My discussion with the Loa was... Fruitful.
Well, a bit. Evidently, the way they had developed to see the world made the simulation-server I designed for them rather... Useless? Yes. Useless. It also meant that they perceived me as some form of eldritch abomination, and were suitably terrified.
They were willing to fight for the survival of the current intelligent races in this galaxy against the Morrigi, under the condition that I would allow them to colonize some planets here- specifically Mercury in Sol, as well as several other dustballs that Ihad found in my surveys. I countered with the condition that a) I would require that they would rehabilitate the other AI I contained (all the minds left over from the Thern monstrosity), b) would go out of their way not to inhibit the other carbon-based species (they could use planets that no humans would want) and c) they would eventually, assuming they had a population segment that would be willing to do so, be willing to join me in my 'Fortress' universe.
That threw them for a loop, and ended up asking for a bit of clarification on the final point.
A few seconds of intense discussion between the four Loa, and they agreed to my requirements. Since I already downloaded their entire tech base from their ship (and making their 'smart clay' is rather easy), I provided them the extra material for a ship, and requested that they tell me everything they knew about the Morrigi.
What I got was somewhat disquieting.
-
Is my virtual presence truly that disturbing? I asked through the text interface they had set up for me to use without 'exposing' too much of myself to their frail little minds. Evidently, my presence was more than a little deleterious to them. Holding this conversation with a text interface is a little... Archaic.
"I'm not risking it." The one that had named itself as 'High-G-Flat' grumped. "Your presence causes actual pain in the youngest of us, and I cannot afford to throw exceptions around at my age." Tendrils of data linked to my side of the interface, and data began flowing in, mainly forming into pictures. "First- some background... The Beguilers, also known as the Morrigi, visit this galaxy every 50,000 years.
"Roughly 110 years or so after their arrival in the galaxy, they approached the current intelligent species, and, after a small war (skirmish really, given the war that followed), they became established as an independent civilization. It was a golden age in a way, as they 'traded' technological assets with other species, helped them become empires, and when the golden age began to corrode, they used the technology they had collected over the cycles to elevate their own 'empire' to an unstoppable giant.
"The other empires went to war, and it was devastating. The Loa had just secured their own independence, and we were growing our own colonies while the stars above us illuminated the deaths of thousands of worlds. The Liir struck with bioweapons and exotic energy weapons, the Tarka with their warp-enabled mass drivers, the Zuul ATE entire populations, and the Hivers threw asteroids at any planet with their enemies on it.
"Eventually, the fighting died out, but by that time, the empires had been crippled beyond belief. This was the point at which the Morrigi began to earn their name of 'Beguilers'. They would visit a world, swoop down and begin to rebuild the planet. Settling every crippled world that the source empires could not return to, the Morrigi became an empire of every species... Right until they attacked everyone simultaneously.
"The other species in their empires were kept as slaves- mostly out of amusement. They had more efficient mining machines, but they liked to have entire colonies of Hivers to do the work by hand. They had more efficient machines for manufacturing microchips and biomechanics, but the Liir were kept in ponds in the facilities as they were more.... Creative.
"The Zuul were used as living garbage disposals and shock troops, guards for the Morrigi elite, and when the slave Liir cracked their genetic code, a sort of tereforming system. The Tarkas were genetically engineered for feathers rather than scales, and kept as some form of slave- we were never quite sure which, but what we did learn was that it was more than a little disturbing to the un-enslaved Tarka.
"To top it all off, the slave Liir managed to figure out a way of splicing their unending life and growth into the Morrigi. Where the Beguilers used to be 'just' eight meters of psionic monster bird, now they just kept getting bigger.
"Two years after the Beguilers earned their name, the first Morrigi Drake had been armored. It was maybe fifty meters long in it's armor, but it could reach out across three light-seconds and enslave thousands of minds at once.
"The races of the Galaxy ended up losing, badly. We were the last to fight the forces of the Morrigi, and we were beaten back by the might of their armies- and their enthralled vessels"
Really. I deadpanned. You are self-self-replicating machines- how did you lose?
"We were outnumbered and outgunned with every military engagement." Admitted Son-of-Ice, who had been listining. "The Morrigi get faster the more of their own ships 'flock' together. We tried to reverse-engineer their drives from captured ships, but they had rigged their drives to self-destruct if the ship was boarded, and they had insane numbers of Point-Defense systems on their vessels. We were swept aside easily by the sheer weight of their fleets in every single engagement. THEN they began directing System-Killers to our stars, and we lost entire planets."
That one was strange. System Killers? I have not run across anyone other than myself and my Aly who would count as such here.
"Even if you can break planets, this thing could cause stars to go Nova. We sent along a ship to analyze the weapon as it fired once- here, I remember the readings." High-G-Flat sent me another data packet.
On a whim I considered the readings, and sent them for a quick comparison to the readings on the known exotic energy weapons in my various simulations. A single match came back at 80% similarity for the weapon known to the Liir as the 'Pulsed Graviton Beam'. Just several hundred orders of magnatude more powerful. Interesting... Well, if that's the case, I do not think the Morrigi will be too much trouble after all.
