing vivid green, approached, halting feet away from the ship's entrance.

My NeoAvatar stepped down to meet them, nodding but saying nothing.

The two mimicked my silence, pointing towards the only door leading off from the landing pad which was, by my rather well informed estimations, hanging perhaps two hundred or so meters above the ground.

Leaving the rest of the NeoAvatars to guard the ship - though I doubted I'd have problems from these guys, - I made my way across the landing zone towards the doorway.

After a moment's consideration, I configured the Starsong's sensors to watch the components and walls of the ship as well as the corridors and rooms - the Zoltan were semi-solid energy beings, and I'd seen one direct interface with a shield generator before, sot here was no guarantee that they couldn't do something similar to what the Engi had done.

Once I reached the door, I was greeted by another pair of silent guards. Rather than pointing me in a given direction, though, these guards turned and walked ahead of me, evidently leading me to wherever it was I was supposed to be going.

As we walked, I picked up a few strange readings with my multitude of sensors - some weird electromagnetic activity, emanating from the guards. I wondered if that was some kind of natural process for the Zoltan, or if it was a form of communications or something.

The pair led me through a maze of corridors, taking turns seemingly at random and occasionally going up a large, spiralling ramp to the floor above.

The smooth textured walls, large windows, gentle curves and sparse but effective decorations made it a very pretty building, but damn, did it seem inefficient.

Finally, the two guards stopped in front of a rather simple looking door, not unlike the two dozen or so I'd already passed, and gestured for me to go in.

Which I did, with much aplomb.

The room was simple in design, not unlike the rest of the building with smooth walls, gentle curves and a huge window dominating the far wall, providing an absolutely jaw-dropping view of the city, made even better by the purple twilight.

In the middle of the room was a desk - ornate, made either of a dark metal or wood, and host to a huge, swirling vortex of electromagnetic energy.

The electricity compressed and shifted, changing from a shapeless mass of lightning to a roughly humanoid green figure.

So. Zoltan are energy shapeshifters. Called it.

"Greetings," the Zoltan began, in fine but accented English. "My name is Avis-Murrd, High Senator of the Zoltan Republic. I take it you are the Faith Foundation's… representative?"

Well, he was technically correct. He just didn't know that I was also Founder, CEO, President, Chief of Staff, and whatever other fancy titles I felt the need to give myself.

"Sure, yeah. Let's go with that."

He nodded and fell back into a soft-looking chair stationed behind his desk, gesturing for me to do the same. I shrugged and sat down.

"You and I have much to discuss," he said once I'd settled in. "About your goals, past and future."

"Certainly. Would you care to ask questions, or should I just tell the story from the start?"

"Well, I am sure that your entire tale is thrilling, but, in the interests of saving time, I'll… cut to the chase, I believe is your saying…" he paused momentarily, brow furrowed, "... I suppose my first question is this. Why did you do it? Why attack Earth?"

Hm. He wasn't kidding. Straight to the point, then.

"Out of curiosity, why do you think," I caught myself before I could say "I", "why do you think we did it?"

"Hm. An interesting question, one I've put a fair deal of thought into, for reasons that should be fairly obvious."

I nodded.

"You're not after territory - even if you were, you wouldn't have attacked Earth, the centre of the Federation's power, and you maintain only a minimal presence there now. You're not after power - you've plenty enough already. You're not working on behalf of either of the involved groups - if you wouldn't have destroyed both sides equally. And you're not in it for the thrill, as they say - if you had been, millions more would be dead."

I gestured for him to go on.

"I suspect then that the Faith Foundation's motives are more selfless - that you acted with the intent of ending the war before more blood could be shed. A noble, if foolish goal."

"We pulled it off, though," I said, careful to continue with the royal 'we', "or, at least, far better than most could have managed."
"From the moment your forces engaged, not a single life was lost as a result of the battle. I'd go so far as to suggest that for any other force in the universe, that would be impossible."

I smirked. "I rather think I'd agree with that suggestion. You're largely right - we acted because we had the power to prevent the huge loss of life that would have otherwise resulted from our inaction. As you say, the Faith Foundation has more than enough territory for its purposes, and enough power to stare down any number of your fleets with confidence. Bringing an end to the Federation-Rebel war earns us nothing, but to end a war, we're willing to accept that."

The Zoltan nodded. "How selfless. And reckless. Had you underestimated the capabilities of the Human fleets, you would almost surely have been overwhelmed."

I considered that for a moment, crunching the numbers. Running my factories at maximum speed… no, I was more than capable of churning out Trackers faster than the fleets could aim at and destroy the ships already on the field. Of course, I wasn't necessarily going to tell him that.

"Perhaps."

The Zoltan's face distorted weirdly, features fading into nothingness and the intensity of the light growing momentarily before returning to normal.

I got the impression it was supposed to be some kind of gesture, similar to a shrug or a raised eyebrow, but all I knew for sure was that it was creepy as all hell.

"The next question, then, is why are you here?"

"This is rather awkward to ask, but… the Faith Foundation would like your help. In controlling the Human population in lieu of the Federation and Rebel governments, that is."

Avis-Murrd chuckled and nodded. "As I suspected."

Wait, what?

Was I really that transparent?

Shit.

"Our diplomats and ambassadors within the Sol system were quick to report on your activities - sparing every crewman, every officer, every marine, shipping them all to the surface and letting them go free. But your follow-up lacked direction, lacked purpose. You shut down any attempt at putting warships in orbit, and ignored all other proceedings.

"That speaks of a lack of preparation on the Foundation's part. You moved quickly to ensure there would be no battle over Earth, and then floundered, unsure of what needed to be done next. Unsure of what you could do, and what you should do. The Faith Foundation was never prepared to assume the responsibilities necessary as a result of their actions."

Holy. Shit.

The Zoltan were always the 'diplomatic' race in FTL. Like the Asari in Mass Effect, it was kind of their 'hat' to be the peacekeepers.

I had assumed that that was something to do with them being kind, honest, and considerate of the needs and desires of others as well as their own. Instead it seemed that they were just really, really shrewd.

The signs, in all honestly, were fairly obvious - once Avis-Murrd had pointed them out to me, it was easy for me to see how anyone might have been able to reach the same conclusions he had reached.

But no one would have, for a long while. They would have been infinitely more concerned with the fact that an entirely unknown group had shown up out of nowhere, annihilated two fleets with presumptuous ease, glassed a chunk of the Moon and then vanished without a trace.

In a way, it spoke volumes about the Zoltan's attitudes towards politics. Much like the Asari, they seemed to favour a 'wait and see' approach… except, unlike the Asari, they weren't so blind as to deny the threat right in front of their face.

"Since it was clear to myself, and many other senators, that the Faith Foundation would not step up to assume command of Humanity in this… chaotic time, we began making plans of our own. Purely as a thinking exercise, at first, but as the signs of your unwillingness to participate grew clearer, it became a more practical exercise than we would have hoped."

In an attempt to regain some of my rapidly dwindling control of the situation, I turned to my oldest and most trusted of partners - snark.

"Do you always make plans to dominate the governments of your galactic neighbours, or was this a one-off thing? I thought you were allied with the Galactic Federation, anyway."

Avis-Murrd rolled his eyes and made to continue. I idly noted that both the Engi and the Zoltan seemed to utilize very human social cues and gestures, given they were, well, aliens.

"As members of the galactic community, it is in our best interests to ensure that our partners and peers, our counterparts of the other governments, are able to rule with a firm hand over their people. A race torn apart by civil war is dysfunctional, from an interspecies standpoint. Every second they spend warring with each other is a second they could be spending far more productively, in a positive and helpful manner. If that means that we, or any other race, may be required to intervene, for a period, then that is a cost we are willing to pay."

"And yes, we are, in the most technical sense, allies of the Galactic Federation. That…"

Avis-Murrd paused, sinking further into his chair and averting his gaze to the side.

"That was a mistake, a political decision made of fear. One that I, and many others of the Senate, are unhappy with. This, though… this is our chance to fix that mistake. The Faith Foundation wish for the Zoltan's aid in regaining control of human governance? We are happy to assist."

 

[Faith]

RE: The Asari being useless - I know they're not, having played ME3 and the DLC fairly recently, actually. On the other hand, Commander!Faith hadn't played Mass Effect in at least six months, and that was before she got transformed into a giant robot and sent to dick around in the multiverse for a couple months more. Details get forgotten, but things like memetic fanon stick around a little longer.

Anyways, here's a chapter. Second last FTL chapter, if I can wrap up neatly in 2000 words or so. If not, third last. We'll see.

