Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]
- Thread starter Faith
- Start date
The Magician
Yeet
- Location
- The Basement
I'm still waiting to see if the Crystal Cruiser is gonna appear or not.
Brian Fiction
A rather shady individual...
- Location
- ?
I quite personally love this story, it is very interesting.
Aren't those microphones physical objects that need to be manipulated, rather than simple software? Of course, I suppose anything's possible with nanites. But it kinda reminds me of this:
Oh, incidentally, I'm tossing in the Shclock Mercenary universe on the list of places to visit. For starters, that universe contains Petey, the kind of god-like AI that can give a Supreme Commander a run for its money. And he's friendly, devious and snarky!
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
She's not using Nanites for that - she can't, at such long range.
The microphones are always on - whether or not they transmit is up to the software on the terminal, and that is something Cmdr!Faith can control. In the future, no one gives a shit about the tiny amount of excess CPU and energy usage racked up by a couple microphones.
They don't do so now either. If you plug a microphone into your PC it's always on, although the software handling it is not necessarily processing.
Glitchrr36
Slick's Short Company, CEO
- Location
- The Wastes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is going to be fun.
44 - Arrival
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
@Ovid, something random I just noticed - your signature links to the Voyager and the Wayfarer. I'm pretty sure that should be the Migrant and the Wayfarer, as the Migrant is the other destroyer-type listed in the post it links to, and the Voyager was the refugee ship, anyway, and entirely lacking in dakka.
Unless you mean to imply that you find throwing refugees out the airlock in the general direction of the enemy is good dakka in which case... you have problems.
Anyways, here, have a chapter.
44 - Arrival
You know what's fun? Using Teleporters to relocate stealthed Ion bombs right into the middle of enemy formations without anyone being any the wiser, and following it up with a rapid barrage of rapidly designed and fabricated Stealth Ion Missiles.
You know what's more fun? The knowledge that if I screw up here, thousands of people are going to die.
Okay, so the second one maybe isn't so fun.
Luckily for me, it looked like I wouldn't be needing them. The Federation's higher command group - or I guessed that's who they were, given that the signal I'd sent had bounced between ships before stopping at the big honking space station hovering over the USA. I mean, if that didn't scream 'I'm in charge', I don't know what did.
Either way, they seemed conductive to talking, and were currently chatting about whether or not they should be pointing their weapons at me.
Whilst they were busy doing that, I was busy carefully brushing aside their firewalls like so many little cobwebs and looting their databases for all they were worth. Which, compared to my currently available technology, was... not a lot. Well.
In terms of new technology, I got access to some nifty Mind Control tech - vastly better than the equivalent from the Sanctumverse. Although it had a shorter duration, something I could no doubt fix, it was much better at actively controlling the target, giving far more finesse and active access to the target's memories.
It also had a far better range - where the maximum range of the Sanctumverse Mind Control Tower was measured in metres, this thing measured range in hundreds of kilometres. Admittedly, it was also used primarily in space and I had no idea how things like atmosphere and notable gravity might effect its power, but even if it only worked in space there was still a huge number of uses for it.
There wasn't a lot else of note. A few new variants of lasers, missiles, bombs, and beams, although none particularly interesting. Most of the bombs and missiles were fairly obvious - bomb full of napalm, bomb full of healing nanites, bomb full of crystalline shrapnel, etcetera - and the lasers and beams, whatever specialised purposes they had, were still outperformed by my Progenitor hypertech.
With the possible exception of the Fire Beam, which caused the very air it passed through to ignite violently. That, I found pretty nifty. I mean, what's not to love about a laser beam that sets stuff on fire from hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away? Even if that was a range estimate allowing for no atmosphere or gravity, I had no doubt that dubious amounts of Commandery bullshit could make it a formidable planetside weapon.
Far more important and useful to me than the new technologies were new designs - I was nowhere near confident in my fabrication ability to design a new ship from scratch - the sum of my experience was welding new things onto old designs, pretty much, - and suddenly having access to Destroyer, Cruiser, and most importantly Dreadnought templates gave me a huge boost in my production capabilities.
Now I wasn't limited to a scout corvette and a cargo-carrier-turned-frigate, and that gave me options. Delicious, delicious options.
I reached out again for the little-used multi-thread function, spinning off another thought process to play with all my fancy new toys.
Of course, whilst I was busy rifling through the Federation's databanks, I was also listening in on the Admiralty Board's conversation. After all, ignoring who I believed to be the most powerful group of people in the system when they were on the cusp of all-out war seemed terribly poor form.
Speaking of, I returned my attention to their discussion just in time to catch this gem:
"-ning move was to ask us to not point our weapons at them - why else but so they can catch us unaware? I suggest we open fire now - a devastating alpha strike while they're not expecting it should be sufficient to cripple their fleet, and make them easy to clean up before the Rebels arrive."
Right. Because the two thousand strong fleet of unknown, unidentified warships that just turned up on your doorstep completely out of the blue would totally wait until you've recovered from shock and pointed your guns at them, only to ask you to lower your guns.