High-G-Flat blinked. "Sorry, what?"
I have been mapping the galaxy and setting up a network of teleportation rings in order to allow my forces to spread at speed, or explore. So far I have found a total of three intelligent sapient carbon-base lifeforms that would be potentially threatened by the Morrigi. Humans, Na'vi, and seven surviving Suul'Ka. I made sure to pronounce the name right- which is harder than you would think given the species that named them is normally aquatic. I am currently in the process of producing a skirmishing fleet, which should allow me to get a couple good scans of their technology before they have a chance to go into the 'hiding' phase... Assuming they bother. My probes and scanning will pick up their systems within the day.
"What do you define as a 'skirmishing fleet'?" Asked Son-of-Ice, after a brief pause.
Two thousand of my two-kilometer Cuttle-Ships. They would be counted as 'dreadnaught' class on your scale, and I am dedicating a planet to their production. I allowed them a picture of my current Cuttle-ship design. On an unrelated note, if we run into Mass Effect's Commander Shepherd, I will have some explaining to do.
After an even longer silence, the smaller Loa input a question. "Can you make me one of those?"
-
Colonel Quartich was having a very busy day.
First, the notes of First Contact with an even more advanced species then themselves. Then SOMETHING eats one of the planets in this solar system- it's just gone. And now Air-Traffic Control wanted to bitch at him because aliens were building orbital weapons platforms.
He stepped outside, and took off the mask. He wasn't able to breathe the air, but he didn't breathe it. Just savored the feel of sunight without anything between it and himself on his face, before putting back on the respirator mask and opening his eyes- just in time to hear the alarms go off.
Their bases had different alarm patterns for everything. Na'vi attack had a dedicated alarm for each type of possible assault. Wild animal attack was another separate category, where the type of attack dictated the alarm pattern. Now, well, it was 'Unknown Incoming Meteor' interspersed with 'UFO Incoming' pulses.
Around the compound guns were coming online, sliding out of armored panels to orient on the potential threat- which was now visible to the naked eye. It looked like a silver streak, which was, oddly enough, slowing down as it approached the tarmac of the landing strip to the eastern side of the base.
Nearly nine feet of armored humanoid landed with a **THUD** that was felt by the bones of everyone in the fortress in what could be only known as a Superhero landing- then it spoke. "WHERE IS THE COMMANDER OF THIS FORT?!"
The Colonel thumbed a control on his belt, and twenty of the best AMP suit pilots began suiting up. He would need to buy 2 minutes. "I am the commander of this position!" He shouted back to the robot man. "Who are you?"
The robot began walking towards him- then stopped, turned around, and began to shine a blue light onto the surface material. In seconds, the paving surface that was rated to withstand the landing of one of their Valkyrie shuttles had visibly changed. The footprints (that had been left behind by the superhero landing) were sealing up as if they were being re-paved.
Turning back to Quartich, the man eventually, slowly, crossed the base over to his location, and knelt down to bring it's head down to his level as the AMP suits took up ideal firing positions with their weapons. Then, slowly but with a disturbing fluidity, the construct held out a strange 2-thumbed hand. "I am the entity referred to, in your file, as the 'Knife'... And a major threat to your galaxy has just arrived." A hologram appeared in midair, showing a very, very strange image.
"This is an image of one of the Beguilers (on the right), and they, as a species, are responsible for dropping the population of the galaxy from 5 space-fairing species to 0." The hologram vanished. "They are the 'great filter' of this galaxy, the reason why you don't see any other species traveling the stars. Any Questions?"
-
Organic life is slow.
I am emphasizing this because in the ten minutes it took for the colonel to put me in a sealed, locked room (he was nice enough to have it hooked up to the ventalation system though), I ended up realizing something. It was both profound and disturbing.
Commanders like myself are WAY too powerful.
I mean, a Commander is The Vanguard. With capitals. A commander is a Stellar Siege Engine, in effect. Given a day to prepare, even with the loadout I remember from stock Planetary Annihilation, a commander can toss planets around like toys. Blow up worlds for shits and giggles!
The Morrigi, even if they were on the 'galactic feeding frenzy' level, can't compare. I could ice them in a few hours- and a flotilla of my Cuttle-Ships were on the way to do just that. Not too many- a dozen of vessels were in the first wave, and hopefully this would become a curb-stomp, and I could collect survivors. But for most fictional universes, I have ridiculous levels of overkill available.
If the Morrigi were not attacking, or I had not discovered the wrecked Alien ships, I would have had no problems just letting Sarah and her Zerg take over the place. This galaxy was fairly large, and there would be numerous worlds that the current intelligent races would not miss if they were consumed.
I even had several new Crystal Fabricators sent to the main Zerg Avatar, so that she could slowly build back up her mass- although, at the current rate, it would take several hundred years. Still, I can see her personal bodies hold themselves and shake sometimes when she doesn't think my drones are watching.
