The Final Thunders
A final schedule of frantic upgrades and construction awaits the shipyard crews this year, after which they're ordered back down Earth. The shipyards, valuable as they are, aren't worth the lives of those who have worked and lived aboard them for the last eight years. Those berths that can be will be packed up and stored in the relative safety of Earth's orbitals, but the capital ship and experimental yards are too massive to be dismantled. That said, if the Shiplords reach Earth's orbit you have most likely lost anyway. Best to ensure that all that can be protected is secure.
[Everyone loves Upgrades (Nanomaterial Hardening): 45 + 38 + 15 (Design Action) = 98. Success]
[Everyone loves Upgrades (Crystalline Heatsink Technology): 88 + 38 + 15 (Design Action) = 141. Solid Success]
For the last time before the invasion, the fleet pours through the yards for refits, relying heavily on the new industrial fabricators to get everything finished in time. Thankfully, the process goes off without a hitch, specially programmed nanite clusters rebuilding entire sections of ships in the space of days. With these final upgrades, your auxiliary craft will be far more capable of handling themselves in high intensity combat, if only for short bursts. You're not sure if they'll be a match for the Shiplord auxiliaries, but they'll give a far better accounting of themselves than they would have five years ago.
[Construct Auxiliary Task Groups: 30 + 15 (Shipyard Complex) + 5 (Ministerial VI) = 50. Solid Success]
[Construct Auxiliary Task Groups: 27 + 15 (Shipyard Complex) + 5 (Ministerial VI) = 48. Solid Success]
[Construct Auxiliary Task Groups: 88 + 15 (Shipyard Complex) + 5 (Ministerial VI) = 108. Overwhelming Success]
Practice Roll: 30 + 50 = 80. Greater Success
As part of this desire for preparation, and a grimmer awareness of the casualties to come, most of your construction capacity is focused on more auxiliaries this year. Unpleasant it might be but they're the most versatile and, coming right down to it, most disposable of all your military assets. It doesn't help that you know that your entire military is made up of volunteers, or that others will be in overall command. You're still the one who'll be sending them to their deaths, in the end.
Mary has some words with you when you express that sentiment, and it does help, but what helps more is seeing the new ships sliding out of their cradles. Two standard task groups is initially a little lower than expected, but then Lina surprises you with the true core of the year's production. Two of the new, more advanced models. The designs haven't been confirmed, or gone through anything approaching the general checking and standardisation, but given the improved survivability of the newer classes produced last year Lina wasn't in the mood to wait.
[Construct Dauntless class Reserve Squadrons: 35 + 15 (Shipyard Complex) + 5 (Ministerial VI) = 55. Solid Success]
The final surprise is a full squadron of Dauntless class ships, crewed but for the required Potentials. You admit to some confusion on this score, but Lina is quick to explain. In a combat situation, it's far more likely for Potentials to survive the destruction of a capital ship than anyone else, simply because of what they are. Although in-combat recovery will be extremely dangerous, there are pilots willing to run those risks, and the ability to reforge nine broken swords could be a desperately needed reserve come a more prolonged engagement.
(2x Auxiliary Task Groups, 2x Advanced Auxiliary Task Groups, 9x Dauntless class [Reserve], Armour Hardeners and Nanomaterial Heat Dissipation systems installed on all ships.)
Red Citadel
It is perhaps dangerous to think like that however, given your choice to amass your forces above Mars and Skylark. One step from the homeworld is a risky move, even with the complexities of orbital mechanics placing the two worlds at a median in distance for much of the year as they move slowly away. But the decision is made, and the men and women of the War Office hurl themselves into the process of preparation. First on the list, actually completing Skylark's defences.
[Securing the Miracle: 63 + 38 + 15 = 116. Solid Success]
Practice Roll: 91 + 50 = 141. Greater Success
It goes well. Very well, in fact. Practiced components are worked together by human ingenuity, and from last year's foundations citadels rise to defend the city that a Miracle returned. Between them they form a ring of lethal fortifications, and the shield that they can project when combined with Skylark's power supplies should be sufficient to protect against almost any bombardment. And if there are projectiles too large or dangerous for the shield to suffer hurled against the city, they will meet the latest fruits of the First Awoken. Any attack on the city will be paid for in blood.
[Wall of Mars: 1, 73 + 38 = 111. Success]
Practice Roll: 85 + 50 = 135. Solid Success]
As below, so above, although the first attempt to move the orbitals almost ends in disaster. Humanity has little experience moving such massive structures, and the requirements for doing so safely are quite complex. It is only luck that saves you the loss of potentially all of them, when one of Lina's analysts catches an error in the stress algorithm bare minutes before the tow process begins. You owe a great deal to that man, as without his sharp eyes three of humanity's most precious defensive assets could have been terribly damaged.