Instead of just, I don't know, opening fire straight away.
"Perhaps," another voice interrupted, "they are simply made nervous by the idea of aliens pointing guns at them?"
Ah. Someone intelligent. Or at least in possession of common sense. Good enough. I sent their communications network a ping, just to make sure it was all working, and then spoke again.
"Oh, oh, yeah, that one. I pick that one. The one that doesn't involve getting shot or manipulated"
The other end of the line went dead silent. For a moment I entertained the possibility that they'd hung up on me, but another quick ping confirmed otherwise.
Since none of them were talking, I decided to keep the tirade going myself.
"Oh, by the way. Totally overrode your systems and set your mics from push-to-talk to automatic. Heard every word. " Not technically true. I'd actually been listening in through their 'secure' camera network, but they didn't need to know that.
"Glad to see at least two of you have brains. Got to admit, I was kind of worried there, for a second." Make fools of Federation high command? Check. Launch not-so-subtle insults at Federation high command? Also check.
"Now, I have some things I want to go over before..."
Suddenly a little voice rang out in my non-existent robot ears, the chipper tone of the automated assistant. 'Warning - Enemy Ship Detected'.
"Oh, son of a-"
'Warning - Enemy Ship Detected.'
I quickly muted that subroutine before it drove me insane, and cast my detail scanners over the area of space my area scanners had detected the Rebel ships in.
Yup.
Yeah, that was their whole fleet.
Mentally sighing, I sent the Rebel fleet a ping. Hopefully they'd be smart enough to hold their fire for thirty seconds whilst they got over the 'random unknown fleet chilling out in orbit around Venus' thing. Actually, come to think of it, hopefully the Federation would be smart enough to do the same.
The Rebels responded to my ping with one of their own, and I performed an act of disproportionate retribution by tracing the ping, finding its origin, and unleashing my glorious progenitor bullshit hacking routines upon the Rebel Network. In under a second I was in, and I took advantage of that fact to access every device with a speaker and screen in the Rebel fleet. And then I did the same to the Federation, because I didn't want them to miss out.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to see the Rebels have finally joined us. Say hello, Rebels."
The voice that responded was gruff, grumpy, and pretty much sounded like a crazy old man.
"What? What's going on? Who is this? How did you get this network?"
"Eh. Good enough."
Cutting him off and silencing his microphones, I resumed speaking.
"Alright, so, introductions. Rebels, meet Feds. Feds, meet Rebels. My name is unimportant. I'm here to clean up your mess."
I paused, organising my thoughts. First priority, get them to stop shooting each other. Then... uh. Hm. I need to think on this.
"You guys are going to stop fighting, or I'm going to kick all your heads in and blow you all to smithereens. Now you wouldn't want that, and frankly, neither would I, so let's keep this civil, right?"
Okay, that should buy me some time.
"Why should we? You're clearly not part of the Rebellion, and we outnumber you two to one! All ships, ignore the new contacts, they won't dare interfere. Target the Federation fleet, close to weapons range and open fire!"
Or not.
The two fleets began to move, fighters and strike craft darting in for knife-fights whilst the destroyers and cruisers edged forward, slowly bringing their main weapons to bare.
Hundreds of brilliant crimson beams lanced across the inky black, the destroyers and dreadnoughts making quick work of the strike craft that had by bad luck or happenstance found their way into the overlapping wall of laser cannon firing arcs.
Just seconds later, a volley of similar size emerged from the Rebel fleet, cutting through the Federation's small ships just as easily.
In only the first barrage of each side, almost two hundred ships were destroyed. Admittedly, all of them were the smaller ships, which probably meant at most between one thousand and sixteen hundred deaths, assuming crews of five to eight for all of them. Given some ships likely has less crew, it was probably between eight hundred and twelve hundred, all up.
Which was still a lot of fucking people.
Dead.
Gone.
Lost in the stellar winds.
Beyond the point of no return.
It was at that point my mind caught up to what my sensors were observing, and I put my foot down. Hard.
Progenitor hacking routines blitzed the tactical networks of both fleets, giving me control of various systems on the majority of the ships. Targeting solutions were wiped from ship memory cores, weapons were powered down, FTL Drives switched off, and blast doors slammed shut, cutting off movement options and limiting options.
And then the second phase of my plan kicked in, and thousands of previously cloaked Ion warheads detonated, pulsing blue points of light bursting into life throughout the system before flickering and dying in just seconds, like adorable little baby stars.
Ships caught in the myriad blasts lost power rapidly, blue energies arcing across their hull plates and systems overloading. Engines flickered out and weapon glows faded to nothing as almost three and a half thousand of the roughly five thousand fighters were mission killed before the fight had even really begun.
As soon as the first warheads began to detonate, my Trackers opened fire with all weapons, a veritable wall of ionic blasts crossing the void between my fleet and the two enemy fleets - each shot carefully aimed to avoid critical life support systems. More missiles fired, these ones packing no cloaking device but larger engines and warheads, making them faster and giving them a greater blast radius and power.