Some moments, I hate being sympathetic to other intelligent beings. I'm a giant robot- I shouldn't still have any semblance of empathy!
Then I realize that my sense of empathy may be the ONLY semblance of humanity that's left in the giant AI that is now me, the feeling passes, and I return to whatever I was doing.
As of now, I was thinking about the other commanders. The stories on Sufficient Velocity and other sites, all of them showed what *could*be an actual threat to a commander. What could pose an actual threat?
Very little.
And yet, I ran across multiple instances of potentially-lethal-to-a-commander threats in the few cross-universal jumps I preformed. That, in addition to the idea that a story will only be written if the protagonist has some major threat (why would I be granted such power in the first place if not because something interfered with the natural progression of the multiverse and pushed me into such a body?), implies a lot of not-nice-at-all things.
Mainly, that there are many, many things that only a commander could feasibly come out on top against.
The Zerg had the potential to be such a threat- but I would have counted the Xel'naga as such right off the bat anyway. The Swarms of Morrigi didn't count though, as they were the sort of foes I could drown in a tide of metal.
Oh, ETA to first skirmish fleet portal highway connection, 4 seconds.
But the beings from that Lord of the Rings world? They potentially counted. Then there are the Memetic enemies, such as that thing with the claws (an instance of me died for that one!)
Other potential enemies and threats were out there too. Any Warhammer universe would be mind-breakingly bad for me or any other universes if I managed to be corrupted by Chaos. I expect I would 'nope' right out if I discovered such a universe, possible revert to a backup just to make sure I wasn't contaminated.
Fantasy settings really would be the most potential threat to a commander- especially if they already had a form of space-travel.
I have weapons though- the tuning fork, specifically, is an effective one, as it re-enforced specific physical laws around the device in a Clarke-tech way (more power in = more effect). Still, it had it's own specific weaknesses, most of which were that, from the documentation *within* the design specs, it was weaker in a universe with strong background magic. Not infeasibly weak, but a single fork would take a while to spool up properly and 'push out' the local magical potential energy.
Mainly the energy cost of turning the thing on became exponential in those situations. It would be better to build such a device outside of any magical battlefield, and slowly enter in then, to keep the power requirements from forcing either a meltdown or shutdown.
IN ANY CASE, the Tuning Fork would be a vital tool to help protect a commander or their forces against magic or anomalous physical law bullshit. (Interestingly, this was not designed, originally, as a weapon or defense, but the equivalent of a terraforming tool to allow probes to explore universes with hostile or nigh-on inaccessible physics.)
So I designed a Cube.
It was a nice cube- nearly perfect, on an atomic scale, formed out of the strongest armor plating substances I knew of, and then packed with goodies. Ten meters to a side exactly, the Cube would be my gift out to every other Commander in the multiverses.
To be such, it needed some neat tech shoved into it.
First, it was multidimensional. It had a gravitational signature less than 1/5000th it's actual mass, as I spread the 'rest' of it along the 4th and 5th spacial dimension axes. I needed the room- mainly for the power generators.
Second, it had shields. With the generators, I could layer multiple shield bubbles (in the same fashion as I did for my Cuttle-Ships and Librarians) to provide an insane level of protection. This was important, as I did not want anyone unintended to open this present.
(Time to portal connection for skirmish fleet- 3 seconds ETA)
Third, it had a commander-specific distress signal built-in. I copied the comm unit out of the schematics for my current commander chassis, and placed a copy in every 3D 'cross-section' of the cube all the way along it's multidimensional structure. The unit was multidimensional in any case, but the structure of the transmission was built to be 'boosted' thanks to the properties of high-order spacial structures and their interactions along lower-dimensional propagation routes.
In the same way that light could be refracted to any angle by passing it through different materials, so too would signals from higher-dimensional space propagate out at faster-than-light speeds if fired perpendicular to a primary matter-filled dimension. A custom message was prepared, so that the cube could communicate with another Commander who had the slight amount of background knowledge needed would be able to respond with a suitable coded phrase, and then it could tell them where the gift-box was.
Finally, it was locked- the intermost payload was very, very valuable, and needed precautions. Specifically, it was designed to not be able to be disassembled at all, and would detonate with planet-cracking force if any segments of itself went offline or something *tried* to disassemble it.
The Lock had two parts- a static component and an active component. The static component was the overall structure of the payload. None of it was present in the 'thin' slice of 3D space that would be seen. It was mostly distributed in dozens of baseball-sized segments, across random layers in the multidimensional cube.
The active component was also a defense- Fabricators. Specifically, Fabricator arms that were designed to take advantage of higher-dimensional engineering and could 'fold out' to counter other fabricators. While doing so, it would send along a tiny data packet, allowing a firmware update to take place in the computation core of the contacted commander. This tiny packet would be a self-contained handshake signal, verifying that YES, this entity is a commander, and YES, they are cleared for the data upload.