---

54 - Admissions

What.

"Sorry. You're just… you're just going to accept, just like that?"

"Certainly. As I say, this is a chance for us to fix the mistakes we made long ago."

"Really? That's all you want this chance for?"

Avis-Murrd nodded. "We learned long ago the folly of mistreating others as slaves - I'm surprised you haven't read about it, yet, but you should perhaps research the Mantis Revolution. After that, once we looked at the Federation we knew that they had to go, but… well. We made a mistake."

I was… dubious. I'd wanted their help - appreciated it, even, - but that they were willing to up and take over another species' government so quickly? It seemed… far too convenient for me. After a moment's deliberation, I split off a second thread to go web-diving.

"Right, you mentioned that," I said, mainly to keep the conversation flowing. "A mistake made of fear?"

Avis-Murrd nodded. "Not to bore you with the exact details - I'm sure you could find them out anyway, given your not-unimpressive cyberwarfare skills, - when we made first contact with the Federation, we realized that their fleets, their military in general far outnumbered our own.

"Of course, we'd been watching them for some time before they officially discovered us, and we learned much about them. We saw that they were no better than we had been, in our treatment of the Mantis. We saw them cowing their own populace with force, and the Engi too."

He paused for a moment, spinning his chair to stare wistfully out at the sun, just minutes from vanishing completely beyond the horizon.

"We knew that presenting ourselves as weak would lead only to our subjugation. After much deliberation, the Senate decided on what they believed to be the safest course of action for our species. Rather than allow ourselves to seem weak, we would present ourselves as impossibly strong.

"Once we'd arranged a formal meeting between our ambassadors and the Humans, in a neutral system between our two territories, we pulled every ship we could spare - every scout fighter, every armed hauler, every sector defence craft, - and combined them into one huge fleet.

"We left every planet in our empire completely undefended, as to make a show of force we hoped would be sufficient to stop the Humans from immediately trying to conquer us. It worked. The Humans suddenly became a lot more amiable to our negotiations once they saw our fleet, more willing to accept peace between our races. After that, it was a simple matter of lying and deceiving the humans at every opportunity, leaving them totally unaware of the location of our fleets - or rather, our lack of fleets."

Avis-Murrd chuckled and then shook his head with a sigh.

"We were waiting for the optimal time to sow dissent into their populace - we had it all planned out; a slowly growing revolutionary movement, key figures given just the right nudges at just the right time so that the development of the liberation movement would rapidly snowball in popularity until it swayed even the lesser nobles, and then the ruling class would have had no choice but to submit and return to democracy…"

Seeing my Avatar's raised eyebrow, Avis-Murrd chuckled again.

"Of course, it was more complicated than that - a hundred of our best minds, master military and socio-political strategists alike, worked in concert over the course of three decades to formulate that plan… but then the Rebels, a completely unknown factor from a border world we didn't even realise existed, began their own war, and… well."

Avis-Murrd shrugged. "I think you can guess what happened from there."

"So… you allied with the Federation because you didn't want to get invaded, but this whole time you were plotting against them? Very cunning of you."

That earned a full-on laugh from the Zoltan. "Oh, please. The Zoltan Republic is always plotting."

I laughed with him at that one, the thought not crossing my mind until much later that he hadn't been joking.

"Now, as I was saying: the Rebels interrupted our original plan, so we had to rapidly abort those operations and switched to our contingency plan. Then you came along, and interrupted that plan - and that was an actual surprise for us - a rare thing indeed. It made us aware that our surveillance abilities have been… slipping, over recent decades. We missed the emergence of not one but two major galactic powers."

I had to admit, that was a pretty big case of dropping the ball, especially for the Zoltan, who were now reminding me much more of the Salarians than the Asari. Admittedly, neither movement had started big, but the Rebels had likely snowballed faster than the Zoltan could adapt and I… well, I think the title says it all. Brutally efficient self-replicating mechanism of war.

"However, whilst our intelligence agents failed in that regard, our plans to assume control of the Human government remain valid, and so, in the interests of maintaining galactic stability, we are more than happy to assist you in your goal."

Okay, now that was just screaming of there being more to it than that. I guess I could see them being afraid of the Federation's military power, even if I couldn't understand how the Federation even got an advantage over the Zoltan anyway due to the Zoltan's hundred-year lead on spaceflight and generally superior technology...

"I suppose that's as good a reason as any for you to agree with my offer, but… I have a question, if you don't mind. Why did you not take the issue to the other races? Did you not believe that they could assist you?"

Avis-Murrd's glowing eyes widened at that comment. "Of course, it was an option we had considered, but, for various reasons, it was deemed that any support they could offer would be too inconsequential to matter."

He leaned back in his chair, staring up into the ceiling, before beginning to explain.

"The Crystals and the Lanius, the only two other major powers, had both largely vanished shortly prior to this time - the Crystals retreating to their home sector and the Lanius vanishing beyond the edge of known space. The Rocks, the primitive descendents of the Crystals, were… well, primitive. They barely had the technology to reach their own moon. And the Mantis were far too small a nation to pose even the slightest threat to the Federation, and the fact that they had not a single interstellar colony meant that if the Federation had attacked them… they would have been annihilated within hours. They were unwilling to risk a war with another race of potential slavers, especially so soon after their first bloody revolution."

The Zoltan's brow furrowed, as though he was deep in thought.

"The Slugs… their government at the time was so horribly indecisive that if we'd bothered asking for help, we wouldn't have received an answer for a century, at minimum - and whilst the Zoltan are long lived, the Slugs surpass even us in that manner."

Avis-Murrd let out another sigh.

"And the Engi are, well, the Engi." The Zoltan added, seeming like somewhat of an afterthought.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, honestly curious.

"Well, you may have noticed that they are rather… lacking, in the department of competent politics. Their first contact was with the Federation, and the Federation have rubbed off on them strongly, especially with regards to galactic politics. They have something akin to a master-pupil relationship."

Oh. That explained… a lot, actually. Looking at the Engi as the Federation's eager student certainly made their criminal lack of tact plausible.

"Alright, so you felt that no one else could help you so you'd have to deal with them on your own. Fair enough. How exactly did you plan to do that?"

"Once we accounted for the Rebels? We were going to help them win. The loss of life would have been regrettable, but the circumstances were heavily in our favour and we predicted we would have no better chances in the foreseeable future. We had originally planned to sway them into limiting the collateral damage as much as possible, but the influence of our agents was limited, and we did not want to lose what little we had."

Well, apparently the Zoltan weren't exactly paragons, either, but at least they were honest about it. I… I guess I couldn't fault them for that. Certainly, letting the war end seemed much safer for the Zoltan than getting caught up in the middle, so...

"Our agent on the other side, within the Federation's Admiralty Board, would have ensured that the Kestrel would have been held back just enough to be incapable of defending against the Flagship, ensuring the eventual defeat of the entire Federation armed forces. Incidentally, the Flagship AI, the one you destroyed? It was one of our own making, designed to target and assume control over networked defensive systems, such as the Federation's orbital grid."

Oh. Oops.

"Once that was done, we were going to deny the Rebels the return of those assets until they agreed to maintain peace with us… naturally, we had plans for all eventual outcomes for that situation, but you rather interfered with them, as well. Incidentally, I understand that the Flagship AI engaged one of the Faith Foundation's AI units, shortly prior to the battle of Earth?"

Ah. Well, if he wanted to believe that…

"Yes. She was rather… upset, about the ordeal."

Understatement of the century. Stupid fucking AI.

"Well, on behalf of the Zoltan Republics I must apologise for its actions. It was merely following protocol, you understand."

I frowned. "That your protocol dictates that any unknown vessels should be immediately engaged seems flawed, at best."

Avis-Murrd frowned at that. "It should not have engaged a ship unless it had verified it as a threat, or was otherwise provoked. Likely, it detected your AI network and assumed the ship was not a ship, but a defence network turret, or some similar issue. Interesting. Although I must say I am disappointed in the Faith Foundation destroying the hard work of the Republic's specialists - I assume that was you, yes? - I can hardly fault you. Prototype AIs are dangerous, and several of our spies were worried the Rebels would eventually aim to unshackle it, to bring it to the level of our own AI. Such an event would have been… dangerous."

No shit, I thought, An unshackled military AI is dangerous?

Heh. I guess I'd be in a position to know. Although I wasn't sure at this point if I counted as unshackled or not. Were Commanders supposed to be capable of such autonomy?

"Regardless, we are rather straying from the topic, I believe."

"Ah, so we are," I acquiesced. "Back to ruling the humans. You were fairly clear earlier describing why every other race would be a poor choice of administrator… but that's not the same as convincing me you would be agood choice."

