I enjoyed the chapter even if you didn't!
Yay!

Threadmark. One is missing.
Nah.

Also hey that's a nice update.
Yay!

Oh boy! Lightning Round! :D
*chanting* Lighting round, lightning round, lightning round...

And I thought Fusou was supposed to be the lewd one.:)
L-lewd? What are you implying? *blushes*

Faith, your avatar looks thoroughly unimpressed.
Meow.

About the same look we had when we were told she didn't just hug her router? :p
Didn't. Happen.

I think the avatar is more unimpressed with all the work they have to do to set up this colony (and illusion).
Absolu-
All KittyFaith wants is for Fusou to pet her all day long.

...

:ogles::ogles:
*slaps Ovid*

Much, much too late my dear...
*distressed whine*

edit: And Ovid, I can see what you mean... probably shouldn't imagine it, seeing as my mind sees the gutter as a nice place to hide out in, but still I understand what you mean...
*slaps Zjunrei*

Is that a "head slap" rating or a "slap Ovid" rating? If it's a "slap Ovid" rating, I sincerely apologize. If it's a "head slap" rating, then I shall grin cheekily and walking away whistling merrily.
*slaps Ovid*

It's so cute the innuendo and flirting the two of you keep throwing back and forth.
W-what? N-no! I-it was j-just a compliment! *blushes very heavily*
 
<Gamma> *o_O's at Sempais and their antics.* I am the only sane Commander, I knew it. Yep. Totally sane. Welp, back to dumping weapons technology on the black market in an unsettled area and enabling the rogue Collective AI. Dum de dum dum dum~
 
79 - Plotting
EDIT: Damnit Tiki, you broke my double post.

79 - Plotting

The city itself was much like the Citadel back on my hub world - as opposed to the Citadel here, in the Mass Effect universe. I had a feeling that was going to get confusing at some point. Damned sci-fi writers, and their lack of originality when naming things.

Anyway, the city. The initial landing site we'd chosen to build at was a large, open plain covered in a thick carpet of grass. There were a number of reasons for this - it was large, flat, and empty, making it perfect for large scale constructions, just a few kilometres north of the bay we'd decided would be the final resting place of the currently-fictional FFV Ringworld, and surrounded on two sides by woodland and the other two by vast swathes of rugged terrain, a patchwork of steep hills and deep valleys.

The 'older' areas of the city, the parts closest to Ringworld Bay, contained buildings that were large horizontally - wide and long, but not particularly tall, representing the lack of construction capabilities the original settlers would have possessed. We'd tried to keep the area at least a little natural - nature strips, parks and gardens were scattered throughout that part of the city, adding a little of the best color ever, green, to the otherwise entirely-white city.

After a little deliberation, Hope and I had agreed to expand this section of the city all the way through the woodlands to the beaches, creating a sort of 'suburban' area, where nature was still present in some respect.

As the city stretched towards the northern edge of the field, the buildings got taller and taller, and markedly more exotic in terms of their designs, with protruding segments to serve as landing pads or just for the fancy aesthetic. That said, none of the buildings were particularly tall by the standards of other places - the tallest tower in the area was only twenty four stories, just barely higher than the level of the nearby cliffs. The ground around these buildings was almost all completely converted to Elysion Alloys - only a few small garden areas remained once we were done.

Further north of the city, into the border of the mountainous area, was the spaceport, abusing the high ground of the cliffs to serve as a better launching point for all our aerospace vessels, ranging from Gageas and our new Liatris dropships all the way up to the Birch and Juniper cruisers - although only one of them could be docked at a time.

To either side of the north-south strip of city was farmland - well, it wasn't technically 'farmland' yet, because we'd yet to plant crops, but the area was criss-crossed by irrigation channels that doubled as canals for the shipment of crops.

The network of canals actually ran through the city as well, in some areas, forming just a small part of the vast public transport network. Along with the canals, there were elevated pedestrian walkways and monorail lines above a network of roads and train tracks that allowed easy access to almost any point in the city.