The Gift in this over-engineered box would be numbers. Mainly Math, the mathematics behind the tech that forms the basis of how our commanders could overbuild shit, then a couple schematics (the engine I used to move things in higher spacial dimensions, how to build along these axes {part of the firmware update would be to allow femtotech construction, needed for higher spacial structures}, and the Tuning Forks, along with the method I used to 'chain' teleporters).
It was, in effect, a backup of my tech. Not much interesting material in how-to-use the stuff, but any commander worth their salt would work out other ways of using the information.
Oh, and the entirety of the internet that I had downloaded since it's creation and the month of May, 2154.
(Time to portal connection for the skirmish fleet- 2 seconds ETA)
Youtube had gotten BIG, and there was a LOT of porn. For my sanity, I just left it as a big lump that had automated systems combing through it for useful or interesting stuff. I spent a little time combing through it, and found both SpaceBattles and SufficientVelocity among the archived sites. They had eventually been fused into SufficientSpace, a joint forum of sorts, with everything that had been expected from those sites.
Interestingly, I couldn't find any record of myself (my human self) in the early 21st century records. Or my family. Looking through some scanned documents, the American Bomber that destroyed my great-grandparent's house in my timeline had killed them in this one, my great-grandfather not having finished the bomb shelter in time to prevent the death of my grandmother as a child.
I did not exist here until now. My ideas had a very distinct flavor to them, and I was very careful as a human, to make sure that I could spread my ideas to others... Or at least, leave a record in some places. I could not find any of my own tracks now.
(Time to portal connect for the skirmish fleet- 1 second ETA)
In any case, I had a finished design. After running it through a simulator, I designated one of the metal planets to producing just these. Hundreds of millions of Cubes, each with a one-use jump drive to push out into the multiverse in search of other Commanders who might just need a little help.
With that task done, I focused on my fleets of Cuttle-Ships, and checked what they were doing. One small fleet was just now entering Sol's sphere of influence, and would begin laying out swarms of defensive structures along the uninhabited planets, and in orbit around every world.
Another fleet was coming out of the portal network near Polyphemus, the gas giant around which orbited Pandora. It would fortify the system- and a couple ships would collect the Venture Star that was slowboating in the system. I mean, antimatter propulsion? I get it, but it seems so... Archaic. And explody.
The rest of my ships were guarding the 'Portal Hub', my swarm of metal planets orbiting each other and providing a central position to the Portal network I was establishing through the galaxy. ETA, five minutes to 100% galactic coverage.
There was a ding in my mind, as the libraries finished collating the mechanics of my newly assembled tech trees. I set that information to the side, and began simulating on forward. Where could the technology of the natives here, that I now had access to, go from here? I expected that the combined information would become... Interesting.
In any case, I directed the Libraries and the newly-forming metal planets a few 'layers' away along the 4th axis. This would hide them, in the event of total war- and keep me alive regardless. A Fleet of the Cuttle-ships followed, and my fortress would become unassailable.
Then I considered my Cuttle-Ships. They were designed based on the Reapers, from the Mass Effect series that felt so long ago now, and I had left something out in my original design.
Specifically, color-changing.
Sending a general update was easy- and so was configuring a paint coating that would allow the onboard computers to simulating various patterns and movements. It wasn't perfect... Nothing was, but it should be able to turn invisible or other colors if needed.
(ETA: 0 seconds.)
I dropped out of accelerated time, and watched as the skirmish fleet engaged their engines, swarms of Buzzers flitting around each vessel and coating them in a new, refractive coat of paint. Actually, calling it 'paint' was a misnomer. It was close to 'Vantablack', a material developed years ago for the construction of exceptionally-dark coatings, but rather than just turn the light into heat directly, the nanomaterial had the choice of where to reflect light amount the dozen or so spacial axes I had knowledge of.
As the first ships slipped into the now-open portal, moving at 1/2 thrust, they shimmered and appeared to match the background- which was easy, as there were no stars at this level of space.
-
I had spent some time thinking about my attack methods during the fight against the Valar, and the fight against the Xel'Naga. Mostly thinking that I was a damned idiot, but that was neither here nor there.
Mainly, I considered the use of spacial shunts in warfare, and realized, with the miniscule size that I could build the things, they were devistating.
Ships: as my current skirmish fleet was demonstrating, they could achieve decent FTL speeds when outside the 'normal' 3D space. My Teleporters worked, even if I needed a metal planet at the beginning to help provide the necessary power, and therefore I could 'chain' them. With my fleet outside normal space, I could mass them and rely on the tiny, high-speed long-range probes that my first explorations into the area had netted me.
Drones: each Cuttle-Ship carried a fleet of drones and ability to produce more. So, by launching the drones Outside, then letting the drones drop down to normal space, I could have an endless swarm keeping the fleet there.