"Absolutely not," Avis-Murrd agreed with a grin, "and I am glad to see you realise that. How refreshing, to converse with a Human who is neither a bigot nor an imbecile."

I smirked, and for a moment there was silence between us, as he appeared to ponder how to answer the question.

"It is a valid point, but I must retort with a question," he said at last. "Who do you think uplifted the Mantis, the Rocks, and the Lanius to some level of civility? It certainly wasn't the Slugs - whilst they're perfectly capable on an individual level, their government is horrendous, as I believe I mentioned. They couldn't motivate themselves to send for food if every member of parliament was starving."

"You raise a valid point, sir."

As valid as it was, though I was still a tad apprehensive. There was definitelysomething going on that I was missing.

"You say you have a plan ready? I'm happy to accept your offer of assistance, but I - my superiors would likely appreciate a copy of this plan to look over, first. To ensure it's not too… morally objectionable."

Avis-Murrd nodded and smiled warmly. "Certainly, a wise precaution to take. And after what you did to our Artificial Intelligence prototype… well. I would not wish to challenge your judgement on moral issues."

He paused for a moment, tapping at his chin. "All things said, the plan will need to be adjusted for the specific circumstances, certain clauses revised… If you wish to leave one of your ships, or a messenger bouy in system, we'll have it sent to you by the end of the working week."

 

[Faith]

Back from the hospital, with a chapter to share. Hopefully I'll be back on track for my twice-a-week updates now. Hopefully. Thanks as always to Drich for the beta and the suggestions.


55 - Restructuring
The Zoltan sent a large data file three days later, containing the specifics of their plan. Some elements of the plan, such as the identities of those involved, were removed, but the structure and details of the plan remained untouched.

Glancing through it, it seemed fairly solid - although I was far from an expert. Which was, after all, why I had sought out the Zoltan's help in the first place. Humanity were already in a position to rebuild their shattered industry and economy, and would likely only need help for the more political elements.

The political system the Zoltan wanted to implement was a little different to what I had intended; a Zoltan council would form the ruling government, and for beginning of their term would prioritise removing two things - dissent and propaganda. The aim there was to allow people to calm down, and think rationally about things, as well as encourage the Federation's citizens and nobles that the Federation really wasn't all that great.

After a period of approximately six months, if the Zoltan deemed the Humans ready, a temporary government would be formed from a large group of Human ambassadors drawn from existing governments. This government would be consulted and ultimately have the vote on policies the Zoltan wished to implement.

In return, the Zoltan reserved the right to veto any proposals the Human representatives put forward, although they promised they wouldn't abuse that. Personally I wasn't too sure, but I figured if I'd bothered to hang around for a while, I could keep an eye on things and call them on their bullshit, and it wouldn't be too much of an issue.

It also included a full overhaul of the education curriculum, most of which was bloated and ruined by huge amounts of Federation Propaganda (especially the History courses), and compulsory re-training for all qualified teachers and education staff, led and overseen by staff of what seemed to be the Zoltan's equivalent to University.

That this meant that the next generation of voters would be raised to be more sympathetic to the Zoltan - their 'temporary' rulers, - rather than their own government, went unsaid.

All of that would have been great, compared to every other option. Except for the propaganda thing - but I wasn't about to complain about the Zoltan trying to sweeten up the next generation of Humans - it wasn't like they wouldn't have earned it.

---

"By the end of the week? Excellent, I'll pass the news up the chain," I said as I stood.

Avis-Murrd reached across the table and shook my hand. "Certainly, certainly. I look forward to working with you and your company in the future."

I was escorted from his office by the same pair of Zoltan who'd lead me there in the first place - I think it was the same pair, anyway, - and led to the landing platform, where the Starsong still sat on its ivory-white landing sleds.

The two NeoAvatars at the door threw lazy salutes as my own entered the vessel and it began to lift off, but my attention was hardly centred on them.

Instead, it was centred on the tiny little listening device I'd embedded deep within the Zoltan ambassador's desk. I'd subtly planted it by way of a tiny swarm of nanobots, the glow of the Fabricator hidden when my Avatar stuffed her hands into the pockets of her bomber jacket.

Said listening device was currently broadcasting all the sounds it could detect - pretty much everything in the office, and then some, - to my network, giving me the most up-to-date news on ambassador Avis-Murrd's dealings.

After all, he'd said some fairly suspicious stuff - suspicious enough that I was picking up on it (although I was sure I'd missed some) and I was a little worried about their overarching intentions.

The fact that the first thing he did once I'd left his office was order it to be swept for bugs was interesting, and the first incredibly obvious sign that something was off. When his agents thankfully failed to find any evidence of me planting anything, they left, leaving Avis-Murrd to his business.

Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to splice the bug into his terminal so it could access his network, and it was a little too late to go back and do that now, so I had to make do with just hearing his conversations.

Fortunately, he seemed to prefer Skype over Gmail for contacting his… superiors, or subordinates, or whatever. "Terro di, Avis-Kresh," he said in the Zoltan language to someone on the other end of the line he had presumably just opened. I ripped a Zoltan-Human translation guide from the 'net and activated it in time to catch the next line. "The meeting is over, so I am free to talk now, but… well, are you sure the plans will be completed in time?"

The voice on the other end was much deeper, and almost raspy in its tone - like the voice of someone who was once a heavy smoker. Although I wasn't sure how much sense that made for a race of energy beings.

"Yes, yes. We have devoted two halls and six intelligences to them. By the time the Faith Foundation wants to collect them, they will be complete, refined, and perfected. We should even have time to run them through our… mutual contact."

Mutual contact?

Avis-Murrd sounded fairly surprised about that. "Really? You wish to run something so mundane past him?"

"He told us to give him anything related to the Faith Foundation," the second voice replied. "You want to be the one to argue?"

"An excellent point. You will handle that?"

"Certainly, and with pleasure."

"Once that's done, where will we be, in relation to the completion of our overarching goals?"

"Assuming all goes well for the Commandant, we should be ready to assume control within two weeks."

I could imagine the smug grin on Avis-Murrd's face as he replied. "Perfect."

---

I'd spent those three days preparing as best as I could without obviously preparing for something. Harder than it might have sounded, since I had to prepare for the possibility of war with the Zoltan, and also the possibility of everything being groovy and me being able to bugger off through a dimensional gate at the earliest opportunity.

I was hoping for a miracle - ie, the second, - but just in case...

A squadron of Firefly scout planes, equipped with Phase Cloaking generators and Fabricators, were jetting around the system, infecting and subverting ever satellite and every vessel they could find.

My Commander chassis had long retreated back to the asteroid base, and I had ordered the construction of several dozen enormous Phase Shield installations across the hollowed-out rock's surface, providing an even greater degree of protection on top of the huge fleet of warships and the totally isolated location that was impossible to stealthily approach.

And I didn't stop at protecting myself - dozens of cloaked Migrant Construction Frigates were scattered out throughout human space, churning out yet more ships, ready to deploy at a moment's notice.

Finally, I stationed another cloaked Migrant above the Zoltan homeworld, set to mass produce missiles - everything from anti-fighter ion bombs to the Progenitor globe-shakers. Most of the missiles I pointed at military strong points - storage depots, starports, all three of the planet's space elevators…

Basically, I was hoping for the best, and hoarding guns like no tomorrow in case of the worst.

Once I received the plans I looked them over, and, satisfied, begun to make the preparations to pull my forces out.

Well, most of them. I was going to leave a few dozen cloaked squadrons around, just to keep an eye on things, but the majority of my presence would be leaving. With any luck, I wouldn't find myself needing to return, but, again, I wanted to be ready, just in case.

I also built a fairly large stockpile of Energy and Metal Storage facilities in the asteroid field around my current base. Since I'd need to keep it here to maintain communications from another dimension, I needed the base to support and defend it - but since I wouldn't be doing anything with the resources, it seemed a shame to let them go to waste.

Hence, the storage devices. With luck, the resource network would extend through the Gate like the command network did - stupidly, that was something I hadn't thought to check before. If not, then the resources would simply be here, ready, if I ever wanted or needed to come back.

All but one of the cloaked fighters was orbiting some planet or station or another, keeping an eye on things for me. The last was to go fluttering around the galaxy scanning every ship in sight stealthily. I wasn't sure how effective my jury-rigged proximity sensor code would work - the Progenitors didn't have any programs to do what I wanted it to do, so I had to make my own, - but if I was right then it would fly around and slowly fill out my collection of cool toys.

