The fact that something, somewhere, is poking things that it should not be able to (Shiplord opinion) rates high enough in their opinion to bulk up their Tribute Fleets. Something to be aware of however, is that the
Medicament did not involve itself at all in the battle until a certain point, and when it
did, it did so for a reason quite different than the one
Collector being savaged by your
Ulfberht squadron. The way that the rolls fell have made that appear to be deceptive, and from an IC perspective it's certainly assumed to be the case given available data. OOC, I can tell in all certainty that it's not. Perhaps I failed to make this clear, both in the Interlude and other discussion around it, in which case you have my apologies. Let me lay it out:
- Humanity poked something that they shouldn't have, got noticed, and Phoebe slagged Project Insight to stop their location being tracked.
- The Shiplords reacted to this in several ways.
- increasing the deployment figures for all Tribute fleets in the sector they were able to track the disturbance to.
- [REDACTED]
- [ALSO REDACTED]
- Increasing the general alert level of the sector.
Then the Tribute Fleet rocks up at Sol. They go in, and you spring a perfect, Practice-enhanced ambush in the faces of a fleet that for all the alerts still expected a milk run. I mean, humanity was on its First Appraisal. So you managed to find the Subnet, that's not particularly normal, and you had a cool new toy, but it's wasn't anything they felt they couldn't handle. Swift development, sure, but not enough to really start alarm bells ringing. The virtual attack sets off a few, but when it actively runs from the oversight AIs, it's discounted as something of a hail Mary. If you could take down the system hub, it's logical that you could find a way to break the hidden system hooks and use them to attack their systems. No matter, if you've put all this effort into the cyber side of things and that new toy they have schematics of, there can't be much else you have in reserve.
Then the
Medicament gets wiped out of existence before it can properly deploy, and the Tribute Fleet suicide charges you for "Error 414: Reasons Not Found".
Before I finish, however, let me touch on the Shiplord perspective interlude. That was the perspective of their first line, a relay station,
not a command post. They're there to keep information flowing, and report in losses like this one. So of course they react professionally, they don't show any of the worry or fear they might be feeling. It's locked behind layers of protocol, and in the moment it hardly registers. Izhn and the relay's Captain clearly dislike the analysis that the former arrives at, but actual decision making on the matter will be made at a far higher level than them. This sort of thing has happened before, yes, but it's made clear (I thought) in the interlude that it also does not happen often at
all. Referring to the analysis done by Izhn as "a slapdash theoretical analysis" however, verges on silliness.
The station AI had already put together scenarios, done the meat of the analysis. What Izhn was doing was giving it a 'human' (Shiplord?) touch and their own opinion as the most recent member of the relay's crew to have been assigned to Fleet Intelligence. I'm not really sure what you expected other than that, to be quite honest.
Right now, humanity's defeat of a Tribute Fleet is highly unusual so early, but not completely outside of the Shiplord's contextual framework. I initially began with the intention that it would be vast surprise, that it would prompt panic and shock and give you the salt that I know a lot of people were possibly looking forward to. But the more I thought about it, and struggled to put it together, I realised that from the information they have right now it
is a minor hiccup from the perspective of the Shiplords. File forms A through Q, send off all data to command. Job done.
I'm also very curious as to where you got the idea that lagless sensors are of any use beyond ranges of a lightday or so, especially as I'm pretty sure I've told you that Shiplords suffer from the same limits as yourselves in that field. You can't build a VLA of lagless sensors to increase the range, it just doesn't work like that. You hit a certain range limit, and your signal strength flat-up dies. So quite beyond the matter of the release of an investigation being a decision for higher authority, I'm not sure how the Shiplords are meant to investigate. Whilst it's a bit of a surprise for them, I'm uncertain as to why you expected them to
care.
It's certainly a big surprise for the other races of the galaxy, however. As far as they're concerned (Neras Emergence excluded), what humanity did is completely unprecedented.
And...I'm stopping. Because I'm halfway into ranting, which isn't good for anyone, and I apologise if I already have.
Latest tally:
Vote Tally : Original - Sci-Fi - The Practice War | Page 193 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[1] You have spent decades of your life putting the world back together, and you trust that work deeply. Not all are part of the Circles, but the bond of humanity itself will be stronger than any rage.
[2] Appeal to the past, to the work of the Elder First before you, and all they gave to rebuild a humanity that was more than just a weapon.
[3] Write-In: "We have already taken steps toward harmony in a way that we as a people have never done before. You are completely correct, and I have faith that we aren't going to lose that unity. Humanity may never be
truly ready for this revelation, but if there ever were a time, this is it. And there is no better time than now: It's a bitter truth, but our victory here may be the sweetener that mankind needs to help this medicine go down. Will we change? Perhaps, but we won't lose what makes us who we are."
[4] Write-in: Do not give in to the Shiplords' plan.
Total No. of Voters: 13
I'll call this later on tonight probably, and have the next section up tomorrow.
It probably does not help that I'm trying to explain this whilst tired, so I really am sorry if all the above came out a mess of preachy garbage.
