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Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]

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Beyogi said:
How much energy would be lost with each silly reflection...
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Considering that very idea was proposed in the '70 & '80sby the USAF, and they were dead serious about the idea as an anti-missile defense or even as an 'ultimate' look-down/shoot-down offensive weapon, probably not all that much. And that's with IRL tech between 30-40 years old, rather then the hyper-tech stuff in 2199.

Being able to 'curve' a beam weapon around a planet to allow you to hit damn near anything ANYWHERE on the surface, or do close to the same up in space, while your emitting site is protected by 'armor' the thickness of a planet, generally means you're willing to over-power the beam enough that even if you get utter crap for diffraction, it's still going to hit with an incredible amount of energy per second.
 
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20 - Armoury
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    • So those silly calcs?

    Look at them. Look at them.

    Ridiculous.

    This is the first setting.



    20 - Armoury

    First bit of interesting technology to check out - slow fields.

    I ran a few simulations, testing the limits of the technology.

    In the games, specifically Sanctum 2, upgrading the Slow Field Mines and the Kairos Tower only upgraded the time-slowing effect to a certain point, around 50% for the turret and 40% for the mines.

    I learned that this was because of the power cost of the time-slowing mechanism. After a point, it became more energy-efficient to increase the field's area threefold than squeeze an extra 2% time slow out.

    Interestingly, overlapping time fields caused the time dilation effect to stack - walking into a 50% time field whilst slowed for 40% meant you moved at 50% of your 60% speed, or 30% of your normal speed.

    The requirement was that each field had to come from its own generator, because each generator could only maintain one field at a time. Honestly that wasn't too much of an issue. That just meant double-barrel freeze guns, if I ever needed anything greater than a 50% time slow, and didn't account for the fact that it was possible to overcharge the generator on the Freeze Gun to totally stop time in an affected area for about six seconds, with an admittedly lengthy cool-down.

    Of course, all that was based on a slow-field generator designed to be rapidly deployable, man portable and linked to a power system that included, alongside Fission-Fusion reactors, things so primitive as wind turbines.

    Not even particularly efficient wind turbines.

    I'd already fiddled around with the older Freeze Gun for my Avatars, but now I had a little more time to play around. Where before I'd basically only touched the power supply and the case, now I was able to go all-out.

    The design I ended up with was less 'rifle like' than the Freeze Gun, more suited to a heavy cannon carried like a minigun or over the shoulder like a rocket launcher. Or it would have been, if I'd bothered designing it for infantry. Instead I scaled it up slightly, stuck it on a ball joint, and put it on the shoulder of the basic Dox.

    On second thought, I scrapped that design. The generator on the Dox was more than big enough to handle the relatively minor power drain of the Freeze Gun. Having removed the main bulk of the weapon, I was able to mount two slow field generators under each of the Dox's plasma cannons and leave it at that.

    I contemplated throwing the slow field generators onto some of the other vehicles, like the Kestrels and Hornets.

    And then decided to do it, because I totally wasn't overpowered enough without my air support being able to bog down enemies in time-slowing fields as well as unleashing city-destroying levels of firepower.

    Simply because of the sheer power levels I was capable of outputting through bullshit Progenitor thermodynamics-fuckery, I was able to reach 65.23% slowing on a single shot, with a range approaching five meters diameter per slow-field. Active in time-stop mode, the Kestrels and Hornets were capable of locking down a spherical area with a diameter of eight metres for about twelve seconds.

    Complete and utter bullshit of the highest order.

    And this was only the beginning.

    I mean honestly I didn't think anything else would be able to match up to the sheer bullshit of time-fuckery, bless the Bright Foundation in all their moral bankruptcy, but there were still a few things I wanted to play with.

    Drones, Friendship Lasers, and Focus Lasers were next on my list.

    I'd always liked the idea of drones. Whether the Sanctum-style size-of-your-hand drones, the Halo Sentinels, or even bigger drones like the various drones from FTL, I thought the idea of a swarm of robotic minions was ridiculously cool.

    Which was why I was looking at the Drones now. As for the three types of lasers, I wanted to see if there was any way to combine them. Because all three of the laser types I was looking at had their own individual strong points - armour piercing, being able to chain lasers into single large shots, and being able to increase damage over time through constant firing - and if I could combine them, I might have ended up with something vaguely useful for the Planetary Annihilation scale.