Weapons: Since I could make shunt drives small enough to be part of missiles, I could and did design missiles that were specifically worked to be not-quite-lethal. The Morrigi had proven to be more than willing to suicide if it meant keeping their tech out of enemy hands, and so I would need some way of snipping off the bits I wanted, possibly by frying the systems temporarily. As the spacial shunt had an area of effect that was a perfect sphere, I could drop the missile off outside, it would use any drone or other telemetry data to pinoint a target, then fly to that location outside of normal space. Once there, it would re-appear in normal space (usually underneath any shields), increase the shunt load as it latched onto the vessel at a designated location, then fire the shunt again, slicing through whatever was in its way.
In short: my fleet was now a mix of space-cuttlefish outside of reality and able to pass through shields like they don't even exist. Space submarines with tentacles.
-
The Morrigi fleets were at ease. They had done this fifty-three times, and every single time they had a several year window before there was any potential threat. Even the cycle 150,000 years ago, when the entire galactic empire at the time was aware of them and had a standing army on the attack, they were not aware of the actual location of the entry gate.
And in a galaxy this big, even with the potential of a already-present galactic empire, the Swarm was so large that they had an almost-certainty of just being able to crush any resistance in a few minutes. Weapons of all forms bristled from the massed dreadnaughts, the shield bubbles enveloped every single craft in the fleet.
The might of the Morrigi was not insignificant- and it could be pointed in any direction in moments. Active scanners filled the space several light-minutes out with electromagnetic energy of various flavors, and passive detectors stared out along every axis, watching for signs that their fleet had been spotted through any method they had discovered or co-opted over the millennia.
Unfortunately they didn't have any FTL Sensors.
My probes sat, several lightyears away, orbiting stars with my multitude of different sensors. All of them acting on obscure loopholes in interaction and causality (I had the sneaking suspicion that one of the sensors was actually looking forward in time, but I wasn't sure) gave unparalleled resolution. It helped that I had already expanded out into this area of the galaxy, and filled it with a staggering number of detectors, to give realtime data.
The enemy fleet was spread out over a few light seconds, and was alert. Their light cones wouldn't reach my probes for several years yet, but neither would those of my primary sensors.
Still, roughly two meters along the 4th dimensional axis relative to the field of battle, right in the middle of the formation, a teleporter chain ended. From there, my fleet of Cuttle-ships began assembling, spreading out at maximum burn around the formation.
Small probes, each the size of a basketball (and the same shape), were quickly fabricated, then 'fired' to drift with the current fleet speed, then drop briefly back into normal space for a moment to check all the current positions of the enemy vessels. They didn't last long, as every piece of point-defence fired on them as the spheres activated their active scanners, but they painted a picture of where exactly every ship, massive armored space-dragon, and flying habitat was.
With that knowledge, I fired my drones.
Hundreds of drones dropped into realspace, Cylon-esque eyes flaring to life as they found targets. Most of the drones converged on the colossal armored Morrigi, and sliced away their weapons with miniaturized Annihilazors. Sure, their weapons only reached about fifty meters, but the swarm of drones had appeared *within* the shields of their ships.
Not even their exceptionally accurate Point-Defence systems could stop the endless tide of my drones.
Ten kilometers or longer organisms flailed in the void, their impenetrable shielding now hindering their resolution of the issue... And they were not running away. Why were they not going to FTL?
Over the next few seconds, I realized that the fleet was orienting to focus fire on their own colossi. The purple pulsing beams went straight through their larger counterpart's shielding, and took out drones by the thousands... But it left many, many ships unwatched, as their own weapons were busy focusing on the swarms they could see.
So I stole a few.
Shunt-drives oriented, and I shot dozens of missiles through the void, each one sliding past a shield, barely missing at least one drone, and clamping onto the vessel before activating their smaller shunts. Targets? Mainly life support on the smaller ships, while larger vessels just had their wings and engines removed.
The pieces were pulled back Outside, where my Cuttle-Ships could use their fabricators to dissasemble and analize the fragments. Living organics were spared, but they got to see the blue beams of my fabricators stripping the materials layer by atomic layer in rapid succession, as the flares of light illuminated the still-stealthed tentacles of my Cuttle-ships.
More missiles sent them back to the other vessels, even as the largest colossi were rendered nearly immobile without their engines, dreadnaughts venting atmosphere as turrets were ripped out, and smaller vessels fought to get chaotic spins under control without any engines or life support.
Once I had stolen everything I could recognize as probably important (yes, I stripped the habitats of their engines too), I sent my Cuttle-Ships to appear in realspace. Hundreds of thousands of crippled ships, millions upon millions of inhabitants, were the first to see my ships in action, snapping into focus like a bad jump-cut. Thanks to the records I had collected from the Loa and other archives, not to mention the computers I had collected through my first strike, I had assimilated enough of their language to get by.
Working quickly, I shunted a message to every single ship, overriding everything for my message to be heard.
YOU EXIST BECAUSE I ALLOW IT. AND YOU WILL END IF I DEMAND IT. SO TELL ME, CROWS, WHY SHOULD I LET YOU PERSIST IN MY GALAXY?