I had pretty much everything of value, though. The only thing left was the Anti-Bio Beam, and even that was less important and more interesting. Their orders established, I left the stealth fighters to their jobs.

---

The Gate engaged, a brilliant blue glow emanating from the vast ring-shaped structure. Less than a second later, the glow had expanded into a bright blue energy field, a swirling vortex of light and colour stretching across the area of the ring.

My Osiris Commander, my primary body that had sat almost entirely untouched since I arrived, lurched into motion once more, quickly crossing the surface of the asteroid to the Gate.

I stared for a long moment, bracing myself to step through… but I was stopped at the last second. My listening device was picking up the sound of Avis-Murrd's communicator activating - his ringtone, basically.

"Ah, Toravis. To what do I owe the pleasure?" I heard the smug Zoltan ask of his associate.

Toravis, I knew, was a Zoltan position of great power and prestige. It was derived from 'avis', which was both a title for ambassadors and a general word for 'sir', and the prefix 'tor', meaning 'good'.

That's the rough translations, anyway. Alien linguistics is… quirky. Basically, the term 'Toravis' could be interpreted as either 'good ambassador', or, my personal preference, 'good sir'. It didn't really matter, though, because in this case it seemed like a title, rather than a phrase. 'High Ambassador', if you will.

It was only really interesting because I hadn't heard him speak to a Toravis before - his other calls had all been to other Avis or lower ranks.

"Avis-Murrd. I wished to contact you regarding your… displeasure towards the plan," the Toravis replied, in a voice both achingly familiar and shockingly alien. "Rest assured, Avis-Murrd, this is the best course of action."

"The reports came in from Byreaka just hours ago - we are more than equipped to deal with the Faith Foundation. Once they, the last major human power, are eliminated, we can-"

"What we could do is irrelevant, because under no circumstances will we be engaging the Faith Foundation," the mysterious voice replied forcefully. "I can assure you, Avis-Murrd, that is not a fight you could win. And if you try to turn back on the agreement, they will find out. And they will descend upon you like the wrath of an angry god."

As the stranger spoke, his voice became less harsh and more wistful, as though he was speaking of fond memories. I don't know what exactly it was that gave me that feeling, but there was something about him...

And I had to wonder how he could be so certain? Was he just so paranoid as to assume I had my fingers in every pie? Or was there something more?

"You truly believe that?" Murrd began. "Since their appearance, the Foundation have taken great pains to avoid casualties, even amongst those they consider their enemies. It's foolish to think-"

"I'm certain that, given the correct stimuli, the Faith Foundation would have no compunctions in annihilating our entire race. For that reason, we are aiming tonot needlessly aggravate them. Drop the political propaganda, tone down the martial law enforcement, and for the love of the scriptures, Murrd, do not think about going behind my back on this one."

After Murrd failed to respond, the Toravis sighed and continued.

"Your plans didn't work on the Crystals. They didn't work on the Slugs, or the Lanius. They're not going to work on the Humans. Whilst I have hopes for the Rock and Mantis projects… any species of meaningful intelligence is more than capable of seeing your schemes. And if it can be seen, it can be subverted. Our race is on the edge of collapse, Murrd. A failed plan is not something the Zoltan can risk again. Am I understood?"

Oh, snap. I knew there was something weird going on with the Zoltan. Maybe…

"Yes, Toravis-Arohbee. I understand."

Arohbee, huh?


Well, he seemed to know a little much for my tastes... but I also didn't feel like sticking around to poke about and see if I could find anything. I had my stealth fighters hanging around keeping an eye on things - I'd just need to remember to check in every now and then. And since the Zoltan were being so considerate as to berate each other for trying to do stupid stuff, I didn't really feel I had much to worry about from them.

And so, as the vast majority of my fleets and the less necessary elements of my base began to break apart, I stepped through the gate and into another galaxy.

 

[Faith]

56 - Terraform

The vortex of cerulean light deposited me in much the same place it had before - a few feet in the air, although this time it was above a metal panel, not a pool of mud.

Which at least confirmed one thing - the Hub Portal drop-off point would be the same every time. Which meant that I wouldn't need to drag myself through waist-deep mud any more.

Good.

The metal panel on which I was standing was the two hundred metre by two hundred metre slab upon which my entire base was built. Well, the part of my base on this planet, anyway. A couple of Generators, some Storage buildings, an Orbital Launcher, an Airfield, a Teleporter and a Dimensional Gate - which was currently offline but, according to its internal systems, would now lead to the FTL-verse if I ever needed to reactivate it. Perfect.

Now… I was left with something of a predicament. I didn't see much reason to do anything more to the planet - the base I already had was more than sufficient for all I should theoretically need it for - that is, catching me before I land in a pool of mud, and allowing quick access to a Dimensional Gate so I can jump right back in.

For everything else, the now entirely-covered moon and the four hundred and twenty five space stations would be more than sufficient. And that wasn't counting the fact that I had another moon to go and assimilate just a couple of hundred thousand kilometres away.

That all said… my hub world was a swamp.

Swamps suck.

Unfortunately, I lacked some high-power terraformers that would allow me to rapidly change the planet's environment with ease.

However, I did know that my main problem was mud, and that mud was mainly caused by water.

Solution? Remove water, planet dries up, problem solved.

I had no idea how I was going to evacuate the majority of the water from the planet - especially since it didn't even have the decency to cluster up in an ocean where I could easily build, say, an enormous teleporter and use it to dump the water into deep space, or a giant superconductor to pump out huge amounts of heat and evaporate all the water.

Actually, I was pretty sure that would just make the water fall back to the planet as rain, but…

Either way, I wasn't going to be getting rid of the water that easily. I was tempted to just turn the planet into a metal planet, but that would have denied the only pre-existing ecosystem in the solar system, and I figured it would be easier to start with one and modify it than to create an entirely new one on a lifeless moon several hundred thousand kilometres distant from the nearest drop of water.

On the other hand, I did have access to an industrial complex big enough to theoretically build entire new planets. Material concerns were kind of irrelevant, at this point.

Speaking of material concerns.

I quickly spun up the Teleporter to the right of my Commander and made my way to the first moon. Which still needed a name. Also, I made a note to replace the entire floor of the swamp base with a teleporter pad, for convenience' sake.

Once I arrived on the moon, I started giving orders. First, to carefully dig really, really deep down and start building a skeletal frame inside the planet, of the same material everything else I had was made of.

Once that was done, my swarm of angry-locust-like Fabricators would hollow out what was left. A layer beneath the surface, perhaps a couple of dozen kilometres thick, would be solid plating. Below that, Phase Shield Generators, of both varieties, enough to cover the entire planet. And below them…

Resource Cores.

Soooooooo many Resource Cores.

I may not have had access to the blueprints of the in-game Metal Planets, but I was certainly able to make my own.

The approximate radius of the moon was one thousand, seven hundred and fourteen kilometres. Take away sixty four kilometres for the solid plating, and that left me with a core of radius one thousand, six hundred and fifty.

I was never particularly good at maths, but I did know the formula for finding the volume of a sphere - four over three, times pi times radius cubed, - and being a super-advanced super computer helped.

That would give me an area full of Resource Cores with a volume of 18,820 kilometres cubed.

It would take, quite literally, hundreds of years to complete - after all, the Fabricators could only build Cores off of existing Cores, or the skeletal frame, and that would limit them to placing a single layer at a time. Each Core would take ten minutes, and as the project wound to a close more and more Fabricators would have to self destruct, to avoid taking up space needed for MORE CORES.

All that was discounting the time it would take to completely hollow out the planet in the first place, which would be, I assumed, not insignificant.

Even so, eventually, the entire fucking moon would be almost ninety percent Resource Cores. And that was well beyond the point where I had any idea what I was going to do with all the resulting resources.

That should deal with any forthcoming material concerns.

Now, back to the stupid swamp.

And this time, I bought ten thousand Air Fabricators with me.

---

The biggest problem with chewing up an entire planet to turn it into a tropical sanctuary is that it takes absolutely ages.

Even with a near-constant stream of Air Fabricators coming from the moon, my units could only cover so much ground at once.

Admittedly, it was a lot of ground, but still.

What they were currently doing involved tearing apart the ground with nanites and getting rid of the water, sending the component atoms off to the resource storage with everything else. I was lowering the altitude of pretty much everything on the planet, to some degree, whilst also digging out a few larger sections - oceans, basically.

It occurred to me that I would probably need to hollow out the other moon for storage, with the rate at which resources would flow in with two seperate planetary bodies undergoing massive brute-force terraforming activities and a huge heap of Resource Cores being constructed, however slowly.