    Combining the Focus and Friendship Lasers was easy. The Friendship Laser was a smaller-scale Focus Laser, which, when fired at another Friendship laser, was caught by a receiver which used the energy to charge up its own laser.

    Also, the reason that in game the Friendship Laser could only chain once was because the capacitors were too small to handle large amounts of power, a problem I quickly fixed with yet more application of bullshit Progenitor hypertech.

    Upscaling the receiver and replacing the various power transmission and capacitor systems, as well as the plasma projection tech, with my own made it possible for heavily upgraded Focus Lasers to supercharge my own, newer Mark II Friendship Lasers, even when firing continuously at maximum blast. It simply made the resulting beam even more ridiculosuly powerful. And the Mark IIs were no longer limited to being boosted by one tower at a time. Now I could have five Focus Towers charging a Mark II Friendship Laser, which could then in turn output simply ridiculous levels of firepower.

    Of course, I could have simply had one stupidly overcharged tower, or remotely transfer the power from any turret to another if it wasn't in range, but this method looked cooler, and honestly I was so far above everyone else in this verse that I didn't think it would make much difference.

    That done, all I needed to do was combine it with the Drones.

    That wouldn't be so easy - the Drones were tiny, whereas the Mark II Friendship Lasers (which really needed a shorter name) were roughly spherical and almost a metre across.

    Downscaling the Mark II would cause it to lose it's massive singular firepower... but would allow it to be fielded by drones and thus in much larger numbers.

    Unfortunately, there was a limit to how much I could downscale it without massively sacrificing the firepower back to useless levels.

    I decided not to bother, instead choosing to mount the Mark II on some of my other units. Namely on my defensive laser towers, in place of the dual laser cannons.

    Which meant that if there was a unit in range of one of my base defence turrets, suddenly it would effectively be in range of all of them.

    Oh, such glorious bullshit.

    I also loaded the blueprints for the Boom spider bot, and replaced the abdominal warhead with a Mark II laser.

    Friendship laser spider death bots, designed to be deployed in swarms.

    Hm.

    I think my Australian is showing.

    I wondered how I would go about making a doombot drop bear.

    The final piece of technology I took a look at was the mind control technology.

    It wasn't anything as fancy as a robotic psionic beacon or whatever it was they had in StarCraft, but it was still a form of neural control that allowed for very basic manipulation of the target, with the limitation that more complex brains took longer to gain control over and were effected for shorter periods of time.

    Not exactly what I'd hoped for. Too clunky to be useful in any ways that mind-control would traditionally be useful for, outside of the scope of Tower Defence style scenarios where the most you wanted was for the guy in front of the enemy army to turn around and punch his friend in the face - fitting, all things considered. I guess it was developed to combat the Lumes, so it was a fair weakness.

    Somewhat disappointed in that particular kind of tech, I turned an eye to the rest of the Bright Foundation's arsenal. There was nothing else particularly of note that I didn't have already - railguns, plasma guns, various explosives, low power DEWs, some kind of energy crossbow... nothing immediately jumped out as super useful beyond what I'd already looked at.

    My tech assimilation complete, I turned my attention back to reality.
     
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    • That energy crossbow could turn out to be really useful later depending on if you can modulate it to work with different kinds.

    Also, you now have prism towers. Everything is fucked forever.
     
    Oh man, I just realized Friendship Lasers MK II on drones don't even NEED good lasers on them. The lasers can be piddly widdly laser pointers for all it matters, because the main thing you should focus on with them is pumping lasers from your laser network in, like with your defense towers. A million miles away, you've got building that're basically GIANT lasers, not done as turrets or anything but just pumping into your laser network, and then the drones can tap into that. They're useless individually, no real armor to speak of, no weaponry, but they're cheap as hell to make, and, the best part?

    When they tap into the laser network, you can have any one of them fire the death beam. So every last one is deadly, and the more you have over more angles, the harder it is to actually get rid of them. Plus, you can beam any part of something if you surround it in drones. Make them able to dodge well, and it'd be like a swarm of laser wasps. Except worse.
     