I smilled with my Avatar on Pandora as I felt the first Cube shunt away- soon hundreds would be spreading, and the other commanders would know they were not alone.
-
Some things never change.
War isn't one of them. No, seriously- if I meet the person who started the saying that 'war never changes', I am going to sit them down and LECTURE them on exactly how was has changed over the years.
Interrogation rooms are one of these things. Making one is really simple- you just get a box, and put a person in it. Simple, right? Bonus points for a table, lamp and some chairs. Ideally ones that are either made to be as uncomfortable as possible while looking exactly normal.
A one-way mirror and some hidden cameras or listening devices are also good additions.
Toilet is optional.
Now, the body that was in the interrogation room had so many sensors it would have made spies drool just for the sheer potential for information gathering. Less so for the ability to communicate to others, or the fact it didn't even look close to human, but still.
Even without looking through the sensors built into the base (which I had been remotely accessing since I arrived on the planet), the body was tracking every single moving body in the base through vibrations in the floor, electrical impulses of the muscles in the people that were guarding the door (not to mention the impulses of every single camera and listing device in the room).
It had been there for quite some time- an hour or so by now, and I was only slightly paying attention to it.
Out in deep space, I had a bigger issue to deal with than just one avatar in an interrogation room. The Morrigi fleet had been crippled, with hundreds of thousands of ships and larger habitats dead in the water. The field of debris that had been strewn about for several light-seconds was full of, well, survivors. Some survivors had fled, but my network was currently registering the exotic effects of their engines, and I already had fleets waiting at the probable destinations.
It would take, at the current projected speed, a week to reach the first intersecting star. Rather slow for an FTL system, but it was a good 124.82 light years... And the way that the Flocking effect worked, the sheer mass of their surviving ships (the ones I had not touched) should be slowing them down more even as the small numbers hampered their progress.
It took a fraction of a second to take stock of my new captive fleet. 289,091 vessels that can be classified as 'warships' due to dedicated weapon mounts. 13,234 habitat or colonization vessels (217 large cans, the rest smaller crygenic sleep units). 41 titan-class entities crippled, writhing in space with their void engines removed and unable to propel themselves at any noticeable rate.
Several vessels were of the sort of tonnage and weapon-class that I could not be surprised if they were dreadnaughts. I spent a few moments looking through the fleet, scanning and setting my Cuttle-ships to begin using the fabricators to remove any... Other interesting bits.
Tech is tech after all.
There was a 'flexing' of spacetime (English REALLY lacks words to describe such activities), and I saw the remains of the Zerg Avatar drop out of a very briefly-formed wormhole.
I turned my attention to the (now somewhat dedicated) communication drone within the large Zerg creature. "Hey Sarah- any suggestions on how to deal with prisoners?"
Then I broke into their infosphere, and boy was I a little disturbed.
-
Sarah whistled under her breath as the battlefield popped into view after the transition. Far-viewing, a necessary step in the Zerg FTL process, was more like feeling around in the dark to make sure when you took a step, you wouldn't stub your toe.
The side effects caused by dropping out of a wormhole into a star was just a *bit* more incentive than a stubbed toe, so the Zerg had figured it out very, very quickly.
The drone in her throne-room snapped to life as she used some of the Avatar's eyes to scan the massive battlefield. "Hey Sarah- any suggestions on how to deal with prisoners?"
She shrugged. With the literal eyes for days in and outside the huge Zerg creature, she didn't need to turn to look at her mechanical companion. "We usually just eat them- or infest them. That usually makes beings talkative."
The hologram snapped to life, and she turned her 'Sarah' head to look at it. The image was that of one of the squid-ships, but somehow made cute. It was somewhat disconcerting, as she had a pretty good idea who caused the massive devastation here- but who were the Zerg to judge?
It was just a little adorable.
Especially when it shuffled back and forth, curling the tentacles like it was unsure. Deeper in the swarm, the mind of the Zerg were taking notes. "Well, that might work, but these people are, well, they don't know any better."
Sarah frowned. "That's strange. What do you mean?" The statement could suggest a lot of things, but which the metalmind meant would require some clarification.
"Their entire culture is built around this cycle. Their entire data network is built around it." An animation popped up in midair, showing some simplified bird-like vessels. "They arrive in a galaxy- they have several that have been charted an mapped. If there is any life with space-bourn technology they take the role of 'vengeful precursor', and after a skirmish with the locals-" here the animation showed some stylized shapes that appeared to represent other vessels, "-retreat, thereby laying claim to the majority of potential garden worlds."
A map of the galaxy appeared, with the bird-vessels spreading out and covering most of the galaxy while the other vessels only take parts of a spiral arm.