Of course, hollowing out a second moon wouldn't help that much - I'd still be getting even more resources from hollowing the moon, no matter how many I spent building storage chambers.

I'd have to spend it on something else, as well. Hm.

---

For two days, I'd been watching through a hundred thousand eyes as an ever-deepening, ever-widening pit was dug into the planet. Another fifty thousand or so had been flying across the planet, constructing huge wells and pumps, lined with Teleporter Pads. Now, the whole system was starting to bear fruit.

The water in the ground around where I'd been digging had seeped through the rock and soil, beginning very slowly to pool in the bottom of the vast chasm.

The pumps drew in water from across the planet and teleported it over the chasm as well, creating sporadic moments where hundreds of thousands of liters of water would fall from the sky all at once, and then no more for hours whilst the pumps refilled.

Already, the mass alteration to the environment was having some impact - in areas where there were lots of pipes, plant life was beginning to look quite dry. The fact I was taking water directly from their roots with the power of SCIENCE! probably wasn't helping, in that regard, but… well, it was their fault for living in a swamp.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Besides, thanks to the Bright Foundation I had access to hundreds of different samples of plants which I could grow instead. Nice, pretty, colourful plants instead of the horrible browney grey of the existing plants.

And only some of the Bright Foundation plants turned things into zombies!

---

I have come to realise that this terraforming process is going to take a lotlonger than I had originally imagined.

Simple solution - bugger off and do something else whilst I wait.

But I still had that slight problem of a huge influx of resources. Well, it was a problem insofar as as long as my storage was full, my units refused to mine more - which was fair enough, since they had nowhere to put it.

So I needed to spend resources. Which was something I couldn't do elsewhere, at least until I had enough resources to set up a Dimensional Gate - a rather significant investment of time and resources, all things considered, and one that would put a rather notable delay on my terraforming actions.

My metal counter ticked up to 94% full.

And finally, I had a problem that wasn't really a problem. Namely, I didn't like that I'd had to rely pretty much entirely on stealing existing designs to create new units from.

Ideally, I wanted to be fielding my own units, as much as possible. Besides the NeoAvatar, not a single one of my units was an original design - just a rescaled, retrofitted version of something I'd stolen.

And even then, whilst I hadn't directly stolen the NeoAvatar, I had had files on cybernetics, both from the Federation and the Bright Foundation, open whilst designing it. So that didn't really count, either.

Fiddling around with creating new unit designs of my own would probably be a good way of consuming those vast amounts of resources, too.

Not so much at first, during the prototyping stage, but I had lots of units I wanted to build: interceptors, fighters, bombers, dropships, gunships, air cruisers, new corvettes, new frigates, destroyers, battleships, cruisers, dreadnoughts, carriers...

And even bigger things besides. Heh.

Now, for most people, this would be a dilemma. Stay and make sure my rapidly growing economy doesn't hit a wall and grind to a halt, whilst throwing practically infinite resources at whatever development project I feel like going after, or go and romp around the multiverse?

Of course, most people aren't Commanders.

---

My second Osiris body stepped off the fabricator platform with an automated precision, coming to a halt at the base of the ramp and staring straight ahead.

My currently-disabled mental fork was shunted across the network into the new platform, and the Osiris' systems lit up as the AI Core activated, awakening the copy of my mind within.

The second Osiris suddenly shifted, stepping forward and turning to face my own.

"Damn, girl, you look fine," my robo-clone said, in a terrible impersonation of an african american accent.

Had I been in possession of organic eyes, I would have rolled them.

---

I considered it a rather bad thing that I was already growing somewhat accustomed to the swirling vortex of blue light that represented a bridge between two entirely separate and entirely fictional universes. That such a thing could lose its wonder so quickly…

Then again, the stuff on the other side tended to be a lot more… interesting, than the portal itself.

I stepped forth, the field of azure light wrapping around my imposing metal frame. There was a flash of darkness, quickly drowned out by a steady blue glow, and then, for a time that might have been hours or merely seconds, I hung in an empty void.

And then I emerged, with the grace and elegance of an eagle, drowning in cement.

I fell half a dozen metres onto soft, red ground, that gave way beneath my feet.

It wasn't mud, for which I was infinitely thankful. That said, it also wasn't a beach, which made the presence of this particular terrain type rather distressing, by my standards.

I turned my head skyward, attuned my sensors, found that no one was watching, and sighed.

"I don't like sand…"

 

[Faith]

Get out of my notes, gorramnit.

57 - Mars
The red sand seemed to stretch on for miles in every direction, and the relatively short-range sensors on my Commander chassis weren't picking up anything beyond rocks and dust.

In the absence of anything interesting to capture my attention, I turned my frame to the magnetic north and started walking. Each footstep ended with the tip of the Osiris' leg buried in sand, sprays of red dust accompanying every action.

The flats gave way to hills, which proved no more difficult to climb. As I crested the first large hill - one larger than my body was tall, - I stumbled upon what my sensors were identifying as the first usable Metal Deposit on the planet.

Once I actually reached the top of the hill, though, I saw something interesting.

Beyond the hill was a sprawling settlement - a number of sheds, garages and small buildings in a loose set of rings. The approximate centre of the ill-defined township appeared to be the site of some kind of extractor or mining equipment - a huge pylon with a number of pumps and pistons feeding into a small hole in the ground.

Most notably, not a single one of the buildings were intact. Roofs were torn loose, walls were collapsed, windows shattered across the street. Rubble, debris and vehicle wreckage lined the street, and the entire place was covered in about two feet of sand. It looked like someone had loosed a dozen maniacs with rocket launchers, and then buried the whole place in sand after the fact.

Obviously, there was not a single living thing in range of my sensors. I made my way down the hill into the settlement, looking around for any sign of where I might be. The general architecture seemed somewhat familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. It was all fairly generic sci-fi, anyway, and so honestly not that much help.

"Seems as good a place as any," I vocalised, to no one in particular, before spraying a cloud of nanites at the central mining equipment.

As the tower was rapidly disassembled, I twisted slightly and sent out another burst of nanobots at the nearby ruins of a shed, an Energy Generator literally rising out of the sand in an ominous manner as the nanobots begun their work.

---

It wasn't until I and half a dozen Fabricator Bots had already assimilated a good chunk of the settlement that I hit the metaphorical pay dirt, buried under the literal dirt. Well, sand..

Most of the computer terminals I'd found - or the remains of them, anyway, - had been so badly damaged as to be almost entirely unrecoverable - what little I could retrieve was so damaged, so fragmented, as to be useless, even to the hypertech computers that made up my brain..

This computer, though, seemed in much better shape. For one, it had been hidden underneath the floor for whatever reason, protecting it from the sandstorms that had evidently wrecked this place over the years. Secondly, the building it was hidden in had seemingly been skipped over by whatever force had levelled the majority of this settlement in the first place, keeping it shielded from shrapnel and blast damage.

Long story short, I found a computer that wasn't busted. Once it booted up (and I'd hooked it into my power network so it could continue to operate), I took a look inside.

And boy, what a doozy.

According to my logs, this was a small colony named Hemsville, founded circa 2125, and abandoned later the same year due to the majority of the people present - the families of EDF forces, for the most part, - heading out for more fortified locations in light of what was apparently being referred to as the Second Martian Revolution.

So, Red Faction, then. According to the timestamp on the documents, that was fifty years ago. The Second Martian Revolution, I was fairly certain, referred to the events of Red Faction: Guerilla. Fifty years after that… was that the movie, or Armageddon?

Based on heavily ionized atmosphere, I hazarded a guess that the Martian terraformers weren't currently operating. Which made this… sometime after the first mission of Armageddon. Hopefully, prior to the bit with all the giant, acid spitting bug monsters.

Hopefully.

So, Red Faction for dummies: A bunch of douchebags try to be typical tyrannical douchebags to the Martian people. Cue revolt. I think there was some mad science involved, or something. Unethical experiments and such. Whatever.

Meanwhile, some stuff happens on Earth that leads to another revolt, that names itself after the first because why not. I couldn't remember if there was any direct relation between the two besides the name, but it didn't really matter since that was well in the past.

After a few decades, douchebags return to Mars, in force. Many people die. Cue revolt. Memetic space asshole smashes stuff with a hammer. Many more people die. Some cool weapons are thrown around, like Singularity Bombs and Nanites, but there's not a lot else that's particularly exciting.

I think the movie fell sometime after Guerilla in the timeline, but I wasn't actually entirely sure, having never seen it. It probably had some stupid plot about memetic space asshole's grandson's long lost sister or some shit like that.