The next attempt, made under the eagle eyed oversight of Vision after she's finished savaging the Shiplord data hook, goes much better. There are some stresses here and there, but none truly serious, and some much needed system upgrades are installed as part of the repair work. By the end of the year, Mars has eight of the fifteen major orbitals in high orbit, three chained by gravity to the spaces above Skylark.
(Skylark fortifications completed, out-system orbitals safely moved into high Mars orbit.)
Naval Training
With the last ships and fortifications complete, all that remains is to ensure those who crew them are as capable as it is possible to make them. Lina modifies the training program again this year, with a considerable focus placed on where you now plan to face the Tribute Fleet, doing all she can to ensure that every part of your defence force will be ready for the difficulties of an orbital battle.
[To Know War: 42 + 38 = 80. Success]
[Walls of Blood and Steel: 17 + 38 = 55. Slim Failure]
As it turns out, the one thing beyond being truly blooded that the naval crews needed was orbital experience, working with the minor effects of gravity and far more major ones of needing to aim around a planet. When moving at ten to twenty percent of lightspeed, it's a lot harder than most would think. Valuable experience, even if the majority of the trials have to be entirely simulated, and by the end of the process the Navy is operating with the smooth surety of professionals.
The same cannot be said for the men and women of Fortress Command, but that is no fault of their own. Faced with new systems and a very different set of environmental conditions within their battlefield, the newer branch of the FSN only manages to maintain last year's ability within those conditions. Not a failure, in truth, but also not a success. You'll take what you can get.
(Naval experience raised to Veteran, Fortress Command maintains Well Trained status.)
Interference Pattern 65+ needed
Working off of incomplete schematics is hard enough in the best situations, working off of them under time pressure is rather worse. Some things were discovered last year about Shiplord scanner technology, however, and the ability to disrupt their readings at long range is the final part of the trap you hope to set around Mars. It won't let you hide your ships, but it'll make them much harder to analyse. Given your incredible advancements over the years since the last Tribute Fleet visited humanity, being able to hide much of it could help a great deal.
[Interference Pattern: 49 + 38 = 87. Success]
If it works or not is rather irrelevant at this point. It works on the subnet scanners, and that's what you were hoping for. Proof of concept against Shiplord technology, specifically technology at the same level as Tribute Fleet systems. You leave it offline for now, not wanting to stress the systems even if they have been rated for over a year of activation time. It all helps, in the end.
[Blurred Crosshairs: 80 + 44 = 124. Solid Success]
What Lina thinks will help even more is the final breakdown of the Subnet hub scanners, specifically a way to jam their fine-grain analysis that allowed the hub to detect the strike team launched towards it. The deeper understanding of Shiplord target and acquisition systems will allow you to leverage the upgrades made to the FSN's electronic warfare capabilities, and has even given the techs some ideas as to more effective ECCM algorithms.
(System wide sensor disruption prepared, FSN jammers and other disruptive EWAR fine-tuned to target Shiplord systems.)
Infinite Parallel Processing 61+ needed
Part of what helped your technical side get that far was the outpouring of brute-force processing power that poured out of the slowly spreading industrial fabricators that are slowly replacing the more basic construction systems of Earth's planetbound military-industrial complex. That isn't the goal in the process, however, Adrianna has a much grander idea in mind. Although Vision's predictive algorithms are gone, the fact that it's possible to create them has given your Home Affairs Minister some very interesting ideas.
[Roll: 61 + 42 = 103. Solid Success]
Ideas that, thanks to her work on the VI that has allowed her to do so much more over the past years, she manages to bring into reality in only one. It isn't perfect, and it certainly doesn't come close to the awesome power that Vision tells you she can remember channelling without any understanding of how. Equally, it's far more than a failure, and the combination of brute-force power and basic algorithms should give you a second chance on some less critical failures.
(You may reroll one non-critical failure on an action die a turn. Actions unlocked.)
Fluid Harmony 66+ needed
Perhaps an excellent example of how useful that would have been is how close you came to success on the matter of the strange, shifting software that Vega is still struggling to understand after two years of effort. Given how split her focus has been the last few years, it's not surprising, but you had to hope that she might get somewhere this time.
[Roll: 7 + 50 = 57. Slim Failure]
Sadly, it's just not to be. Although your Minister for Practice does get a bit further into the subject matter, the true meat of the problem remains after year's end. She's no closer to understanding what's behind the constant changes the program makes to itself in response to the user, even if this latest failure exposes a few lines for deeper enquiry.