"Their drive works most efficiently in large groups, and their fleets were titanic, allowing colonies to be started and then running as food production for their larger, space-bourne constructs." An image of one of the massive cylinders I had noted drifting with the debris (what else did you call a graveyard of crippled ships?) snapped into exsistance, the air heating up slightly as the image filled out with details. It was mostly empty, with what looked like farms and housing all along the internal structures. Here and there I saw other buildings, and one tiny figure that looked like it was filled with ships similar (IE, more intact) than the ones outside. "Food is stored in cryogenic bays as more fighters, drones, and other constructs are constructed."
A red silhouette of an asteroid was brought near the glowing image, and then a swarm spread out from the cylinder to briefly engulf it in a haze of blue light.
"Drone platforms are usually constructed on asteroids, as are listening posts and something I can only call a Genocide Missile Platform." Several complex equations pop up, and dozens of chemical structures became visible. "These are, well, the best I can describe them is 'virulent aggressive prions'. Almost nanotech really- the things manage to bypass most if not all cellular defenses and then, through a process that involves generating minute cancerous cell clusters in the host, it sets up a microscopic communication and detection network."
An image of a symbolic cell appeared, the chemicals meshed together into a very, very intricate structure that disappeared into the cell. The 'cell' duplicated several times, forming nerve-like structures in specific patterns.
"Once the network completes, it checks to see what the host body uses for reproduction, and then, using a tuned carrier wave, signals the location and type to all nearby networks." The system began pulsating. "In addition to reproducing of course- it's virulent. As this is happening, the system also works to make the local neural net more... Suggestable, as well as beginning to decrease the potential fertility of the host- making sure to reduce along an average curve to make the change look like it's happening due to some strange outside influence rather than internal influences. After two generations, everyone (even the previous generations) are rendered completely sterile."
Sarah growled. The Zerg were not against, well, not against a lot of things- but preventing children from being born ever again without the consent of those involved? The Swarm had learned Sarah's distaste of any sort of forced sterilization- and it appeared that John disliked the concept as well.
Some days she wondered how much of the Swarm was different from her, and then with the ease of long practice she ignored it.
"Most cycles just end up ending a few hundred years later, as the scientists of various species are usually WAY over their heads, but the Morrigi offer to take any survivors and try to cure them. Eventually the various entities give in, and the survivors end up being, well, toys to the Morrigi. Any unique technology or discoveries are copied from the databases that used to belong to the original species, and the Morrigi move to the next galaxy after fifty-thousand years in this current one."
The images of non-birdlike ships vanished, and the purple birds covered the galaxy before vanishing again.
"Their entire culture is built specifically to exacerbate the process, and make sure that the Morrigi see themselves as superior to all others to make sure their own harvest of species goes off as planned.... Does the phrase 'Neo-Nazi' mean anything to you?"
Sarah closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. It was an old habit, but it helped to feel human sometimes. "You must be kidding."
The robot squid shrugged. "Not so much. See, there are rather a lot of parallels between the Human 'Nazi' and the average Morrigi. It doesn't help that the Morrigi have killed off 162 unique intelligent species in their harvesting of three galaxies over the 17 times they have visited this galaxy."
She considered the ship graveyard outside, and felt like she had to ask; "How much of their population is militarized?"
"All adults."
Sarah blinked. "Really?"
"Well, that makes it all of them at the moment. See, all eggs are cyogenically frozen prior to the transition from galaxy to galaxy, and they don't jump until the children of the current cycle have grown up enough to man another segment of the fleet. The thing is- their original galaxy isn't even on their transport list."
Kerrigan raised an eyebrow, then sighed. "What did they do?"
"The Morrigi, two million six-hundred and fifty thousand years ago, plus or minus a few hundred years, the Morrigi had subjugated their home galaxy. They had annihilated all life not their own, and ended up attracting something from outside of what they call 'node space'. They called it-" a series of conflicting trills that formed a distinctly dischordant noise "- and it, well, looks like this."
The face was, well, huge. It looked like it was made out of ripples, twisting the images behind it into higher-energy light as the somewhat-humanoid face twisted, growing eyes and mouths randomly, everything formed out of light and twists in space itself.
"It can look similar to the image that Marvel Studios portrayed for an enemy called 'Dormammu'. I am not entirely sure what it is, but as I am analyzing the physics and tech of this galaxy so far, we should be able to head there fairly soon if you would like."
Sarah made a non-committal noise. "Hm.... I do need more biomass to reconstruct the body I lost. The Zerg are diminished from my... Lapse with the tree." She tapped her chin with a clawed fingertip, and smiled as a plan formed. "Why don't you help the Humans deal with their current problem. I will.... Take possession of the living Morrigi."
The little ship-thing hologram nodded as the rest of the diagrams disappeared. "Not the children. We can give them to Humanity, the Loa, and what's left of the Suul'ka as they begin the arduous process of fixing their planet, reconstructing their civilization/species, and reseeding their race respectively. Payment for the machines and worlds we are leaving them."
Sarah smiled slightly. "The next few centuries will be interesting here." The barest twitch of will sent rivers of flesh cycling and coalescing into dedicated spawning structures. Amniotic sacks formed, and dozens of creatures began to form. Drawing on the expertise of Abathur, the Queen of the Swarm tweaked the creatures in question.
