Yes it does, it just has to be properly applied and aimed.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
There is no problem that cannot be solved with appropriately applied explosives*.
*actually applies to all forms of Dakka. Also, Duct Tape.
Also, have a chapter. In which Faith gets distracted. Again.
---
47 - Wrap-Up
The Flagship dealt with, I was free to turn my attention back to the bigger problem.
Namely, I had a little over seven thousand ships ranging from ten to a thousand metres in length, all lacking weapons or engines, simply drifting in space.
Of the seven thousand ships, half sat firmly on each side of the Rebel-Federation war, wanting nothing more than to stamp out and destroy their enemies once and for all.
And I was now holding them at gunpoint whilst ordering them to turn to peace.
Dealing with this would be… complicated.
First, I'd need to get rid of these fleets. Then I'd need to worry about setting up the democracy - and that was going to be a right pain. It would mean a lot of Avatar droids pointing guns at a lot of people and forcing them to comply.
Right, fleets.
Shipping the two sides to their 'homeworlds' seemed like a prudent solution, with the one problem being that I had no idea where the Rebel 'homeworld' - more realistically, their main base of operations, - was, or if they had one.
For all I knew, they were an entirely fleet-based faction.
Speaking of which, I had two entire fleets here, dead to rights. I set my Pilgrims to start assimilating the individual ships, starting with the Dreadnoughts - whilst I had control of their critical systems, that didn't give me the blueprints for everything they had on board - especially in the case of the Rebels, whose ships were heavily modified from the norm.
It also didn't allow me to access the isolated components, terminals and the like that were cut off from the network, and it was entirely possible that the Rebel's higher ups had such devices - I would have, in their positions.
I'd have filled them with all sorts of potential blackmail data and other important goodies, should I ever need to jump ship and support my enemies. Of course, given the standard Federation response to Rebels was to execute them on sight, it wouldn't have worked in this case, but still.
Given that none of the remaining ships had attached engines, that was something I'd need to fix. In hindsight, it probably would have been better to just destroy the weapons, but I lacked the time travel technology to go back and fix that mistake, so… oh well?
An order of forty thousand or so Booster Drones from my Migrants, both the two present and the fif-no, eighteen present at my asteroid base, solved that problem neatly.
Well, for the Federation ships, anyway. The Rebel ships would be… harder. Unless I set up an FTL Gate, which was a valid enough option, or would be as soon as I found out where to put the other one.
A quick search through the wealth of knowledge that I had stolen from the Rebel ships told me that the majority of their forces were drawn from the border worlds, at the edges of Human space, and that their 'main' base, or at the least their main shipyard, was to be located on a border world named Erran.
It was large, Earth-like, and easily capable of supporting tens of thousands of people, with a little work. And, for the Rebels from offworld, they would be able to hitch a ride on any number of civilian transports. I just needed to set up somewhere for them to wait - not a difficult prospect. I already had designs for what was functionally a hotel in the Voyager transports, so with some modification and expansion, I could easily set something up.
After a little more database digging to find out where Erran actually was, I sent a pair of Pilgrims from my asteroid base to construct an FTL Gate in orbit whilst the rest of my large ships, mainly Migrants, made their way to Earth.
The eighteen Migrants arrived from FTL, depositing a swarm of eighty or so Booster Drones, emptying their fabrication bays, before resuming construction. The automated engine pods moved off towards the various small craft of the Federation fleet, clamping on and dragging them towards Earth carefully. The six Pilgrims I now had over Earth began construction of another FTL Gate, to link up with the one above Erran.
I set up a long queue of orders, for all of my vessels, effectively automating the entire process of capturing and dragging away ships to the relevant homeworlds.
And all of that took just twenty seconds. Just as planned.
With a mental grin, I continued my little speech.
"Alright, sorry to keep you waiting. Just had to deal with that little pest there."
I was pretty sure everyone knew what I was referring to. I'd made quite the show of annihilating that Flagship, after all.
"So, any other incredibly flimsy last ditch attempts at destroying the unknown fleet that just stomped your entire combined fleets into dust?"
Silence. Mainly, I suspected, because I'd muted every microphone on the network besides mine.
"No? Good. Where was I? Right. Democracy, how it rolls. So, you may be thinking that the system I suggested is stupid. That it would just descend into every planet, every system, trying to be the most appealing to corporations, the most appealing to other people, and generally the most appealing system for everything. Because that way, they'll attract all the tourists, all the business, and all the money."
"Now, if you'd bothered to shut up and listen instead of interrupting every five seconds, you might have heard my solution to that problem. Seeing as how I have a lick of common sense, I'm not dumb enough to give every planetary body that kind of capability. That's the kind of stupid that results in crashing economies, societal collapse, and other such bad things."