    Maybe you could have two sets of drones? The Bees that have nothing byt the Drone parts and the laser emitter and receptors no capacitor the receptors are hooked straight to the emitter. Meanwhile the bigger Wasps also has the laser parts plus the capacitors that uses its laser to powers the bees laser. The Wasps could also be use as a carrier, maybe builder of the Bees.

    On the cellphone so sorry for any auto correct shenigenins or tenseness.
     
    tarv said:
    i really want you to go to mlp just for the sheer levels of WTF
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    Actually, that'd be pretty hilarious to see, what with just how vastly different the settings are.

    Honestly, I think tech should not be an important factor when deciding what settings to go to. What really matters is how well developed the setting is, because that means you already have an idea of places to visit, the cultures that are there, the characters and their interactions, and so on.
     
    21 - Trial
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    • So after an incredibly busy week, have a slightly-shorter-than-usual chapter.


    Sorry for the delay :p


    21 - Trial
    Over the next few days, both TSYGAN and the General made several trips down to Kian Six to deal with immigration issues, either alone or together.

    The other thing they dealt with was the construction of a case against the Bright Foundation.

    Humanity First had been far, far too happy to jump on board at the prospect of shutting down the Brightsiders. It was almost scary.

    Well, not really.

    I am a giant robot, and I don't afraid of anything.

    It took almost a week of back and forth between them, Director Keeting, and some high-up Humanity First people on Earth, but eventually the case was declared.

    Humanity First, working with the information TSYGAN and the General provided, immediately had the Bright Foundation put under investigation. Every high-up member of the Bright Foundation had been rushed off to Earth to take part in the hearing, leaving regional managers in charge of an entire solar system of Bright Foundation personnel.

    Which was good, in a way, because it meant no one in the Bright Foundation had enough time to meddle with our operations.

    But it wasn't just the Bright Foundation in the Kian Sector who were effected. Dozens of Bright Foundation high-ups from around the galaxy, as well as several Humanity First members, found themselves plucked from their cushy chairs in high-rise offices and dragged to Earth by interplanetary fair trade officials.

    Of course, the massive influx of people going out of the Kian System (it was, after all, a major transport hub) dwarfed the number of people coming in, but that didn't lessen the significance any.

    Almost ten thousand Humanity First employees from around the galaxy had made their way to Kian Six to assist the present staff in filling out the dreaded visa forms on behalf of the people of Elysion One.

    I was still wondering why the forms had to be filled out by the Humanity First group, instead of, say, the refugees, but that was another matter.

    The Humanity First people were so numerous that they ended up unofficially taking over the now-abandoned Bright Foundation corporate spire in Kian Six' capital city, just so they had enough room and computers to work.

    Joining the flow of people headed out were as TSYGAN and General Whalebrook, taking one of the Pioneers to Earth so they, as well as Reid and the rest of the Bright Foundation's Elysion Project board members, could take part in the hearings as well.

    The presses were calling it the biggest scandal since Witherwood Road - whatever the hell that meant, I didn't feel like checking - and public opinion had massively turned against the Bright Foundation.

    Although apparently that wasn't a new thing by any stretch.

    I was also obviously present at the meeting, in some small form - two of my Avatar droids had accompanied TSYGAN and Whalebrook, and as they'd flown there on one of my Pioneers, I had access to that as well, but my involvement ended there.

    TSYGAN had suggested not getting personally involved any more than I already was, to help fend off awkward questions like 'where the hell did that Faith group get that fleet from?' and 'why didn't they send any representatives besides robots?'

    And yes, the current consensus was that I was not an individual but a group, like Humanity First, the Bright Foundation, or any number of other supercorps.

    Which I guess was almost right. I was an individual mind, but I had lots of bodies. And it was certainly more believable, from their point of view, hell, from my point of view, than a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war.

    Although I hadn't done much to earn that title. Brutal efficiency had gone to the wayside in place of not utterly annihilating the Lumes with ridiculous dakka, and fallen further when I'd chosen to give the refugees more room than they needed in the interests of comfort. Self Replicating - well, I'd done that, no denials there. Mechanism of war, though? I killed some plants.

    Big, angry, sentient plants, but still plants.

    It wasn't really much of a war.

    Nor was the legal battle, despite what the few remaining Bright Foundation supporters were saying.

