Right. Go with the "well intended" aliens or the "totally honorable" defenders.
...
You needed some time to think.
"I'm going to sit tight for second General Hamond-" when was the last time someone was called Lord, "-but I'll do nothing at the moment to harm your forces. I need space to breathe for a second."
You could almost feel the relief in his voice as he responded: "We can handle that for now.Your timetable is as long as you'd like I'd bet, but not everything flying around here has infinite patience. Hamond out."
Breathing room and a little bit of time. Defenses could help with that. You shift your engineers around to start laying down walls, with a few assisting as you start upgrading your ACU's modules. The red glow bleeds through even your color correcting screens.
Really, you want to side with the humans as a gut reaction. It just feels like home replaying itself, if a bit more… primitively. Where were you that they had to move things with ships? Just how many did it take to bring what you have around you right now to this planet?
As the first shield dome goes online, a short reaction ripples across the battle lines on your radar. You can see things pull away from and reorient towards you, so many vehicles in motion that a haze fills the air again. As nothing happens, at least anything that could be termed 'bad', when more shield domes pop up, what you'd guess was the Tau artillery bring their targeting system back to bear on the Imperials.
Really, as you step over scurrying engineers to lay down point defenses facing the Tau, you have no reason to trust either side. You had no idea what was true here, or if the Imperials could be as bad as that hyperbolic statement. But the Tau admitted to attacking here and that really just clinched the matter for you. Well…
You'd rather not have to make a decision like this, but you can see more and more forces reorient toward you again as the little fortress that represented your only point of safety grew. Given they hadn't done any sizable work themselves, the Imperials had what looked like prefabbed metal panels surrounding key points but that was it, their 'god machines' were elsewhere at the moment.
Both sides were getting shuffling forces around as your building accelerated as you ran through the process of converting from a T1 economy to halfway to T3. You'd built up a not so small starfort, taking advantage of the Cybran's customizable shield dome size to build five outer points and a layered center hub over your non-defense buildings. Walls, heavy point defenses nested inside the coves of them, with swarms of fast response lighter units to push back any attempt at getting under your domes. Mantises with the occasional Rhino looked to more than enough to do that job given the locals forces, given the defenses you held.
You couldn't stall forever though. Really, it came down to one side was human. If that made you a little xenophobic, even if you had an excuse, so be it. Everyone knew the best way to introduce yourself to a group of multi-Nodal Cybrans: be honest.
You try and contact the General over the same frequency he used to contact you. This takes a few minutes, leaving you with nothing to do but watch the locals scurry about. You wonder if they're just that busy or just trying to figure out their response to you.
Your screen flashes that they're responding. The muffled background noise is considerably louder this time and a separate voice from the 'Lord' General speaks up.
"You don't quite know just how much you've shifted the forces around this planet do you? Staying still has already helped us greatly by pinning the some of Tau here on multiple fronts."
You'd take the compliment, but from the voice alone you wonder how far the stick went up along the man's backbone. He sounded like some UEF bureaucrat, letting everyone know how much they were personally helped by whoever they were talking to. Still, better to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
If for no other reason than you'd need some support from high places.
"Standing still was the easiest thing I've had to do in a long time, but it's getting a bit old and this place is getting more crowded by the minute. General Hamond said we could talk somewhere where everyone was a little less tense?"
The line was silent for a long pause, likely muted entirely, before the speaker responded. "Yes, the Lord General has tasked several members with meeting you if you were agreeable. Given -37 degrees off magnetic north, they've agreed to meet you several miles behind the current lines. However," he sounds a bit eager at this, "Our Tech Priest attache has asked you to bring some of your… Machines with you. Given the likelihood of a Tau response it's for the best really."
You're hoping that was a polite way of saying you didn't have to come undefended.
"I can manage that. Given me five minutes and I'll move out. I'll be bringing some… Larger units, I'd appreciate if no one got trigger happy."
"So long as you can keep them from stepping on someone you'll be safe. Archer out."
Like you'd let them step on someone. You only crushed a few UEF housing blocks during one mission, and that was on a mission you didn't even want to do. Fucking Scorched Earth Node and their blackboxed secrets, if everyone didn't owe them favors…
You kinda already miss home.
While you start pining for home, you've had the nearly finished base start switching over to some fixed artillery production. Just in case you need some fire support. Your escort will be a good number of Mantes, Titans for the tactical defense, and several Bricks: You have a dozen of them but don't want to really scare them, your Bricks outsize even their supersized tanks that you've seen filter in in sizable numbers. Your first ace, though, is your Wailers: stealthed gunships with strong, rapid fire lasers. You doubt the locals' radar could cut through their jamming shrouds and the AI could jink all day against unassisted direct fire.
Oh and the other ace: Fire Beetles, aka walking bombs that you were going to say are logistics nodes, could help too if things went south. Nothing like a few explosions to cover your tracks. By the time you started walking over, only air units are still in production giving you the economic breathing room to construct the ACU Stealth Shroud upgrade at a reduced pace. Given the sheer size of the forces involved and the unknown orbital assets you really didn't want to have to run for it, but a shitty plan C was better than no plan C.
So far, you had made out over seventy individual radiating contacts at any one point in the sky above you, concentrating above the north and south poles with occasional small groups darting around. Unfortunately, the sources must be outside the optimal resolution range of your sensors as well as your systems not having the context to sift through what you were getting, so anything further you couldn't really say.