"No, when your newly elected governments vote on things, there will be oversight. For minor laws, unimportant things, it will be all up to the elected leaders. But if they want to charge everyone on the planet tax rates of ninety percent and make it illegal to try and leave, well, then I'll step in. Unless they have a really compelling reason."
"Now, you have to understand that I am under no compulsion to tell you this, and I'm pretty sure very few of you here will end up needing to know the fine details, so I'll save them for later. For now, you guys are all going to sit tight on your planets and think about what you've done. I hear word of any more conflict, and… well, you all saw what I did to your precious moon."
The reasons for this were twofold. One, as I'd said, was that I was pretty sure it would be a waste of breath… well, not really, because giant robot, but you get the idea.
The second is because I was rather lacking those finer details. I had… a few ideas on how to deal with the problem, long term, but most of them I was largely against. Theoretically, I could create another AI Core, and copy myself onto it. Of course, that fork would enjoy running this madhouse as much as I would… which is to say, they wouldn't.
And I wasn't sure if the copy would work perfectly, or even at all, either - their must have been a reason that the Progenitors preferred creating new AI over copying their existing, more experienced, Commanders, right? And the last thing I needed was an evil commander clone of myself.
Knowing my luck, they'd actually be semi-competent at PA, too.
No, my main idea was to get out of the problem by throwing it at someone else. The Zoltan and the Engi came to mind - the Zoltan were supposedly famed diplomats, and the Engi were, technically, strictly neutral in the war.
It didn't stop them helping the Federation subtly with supplies, repairs, and new ships such as the Stealth Cruiser, but they were still technically neutral.
Of course, throwing the problem at someone else seemed a mite irresponsible - although how I planned to make it up to them, I wasn't sure. Giving them a few pieces of technology, maybe? The Engi back at Merridew had been pretty excited about the various upgrades I'd provided.
The Cores had been of special interest to him, I recalled. Something about its' ability to be calibrated to generate any kind of gas as desired.
It was also an entirely self-sustaining power source, so that was cool.
I figured between that and a few other trinkets - general upgrades to sensors, engines, power sources, that sort of thing, - I could convince the Engi or the Zoltan into taking over.
Also, I was certain they'd be happy that the humans had stopped squabbling, even if it was because an even greater threat had appeared out of nowhere and entirely disabled both fleets with not even so much as a casual wave before picking up and moving the ships at will, like some sort of Dungeon Keeper player looking after their minions.
Heh.
--
As I had guessed, the planet of Erran was not equipped to deal with a huge influx of Rebel soldiers. Not an issue, though. The two Pilgrims responsible for building the FTL Gate there moved down to the surface as soon as they were done, where they immediately began construction of a Vehicle Factory.
No particular reason for choosing Vehicle over the others - I just hadn't had a decent chance to use it yet.
The location the Pilgrims set down in was a fairly open area, low rolling hills and vast grasslands. The buildings would slightly ruin the scenery, but at least the Rebels would have a nice view.
The first Vehicle Fabricator rolled off the factory pad, a small (by Progenitor standards, meaning a good eight or so metres long) tank armed only with Fabricator sprayers. It quickly moved to start digging away at the hill with its nanobots, freeing up the room to begin the construction. The Pilgrims joined it, and several hundred metres of hill were slowly stripped away by the growing number of Fabricators.
Once the land around was relatively flat, they would stop destroying things and start building the buildings I was in the process of designing.
The Habitation Block, as I had decided to name it, was pretty much ripped directly from the Voyager's passenger bay, with a few minor changes, both functionally and aesthetically. The Life Support (that is, the Elysion Core) was moved from its room on the fourth floor to a newly implemented basement level, along with the Teleporter, which freed up the main rooms of both the fourth and third floors.
The third became another mess hall, as the second was, and the fourth was turned into a larger recreation room, with a number of computer terminals and TVs lining the walls and a series of desks in the middle of the room. Of course, I'd need to actually set up the computers and such with local information systems, but that wouldn't be too hard.
On the outside, the once blocky structure became smoother, sharp edges replaced with round. The angular protrusions on the side - what once had been the structural supports holding the cargo bay to the ship, - were also smoothed over, becoming roughly cylindrical towers that served more for looks than to hold up the building.
After a couple dozen checks to make sure everything was in order, I remembered to add a front door.
And with that done, the Habitation Blocks were ready. I just needed to build them.
And then fill them with Rebels.
And then look after the Rebels.
Whilst dealing with the Federation at the same time.
And anyone else who tried to stick their noses in.
And I had to manage the Starsong, which was off expanding my little space empire.
Oh well. One problem at a time.