More ships began to drift, dead in space, as waves of rapid-fire ion blasts washed over their shields and surged through interior systems. Of special concern were the dreadnoughts and the Federation stations - and my Migrants, hastily modified to fit FTL teleporters, began spewing out ion bombs, delivering them via space-phase fuckery to the internal systems as fast as the teleporters could activate.
In less than ten seconds, what would have been the site of a cataclysmic battle for the fate of human kind became a graveyard for ships, left adrift with no weapons, no engines and no drones. With nothing available but life support and basic communications, there was nothing the combined Rebel and Federation fleets could do. They were entirely at my mercy.
And right now, I was pissed.
Unless you mean to imply that you find throwing refugees out the airlock in the general direction of the enemy is good dakka in which case... you have problems.
Anyways, here, have a chapter.
44 - Arrival
You know what's fun? Using Teleporters to relocate stealthed Ion bombs right into the middle of enemy formations without anyone being any the wiser, and following it up with a rapid barrage of rapidly designed and fabricated Stealth Ion Missiles.
You know what's more fun? The knowledge that if I screw up here, thousands of people are going to die.
Okay, so the second one maybe isn't so fun.
Luckily for me, it looked like I wouldn't be needing them. The Federation's higher command group - or I guessed that's who they were, given that the signal I'd sent had bounced between ships before stopping at the big honking space station hovering over the USA. I mean, if that didn't scream 'I'm in charge', I don't know what did.
Either way, they seemed conductive to talking, and were currently chatting about whether or not they should be pointing their weapons at me.
Whilst they were busy doing that, I was busy carefully brushing aside their firewalls like so many little cobwebs and looting their databases for all they were worth. Which, compared to my currently available technology, was... not a lot. Well.
In terms of new technology, I got access to some nifty Mind Control tech - vastly better than the equivalent from the Sanctumverse. Although it had a shorter duration, something I could no doubt fix, it was much better at actively controlling the target, giving far more finesse and active access to the target's memories.
It also had a far better range - where the maximum range of the Sanctumverse Mind Control Tower was measured in metres, this thing measured range in hundreds of kilometres. Admittedly, it was also used primarily in space and I had no idea how things like atmosphere and notable gravity might effect its power, but even if it only worked in space there was still a huge number of uses for it.
There wasn't a lot else of note. A few new variants of lasers, missiles, bombs, and beams, although none particularly interesting. Most of the bombs and missiles were fairly obvious - bomb full of napalm, bomb full of healing nanites, bomb full of crystalline shrapnel, etcetera - and the lasers and beams, whatever specialised purposes they had, were still outperformed by my Progenitor hypertech.
With the possible exception of the Fire Beam, which caused the very air it passed through to ignite violently. That, I found pretty nifty. I mean, what's not to love about a laser beam that sets stuff on fire from hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away? Even if that was a range estimate allowing for no atmosphere or gravity, I had no doubt that dubious amounts of Commandery bullshit could make it a formidable planetside weapon.
Far more important and useful to me than the new technologies were new designs - I was nowhere near confident in my fabrication ability to design a new ship from scratch - the sum of my experience was welding new things onto old designs, pretty much, - and suddenly having access to Destroyer, Cruiser, and most importantly Dreadnought templates gave me a huge boost in my production capabilities.
Now I wasn't limited to a scout corvette and a cargo-carrier-turned-frigate, and that gave me options. Delicious, delicious options.
I reached out again for the little-used multi-thread function, spinning off another thought process to play with all my fancy new toys.
Of course, whilst I was busy rifling through the Federation's databanks, I was also listening in on the Admiralty Board's conversation. After all, ignoring who I believed to be the most powerful group of people in the system when they were on the cusp of all-out war seemed terribly poor form.
Speaking of, I returned my attention to their discussion just in time to catch this gem:
"-ning move was to ask us to not point our weapons at them - why else but so they can catch us unaware? I suggest we open fire now - a devastating alpha strike while they're not expecting it should be sufficient to cripple their fleet, and make them easy to clean up before the Rebels arrive."
Right. Because the two thousand strong fleet of unknown, unidentified warships that just turned up on your doorstep completely out of the blue would totally wait until you've recovered from shock and pointed your guns at them, only to ask you to lower your guns.
Instead of just, I don't know, opening fire straight away.
"Perhaps," another voice interrupted, "they are simply made nervous by the idea of aliens pointing guns at them?"
Ah. Someone intelligent. Or at least in possession of common sense. Good enough. I sent their communications network a ping, just to make sure it was all working, and then spoke again.
"Oh, oh, yeah, that one. I pick that one. The one that doesn't involve getting shot or manipulated"
The other end of the line went dead silent. For a moment I entertained the possibility that they'd hung up on me, but another quick ping confirmed otherwise.
Since none of them were talking, I decided to keep the tirade going myself.