(+10 to next attempt.)
Realising the Soul 81+ needed
After that result, you worry rather a lot more than is reasonable about the progress of those Potentials immersing themselves in the study of internalising their Focus, even if it went just fine last year. You can't help with the process yourself, but you do ask Marcus to look in on the First Awoken students closest to realising the internal loop that he's stabilised in himself.
[Roll: 87 + 50 = 137. Solid Success]
Although there's no miraculous success, there's also no failure, and with Marcus's help you now have a solid core of First Awoken well on their way to realising the internal focus that makes Marcus so powerful. With enough time after the Tribute Fleet has been defeated, you might even be able to work out a way to soften the backlash he suffers when pushing himself. For now, you content yourself with the small number of impossible blades the training has given you.
(Small number of First Awoken have realised internal Focus loop. Will be available for Tribute Fleet action.)
The Bindings Shatter
Above all, however, there's one matter that scares you the most where it comes to the possibility of failure. After last years near disaster, only prevented by the swift intervention of Marcus and his team, you judge it better to take no chances. You assign Vision to the task of ripping away the Shiplord hooks left behind in the network, shifting resources to ensure that she has all the support she'll need from Marcus and the rest of the Ministry for Security.
Even with all that you worry, unsure of the ability of an AI that you've never seen in action before, and hopeful that Marcus will be able to keep her on track if anything goes awry.
[Breaking Chains: 64 + 44 + 9 (Network Supremacy) = Irrelevant]
Practice Roll: 56 + 50 = Irrelevant
[Cutting the Cord: 100 + 99 + 59 = 258! Natural Critical reroll: 99! (Kill me) Absolute Success]
Little chance of that.
From his report, it was all Marcus could do to keep up with the AI's rampage as she tore a bloody swathe through the hidden traps and pitfalls the subnet left as a final gift to its masters. Not a single piece of the network is actually harmed in the process, Vision using the vast processing power available to her to crush any resistance stillborn. She tells Marcus after the fact that it was only thanks to his reports that she was able to be so effective, but it hardly matters. Within six months, every hook in the system is ruthlessly hunted down and eradicated.
Marcus's weakness is that he can only be in one place at a time. For all his ability, he's limited by the singular bound nature of human consciousness. Vision has no such problems. As he explains it, it is as if Vision became the interplanetary network for her hunt, bending the vast power of the distributed network to her own will in a display of power that would be terrifying if she wasn't on your side. Ok no, that's a lie, it's terrifying even then.
Frightening or no, her actions this year secure the safety of countless lives, and for that you can only be grateful.
In the aftermath, Vision explains that the work she's done might allow her to act against any attempts by the Shiplords to activate their now obliterated hooks, something that Marcus and Lina are quick to jump at the prospect of. It would not be without risk, and any effects of success would certainly be limited by the ability of the Shiplord vessels to simply cut their connections, but every second counts in a cyberwar
(Shiplord system hooks utterly eradicated. Cyberwarfare actions opened up for Vision next turn.)
Doors and Keyholes
With the holes in the network finally plugged beyond any doubt, you have Mary move from her involvement in examining the Elder's Vault database to focusing on the locked files within the Red Tower. They've been there for almost seven years, and with Mars chosen as your battleground, you feel it wise to do everything you can to secure the knowledge they contain. Mary agrees, although she's very firm on the subject of her being on Earth when the Shiplords actually engage the FSN. She has enough memories of fire above red sands to last a lifetime. The degree to which she very clearly doesn't want you to risk yourself is an almost tangible presence in conversation as the end of the year approaches, but one she also never voices.
[Databank Sweep: 4 + 49 + 5 (Partial Database) = 58. Failure]
Without Mary leading the way, and Vision distracted by dismantling decades' worth of network traps to get to the Shiplord hooks beneath, the process of searching the Elder Vault database falls to other hands. It would not be fair to call them lesser, but in some ways it would also be the plainest truth. For all their expertise, navigating the tangled mess of the Vault's infospace ends up being beyond their ability.
[Ancestral Key: 66 + 49 = 115. Solid Success]
Not so for Mary the data vaults of the Red Tower of Skylark. The process takes longer than she ever would have liked, and some of the resources she has to requisition have a marked effect on the failure of her subordinates back on Earth. Yet at the same time, the Elder's Vault is in many ways secondary. Its database is protected by the most powerful defence system in the solar system, and even then the data recovered from Tombstone platforms confirm that the Shiplords should not even be aware of its existence. Marcus and yourself are long past the point of trusting that, of course, but the fact that they can't (easily) find out if they don't already know is comforting.