Admittedly, we… may have gotten a little carried away - not just with the transport networks, a habit drilled into me and by extension Hope from hours of playing SimCity, but with the place as a whole.

I'm not entirely sure what Fusou had in mind when she gave us free reign to set up a colony, but I doubted it would be this.

Then again, she knew I was a Commander - maybe she expected me to run one of the Planetary Assimilation protocols and turn the place into New Cybertron, or something. In which case, I guess she would be disappointed.

Ah, well. Keeping her satisfied wasn't exactly a high-priority goal of mine.

Once our vast horde of builders had completed their work on the city of New Bondi, - which almost looked like something ripped straight from Mirror's Edge at this point, with the bland white-and-glass buildings and the occasional splotches of colour, - Hope and I descended to the planet once more to give it some finishing touches - lights, street posts, public information terminals, park benches, and other such trivial but nonetheless important objects.

Going over the entire city and doing that took as an entire day cycle and then some. We did a little work on the interior of some of the buildings, but quickly gave up on that - the task was so enormous, and so boring, that neither of us particularly cared for it.

Besides, if anyone ever came to stay the could always decorate the place themselves. Custom furniture wouldn't exactly be an issue for us. We could even sell it for free. Heh.

---

Once work on New Bondi had pretty much come to a complete halt, we left a few hundred Medical Bays active, churning out yet more randomized NeoAvatars to 'inhabit' the city - ie, to follow basic pathfinding and wander at random around the city. Just enough to fool a casual spying eye, not that we expected to encounter any all the way out here.

After all, whilst it was a garden world, and thus of immense interest to the council, it was also several months of FTL travel from the nearest Relay-reachable system, and no ship in the Council armada could hope to achieve that kind of distance without frying the crew, burning up, and exploding due to the rather finicky limitations of Eezo FTL.

Leaving the city to its own devices, Hope and I then travelled slightly further along the coast, heading south from Ringworld Bay until we found another aquatic alcove, surrounded almost entirely by mountains and semi-active volcanoes, casting the sky grey with ash.

Secluded, isolated, and protected from prying eyes. The perfect location for our new military testing base.

---

"See, I kind of want to call it Bikini Cove, because the place where they tested the nukes was Bikini Atoll, but I'm worried if we do that, people will get the completely wrong idea," Hope's avatar complained, kicking her legs over the edge of the mountain cliff. "And I can't think of any other good historical references."

My own avatar sat just behind hers, cross legged on the ledge overlooking the cove. Well, actually, it was more of a bay - and that's where I got the idea for the name.

"Hope. I have a brilliant idea. I get that you want to name it after the nuke testing site, but there's another bay known for gratuitous explosions, too."

Hope turned, looking over her shoulder at me. "Wait, that one in Russia where all the nuclear subs are?"

I smirked. "No, no. I was thinking more…"

---

Once we'd settled on a name, we set to work on the actual constructions. Unlike New Bondi, we had no plans to restrict our use of Progenitor technology here - huge underground caverns were constructed and filled to the brim with Fabricators and teleporters. A small surface compound was created, more for the purpose of housing a wide array of sensors and communications equipment than for any habitation purposes, but, just for giggles, Hope and I included a large air-traffic control tower, allowing occupants to look over the bay at the various testing areas.

The meat of the construction work finished, we ordered a couple of Fabricators to work on constructing an elevated highway/railway between the two colonies. And whilst they did that, Hope and I put our science hats on.

Or rather, our SCIENCE! hats.

---

Of course, we weren't just playing SimCity with our new planet. Rather, we'd been doing a little snooping - not us directly, but a number of Gagea craft had been out and about, our hidden eyes throughout Batarian space.

They, combined with the data Fusou had given us, which had included several important and highly-classified Hegemony reports, many of which concerned the capture and/or assassinations of several dozen political dissidents amongst the Hegemony, gave us a pretty good idea of the political scene in the Hegemony.

And it was, quite frankly, a mess.