"Oh, by the way. Totally overrode your systems and set your mics from push-to-talk to automatic. Heard every word. " Not technically true. I'd actually been listening in through their 'secure' camera network, but they didn't need to know that.
"Glad to see at least two of you have brains. Got to admit, I was kind of worried there, for a second." Make fools of Federation high command? Check. Launch not-so-subtle insults at Federation high command? Also check.
"Now, I have some things I want to go over before..."
Suddenly a little voice rang out in my non-existent robot ears, the chipper tone of the automated assistant. 'Warning - Enemy Ship Detected'.
"Oh, son of a-"
'Warning - Enemy Ship Detected.'
I quickly muted that subroutine before it drove me insane, and cast my detail scanners over the area of space my area scanners had detected the Rebel ships in.
Yup.
Yeah, that was their whole fleet.
Mentally sighing, I sent the Rebel fleet a ping. Hopefully they'd be smart enough to hold their fire for thirty seconds whilst they got over the 'random unknown fleet chilling out in orbit around Venus' thing. Actually, come to think of it, hopefully the Federation would be smart enough to do the same.
The Rebels responded to my ping with one of their own, and I performed an act of disproportionate retribution by tracing the ping, finding its origin, and unleashing my glorious progenitor bullshit hacking routines upon the Rebel Network. In under a second I was in, and I took advantage of that fact to access every device with a speaker and screen in the Rebel fleet. And then I did the same to the Federation, because I didn't want them to miss out.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to see the Rebels have finally joined us. Say hello, Rebels."
The voice that responded was gruff, grumpy, and pretty much sounded like a crazy old man.
"What? What's going on? Who is this? How did you get this network?"
"Eh. Good enough."
Cutting him off and silencing his microphones, I resumed speaking.
"Alright, so, introductions. Rebels, meet Feds. Feds, meet Rebels. My name is unimportant. I'm here to clean up your mess."
I paused, organising my thoughts. First priority, get them to stop shooting each other. Then... uh. Hm. I need to think on this.
"You guys are going to stop fighting, or I'm going to kick all your heads in and blow you all to smithereens. Now you wouldn't want that, and frankly, neither would I, so let's keep this civil, right?"
Okay, that should buy me some time.
"Why should we? You're clearly not part of the Rebellion, and we outnumber you two to one! All ships, ignore the new contacts, they won't dare interfere. Target the Federation fleet, close to weapons range and open fire!"
Or not.
The two fleets began to move, fighters and strike craft darting in for knife-fights whilst the destroyers and cruisers edged forward, slowly bringing their main weapons to bare.
Hundreds of brilliant crimson beams lanced across the inky black, the destroyers and dreadnoughts making quick work of the strike craft that had by bad luck or happenstance found their way into the overlapping wall of laser cannon firing arcs.
Just seconds later, a volley of similar size emerged from the Rebel fleet, cutting through the Federation's small ships just as easily.
In only the first barrage of each side, almost two hundred ships were destroyed. Admittedly, all of them were the smaller ships, which probably meant at most between one thousand and sixteen hundred deaths, assuming crews of five to eight for all of them. Given some ships likely has less crew, it was probably between eight hundred and twelve hundred, all up.
Which was still a lot of fucking people.
Dead.
Gone.
Lost in the stellar winds.
Beyond the point of no return.
It was at that point my mind caught up to what my sensors were observing, and I put my foot down. Hard.
Progenitor hacking routines blitzed the tactical networks of both fleets, giving me control of various systems on the majority of the ships. Targeting solutions were wiped from ship memory cores, weapons were powered down, FTL Drives switched off, and blast doors slammed shut, cutting off movement options and limiting options.
And then the second phase of my plan kicked in, and thousands of previously cloaked Ion warheads detonated, pulsing blue points of light bursting into life throughout the system before flickering and dying in just seconds, like adorable little baby stars.
Ships caught in the myriad blasts lost power rapidly, blue energies arcing across their hull plates and systems overloading. Engines flickered out and weapon glows faded to nothing as almost three and a half thousand of the roughly five thousand fighters were mission killed before the fight had even really begun.
As soon as the first warheads began to detonate, my Trackers opened fire with all weapons, a veritable wall of ionic blasts crossing the void between my fleet and the two enemy fleets - each shot carefully aimed to avoid critical life support systems. More missiles fired, these ones packing no cloaking device but larger engines and warheads, making them faster and giving them a greater blast radius and power.
More ships began to drift, dead in space, as waves of rapid-fire ion blasts washed over their shields and surged through interior systems. Of special concern were the dreadnoughts and the Federation stations - and my Migrants, hastily modified to fit FTL teleporters, began spewing out ion bombs, delivering them via space-phase fuckery to the internal systems as fast as the teleporters could activate.
In less than ten seconds, what would have been the site of a cataclysmic battle for the fate of human kind became a graveyard for ships, left adrift with no weapons, no engines and no drones. With nothing available but life support and basic communications, there was nothing the combined Rebel and Federation fleets could do. They were entirely at my mercy.
And right now, I was pissed.