The Red Tower is a target that the Shiplords would be unlikely to ignore anyway, and in the battle to come it will be right under their nose. So Mary has everything she needs, and before the year is out succeeds in accessing the Tower's internal network. Uploading her current DNA profile is enough for it to open access to the encrypted libraries, but the amount of time it takes to get to that point is measured in weeks instead of the days that most unfamiliar with the technology had thought it would take. When it takes almost a day to upload the contents of those libraries to Earth-based secure servers, the need for protective measures some would cheerfully call insane starts to make a bit more sense.
Mary is going to have a lot of work to do once you've fought off the Tribute Fleet…
(Skylark data vaults accessed, full backups uploaded to the Network, post-invasion actions unlocked)
Touch the Sky
Speaking of work to do, you weren't spared the rod yourself where it came to that this year. With only a year left and over thirty Platforms unbound, the desire to expand the Unisonbound family wars with the understandable hesitance that comes with knowing you'd have to train those new additions up very quickly. Eventually the feeling of wrongness that comes with trying to ignore the Platforms wins out, although your main focus this year will be on learning what you can do with your old Concert Set, and integrating it with Sidra.
[Synchronisation Trials: 66 + 50 = 116. Solid Success]
[Upon the Wing: 54 + 50 = 104. Solid Success]
[Miracles of Being: 62 + 50 = 112. Solid Success]
[Unison Training: 92 + 28 = 120. Synergy bonus Active]
[Artifact Examination (Concert Set): 55 + 28 = 83]
That was, of course, what you told yourself would be the case. Until Kalilah synched with a Unison Platform. And, um, everything else.
(See Interlude: Sword of the Stars)
The Future Passed
And around everything, work steadily moves forward on restoring the monuments of the old world to their former glory. Memory and warning in one, but also the completion of a task you started many years ago. You had sought to restore the old world, and bring it with you into the new. To mend and grow, yes, but not leave behind the foundations that had made you who you were.
[Symbols of Hope: 9 + 42 = 51. Success]
Although you have no time to dedicate to the project itself, you watch it with an almost parental pride, searching for the right mix of healing and creation to use as a setting for an address to the world, that will prepare and galvanise humanity. It is perhaps ironic that, in the end, you find yourself standing before a renewed Statue of Liberty, gleaming aquamarine in the autumn sunlight.
It's hard to describe the mix of feelings you experienced putting together that speech, unlike any you've written or delivered before. Everything you had done up to this point had been to bring humanity together through your words, to make them stronger together and heal the wounds of the Week of Sorrows. In this, you sought a very different goal; to fill the hearts of humanity with fire, fire to hurl against the uncaring ships of your oppressors and to make your soldiers fearless in their defence of your home.
[Presidential Address: 38 + 51 + 10 (Write-in Speech) = 98. Greater Success]
Practice Roll Hidden. Will activate on Tribute Fleet arrival.
"When the Shiplords first came, they brought with them untold devastation and destruction. Our Guardians were defeated, Mars burned, and Earth's cities were left empty and destitute. Humanity had been laid low.
"And yet we refused to give up. Despite everything and everyone we lost, humanity came together, and we rebuilt. Look at us now! Our cities are restored and shine brighter than ever. Mars is being recovered, the city of Skylark given back to us by a Miracle. And though our Guardians may be gone, like all those taken from us by the Shiplords, their legacy lives on in us."
You remember taking a pause here, pacing the fire pouring through your soul, letting a spark of it sink into every connection you could feel. Then you gave it air to breathe.
"The Shiplords arrive next year, and when they do, they won't find a race shattered by its failures. They will find us, and we will be ready.
"For the last decade, we have prepared. We've researched and built, merging Technology and Practice to make ships that can stand up to the Shiplords. We've trained and strategized, preparing those who would wield humanity's weapons to do so with valour and effectiveness. And we've fought; claiming the first victory of this war by destroying what the Shiplords left behind in hopes of destroying us from within.
"When the Tribute Fleet arrives, we will face it united. And we shall have victory!"
You felt something in that moment as you finish the broadcast and let the world flood back in, an echo through the connections you've only just started to feel. The roar of the crowd before you drowns it out, but you find yourself coming back to it in the days that follow. Trying to find what it was, that feeling of reflected purpose and uncoiling power, and where it came from.
In the end, you're left only more questions, and a strange bubble of hope that comes from neither yourself nor Sidra.
(Population and military energised, 'Miracle of Victory' modifier applied to all combat rolls, ???)
Opinion
Public: United. Serene
Congress: United. Serene.
Administration: United. Fanatical.
Military: United. Serene.
Seems very fitting... and don't worry, it won't be you we'll use those results to kill...