Over the past four years, almost seven thousand outspoken activists and political revolutionaries had been captured and enslaved, or flat out executed, by the Batarian military in top-secret raids.

In fact, one group of such dissidents, the leaders and members of a failed resistant movement on Lorek, were currently in a high-security facility waiting for a transfer to Khar'shan, where they would be executed publicly as enemies of the state.

Except not, because I planned to intervene a little before then.

For that, I'd rolled out the rest of my first fleet of Rowans - FFVs Avery Johnson, Edward Buck, Chipps Dubbo, Pete Stacker, and John Forge, and they had linked up with the Jacob Keyes in orbit over Miranda, waiting for a chance to strike.

That chance would come, if the Batarians stuck to their schedule, in just over two weeks, when they loaded their prisoners onto the Hegemony Dreadnought Might of Khar'shan. It would be a dangerous mission - since I was 'undercover', my ships were built to Mass Effect-verse combat specifications, and not my own, at least in terms of durability, and since I intended to board the Dreadnought, their Progenitor-grade firepower was a complete non-factor.

After all, there were some people on that boat I wanted to meet, and it absolutely would not do to accidentally vaporise the lot of them with a swipe of the CLAWs - that is, the Coordinated Laser Array Weaponry, not literal claws built onto the sides of my ships.

Although… hm. I filed that idea for later.

The Hegemony had gone to a lot of trouble to capture these people alive, as well - this was the single largest group of captured revolutionaries in fifty years, an unusual display of effort from the otherwise murder-happy governing body. And that was very good for me, because these revolutionaries were special - unlike a lot of other revolutionaries, who wanted simply to put themselves at the top of the political ladder, they wanted to completely scrap the caste system and do away with the slave trade.

And they had been clever about it, too. The Hegemony filled their own little slice of space with so much propaganda promoting the innate superiority of the Batarians over their two-eyed space neighbours that the Batarian public had started to legitimately believe it.

The revolutionary group, calling themselves the Judak Nurr, argued that if Batarians were so superior, mentally and physically, then their nation's strength should come from them, not their slaves, and that relying so much on slaves as opposed to their own labour was a disgrace to the Pillars of Strength.

Apparently, some element of the Pillars of Strength promoted the idea that each Batarian should work for their own strength, and whilst the Hegemony had twisted that to 'each Batarian should enslave as many lesser people as possible', the Judak Nurr were happy to promote their slave-free alternative - as was I, to be perfectly honest.

They'd further argued that, if the Batarians were to be a truly strong member of the galactic community, then they needed each to possess the freedom to work how they did best.

Personally, I thought that sounded like an invitation to have everyone tripping over each other's feet and no one ever getting anything actually done, but either way, they wanted to promote a more diplomatic Batarian Hegemony, and I was totally willing to support their efforts.

The fact that the Hegemony had decided that this particular group of dissidents was important enough to capture alive and publicly execute, when so many others had been simply silenced in the night, spoke volumes, I felt.

Which is why I wanted to pay them a little visit. Fusou's records had contained slightly older documents, dated two weeks ago - whether that was because there hadn't been any updates or because Fusou just hadn't bothered to steal them, I didn't know, but the records I did have suggested that a large number of the revolutionaries were either former military veterans, ex-mercenaries, or bounty hunters - trained combatants, basically.

The rest were of varied professions, including chefs, engineers, dock workers, entertainers, and scientists, proving that this wasn't just another violent uprising. According to the Hegemony's reports, though, the upper echelons of the Judak Nurr were largely politicians, political scientists, philosophers, and preachers, presumably the ones responsible for promoting the slave-free version of the Pillars of Strength.

That, if nothing else, gave me a little bit of hope for the future of the Batarian race. The rebellion in the FTLverse had been lead by dissatisfied military commanders and terrorist leaders, only too happy to destroy entire cities or burn worlds from orbit in order to get their targets.