Travisplo
The Necromonsieur
Whelp, there goes the rebels and the feds! I hope for their sakes that Faith isn't too pissed.
ellipsis
Journeyman Mad Scientist
- Location
- The L4 Lagrange point
It's not good dakka unless the refugees are holding, attached to, or implanted with antimatter warheads.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Considering Faith's little flipout about the cause of the war earlier I'm surprised those were ion bombs instead of nukes.
Travisplo
The Necromonsieur
I just don't want to know that space is now red with blood and gore, sorry.
- Location
- North of England
- Pronouns
- She/They
Why not get some practice in once you're done with the current incident?
- Location
- Middle Earth
On the bright side, at least Faith hasn't been to the Falloutverse yet. Since, depending on whether they make it canon or not, they could pick up some nifty Zetan technologies. Like the Death Ray, which is a fifty exajoule laser cannon, and their shields, which can take multiple hits from said Death Rays. All-in-all the Feds and Rebels should be glad they're merely dealing with a fleet of conventional ships instead of, say, a handful of Fuck-You class ships. Which is my way of pointing out that these are things you point at people who you want to be not alive anymore.
- Location
- Arizona
...Bwahahahahaha! oh man, I completely missed that. You get a Funny for making me laugh so hard at breakfast. Fixed that to say Migrant and Wayfarer. And technically speaking the Wayfarer is just a good design, not necessarily dakka related (which is why it's not in the same list as Drich's Maelstrom).
back to the story. While I'm surprised it took Cmdr_Faith so long to react to the two idiot factions firing on each other, now Faith knows that it's a mistake to assume these folks will act anything near rationality. Suicidal lemmings, all of them.
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Glitchrr36
Slick's Short Company, CEO
- Location
- The Wastes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
By the way, are there any images of the ship the voyager/migrant are based on
45 - Retaliation
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
I do apologise for the late chapter - meant to post this yesterday, got distracted.
@glitchrrr36 I am afraid I don't have any pictures on this PC, but I'll toss in a link to the video from the last level to give you a rough idea. Unfortunately this cutscene is the only time they appear in game (unlike the Pioneer which is at least a map prop) so it's a little spare on details.
The ship taking off is the corvette the Pioneer is based off, the two bigger ships that get smashed up by Titans are the basis for the Voyager.
45 - Retaliation
The first thing I did was split off about two dozen mental forks.
The second thing I did was speed up my processing time as much as possible, to the point where I could visibly see the movement of light between the sun and the Earth.
And then I raged.
I kicked, and screamed, and cried, and generally made a big mess of myself for about six hours, relative time. Times several dozen forks.
For the Rebels and the Feds, it was just a matter of seconds before I spoke, rather calm compared to how I had been feeling prior.
"Alright, fuckheads, listen up."
Seven thousand ships hung in space, immobile, undefended. But not blind. Not deaf. They knew exactly what was going on.
"You fucking bastards are a bunch of murderous scum, and only the fact that I refuse to stoop to your levels has allowed your continued survival. Two hundred ships were destroyed in the fifteen seconds it took me to stamp you under my heel. Next time, I will not allow so many lives to be thrown away. Your decimation will be swift and without mercy."
That statement was met only with silence. Whether of awe, guilt, terror, or something else, I didn't know. But as long as they were listening - and I knew they were, - then I didn't care. I had my Wayfarers split apart into two groups and move towards the warring fleets. As they drew closer, their beams fired, melting through hull armour and cleaving apart enemy ships, severing critical components such as weapons and engines from the bodies of the vessels.
The few drones that had already been dispatched - defence drones launched before the battle had begun, - now found themselves the targets of they Wayfarer's heavy lasers, obliterating each drone in a single shot.
"As of now, your stupid fucking war is over. If anyone, anyone, tries to start shit again, I will stamp them out. My fleet of two thousand just disabled two fleets totalling over three times the size. I have several thousand more ships, preparing for deployment within the next week. I will place my ships over every planet in the galaxy, if I have to. Your war is over and any attempt to revive it will end much the same as this battle did. With me stomping all over you."
I heard over the communications some gulps and nervous whispers, but whoever was transmitting, accidentally or not, seemed content to let me speak for now. Possibly had something to do with the fleet of frigate-analogues flying around disarming and crippling every ship in sight.
"So, now that we've made clear exactly what I am capable of, let us return to what was our original topic of conversation before the good Rebels decided to attempt to upstage me. Namely, the reasons for your dumb fucking war."
I paused again, ordering my thoughts. Okay. Step one. Identify the problems.
"Rebels. You don't like that the Federation has a terrible social structure which outright encourages slavery and abuse. This is fair."
There was some mumbling of agreement from Rebel channels, and some cries of indignation from the Federation, at that comment. I had my Trackers fire off a few more Ion missiles, detonating them harmlessly in the space between the two fleets. A sort of... warning shot, almost. The chatter ended almost immediately.