    Humanity First had apparently gone out of their way to gather every scrap of evidence and every victim or eyewitness they could get their hands on, because two days into the hearing, less than ten percent of the evidence had been presented.

    It was something closer to 4%, actually.

    It was going to take almost two months to finish laying out the case, assuming the court went full bore every day, with no breaks.

    I dreaded to think of the kind of legal fees that would rack up.

    Probably enough to sink the Bright Foundation even if they were somehow proven innocent on all counts.

    There was no way in hell the Bright Foundation would be able to defend against all of those allegations. They were, as I'd said, collapsing like a house of cards.

    Which was good, because they really were bastards, and the majority of them deserved it.

    ---

    "Excuse me, Faith?"

    I flicked through the various cameras until I found what I was looking for. A rather well-built Core Guardian with bleached blond hair and piercing purple eyes - some kind of Bright Foundation gene-mod, although I wasn't sure why you'd want such a thing - was sat at the communications console on the bridge of one of the Pioneers.

    I turned the screen on, displaying nothing but a green circle and a volume bar.

    "Can I help you?"

    As I spoke, the circle pulsed and light shot across the screen.

    The Core Guardian looked at the screen, raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and got on with it.

    "I was hoping you could. Captain Maller, Core Guardian. A couple of my men wanted a chance to stretch their legs, and Deputy Director Munning wanted to speak with me. I figured we could kill two birds with one stone. If you could just park this ship down on Kian Six, my teams can take some shore leave whilst I chat with Munning."

    Ah, this would be the guy Whalebrook had left in charge, then.

    For a moment I was confused that he'd been put in charge, despite Skye Autumn being the leader of the Core Guardians, but then I remembered she was borderline psychopathic and wanted nothing more than to watch Lumes die in incredibly gory, visceral ways.

    Probably for the best Maller was in charge.

    "I don't see why that would be a problem. Give me a moment to confer with Major Collins and I'll tell you when we're headed planetside."

    "Thank you, Faith." The soldier paused, scratching the back of his neck. "For everything."

    "No problem." The screen winked out and I watched the soldier stand and leave the bridge.
     
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    • Can I just take a moment to tell you how much I love the absence of direct, violent conflict? :)

    It's fine sometimes, but kind of boring when the outcome is fixed. Legal battles, resettling, social conflict... that's a far more viable area of conflict for this story, not to mention the inevitable battles (hopefully not literal) when the humans finally figure out what Faith is.
     
    22 - Waiting
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    • Busy life continues to be busy. Short chapters continue to be short. Road trip tomorrow, probably not going to get much written. Expect delays :(



    22 - Waiting
    The worst thing about waiting for one hundred and fifty thousand migration visas to be filled out?

    Waiting for one hundred and fifty thousand migration visas to be filled out.

    I was bored.

    There was nothing I could do to speed up the court hearings, nothing I could do to help the migration, and nothing left to do on Loek III.

    Well, nothing I could do without causing all sorts of problems of the 'ohshitalienaihackingourstuff' category.

    Probably for the best if I tried to avoid that kind of thing.

    I dipped into the Bright Foundation's databanks for the eightieth time and searched for anything interesting.

    I looked at fashion, food, and pop culture, and found all three to be somewhat... lacking.

    I guess when you're a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war with supposed multiversal travel capabilities, the ideas of shopping for nice clothes and having a nice meal don't really appeal any more, even if they are eight hundred years ahead of the curve.

    I moved on to the less public files, once again skipping over the personnel records. I'd already sent copies to Humanity First, so they could accurately fill out the visas, so there was no reason for me to look at them.

    The military designs - the useful ones, anyway - had already been totally assimilated into my network, and there was nothing of note to see there.

    There were several hundred pages of documentation about the Lumes, as well as recorded experiment results.

    Looking at them was interesting, but even with the incredible biotechnology and genetic engineering research to be gained from the Lumes - research that the Bright Foundation had been using rather successfully in medical programs, - it wasn't really that impressive compared to my own feats of engineering.

    Although if I ever needed an army of sentient plant monsters, I had that information on hand, I guess.

    ---

    "...in addition, document CUY 81-73 indicates that the Bright Foundation had effectively enslaved the local population of Miridanus Nine in order to..."