Hopefully, the Judak Nurr's inner circle would be more against that sort of thing, even if I didn't make it a requirement of my support. The revolutionary movement's higher ups all seemed like responsible individuals, mature enough to recognise the flaws in the 'nuke everything' plan, and from what the Hegemony's records suggested, any one of them would have made a capable leader for a new, democratic Batarian government.

Then again, I am an Australian, and therefore pretty much the opposite of a political expert. When it came to picking leaders, we, as a country, had a pretty terrible record.

The leader I had in mind for the new Batarian government, however, was one Krilak Thol, the leader of the Judak Nurr, and, by all accounts, the mastermind behind the earlier stages of the group's success, as well as the key figurehead of the movement.

Yes, he and I were going to have a little chat.
 
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<Gamma> *o_O's at Sempais and their antics.* I am the only sane Commander, I knew it. Yep. Totally sane. Welp, back to dumping weapons technology on the black market in an unsettled area and enabling the rogue Collective AI. Dum de dum dum dum~
Hey! Some of the rest of us are sane! I haven't made Behemoth break dance! Yet! See? Totally sane.
 
Interesting. Mhhmm. I wonder what happens when the humans come to visit with their easy to reach Miranda slipspace drives.... fully colonized by barely programmed NeoAvatars.

Muhahahaha
Once work on New Bondi had pretty much come to a complete halt, we left a few hundred Medical Bays active, churning out yet more randomized NeoAvatars to 'inhabit' the city - ie, to follow basic pathfinding and wonder at random around the city.
... wander?

... Oh god I hope this was supposed to be giggles and not some new word that combines the word giggles with... excrement.
 
<Gamma> *o_O's at Sempais and their antics.* I am the only sane Commander, I knew it. Yep. Totally sane. Welp, back to dumping weapons technology on the black market in an unsettled area and enabling the rogue Collective AI. Dum de dum dum dum~
Rachel: Hey what about me?
*Research network ding*
Rachel: Oh, this is nice. MWAH HA HA HA HA!
Rachel: Sorry, what were we talking about?

Ah, well. Keeping her satisfied wasn't exactly a high-priority goal of mine.
So how does this mesh with the:
I didn't want to use her once and never talk to her again, after all.
From the last chapter? :p

Or rather, our SCIENCE! hats.
The ones with the Tesla coils on them to create lightning when you start cackling?
 
Awesome. Although...

"Hope. I have a brilliant idea. I get that you want to name it after the nuke testing site, but there's another bay known for gratuitous explosions, too."

Hope turned, looking over her shoulder at me. "Wait, that one in Russia where all the nuclear subs are?"

I smirked. "No, no. I was thinking more…"

You didn't name it after Brockton Bay, did you?
 
<Gamma> *o_O's at Sempais and their antics.* I am the only sane Commander, I knew it. Yep. Totally sane. Welp, back to dumping weapons technology on the black market in an unsettled area and enabling the rogue Collective AI. Dum de dum dum dum~
You haven't meet Drich yet.

Also: why no one names their ships in Quenya? For maximum distractoconfusion.

Additionally, Faith would need to upgrade NeoAvatars with Adjuctant protocols, later, to simulate planet better.
 
You haven't meet Drich yet.

Also: why no one names their ships in Quenya? For maximum distractoconfusion.

Additionally, Faith would need to upgrade NeoAvatars with Adjuctant protocols, later, to simulate planet better.
Something I'm doing later is going to result in a lot of ships named in a language I',m making up, but to respond to the actual question, because nobody except my friend wesley has time to sit down with an Elvish dictionary and try to find appropriate words.
 
So Fousou has adopted the humans, Tiki has adopted the Geth (or the Geth have adopted him), Faith is apparently going to adopt the Batarians, so I guess Drich will either try to salvage the Reapers or adopt the Citadel Council.
 
Drich adopts the Krogans, maybe?

No, wait. Drich likes psychic eldritch beings that are misunderstood by others or need redeeming...

Drich adopts the Rachni. (And the Thorian, after it has some time out of others' heads.)
 
This is the same Faith that left Humanity in the tender cares of its alien neighbor, right?

Welp. GG, bro.
 
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