"Feds. You don't like that the Rebels oppose your political system of choice. Now I'm not going to pretend that your system is good - it's not, it's a pile of shit and you should all feel bad, but for the purposes of this argument it's a fair point."
My assessment was met with more cries of indignation from the Federation. Through no intervention of my own, that was suddenly silenced as one of the Federation Admirals, the brash one who'd claimed me a Rebel agent, snapped loudly across the network.
"Listen here, you-"
I muted his microphone and kept talking, unperturbed.
"Both of you have reason to disagree with each other. Your political and cultural views clash in a nearly irreconcilable way. This is fine."
Clearly sensing that I was leading up to something, the minor chatter on both sides died out, fading away to nothing.
Which was nice, because I really liked the silence. It gave me a chance to think. Subjective hours to think, really, thanks to Hypertech computational overclock shenanigans and multi-core threading out the wazoo.
"What is not fine, is that both sides decided that the simplest, easiest solution to their non-existent problem was to vaporise it. And thus through idiocy the greatest war of the last ten generations was sparked," I continued after a few real-time seconds, still thinking.
Step two. Having identified the problem, figure out roughly how to fix it.
Well.
I couldn't just let the two factions be - they'd get back to fighting within minutes of me leaving. Neither faction was really in the right, meaning it wasn't as clear cut as Sanctum's 'destroy group A, save group B' solution. I couldn't stay here and oversee peace unless I wanted to be rooted in place for decades at a minimum, and I really, really didn't want to create a new AI to manage the place. There was no amount of shiny in the universe that would convince me that raising a super advanced war machine AI baby would be a good idea.
The factions were the key cause of conflict, and as such, they needed to go. Getting rid of the Federation would be easy. Getting rid of its influence, probably a lot harder. Keeping the Rebels satisfied, harder still.
But the biggest problem with removing the factions was their replacement. Namely, there was no perfect third party to push to prominence and rule the galaxy in a safe, sane, and benevolent way. Or, if there was, I hadn't met them.
I let out a digital sigh. Replacement it was. But replacement with what? For all that democracy was a great system, it was very prone to human error, and there was no easy way for me to deal with that. Communism suffered much the same problems, plus a host of others and major social stigma - or at least, it had back in 2015. Whether the same applied now, I was unsure, but I was never really keen on it anyway - except in some rare circumstances. Like Endless Space, where a perfect communist government was possible with enough happiness-increasing tech.
But no. That would rely on having a non-biased manager to oversee the system, and I didn't want to root myself here - nor was I so naive or presumptuous to claim I was completely without bias. That option would be even worse than having to raise an AI - at least doing that I'd eventually be able to leave. Democracy it is.
"Here is the new solution. I am going to dissolve the human portion of the Galactic Federation. This is non-negotiable. Once that incredibly retarded form of central government of gone, I will be creating, and overseeing, a democracy. A proper one. And all of you are going to shut up and enjoy it or I will stomp you."
The brazen Federation Admiral must have found another microphone to use, because his voice assailed my ears again. "We have a democracy! Those Rebel scum-"
Mute.
"No. You have a ridiculous hierarchy of nobles the likes of which haven't been seen since the medieval ages, and those select few utilize a democratic system to rule over billions of people who otherwise have no say. That's not democracy, it's borderline tyranny, and the Rebels are entirely right for contesting it."
"Thank you!" An exasperated voice called out over the communicator. I muted him too, just on principal. No one was allowed to interrupt my speech.
After a second of mentally cursing the interruption, I continued. "Of course, they're still massively in the wrong for contesting it through violence, but the point stands. Okay. Right. Under my system, every human planet will have a democratic government, with members elected by the populace of that planet. Every human solar system will have a democratic government, with members elected by the planetary governments. Every human sector will have a democratic government, with members elected by the system governments. And those sector governments will elect representatives for the Human government."
Seemed logical enough. It'd be a right pain in the ass to set up, though. I'd probably need... more than a few Avatar droids and such.
"This way, every level of human society gets a chance to determine what laws or restrictions they do or do not want in place. Further, at any level, a rule may be overturned by majority vote for that sector, system, or planet - if everyone in the solar system wants to pass a tax except one planet, then no taxes for that planet. That's how democracy rolls. Kay?"
I couldn't help but feel I'm thinking too long term here. Perhaps I should've dealt with the two huge fleets of warships first. I mean, sure, I disarmed them and stopped them from going anywhere, but still.
"Alright, stranger, listen here," the Rebel leader said loudly, cutting through the silence. I hesitated for just a second, curious as to what he had to say. "I don't know who you are, and I don't know where you come from, but I do know that you have made one very big mistake."
Now that was just insulting.
"Oh, really? I effortlessly trounced both of your fleets. Even if I did make a mistake, which I quite possibly did, you're in no condition to capitalise on it."
"You may have disabled our external systems, but our internals work fine. And that includes our communications and our Artificial Intelligence cores. Once our new AI is done hijacking your fleet, we're going to destroy the Federation and humanity will be free of their tyranny! Forever! So thank you, stranger, for the reinforcements. Long Live the-"
Almost absent-mindedly, I muted him too. I was too busy pondering over what he'd already said to care about what else he had to say.