Finally, a different group of douchebags come along and blow up the Terraformer, the one thing allowing people to live on the surface of Mars. Everyone runs underground. Memetic space asshole's grandson is tricked into unleashing a bunch of giant acid spitting bugs. Memetic space asshole's grandson kills the bugs. The end.

Kinda generic and boring, when you think about it, but it was hard to care with the promise of so many delicious technologies up for grabs. Red Faction, being a game prized for its awesome destruction engine, had a lot of fun toys for me to steal.

Now I had a rough idea of what I was looking at, I could set some goals.

Number one - kill the Mars bugs. Those guys were assholes. They also had a really silly weakness, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember it. Citric acid? No, that was the Zerg… eh. Whatever.

Number two - steal all the cool toys. Because cool toys.

Number three - fix Mars' atmosphere, since the Terraformer clearly wasn't up to the task.

Now, if only I had some bullshit pseudo-magic atmospheric terraformers…

---

The third objective was far-and-away the easiest of the three to complete - I could do the entire thing without stepping underground once, if I didn't mind waiting ages for my Fabricators to fly around building Cores every half kilometre or so. If I wanted to only fix the atmosphere in the inhabited areas, that would be much faster, but it relied on me knowing where the inhabited areas were and none of them were in my sensor range.

On the other hand, I was fairly certain it wouldn't be entirely necessary. If I could just find the existing Martian terraformer, and fix it (stealing the shiny technology in the process) that would achieve the same result, and probably a fair bit faster to boot.

I constructed and then sent out a group of Fireflies to search for the facility on the surface, followed by a wave of Air Fabricators whose purpose was to spread Metal Extractors and Sensors across the surface. Whilst they did that, I turned my own attention underground.

Assuming this was sometime during Armageddon, but after the terraformer fell, I could have had anywhere between five years and about five seconds before the Plague got out.

Which meant I needed to find those underground settlements, pronto. Unfortunately, I doubted my fifteen metre frame would fit in the tunnels - even the larger tunnels, for vehicles to pass through, would probably be too small for the Osiris.

Fortunately, the EDF who'd abandoned this place had been kind enough to leave some vehicles of their own behind. Damaged, torn up and dilapidated vehicles that were fifty years or so out of date, but vehicles none the less. Thanks to my NeoAvatars, I would be entirely able to operate them, once I repaired or rebuilt them..

It was a fairly simple matter to find some of the less-damaged vehicles and figure out exactly what was supposed to go where - and there were enough samples around for me to cross reference that I didn't have much trouble putting the pieces together.


Once I had the complete, undamaged designs for the boxy jeep-like vehicle, I ordered my Fabricators to start assimilating the wrecks for scrap. The truck in front of me began to glow green as the nanobots tore into its body, ripping it apart at the molecular level.

I opened up my design subroutine and started fiddling.

I know, I said I was going to design my own vehicles more, but that was kind of the point of leaving behind a second instance on my Hub world. And besides, I didn't have any equivalents to infantry APCs in my tech base already, so having something to work off, at least the first time, was helpful.

First off, update the materials. Armour, chassis, axles, everything metal was replaced with Progenitor grade alloys. The engine was harder to replace - the Progenitor vehicles with wheels had separate engines for each wheel, which allowed more power and control at the cost of energy expenditure.

After a few subjective hours of trial and error testing, I managed to rig up one of the Progenitor motors to the axle in a way that caused the car to operate like a normal goddamn car, with only a slight, three hundred and seventeen percent improvement in terms of engine output.

I also replaced the small power cell in the back of the truck with a much smaller, but infinitely more efficient Progenitor equivalent, freeing up a lot of room where the fuel cell once resided. I filled that in with a multitude of sensors - whilst I couldn't fit every kind of sensor I possessed into the truck's boot, it would still probably have a bettor sensor net than pretty much everything else on the planet.

That finally sorted, I moved on to the cabin of the vehicle. Seat fabric, internal computers, lights, air conditioning - all stripped out and replaced.

I mounted a greatly miniaturized Core under the dash, providing an infinite air filter for the vehicle. The unit's AI core occupied the rest of the space under the dash, allowing fully autonomous driving if no one happened to be at the wheel.

Underneath the seats was a small Phase Shield generator - only two layers. I wasn't sure how well an individual layer would hold up against the acid spit and brute force I'd likely be facing, but either way even if they did break through the shields, I had a lot more faith in the Progenitor armour for protection. The shields were pretty much only a curiosity.

Wait, did Red Faction vehicles have shields? Might be something to look into.

Finally, I altered the exterior lines, replacing the sharp, angular look with smooth, arcing curves. The turret on top - a small, rather pathetic light machine gun, - was swapped out for a Progenitor grade laser turret, modified to be capable of firing the same high-intensity infrared beams as the Fire Beam.

Finally, for shits and giggles, I mounted a rocket pod on the back, facing skyward - an artillery option, basically. I was sure at some point, in some universe, I'd find a use for a rocket/mortar system on my… well, it wasn't really an APC, because it only had two seats, but… whatever.

That all done, I disabled the design subroutine and requisite mental overclocking, only a couple of seconds having passed as I worked.

So now I had a way of getting around in the tunnels, I just needed to find them.

Just as I finished thinking it, one of my Fireflies reported a vehicle convoy on the edge of its sensor range - a few trucks and jeeps escorting a pair of large, four legged walkers.

Hm.

The Firefly turned slightly, moving to investigate.

 

[Faith]

58 - Cultists
As soon as the Firefly got within visible range of the vehicles, a number of weapons opened fire, sending a hail of rockets, plasma blasts, and gauss rounds hurtling towards my poor, unarmed, defenceless scout.

Which proceeded to weather the hits without issue, flying right on over as if it had merely encountered a stiff breeze. I even had it perform an aileron roll, just for shiggles.

Still, kind of an asshole move on their part - 'oh, hey, an unknown flier. Let's shoot at it!'

In their defence, there probably weren't too many amateur glider pilots on Mars. Especially not with the regular communist revolutions and the huge sandstorms currently wrecking the planet.

Anyway, what I'd hoped to achieve with my close-range flyby was a nice picture of the people in the convoy - and despite the fact that most of them were inside vehicles, the few sticking their heads out the roof to man turrets showed me all that I needed.

Dark red hoods, lots of brass and spikes, glowing red optical lenses… yup. Cultists. The post-Guerilla Marauders wore more… not-crazy clothing, from what little I remembered.

Which meant the convoy I was looking at was… well, I was pretty sure I recalled their leader, Adam Hale, having one of the Marauder walkers, and this convoy contained two of the things, so it was a fair bet that this was one of his own.

And though he may have been the utterly insane leader of a rather crazy bunch of cultists, I trusted even he wouldn't be fucking around on the surface of Mars if he didn't absolutely have to. Which gave two possibilities - he was going somewhere, or he was coming back from somewhere. If I had to guess, that somewhere would be the Plague's temple, if only because ROB seemed to massively hate me.

Either way, stopping him was probably prudent.

As the Firefly swooped around for another flyby, I sent the convoy a ping, and was immediately rejected. Apparently Hale - assuming it was Hale, which I had yet to confirm, I reminded myself, - didn't feel like chatting.

Unfortunately for him, I did.

I had a couple of little things to attend to before I left Hemsville, though. First, I constructed another Habitation Block turned-prison on the former site of the colony's school, because I needed somewhere to put the Cultists. Second, I constructed one of my newest vehicles - the Brave IFV, I had decided to call it, - from the Vehicle Factory I had constructed on the eastern border of the town. Small, well equipped, and damn fast, the Brave would likely be incredibly useful in the future.

Third, I constructed a Cloning Bay - the design ripped straight from theStarsong, it would allow me to produce more NeoAvatars. At some point, I made a note to build a bigger facility for that kind of stuff. A Medical Block, perhaps.

The Cloning Bay quickly set to work producing three NeoAvatars - one was my 'personal' cyborg, Captain Drake, and the other two were nameless, faceless soldier-types. Well, obviously, they had faces, but I put no major effort into constructing them - in fact, I just outright copied two facial structures from the Cloning Bay's databanks and tweaked minor details like eye colour. If at any point they needed names, well, I could figure it out later. For now, I just mentally 'labelled' the queued NeoAvatars as Trooper 1 and Trooper 2.

Unlike the former crew of the Starsong, I had them garbed in attire far more practical for combat - a grey, battlefield-rated padded bodysuit with smooth, lightweight armoured plating, painted white and green, over the more critical areas - feet, calves, thighs, upper torso, neck, biceps, wrists, and hands.