    The Avatar slowly swivelled its head, taking in the rest of the room.

    TSYGAN was slumped over a desk, drooling. Whalebrook, sitting beside her, was sat back in his chair, head titled to the side. He looked half asleep, but at least he was pretending to care.

    Everyone else in the room appeared to be in similar situations. Everyone except the lawyer looked incredibly bored. Even the Bright Foundation board members apparently couldn't muster up the emotion to act disgusted at the long, long list of allegations.

    About seventy percent done with displaying the evidence.

    Just another ten or so days of tortuously slow legal proceedings to go.

    I did not envy them in the slightest.

    ---

    "Ah, Captain Maller. Something I can do for you?"

    The Core Guardian in question was sitting in the communications seat of the Pioneer, staring into the blank screen. I quickly switched the screen's display to the pulsing green display and he sat up straight.

    "Faith, yes. Deputy Director Munning said that his team's completed almost two thousand of the refugee visas. He was wondering if you wanted to start sending them down now, ease the situation on the other ships."

    I thought for a moment before answering.

    "Ask the Deputy Director where he wants them, first off, and ask him to send up a list of names. I'll be able to teleport them down to the surface. It's probably the easiest way of doing it."

    The Core Guardian nodded. "What's the situation with the General?"

    "Still on Earth, still presenting. The Bright Foundation are getting hammered. Just the records from Elysion One were enough to throw most of the Bright Bastards in jail for years, but then the FCA and the URW requested permits to investigate their activities on other worlds... things spiralled pretty rapidly out of control."

    He nodded, brushing a strand of blonde hair away from his eyes. "It just seems a little unfair that the low level workers seem to be grouped in with the rest as far as the public's concerned. I saw on the news earlier that one of the Bright Foundation car dealership got firebombed. Even here on Kian we've seen Bright Foundation workers being taken in by protective services. It's insane."

    One of the other tweaks I'd made to the Pioneers - human accessible controls. Now the crews could actually use things like the TVs and holoprojectors without me managing everything for them. The Core Guardians had most of the TVs on their Pioneer linked to the Kian news channels. The Rats, on the other hand, mainly seemed to watch silly cartoons and sports. An odd contrast.

    The most embarassing thing about it was that manual controls was something I'd only remembered to add after someone asked how to lock the door in the toilets.

    Shh.

    "Yes, it's most unfortunate. No one deserves to get their place of work attacked like that because their boss's boss's boss's bosses did something evil. Hopefully, however the court case turns out, those workers will get something good out of it. New jobs at Tsygan Incorporated, perhaps."

    The Core Guardian's face shifted to a grimace for just a second before settling in a more neutral position. He shrugged. "I'll head out and talk to Munning, get those names you wanted."

    He slid offscreen, and I quickly switched to one of the other cameras to watch him as he left the bridge, headed for either the recreation room or his private room.

    As he did so, I ordered one of my Orbital Fabricators to move away from the FTL Gate and into Kian Six's orbit, towards the city where I'd landed Maller's Pioneer.

    ---

    "Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. The process of relocating you all to Kian Six is going to be long, but we've already begun and Humanity First are making quite good progress. That in mind, we're going to begin offloading people immediately."

    On one hundred and two different vessels, people fell silent and perked up.

    "Now, don't all get your hopes up just yet - getting everyone sorted and offloaded is likely going to take at least a couple of weeks. However, if you hear your name read out, could you please pack your belongings and get yourself to the Teleporter Room on the Deck Three. Avatars will be on hand to ensure only those people with permits may go through, so don't bother trying to sneak past them - you will be caught and I will ask your name to be moved to the bottom of the list."

    "Now that those technicalities are out of the way, can I get the following people to report to the Teleporter Room on Deck Three - Adrian Addis, Alecia Addis..."
     
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    • 23 - Visa
  • Threadmarks
    • Life continues to suck. Updates continue to be slow. My apologies.

    Wrapping up the Sanctum arc now, I feel it's dragged on a tad long. Just a couple chapters away from FTL: Faster Than Light.

    23 - Visa
    No, I changed my mind.

    Waiting for one hundred and fifty thousand visas to be processed was absolutely fucking nothing compared to waiting for one hundred and fifty thousand people to leave my ships.