Artificial Intelligence? I didn't remember there being any artificial intelligences in the Rebel Fleet. In fact, I hadn't seen any artificial intelligences at all, except for...
Wait.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
@glitchrrr36 I am afraid I don't have any pictures on this PC, but I'll toss in a link to the video from the last level to give you a rough idea. Unfortunately this cutscene is the only time they appear in game (unlike the Pioneer which is at least a map prop) so it's a little spare on details.
The ship taking off is the corvette the Pioneer is based off, the two bigger ships that get smashed up by Titans are the basis for the Voyager.
45 - Retaliation
The first thing I did was split off about two dozen mental forks.
The second thing I did was speed up my processing time as much as possible, to the point where I could visibly see the movement of light between the sun and the Earth.
And then I raged.
I kicked, and screamed, and cried, and generally made a big mess of myself for about six hours, relative time. Times several dozen forks.
For the Rebels and the Feds, it was just a matter of seconds before I spoke, rather calm compared to how I had been feeling prior.
"Alright, fuckheads, listen up."
Seven thousand ships hung in space, immobile, undefended. But not blind. Not deaf. They knew exactly what was going on.
"You fucking bastards are a bunch of murderous scum, and only the fact that I refuse to stoop to your levels has allowed your continued survival. Two hundred ships were destroyed in the fifteen seconds it took me to stamp you under my heel. Next time, I will not allow so many lives to be thrown away. Your decimation will be swift and without mercy."
That statement was met only with silence. Whether of awe, guilt, terror, or something else, I didn't know. But as long as they were listening - and I knew they were, - then I didn't care. I had my Wayfarers split apart into two groups and move towards the warring fleets. As they drew closer, their beams fired, melting through hull armour and cleaving apart enemy ships, severing critical components such as weapons and engines from the bodies of the vessels.
The few drones that had already been dispatched - defence drones launched before the battle had begun, - now found themselves the targets of they Wayfarer's heavy lasers, obliterating each drone in a single shot.
"As of now, your stupid fucking war is over. If anyone, anyone, tries to start shit again, I will stamp them out. My fleet of two thousand just disabled two fleets totalling over three times the size. I have several thousand more ships, preparing for deployment within the next week. I will place my ships over every planet in the galaxy, if I have to. Your war is over and any attempt to revive it will end much the same as this battle did. With me stomping all over you."
I heard over the communications some gulps and nervous whispers, but whoever was transmitting, accidentally or not, seemed content to let me speak for now. Possibly had something to do with the fleet of frigate-analogues flying around disarming and crippling every ship in sight.
"So, now that we've made clear exactly what I am capable of, let us return to what was our original topic of conversation before the good Rebels decided to attempt to upstage me. Namely, the reasons for your dumb fucking war."
I paused again, ordering my thoughts. Okay. Step one. Identify the problems.
"Rebels. You don't like that the Federation has a terrible social structure which outright encourages slavery and abuse. This is fair."
There was some mumbling of agreement from Rebel channels, and some cries of indignation from the Federation, at that comment. I had my Trackers fire off a few more Ion missiles, detonating them harmlessly in the space between the two fleets. A sort of... warning shot, almost. The chatter ended almost immediately.
"Feds. You don't like that the Rebels oppose your political system of choice. Now I'm not going to pretend that your system is good - it's not, it's a pile of shit and you should all feel bad, but for the purposes of this argument it's a fair point."
My assessment was met with more cries of indignation from the Federation. Through no intervention of my own, that was suddenly silenced as one of the Federation Admirals, the brash one who'd claimed me a Rebel agent, snapped loudly across the network.
"Listen here, you-"
I muted his microphone and kept talking, unperturbed.
"Both of you have reason to disagree with each other. Your political and cultural views clash in a nearly irreconcilable way. This is fine."
Clearly sensing that I was leading up to something, the minor chatter on both sides died out, fading away to nothing.
Which was nice, because I really liked the silence. It gave me a chance to think. Subjective hours to think, really, thanks to Hypertech computational overclock shenanigans and multi-core threading out the wazoo.
"What is not fine, is that both sides decided that the simplest, easiest solution to their non-existent problem was to vaporise it. And thus through idiocy the greatest war of the last ten generations was sparked," I continued after a few real-time seconds, still thinking.
Step two. Having identified the problem, figure out roughly how to fix it.
Well.
I couldn't just let the two factions be - they'd get back to fighting within minutes of me leaving. Neither faction was really in the right, meaning it wasn't as clear cut as Sanctum's 'destroy group A, save group B' solution. I couldn't stay here and oversee peace unless I wanted to be rooted in place for decades at a minimum, and I really, really didn't want to create a new AI to manage the place. There was no amount of shiny in the universe that would convince me that raising a super advanced war machine AI baby would be a good idea.