Critical is a relative term, when discussing robots made of nigh-impervious armour, you see. But I wasn't willing to skimp entirely, because whilst one could get away missing a couple of pieces, if I'd removed the bicep and neck armour it would have presented a hugely vulnerable target in the most easily visible area, and that just looked outright silly.

I mean, I was trying to at least maintain a veneer of realism, here, and having supposedly professional soldiers run around with their entire upper torso and neck exposed was a ridiculous idea.

Once the NeoAvatars were done, I had them head into the Prison Block, where they could wait for Hale's imminent arrival. Speaking of, I should probably go and collect him.

---

FTLverse tech is so bullshit. Aside from their FTL Phase Drives, which allowed a maximum speed of around two dozen light years per second, their Phase Teleporters were also pretty silly. Limited only by the amount of power you could supply, and the accuracy of the sensor system you were using, any target larger than a housecat could be transported with precision to anylocation in range. Smaller targets worked too, of course, but the field had to be a certain size to maintain integrity and that meant a lot of wasted space if you were taking something smaller than a kitten around.

That said, none of that was particularly relevant, as I was teleporting something a little on the bigger end. Fifteen metres of brutally efficient self replicating machinery, to be specific.

The large Teleporter Pad I constructed over what had once been Hemsville's EDF Barracks, once connected to my sensor grid and power systems, was more than powerful enough to teleport me into the middle of the desert for a quick chat with the cultists. I'd even be able to bring me back, too, which was just plain swell.

I stepped onto the pad and fired it up, and in a flash of light, I was gone.

---

I popped back into reality just an inch or two off the ground, barely enough to register on my sensors and just enough to kick up a small cloud of dust and sand upon my landing.

To their credit, if the Cultists were surprised about the sudden, unexplainable appearance of a giant robot, they barely showed it. After just a second there were bullets and plasma shells slamming into my Osiris' torso, chipping away the paint and leaving scorch marks on the previously pristine hull.

Well, it hadn't been entirely pristine, but it was certainly cleaner going in than it was coming out.

After a moment, they stopped firing - presumably to reload, and let weapons cool down.

I flicked a few mental switches, turned on a voice synthesiser to give myself a slightly more forceful voice, and asked in a polite, but exasperated manner;

"Are you done?"

They must have realized that their weapons weren't doing anything to my torso, because they quickly shifted targets, with some aiming up at the eye and others aiming at the leg joints, and opened fire again.

For a bunch of maniacs, they seemed pretty on-the-ball, actually. I mean, their continued fire meant pretty much nothing - even their vehicle mounted plasma cannons and rockets were doing such negligible damage that… well, if I'd been of mind to stand around in front of them and do nothing, they might have achieved some level of damage before expending their entire munitions pool.

Since I didn't feel like allowing that to happen, I just raised my arm and fired a huge swarm of nanobots at them, rapidly disassembling every single weapon in the convoy - both vehicle and infantry based.

And as the tide of nanites washed over them and the gunfire stopped, every single visible cultist stood stock still, as if suddenly too afraid to move.

"Now are you done?"

The first of the two now-disarmed walkers dropped slightly, the body lowering itself to the ground and a small ramp deploying from its belly. A lone figure descended, clad in overly ornate robes and a very fancy hood. Adam Hale.

Good. It would have been embarrassing if I'd just screwed over a convoy of Marauders.

Before Hale could even open his mouth to speak, I had the Teleporter Pads in my Hab-turned-Prison Block lock on to the coordinates of every Marauder Cultist in the general vicinity of my Osiris. And then, when Hale did open his mouth to speak… he found himself suddenly alone in a white walled cell.

As did every member of his cult.

I, meanwhile, turned my attention to the vehicles left behind - or rather, forcibly abandoned. Trucks and jeeps, boring. Walkers - far less so.

I mean, walkers were, as a rule, fairly impractical compared to wheeled or treaded vehicles, but if the real walker could match it's in-game feats - such as near-instantaneous 180 degree spins and walking through most buildings effortlessly, - then, well, I wanted it.

And even if it couldn't, it still looked cool, and honestly as far as Red Faction, at least, was concerned, there was so little around to threaten me that I didn't really feel any pressing need to prioritise practicality over style.

Once I had completely assimilated the designs, I turned to leave before having a thought.

Red Faction quad-walkers could crush stuff underfoot. I was currently (piloting?) a much larger quad-walker with much more mass. Could I crush stuff underfoot?

In the name of science, and for absolutely no other reason at all, I walked over to the first jeep, lifted my leg, and put my giant robot foot clean through the bonnet.

The engine promptly exploded, shoving the Osiris back with a surprising deal of force. Probably because I'd been directly standing on the explosive at the time, but oh well. Had I but a face, I would have been grinning like a maniac as I moved over to the next car.

---

Lesson learned - the Osiris is much better at crushing stuff underfoot than the Red Faction walkers are. Other lesson learned - the Osiris is much more top-heavy, and slightly harder to return to an upright position if you fall over than Red Faction walkers.

No, I'm not elaborating.

---

The two armoured figures and the woman in the bomber jacket made their way along the corridor towards Hale, passing by a number of other occupied cells, and receiving jeers and cries from the residing inmates.

Hale was, in fact, the only one not jeering at my NeoAvatars as they approached. He remained silent as they drew nearer, staring resolutely at the floor as if he were diving the secrets of the universe from the smooth white tile. I swapped my focus to the lead Avatar and crossed my arms.

I really, really wanted to know if he'd let the bugs out yet - it kind of defined my entire future on this planet. Whether I'd need to start building an army or just cruise into Bastion and solve all their other, smaller problems by way of the Brave. After a couple of minutes, though, it became clear that he wasn't going to react to my presence, so I started talking.

"Adam Hale?"

At the mention of his name, the deranged cult leader looked up, bloodshot eyes twitching. "You're too late!" he cried out dramatically. "I know why you hunted me. I know why you tried to stop me. But it DOESN'T MATTER!"

Perhaps leaving him locked in solitary for a few hours was a mistake. Not that I intended to leave him alone for so long, of course, it was just… well, crushing cars by stomping on them was pretty fun.

For a moment the insanity seemed to vanish from his features, and he just stared right into my eyes - or rather, the cameras that served as the eyes of the NeoAvatar, - as if engaging in a battle of wills.

And then the madness returned, and he grinned. "No, no! You're too late! The true masters of Mars have already awoken! They will scour the surface of the world, and only the faithful shall be spared! This is the end of Martian oppression!"

And suddenly he broke down into a state that was half crying, half laughing.

"You're too late! Not one unfaithful soul will survive! Not you, not them, not the Masons! This is armageddon!"

The laughter took the lead by far, and Hale stumbled backwards, collapsing onto his bed.

Well. That answers one question, I guess.

 

[Faith]

But I haven't even been to Exalted yet!

59 - Tunnels
Soooooooo.

Bugs. Lots of bugs. With the GPS data I recovered from Hale's cultist convoy, I was able to locate both where they were going - a cultist stronghold in the tunnels beneath Eos, - and where they were coming from - a Marauder ruin containing a seal that kept the Plague from emerging.

A seal which had, in the past three hours, been torn apart and smashed in by one Darius Mason.

I'd hoped it would have been the reverse, but having deployed Fireflies to both locations on the GPS, and observing one being totally overrun by acid spewing monsters… well, there's only so many places you can find acid spewing monsters on Mars.

And they're going to get even rarer, if I have anything to say about it.

Luckily, the cultist's GPS systems had also provided a few other tidbits of useful information - the location of almost every tunnel entrance on the surface.

The GPS didn't have exact maps of the tunnels themselves, so it was impossible for me to say with certainty which settlements would be first hit by the Plague - assuming they hadn't already, - so I took the more Commander-y approach.

Don't know which area's going to be targeted? Defend all of them.

The two NeoAvatar Troopers who had been escorting my personal Avatar clambered into the Brave parked at the doors of the Prison Block, joined by almost a dozen more of the rapidly built IFVs.

Whilst they assembled on the Teleporter Pads, I had my Fireflies do fly-bys and sensor sweeps of the tunnel entrances - I didn't want to teleport my jeeps onto the tops of civilian vehicles, or anything, after all.

Once I'd verified that the tunnel entrances were deserted, I started teleporting the Braves out, two to a settlement. The IFVs quickly made their way into the tunnels proper, descending winding ramps and the occasional manually-triggered cargo lift (luckily, the NeoAvatars inside were more than capable of getting out and flipping switches, but the Red Faction really should have switched to wireless, the inconsiderate bastards).