    Most of them decided that now there weren't any giant kaiju after them, they no longer had any reason to rush at all, and the first two thousand took almost four hours to leave.

    Four hours.

    That was enough time for me to evacuate the entire city. Four times over.

    Five hundred people an hour through one hundred separate teleporters was not okay.

    Eugh.

    It was almost as if they didn't want to leave.

    A couple of them even had to be escorted out by my Avatars.

    I wasn't sure quite why they wanted to stay so badly - the rooms were cramped, the food was, as I'd gathered from the reactions of those dining, rather mediocre, and the generally crowded state of the ships made it noisy as hell and near-impossible to navigate without bumping into someone.

    Given the alternative was a fully furnished home on one of the wealthiest and most popular colonies in this part of the galaxy, it was outright stunning.

    Either way, about a month after the first group left, so too did the last group, stepping through the Teleporter on Voyager 54 and emerging into the sunlight for the first time in eight weeks, moving on into their new lives.

    ---

    The court case had continued on apace, but at no point did it ever become interesting.

    The Bright Foundation hadn't even attempted to fight back.

    I didn't blame them. Against enough paperwork to deforest Endor, I would've given up as well. There was no way in hell they could have constructed any sort of viable defence to that.

    Once the absolutely ridiculous amount of evidence was presented, it basically devolved to just stacking up the highest possible punishment on each member of the Bright Foundation one at a time.

    Which boiled down, very simply, to three hundred high ranking officials with life sentences, two thousand more with long jail sentences, and a whopping six hundred thousand hours of combined community service.

    Also enough credits that you could have bought a gemstone the size of Jupiter. You know, or three.

    The sad thing was, split between the various victims across the galaxy, it totalled less than four thousand credits a head in compensation, even for those who had been literally used as meat shields for a bunch of stuck-up scientists and corporate executives.

    Still, overall, a victory for both the legal system and the victims. The Bright Foundation, as I'd promised, had collapsed like a house of cards.

    Honestly the biggest problem was that they had to sell most of their assets to cover the expenses of the court case and the multitude of repayments, meaning that there was no company left for TYSGAN to hijack.

    Although I wasn't sure that was going to be a problem - she seemed to get along quite well with a couple of the Humanity First staff, and I was fairly certain she'd be able to get a job from them if she really needed one. As TSYGAN met up with Whalebrook again and the two made their way back to the Pioneer, I turned my attention away from the court case and back to matters closer to home. Well, Kian. Whatever.

    ---

    The single Avatar droid somehow went totally unimpeded from the starport, through the city centre, into the residential district, and right up to the small complex the Core Guardians had been housed in.

    Not one person found the lean green war machine an even slightly interesting sight. Or if they did, they only looked at it weirdly when it wasn't looking back. Which, in hindsight, I couldn't really blame them for. Everyone on Elysion had seen or heard what my bombers had done to the Titan, and the people on Kian had probably just assumed that the Avatar was nothing special - after all, the Elysion Refugees had turned up on entire fleets of 'Faith Foundation' vessels. Everyone was either too terrified to interrupt me or didn't know I was important enough to matter.

    Ha.

    The Avatar approached its destination with near-silent steps, coming to a halt outside the door of apartment 24. At this point, a couple of the Core Guardians had glanced over, but none approached.

    I paused for a moment before devoting myself to the task, and the robot knocked.

    After several silent seconds, Haigen opened the door, bleary eyed. His hair was a mess and there were bags under his eyes.

    "Haigen."

    The former slum rat blinked at me a couple of times before recognising me.

    "Faith. What's up? Can I grab you a coffee?"

    I didn't answer.

    After a moment he realised his mistake.

    "Oh, right. Sorry, I'm a little tired. First good night's sleep in months. Come on in. What's up?"

    The Avatar followed him through the doorway into the small living space in his apartment. Haigan shuffled over to the kitchenette on the far side of the room, and went about making himself some coffee.

    "Two things. First, I'm having a little meeting, about lunch time tomorrow, on Pioneer 1. Could you grab Skye, Sweet, and Simo and tell them? I'd do it myself but I have other things to oversee."

    Haigen shrugged and took a huge swig of coffee. "Sure, no problem. What else?"