The Tau made no overt moves as you walked to and through the Imperial lines aside from a heavy increase in air traffic which caused the Imperial air activity to pick up as well. It was like watching a cloud of bees. You switch production back to fighters, favoring basic T1 just to give yourself some weight of numbers, but it wasn't going to win outright. You hid them in the staging areas for the most part, not wanting to let on just how much air cover you had, to avoid any more air units being diverted here.
The Imperial meeting area was surprisingly sparse... At least in terms of things in direct line of sight. You could see response forces stationed in the hills around via your gunship escort, and their frankly absurd amount of artillery would not be fun to deal with. But you think you could fight your way back out if needed, you had taken a slower walk here to hide just how fast a swarm of Mantises could go. Or respond from your base.
Strangely, there was only one person and a sizable table and some extra equipment at the meeting point. If it was a person still, you had some augments but they had gone all the way. You mean, they had a third mechanical arm coming out of their back and it might be twitching… In excitement you hoped. Even its voice sound digitized and boomed quite a bit louder than it needed for you to pick it up.
"Praise the Omnissiah! I am Grand Artisan-" Instead of a name, the unknown figure bleated out some form of three tone sound. "-and I wish to waste no time talking that I could be spending examining your machines instead! The other members of the Lord General's delegation will be meeting via this holo-table." The Grand Artisan finished with a vague hint of distaste, while the holo-tank flickered on via a burst of wireless traffic, displaying a placeholder golden double headed eagle that seemed to be a common symbol they used.
Once the static screen faded away, it was replaced by a handful of upper body shots. The different people who had a stake in what would happen here, you presumed.
In the upper left was a young man wearing what looked to be a purple half cape draped over one shoulder, wearing a drab green tunic with a small number of colored strips on the left breast. Presumably, these would be either rank insignia or indications of awards. As for the man himself, he held himself nigh perfectly upright in his chair and had a darker tone of skin, similar to what someone who enjoyed frying their skin in the sun would have if a bit darker.
To the right of him was… To be honest, you'd call the woman a nun. A dark cloth cowl wrapped around the sides and top of her head, while a stylized version of the double headed eagle was emblazoned across her chest with the peculiar addition of a skull to the bottom half of the emblem. She was pasty faced and absorbed in her work offscreen: the very picture of a technician. If she was a mere technician, however, then why would she be in the video conference?
To the bottom left was a… Well, you weren't quite sure. He wore bright but tasteful clothing, yet had a bandolier of presumably charge cells looped around his chest. And given the large number of medals the older man bore, he might have been a commander of locally raised forces.
And finally, there was another of the 'augments'; in this case much less so but still wearing the red tabard or robe that the Grand Artisan was wearing. If you squinted, you almost thought that this could be a woman, from what little of the facial structure remained visible to the world.
"Thank you for agreeing to speak with me." You start the meeting, bowing your head slightly. "I know it must have been a sacrifice with the current… Events." Warfare on a scale that you found hard to understand, more like, but you kept with a simple understatement. "I am Keith Lyon, member of the Red Skull Node, which is a portion of the Cybran Nation. And, to be frank, coming here wasn't exactly something I planned ahead of time, so I'm afraid I'm not too sure what is happening."
The man that you had labeled as 'military officer' nodded sympathetically.
"The unforeseen is truly a great enemy." He then paused to indicate himself with a gesture, a self deprecating smile on his face. "Pardon me, I am Staff Officer Second Seniority Jans Hammil, currently serving as an aide on the staff of Lord General Hamond. In the upper right panel of your screen is Sister Ollannius of the Order Speech-ing, while in the lower left is Fourth-in-Succession General Herildus Mankan of the Planetary Defense Forces, here as the representative of the planetary administration. And finally, we have Forge Master U-445, as the speaker for the Order Machine while the Grand Artisan does the physical inspection of your… Constructs."
"Physical inspection?" You ask cautiously, already marking your current escorts for reclamation once you returned to your base, to prevent any sort of observation systems that somehow slipped past their (unfortunately limited) security.
"We have our reasons, even if you haven't encountered anything similar during your travels." The Forge Master interjected, one eyepiece focusing somewhat. "Unless the inspector finds something of concern, it won't be invasive or destructive."
That allayed your fears enough, you supposed.
"Permission granted then." Carefully, you ordered a single Mantis towards the small station that the Artisan was standing at, ensuring that it didn't smack the excitable augment as the individual clambered up onto the machine. You did take care to start recording the three tone sounds the Artisan was emitting however, in case it was a code of some sort.
The Forge Master subsided, flicking a hand at the screen in dismissal, in what you can only assume is a 'my part is over, now you all can start bickering or what have you'.
"If I may, good sir." The nun carefully put away whatever she was working on before interlacing her fingers. "Where did you come from? It must have been far away if you have no familiarity with current events."
"As of now, I couldn't say." You say, a slight edge to your words. What better to deflect probes than the truth? "I'm not entirely certain how I got here, let alone where it is in relation to where I came from."
"In case it is of assistance to you, you are currently on Alkonost III, to the galactic east of the Core inside of the Ullanor Sector." The softspoken nun sits back in her chair, done for now.
That… Was spectacularly unhelpful. Then again, it seems to be your turn to ask questions.
[And with that, this is a chance to ask some questions. I'd prefer to see questions that more than one person wants answered, so as to save on space and allow me to dress it up in a short series of mini-updates. Some examples could be "Why are the aliens invading?", "What's the military situation on the planet?", or "What's going on in orbit?"]