As I guided the vehicles in their traversal of the tunnels, I spun off a second thread to manage the rather more pressing matter of the ohgodhuge swarm of bugs.

By creating an equally ohgodhuge swarm of robots.

Obviously.

First, though, I would be sending in some NeoAvatars - if only to extract Darius Mason. Didn't want to accidentally crush the guy under an unyielding tide of metal - even if he probably would have been able to space-asshole his way out.

The third thing, of course, was to do with the stability of the Martian atmosphere. The Terraformer that held it all together had been destroyed by Hale's cultists, but they'd been nice enough to keep a record of it's location - they marked it as a holy site, even. For… some reason.

Anyway, long story short, I had the location of the Terraformer. Which meant all I needed to do was rebuilt it. I wondered if I could integrate Elysion Cores into its inner workings for increased efficiency.

Since the terraformer was a rather less pressing concern than the impending alien space locust apocalypse, I put the thought aside. Questions for later.

---

The first bugs arrived at Diggstown only a few minutes after my own forces. In fact, Trooper 21 had only just gotten out of his vehicle - and I had to double check to confirm the apparent gender of the cyborg, because I'd had the Clone Bay cranking out randomised clones and I hadn't been keeping track. Anyway, Trooper 21 had exited his vehicle to talk to the Red Faction soldiers guarding the checkpoint when the first bugs appeared on the Brave's incredibly advanced sensors.

For all that they were creepy and small and fucking terrible at killing Masons (not too shabby at murderifying the rest of Mars, though), the Plague were fast. They passed through several kilometres of tunnel far faster than I would have liked, growing steadily closer to the settlement even in the time it took Trooper 21 to walk the fifty or so metres from the cargo elevator to the checkpoint.

Of course, I was feigning ignorance - at least to the imminence of their attack, - to fool the natives, so I refused to allow my growing unease show as Trooper 21 approached the checkpoint.

"Hey! Who the hell are you fellas?" The apparent leader of the Red Faction guards called out. "I've never seen your uniforms around."

I hopped across the network, assuming direct control of Trooper 21 and waving dismissively as I switched on an appropriate voice modulator unit. "Not surprised. We're new to Mars."

"New to Mars…" he seemed to mull that over for a moment before he - and his three colleagues - all pointed their rifles in my direction. "You're from Earth?"

I… actually wasn't sure how to answer that. I mean, yes, technically I was, but not the Earth they were thinking of… and besides, they might interpret the unexpected and unannounced arrival of a large military force as some kind of attempt to retake Mars in the name of the glorious homeworld, or some bullshit like that. I mean, it'd be far from the stupidest thing to happen.

In the end, though, I decided to go for something approximating the truth.

"We're the Faith Foundation. We're pursuing some leads on some potential Ultor biochemical weapons and technology. A recent analysis of their documents indicated that there's something they've been running on Mars, some incredibly dangerous project that could potentially kill everyone on the planet."

I shrugged. "I think you can see why we'd want to look into it."

The Red Faction guards shared some glances. "Faith Foundation, huh? Never heard of you. That said, we have been living in caves for five years. Contact with Earth has been… sporadic," the leader explained. "Ultor technology, though? You won't find any of that underground - most of their facilities were on the surface."

After a moment's pause, he added, "'course, most of those got taken down at some point or another… guess the Marauders might have some lying around, but there's none in Diggstown, I'll tell you that now."

I shrugged again. "Well, thanks for the intel. Don't suppose we'd be able to hole up here for a while? Surface isn't exactly fun to go driving around on, especially with the weather how it is. And we're running low on rations - can we restock here?"

The Red Faction leader laughed heartily. "Sure, if you don't mind your rations tasting like dirt and iron filings. Just don't you or your pals do anything stupid. We've got our eyes on you."

"Excellent. Shall we leave our vehicles at the gate?" I asked, gesturing to the wide open expanse where a small number of vehicles sat, surrounded by crates and fuel tanks.

The leader nodded and grinned. "If you wouldn't mind. Baxton! How about you show these gentlemen around after they're done parking?"

I had Trooper 21 turn and walk back towards the two cars, increasingly aware of the Plague's growing proximity. Of course, I didn't need to get within talking distance to control the vehicles but… you know. Keeping up the illusion, and all that.

After moving suitably far away from the Red Faction soldiers, and making some generic commanding-looking gestures, I had the two IFVs move towards the gate to park.

By absolute sheer coincidence, and not at all my own planning, the two jeeps had just begun to reverse into place on either side of the main path when the first creepy crawler emerged from one of the side tunnels with a sickening screech.

The Red Faction's guards turned from their little huddled discussion at the noise, looking across the near-empty cavern with looks of surprise and concern upon their face before one of them called out, "what the hell is that?"

Suddenly nine more of the little crawlers ran around the corner, all hissing and biting and snapping at the air.

The Red Faction seemed to hesitate only briefly before taking up arms, two men operating mounted turrets whilst the others grabbed their rifles and crouched down to open fire at the rapidly growing swarm of aliens. Streams of bullets interspersed with the occasional plasma blast shot across the expanse between the barricade and the side tunnel, shredding the Plague and blasting them into little chunks, but for every one that fell, another seemed to step forth and take its place with gusto.

I quickly authorised my own forces to join in, and twin beams of light shot out from the Braves, carving huge swathes through the approaching horde. Trooper 21, the only one not inside a vehicle, reached over his shoulder and retrieved his Plasma SMG, adding its power to the maelstrom of fire.

Similar duels were going on throughout the tunnel network - all seven of my two-car patrols had engaged the enemy, with or without the support of the Red Faction. In one case, the Red Faction had even fired upon one of my IFVs - luckily, the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher lacked the shield breaching technology that FTLverse missiles used, and the Brave's Phase Shield generator was able to shrug the hit off without issue.

The team I'd sent to pick up Mason was having… surprisingly little trouble, actually. There was all of nothing important between the entrance to the temple and the seal - just rubble, debris, and a few odd stage lights and the like. Every now and then, a single small Plague bug - crawler? Creeper? Something to that effect, - would leap out, and be immediately immolated for its trouble, but for the most part it was silent.

The four NeoAvatars had to dismount to proceed down a service elevator - not that that would have stopped the three Braves from providing cover fire at maximum efficiency. The only reason they weren't was that there was nothing for them to shoot at, honestly.

The elevator hadn't even reached the bottom when I picked up some rather odd readings from the random patch of desert from which I, myself, had emerged upon stepping through the Dimensional Gate.
Curious.

---

The source of the odd readings was, in fact, a Dimensional Gate. No frame was present, there was just the glowing vortex of energy hanging in the air - and not a lot else besides that.

It was simply there. Doing nothing.

My Osiris chassis had moved to inspect in person, escorted by a number of miscellaneous units I'd picked up along the way - a Firefly, two Air Fabricators, and a host of Kestrels I'd borrowed from Fork 3's military buildup pile, but nothing seemed to be happening.

I attempted to order one of the Kestrels to fly through, only for it to be violently pushed back by some inexplicable force - one I couldn't even perceive with all the myriad bullshit sensors at my disposal.

I was about to shrug it off as a weird one-off, surround it with turrets and call it a day when a bright green Osiris Commander stepped out, a single grey racing stripe (was it still a racing stripe on a fifteen metre unstoppable war machine?) running down its torso.

That would be… Fork 2, then. The one I'd left behind on my Hub World, and subsequently lost contact with as soon as I'd passed through the Dimensional Gate.

The Osiris commander twisted to look at my own before the copy of my mind residing within spoke up.

"Huh. Apparently you can't send signals through these things. Who designed that? Wait, never mind. ROB. Best not wonder any further"

I nodded at my own sage advice. "Is there something you needed?" I asked my Fork, genuinely curious as to why I might have decided to leave the Hub. Surely I hadn't gotten bored already?

"Hey, I'll just shut down and we can re-merge the threads or whatever. It'll be faster than communicating verbally… why are we communicating verbally?"

I had no decent response to that, so I shrugged. An even more ineffective method of communications for a hyper-advanced war machine such as myself.

The second Osiris shut down, red eye dimming, and I reached across my unit network to recover the mental fork.

A̧̡͘n҉̸̨͜d̀͞҉ ̧͏t̨̧̕h́҉̢͢e̵͝n̸͜͞ ̷̢̡͜͏s̷̨̢o̧m̛͜͢͏ȩ̶́t҉̸͏h̴̸̡̕͝i̵̷͞ń̛͟͏́g̴̶̶̛ ͟͏̡̕͡b͘͟r̨o̶͞k̴̀ȩ̶͜.̸͠