In which things actually go wrong.
9 - Murphy's Law
In the game Planetary Annihilation, there's a nice announcer lady who gives you advice like 'Nuclear Launch Detected' and 'Enemy Commander Detected'.
It turns out that the various subroutines, such as the Radar subroutine, send those messages to me when they detect stuff.
And I can change what they're set to detect, so my Radar was now set to warn me of any Lume Titans.
It was just like playing the game, except my Radar kept screaming at me because -
'Warning - Lume Titan Detected'
Again?
Fuck. Fucking fucking fuck.
Now everything's gone wrong. I never should have said those stupid words.
Goddamn Murphy. He's an asshole.
Four - no, five now, - locations of large, unnatural seismic activity. Conveniently coinciding with five locations of drastically increased Lume activity.
More Titans.
Luckily, all five were still a long way from Elysion, and I immediately threw my remaining Hornet bombers at them. My Kestrels stayed where they were, providing cover fire and air support for the refugees still in Brightholme.
I fucked up, big time. Obviously by killing the first Titan I'd prompted the rest to get up early. I hadn't even started evacuation yet.
I quickly powered up the Teleporters, blue gateways bursting into life.
I sent the three Doxes I had through the Teleporter, noting that they barely fit under the shrunken frame.
Well, as long as they could get through I didn't really care.
The crowd on the other side of the portal seemed fairly apprehensive about the sudden appearance of giant robots, which was fair enough. I'd probably be worried too, in their position.
The Doxes turned to the crowds and through them, I spoke.
"Alright, everybody. Listen up. On the other side of this portal there is a ship. The rooms fit up to four - if you've got a bigger family or group than that, take two rooms. If you're on your own, wait until last. Anyone trying to sneak on board early will be forced to the back of the line. Understood?"
The crowd stared dumbly at the Doxes. The Rats, however, seemed to be paying some attention at least. Once I was done speaking, they started yelling out over the crowds.
The people began shuffling forwards towards the Teleporter, pushed forwards by the Rats who seemed to be eyeing me warily more than watching the crowd.
I left the actual organisation of the crowd in their possibly not-so-capable hands and turned back to my base.
The Doxes there, of which I now had several, formed two lines, effectively walling in a path from the Teleporter to the Airfield's ramp.
Nothing says 'walk this way' like a line of angry looking doombots.
Much as I wanted to micromanage the evacuation, I really didn't have much choice. I'd already told the crowds how many people to a room. I set up a counting routine on one of the Doxes at the base of the ramp, to keep track of how many people entered this ship and left it at that.
I had some more Titans to kill. Well, preferably I'd avoid killing them, but I definitely wanted a way to kill them if they reached the city before I was ready.
---
These Titans, unfortunately, proved somewhat harder to kill than the previous one.
They were smart enough to start attacking my craft straight away, and block any missiles aimed for their face by crossing their arms.
It certainly made for an interesting battle.
Well, calling it a battle was maybe a bit of an exaggeration. It was my Hornets buzzing around like the insects they were named after and being totally ineffective at causing damage whilst the Titans flailed vainly in an attempt to destroy them.
It would distract them, but probably not for long.
Not for long enough.
Well, actually, that was probably a lie.
After all, I had the Sokol's blueprints now, courtesy of TSYGAN.
And whilst hers was slow to charge and needed to drain multiple cores for power, mine could be modified with bullshit Progenitor hypertech to negate that.
And I could also build the things very, very quickly.
Well, compared to TSYGAN. They were still pretty big. Probably around... five and a half minutes, if it was being built by just one Advanced Air Fabricator. Something to think about.
Switching focus back to my main Commander body, I looked around the cliff I was on. Two Airfields, taking up most of the room. Currently building a Pioneer each, to bring my total to four.
And there was the Advanced Air Factory, currently building more Advanced Air Fabricators. I had six, now, assisting in the construction of the Pioneers.
I called them off, ordering them to reclaim the Advanced Air Factory. I needed that room for my new gun.
The Air Fabricators I'd sent into Brightholme proper were still flying around, building Laser Towers along the busier roads. Refugees would stare in awe as towers formed in seconds around them, before being pushed forwards by another surge of the crowd.
The Kestrels, meanwhile, who were now allowed to slack off slightly thanks to the presence of Laser Towers, began to spread further over the slums and into the city proper.
I appropriated two of the Kestrels and one of the Pioneers for a little reconnaissance mission and let the rest do their thing.
---
The blueprints for the Sokol were an absolute mess.
Comparing it to the Penetrator Turret, I could see that most of the vital components were simply upscaled, and everything else stripped away or discarded. The things people do to cut costs...
It was terribly inefficient compared to Progenitor hypertech, but it was still a plasma cannon supposedly capable of 'turning Elysion One into a crater', or so thought Haigan. That was fairly impressive, I guess.
I loaded up the design for the Doxes' plasma cannon as well, comparing all three blueprints. And then I got to work.
First, strip out the Sokol's capacitor and energy systems with the vastly superior Progenitor Energy Generator. Not only did that mean it didn't need to feed off a whole heap of Cores for power, but it was also capable of tapping into my Resource Grid and therefore charging... pretty much instantly. Progenitors? Bullshit.
Then, I replaced some other systems. The protruding rails were, in fact, magnetic rails for accelerating the plasma blast. Those were replaced. The energy field generator, which opened some interesting ideas for energy shields that I would have to look into, was likewise replaced with the Progenitor equivalent.
The cooling and ventilation systems were... totally unnecessary, since Progenitor hyptertech was apparently so close to 100% efficient, and their materials were so advanced, that the tiny amount of waste heat that did get through made no difference to the operation of the gun. I stripped those out, streamlining the design greatly.
And after a few rounds of going over the designs with a fine tooth comb and stripping the useless stuff out, I was left with the blueprints for a high power plasma cannon that, according to the physics simulations, could almost match the firepower of my nukes.
And it looked freaking awesome. Plus points for style.
I didn't want to kill the Titans, if I could help it. They weren't exactly the villains any more than the Brightsiders. But if push came to shove, I was more than capable of shoving right back.
I saved the design for my new toy and ordered my six Advanced Air Fabricators to begin construction where the Advanced Air Factory used to be.
Whilst they were doing that, I needed to think of a name.
Go ahead and suggest ideas. I have a name, but if I like yours better I'll use that instead. *kisses*