    "TSYGAN and Whalebrook are on their way back from Earth." The Avatar reached out, uncurling its fist to reveal a single credit chit. "Buy the goddamn girl some flowers."

    The Avatar dropped the credit chit on the nearby table and left, closing the door behind it.

    Not that I was trying to be an asshole to the poor guy, or anything, but I really did have other things to do.

    Next on my list - Captain Maller.

    I found him on the ground floor of the complex, in what might have once been a restaurant that had been converted into a public mess hall area. He was sat with two other guardians - his squad-mates, probably, - and chomping down on a slice of toast.

    "Captain Maller."

    The soldier glanced over his shoulder, spotted me, and quickly climbed to his feet.

    "Faith? To what do we owe the pleasure?"

    "General Whalebrook is returning from Earth now. He'll be back in a few hours, at which point I believe he intends to retake command."

    Maller grinned and shot a glance at the rest of the people in the mess hall. Most had fallen silent and were trying very hard to make it look like they hadn't been eavesdropping. "Good. I'm fed up of running this damned circus."

    The soldiers laughed heartily, Maller grinning like a madman.

    The joke hadn't even been that funny, but I guess this was the first time they'd had a chance to just relax without the looming threat of, well, Lumes, ruining the attitude.

    I could forgive them for that.

    "Tomorrow lunch, head over to the starport. We're having a quick meeting. Just so you know."

    Maller frowned, then shrugged and nodded. "No problem. See you around, then?"

    "Indeed. Thank you, again, for managing everything whilst the General's been away."

    "Well, I've just been dealing with Munning. He's been doing the hard work."

    "Perhaps. Either way... they say the hardest part about dealing with soldiers is telling them to hurry up and wait. I'm glad your men didn't blow up the city whilst the General and I were busy."

    "Ahaha, no, we're too disciplined for that... what have you been doing the past month, anyway? I know you weren't involved in the trial."

    "Well... you know what, I'll tell you tomorrow."

    ---

    On the newly-abandoned planet of Loek III, a number of Air Fabricators were clustered around their latest construction.

    A portal, a Dimensional Gate.

    According to ROB's message, this would allow me to expand beyond Sanctum and visit the rest of the multiverse.

    Fun.
     
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    • If you're talking about FTL...

    I was never very clear to me which side was "in the right", in that universe. Rebels, or Federation? We only get the military view, along with definite evidence that the war has made things very bad for civilians. Most rebels do appear to have grievances.

    I suppose helping the civilians out is a good start, but given the scale of the problem... you could easily end up running a Pax Fide.

    Which would be fun. Certainly you're capable of it. You may need to copy your mind a few thousand times, but that's a-ok, right?
     
    That's actually one of the things that's going to come up. If the Federation are the 'good guys', why do the dissenting rebels (consisting of only one race/mainly one race, unlike the Feds), outnumber and outgun them so badly?

    Probably because lots of people want to rebel against the Feds. Does not bode well for them being a nation of peace and virtue.
     
    Faith said:
    That's actually one of the things that's going to come up. If the Federation are the 'good guys', why do the dissenting rebels (consisting of only one race/mainly one race, unlike the Feds), outnumber and outgun them so badly?

    Probably because lots of people want to rebel against the Feds. Does not bode well for them being a nation of peace and virtue.
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    Aye, but here's thing important part: All the rebels consist of Humans. What about all the other alien races? Why do they not join the rebellion? Perhaps the rebels are supremacists, maybe the federation sacrificed human wellbeing too many times in favor of Alien races? It's probable neither of them are angels, but which of them are the lesser evil?
     
    Mechanis said:
    nah, you want the Reflecting Satellite Cannon:

    because fixed-arc land-based weapon with NO BLIND SPOTS.
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    Thats nice. The one i suggested has no blind spots either. And it isnt fixed... its fully mobile. And it can cover the entire solar system. And, instead of some future-tech generator/energy system, its solar powered. Both the main function and the satellites.

    Free power.

    Free.

    Power that can be allocated elsewhere.

    And its redundant in its construction. With the one you suggested, all one has to do is take out the projector. With mine, you have to take out a LOT of satellite dishes before you can seriously diminish its power.
     
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