Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
This is how intergalactic empires are formed: by getting sick of everyone's shit and just invading the lot of them. Except she's contractually obligated to wander, so that's not so much of an option.
Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]
- Thread starter Faith
- Start date
Bah, even Drich took the time to make sure to clean up any messes she made.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
Drich also created a sentient deathbot AI with access to the multiverse and had it work out fine. In the overwhelming majority of cases that ends with a dead multiverse. She's a pretty lucky gal in the situations she ended up in from a simplicity of fixing angle.
Edit: I kinda want her to try one or two more things then just shout "fuck it!" and leave them to their fate. Rebels get to be in charge, because they're slightly less terrible. Or just handwave the whole thing away in a summary chapter. I guess what I'm saying is I'd rather the author spend time writing things that they enjoy writing, and Faith has said that she's basically churning them out to get it over and done with.
@Faith don't underestimate the amount of things that you find boring that you can summarise in a chapter or two and then completely ignore. The vast majority of readers really won't mind if that's what you find more enjoyable, and some will be actively in favour.
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Consider it? Heck, knowing what little Commander Faith did, I'd have bombed all the governmental centers of the Federation straight back to the stone-age.
Declaring groups of Humans to be Non-Human, is pretty much exactly what Hitler did.
Letting these chucklefucks live (in my view) would be like inventing time travel, going back to before Hitler suicided, bringing him back to your time, and telling him "You're free to go."
It's exactly like saying the horrible, horrible war-crimes they committed no longer matter.
Declaring groups of Humans to be Non-Human, is pretty much exactly what Hitler did.
Letting these chucklefucks live (in my view) would be like inventing time travel, going back to before Hitler suicided, bringing him back to your time, and telling him "You're free to go."
It's exactly like saying the horrible, horrible war-crimes they committed no longer matter.
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
Wohoooo, boy. Big reply post. Apologies if this tricks anyone into thinking it's an update.
The Engi priorities threats over objectives in a sense of self-preservation. Remember, due to their networks and functional immortality, the only things the Engi find threatening are things that could conceivably track down and destroy every single Engi installation in the galaxy. Faith has both the firepower and the numbers, as well as better (more precise) FTL tech, better sensors, and better cyberwarfare options, cementing her position as a serious threat.
If they can eliminate something as a threat (whether by violence or diplomacy), then they might consider the threat's objectives and weigh them against their own. In this case, though, they have identified that Faith has sufficient firepower to potentially harm them and are therefore sure as fuck going to investigate. They don't care why the Faith Foundation are there, they just want to make sure the Faith Foundation aren't going to violently murder them all.
If it were up to them, they'd simply negotiate a peace deal with Faith, but she did attack their sponsors and close allies, the Galactic Federation, and are wanted by said Federation because of this.
Existing allies trumps potential new allies, so the Engi are going on the offensive.
tl;dr Galactic Federation is a terrible influence on the Engi.
PACIFIST. THERE WILL BE NO EXTERMINATUS WHILST FAITH IS IN COMMAND. ARE WE CLEAR?
Seven, if I've done my maths right...
trolling restraint from his Creator-Mother.
Functional immortality via infinite resurrection gives the Engi a somewhat... odd view of risks.Engi: they are better than us in every conceivable fashion, And our military might is insufficient to destroy them.
2ndEngi: Lets piss them off and attack them.
Engi: Agreed this cant go wrong for us in any way.
Nope.
In a few months.
Was always a Plan B for Commander Faith. No huge loss. Hopefully the Plan A doesn't fall apart as well.
The Engi are a huge group of networked intelligence - until they made First Contact, they never had to deal with crime or lawbreakers or anything like that. They picked up the idea of criminals and arresting people from the Federation, but... well, the Federation aren't exactly the best teachers for that sort of thing.
The Engi priorities threats over objectives in a sense of self-preservation. Remember, due to their networks and functional immortality, the only things the Engi find threatening are things that could conceivably track down and destroy every single Engi installation in the galaxy. Faith has both the firepower and the numbers, as well as better (more precise) FTL tech, better sensors, and better cyberwarfare options, cementing her position as a serious threat.
If they can eliminate something as a threat (whether by violence or diplomacy), then they might consider the threat's objectives and weigh them against their own. In this case, though, they have identified that Faith has sufficient firepower to potentially harm them and are therefore sure as fuck going to investigate. They don't care why the Faith Foundation are there, they just want to make sure the Faith Foundation aren't going to violently murder them all.
If it were up to them, they'd simply negotiate a peace deal with Faith, but she did attack their sponsors and close allies, the Galactic Federation, and are wanted by said Federation because of this.
Existing allies trumps potential new allies, so the Engi are going on the offensive.
tl;dr Galactic Federation is a terrible influence on the Engi.
Faith's Cyberwarfare suite is... faulty. The defensive elements, mainly, although the offensive elements are also crippled, making them useless against anything that can adapt to them (ie AI)
Yes, there are several copies of the AI. However, Faith does have the locations of all the backups LDC-952 made. If the Rebels made any backups between picking up the AI and the Battle of Earth, Faith doesn't know about them (because she hasn't looked through the flagship's files yet).
Yes, yes she is, and yes, yes they would.
Thank you, and yeah. I'm not exactly the most confident person and I generally just hide behind other people in confrontations. Obviously Commander Faith suffers in the same way, because, well, she's me.
Mea culpa. Douche. /s
Headless Chicken!Faith is pretty much over, by this point. Next setting involves much less politics and shit. And everyone knows that the less likely a problem is to be solved with politics, the easier it is to solve with Dakka.
Well, I rather thought I'd made this point plenty clear before, but apparently not. Let me make this point one last time, just for the people who haven't caught on yet.
PACIFIST. THERE WILL BE NO EXTERMINATUS WHILST FAITH IS IN COMMAND. ARE WE CLEAR?