The factions were the key cause of conflict, and as such, they needed to go. Getting rid of the Federation would be easy. Getting rid of its influence, probably a lot harder. Keeping the Rebels satisfied, harder still.
But the biggest problem with removing the factions was their replacement. Namely, there was no perfect third party to push to prominence and rule the galaxy in a safe, sane, and benevolent way. Or, if there was, I hadn't met them.
I let out a digital sigh. Replacement it was. But replacement with what? For all that democracy was a great system, it was very prone to human error, and there was no easy way for me to deal with that. Communism suffered much the same problems, plus a host of others and major social stigma - or at least, it had back in 2015. Whether the same applied now, I was unsure, but I was never really keen on it anyway - except in some rare circumstances. Like Endless Space, where a perfect communist government was possible with enough happiness-increasing tech.
But no. That would rely on having a non-biased manager to oversee the system, and I didn't want to root myself here - nor was I so naive or presumptuous to claim I was completely without bias. That option would be even worse than having to raise an AI - at least doing that I'd eventually be able to leave. Democracy it is.
"Here is the new solution. I am going to dissolve the human portion of the Galactic Federation. This is non-negotiable. Once that incredibly retarded form of central government of gone, I will be creating, and overseeing, a democracy. A proper one. And all of you are going to shut up and enjoy it or I will stomp you."
The brazen Federation Admiral must have found another microphone to use, because his voice assailed my ears again. "We have a democracy! Those Rebel scum-"
Mute.
"No. You have a ridiculous hierarchy of nobles the likes of which haven't been seen since the medieval ages, and those select few utilize a democratic system to rule over billions of people who otherwise have no say. That's not democracy, it's borderline tyranny, and the Rebels are entirely right for contesting it."
"Thank you!" An exasperated voice called out over the communicator. I muted him too, just on principal. No one was allowed to interrupt my speech.
After a second of mentally cursing the interruption, I continued. "Of course, they're still massively in the wrong for contesting it through violence, but the point stands. Okay. Right. Under my system, every human planet will have a democratic government, with members elected by the populace of that planet. Every human solar system will have a democratic government, with members elected by the planetary governments. Every human sector will have a democratic government, with members elected by the system governments. And those sector governments will elect representatives for the Human government."
Seemed logical enough. It'd be a right pain in the ass to set up, though. I'd probably need... more than a few Avatar droids and such.
"This way, every level of human society gets a chance to determine what laws or restrictions they do or do not want in place. Further, at any level, a rule may be overturned by majority vote for that sector, system, or planet - if everyone in the solar system wants to pass a tax except one planet, then no taxes for that planet. That's how democracy rolls. Kay?"
I couldn't help but feel I'm thinking too long term here. Perhaps I should've dealt with the two huge fleets of warships first. I mean, sure, I disarmed them and stopped them from going anywhere, but still.
"Alright, stranger, listen here," the Rebel leader said loudly, cutting through the silence. I hesitated for just a second, curious as to what he had to say. "I don't know who you are, and I don't know where you come from, but I do know that you have made one very big mistake."
Now that was just insulting.
"Oh, really? I effortlessly trounced both of your fleets. Even if I did make a mistake, which I quite possibly did, you're in no condition to capitalise on it."
"You may have disabled our external systems, but our internals work fine. And that includes our communications and our Artificial Intelligence cores. Once our new AI is done hijacking your fleet, we're going to destroy the Federation and humanity will be free of their tyranny! Forever! So thank you, stranger, for the reinforcements. Long Live the-"
Almost absent-mindedly, I muted him too. I was too busy pondering over what he'd already said to care about what else he had to say.
Artificial Intelligence? I didn't remember there being any artificial intelligences in the Rebel Fleet. In fact, I hadn't seen any artificial intelligences at all, except for...
Wait.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
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Glitchrr36
Slick's Short Company, CEO
- Location
- The Wastes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On paper the Progenitor systems will beat the up start FTL AI no problems, the issue is that Faith has barely scratched the surface of truly utilizing the systems at her command. She has been throwing overwhelming progenitor super tech at things rather than really understanding it all and using it efficiently. Now comes the crash course in AI info-warfare.
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Um... I really don't get why you think the rebels are in the wrong. They may be a leetle bit heavy with the war crimes, but peaceful revolution is not an option against most forms of Tyranny. Especially not when the Oligarchy is pretty monolithic and has no issues with suppressing anyone who's against their system.
Faith comes off as a raging hypocrite here. Almost every change in a government system that didn't happen over the space of centuries or involved an actually sympathetic elite was violent.
The big issue here was that the nobles weren't going to step back and let democracy do its thing. Unless that actually happens violent revolution is the only choice unless you want to wait a few generations in the hope that people who're less assholelish might get into power.
Faith comes off as a raging hypocrite here. Almost every change in a government system that didn't happen over the space of centuries or involved an actually sympathetic elite was violent.
The big issue here was that the nobles weren't going to step back and let democracy do its thing. Unless that actually happens violent revolution is the only choice unless you want to wait a few generations in the hope that people who're less assholelish might get into power.