Yay, crippling social anxiety! Dealing with other people is hard!
No one does as well as Drich-sempai. No one. She's pretty fucking top tier already, and she's only going to get stronger by her seventh jump. Even after having seven jumps herself, Faith is going to be nowhere close.
Seven, if I've done my maths right...
Faith's position as a Multiverse Hopper makes her unfortunately ill-suited to ruling empires, yes.
Faith will. Once she's done what she's set out to do, then she'll wash up and leave. It's like in video games - you advance the story to the next major turning point, then before you do that mission, you go and finish up all the sidequests.
Are you referring to Little1? He's somewhat of an exception because unlike most AI in sci-fi, he was treated like a kid when he was first born, and not a genius military strategist. Plus he inherited god-like levels of
Summary chapter is already planned for the wrap-up of FTL, once the major plot is done (two or three more chapters, and they've not been as bad as these last few with the Engi). I was going to do a set of post-plot-resolution chapters that were more slice-of-life esque, but... fuck it. I'm bored of FTL now. Sorry, Sempai Prime. No warrior-poet Mantis for you (well, maybe a cameo).
Will gladly accept this advice.
Too time consuming for Faith's liking. She's got an entire multiverse to explore, and she'll be damned if she wastes the first fifteen years rebuilding society and annihilating decades of prejudice and bigotry.
This will be addressed. They'll get what's coming to them.
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My god its full of answers.
Love the comment roundup things authors do. It was also nice to get a bit of clarity into the engi mindset, Put like that they dont seem quite as cray cray. More like emulated cray cray they got from other cray people.
Love the comment roundup things authors do. It was also nice to get a bit of clarity into the engi mindset, Put like that they dont seem quite as cray cray. More like emulated cray cray they got from other cray people.
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
I find it's a good habit because it means if people missed something in the text I can clarify, and if they still don't understand, I know that I either didn't clarify well enough, or I need to put it in the text.
In this case, the Engi explanation may come up again later in story, but I figured I'd post it now because as it is, the Engi do look like a bunch of warmongering fuckwits, and having an omnipresent point of view explaining everything is easier than trying to shoehorn it into a narrative.
In this case, the Engi explanation may come up again later in story, but I figured I'd post it now because as it is, the Engi do look like a bunch of warmongering fuckwits, and having an omnipresent point of view explaining everything is easier than trying to shoehorn it into a narrative.
The Big Papa Or Mama of the PA fics. (Gender Remains Uncertain For Author, Author Likes It That Way)
The OG.
The Late Great and Still In Shape.
Originator, That From Which All Others Spawned.
Psychic Master, God of Destruction, Savior of Multiple Galaxies, Crafter of Doom, Mother of AI and Savior of the Last Commander of the Planetary Annihilation Universe (So far as I can tell).
The one whose fic is named: Commander [PA MultiCross SI]
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vyor
KITTY! \o/
In that fic specifically they are noted to be a she.
That people insist that they are a male confuses me greatly.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Drich is a Drich, and that is how it shall remain.
I'm speaking of the author, not the SI, in what you quoted.
Besides....
This, basically.
- Location
- Attempting to cast animate object on a black hole.
It cannot be solved with the amount of Dakka Faith is willing to use, not the amount Faith can use. An important distinction.
vyor
KITTY! \o/
StrangerDanger51
Novice Writer
- Location
- New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Humans find it unnerving when they cant fit the thing they are observing into predetermined stereotypes
EG: Guys Are Buff, Women have Boobs, etc...
I suspect Dirch took on a feminine avatar so they feel more graceful and human-like when dealing with humans, so the humans are more relaxed
It's not just an avatar. At one point she quotes something a pre-wakeing-up-as-giant-doombot friend said about her, and said friend used the female pronoun for her. Now, it's possible said quote was either invented entirely or gender-shifted. but absent actual evidence to the contrary I conclude that Drich is a real-life female.
Actually, that's not all that terrible a plan. Remember, Hitler isn't Victor von Doom; he didn't gain power through personal genius or superlative skill. He was a charismatic leader who really, really hated Jews, in a time when a lot of people really, really hated Jews. There is no chance he could end up doing it again now - even ignoring the fact that he's fucking Hitler, he isn't in a position this time where he has any path to power.
Now, consider what the world today would look like from his perspective. His ideology is dead. He, personally, is a byword and reference point for evil. The country he lead vehemently and forcefully rejected everything to do with his legacy, to the point of outlawing it. The world we live in is a testament to how he failed.
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
You break it, you bought it, Faith.
PyroTechno
The Procrastination Pokemon
Guilty as charged.
Battleship_Fusou
(The Itty-Bitty Pretty Battleship Kitty)
- Location
- Surigao Strait
I am sorry to say, but after speaking with sempai about that same quote in the past, Drich informed me that there was no evidence as to whether or not that quote was actually about sempai.
52 - Preparations
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
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."
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."
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
So, one of the options here is:
EDIT: I always feel a little awkward saying such things in a self-insert story, because it means Faith screwed up in a massive manner. The SI, that is, not the author. The author would be able to parlay such an event into massive character development, so it can actually be a good thing... stories where the protagonist always wins aren't fun, and making the failure their fault is something that doesn't happen nearly often enough on SV.
- Faith sets the Zoltan up as the people in charge of the Federation.
- The Zoltan gleefully agree.
- Faith leaves.
- Humanity quickly goes extinct.
EDIT: I always feel a little awkward saying such things in a self-insert story, because it means Faith screwed up in a massive manner. The SI, that is, not the author. The author would be able to parlay such an event into massive character development, so it can actually be a good thing... stories where the protagonist always wins aren't fun, and making the failure their fault is something that doesn't happen nearly often enough on SV.
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