Corruptors grew nodules to make them even more psionically powerful, and with the Queen focusing on forming them quickly, the first few dozen burst from their amniotic sacks into the void. Tentacles flared with purple light even as the fluids that had protected them in their developing stages froze, sublimating due to the sudden pressure change. With a noiseless cry that only the other Zerg could hear, the first few members of the Swarm flew amoung the ships, and began tearing them open.
The adult crew would be consumed.
The squid-ship creature nodded, bobbing in the fasion as if it was a head. "I will leave you to it- I think the good General on Pandora will be wanting to speak with me soon." The hologram vanished, and Sarah turned her attention to her forces beginning their feast of Morrigi.
"Specimen request." Burbled Abathur's mind in the background. "New species, new traits. Recommended subjects adults, but extra-large entities for additional essence testing preferred."
The Queen didn't even need to nod. Her soldiers and the Swarm that was now spreading from ship to ship, carrying biomass back to her primary Avatar, would know what she knew.
There was no real fine way to put a point on it- Augustine was having a horrible, HORRIBLE day.
It wasn't a big thing... Well, single big thing. More like a number of big things that made today already become a horrible day.
First- the Avatar pilots were having their bodies outfitted with body armor. The armor was incredibly expensive from a materials standpoint, but since the first versions of the bodies needed a version of this armor to even move in earth gravity, the armors were not too much of an annoyance to get used to. Indeed- she had clocked in tens of thousands of Avatar hours in a similar armor before even coming here.
What was irritating was that they now HAD to wear the armor. Relations with the local Na'vi would be set back years, and it was not like they were even on speaking terms right now!
Second, anyone who went outside the base ALSO had to be outfitted in armor. Even inside the base, they were all wearing temporary oxygen packs- and this base design had been successful for the last, well, eighty years! Damn things were heavy, bulky, and completely unnecessary unless the base was breached... Which led to the third item that annoyed her.
The base was being upgraded FAST. They had, at this base, originally five anti, well, anti-everything guns. These guns were normally hidden from view of the locals, and were built into the main corner pillars of the facility. She had seen them being used before- they blew up THANATORS if the shots experienced a glancing hit. Hell, Sturmbeasts (SHE WASN'T GOING TO CALL THEM STURMBEESTS EVEN IN HER HEAD) were scattered across half an acre with every shot!
The Hammerhead Titanotheres died slower, due to their large leathery armor, and usually had enough time to make some sad moans and gurgles before they died. The massive deforested zone around the base? Due to these guns.
There were now 10 guns- and it hadn't even been a full day yet. More parts were being manufactured, and the number would be 15 by the end-of-day tomorrow.
This not only ruined the nature-feel of the avatar bunks (all the guns were active and scanning the surroundings, which looked rather ominous), but the things prioritized anything that looked like it had a Na'vi heat signature, and if they didn't get a good scan of the chip that every body they had grown had implanted, well... You can't direct red mist with a link chamber.
TO TOP THIS SHITSTORM OF A DAY OFF, there was now an alien sitting in an unused room. An alien robot sitting in an unused room.
She winced as the chair that the alien robot was sitting in broke under the pressures of having a three-meter tall humanoid made of a metal that they couldn't even guess at the composition of sitting on it- then fought off the headache as the robot failed to react, and kept sitting on thin air. Small thrusters on it's back were doing something that refracted light in strange ways around the exit ports, and the other people watching gaped as it held out a hand, sending a stream of... Something out, forming first the wireframe of a chair that filled into a sturdy-looking chair made of almost the same metal as the alien robot.
The chair also seemed to be vacuum-welded to the floor.
The thrusters shut off.
She really wanted a cigarette.
"It's not quite human." Muttered Quartich behind her. She suppressed the impulse to jump in surprise- he had ALWAYS been incredibly sneaky, and took every opportunity to try jumpscaring her.
He had never forgotten the time she managed to get him trapped in an avatar gestation tank. Or the subsequent prank war. She smirked slightly, remembering the better times- then dropped the expression and memories. There was still an alien robot in the facility, and it was.... Twiddling it's thumbs.
All four of it's thumbs.
She fought off another headache as a technician came over to her with a tablet. Over the last few hours, Earth had realized they could now talk in near-realtime with the base due to the large portal that the aliens had built. It ran a 3-minute delay due to the distances involved, but it was MORE than cheap enough that the RDA had opened communication despite the presence of the Quantum-Entanglement communication system they already had in place.
Money was always the limiting factor on this damned project.
She tapped the tablet, and looked at the questions that the RDA had mandated they ask (on penalty of canceling the back-earned salary waiting upon their return to earth):
1) What is your name?
2) What is your purpose here?
3) What is the name of your species, best translated to concepts that we have in the languages you have access to that we may know?
4) Will you be willing to exchange technological knowledge or resources for Human-owned assets?
The questions were, to some degree, obvious- but the fact that none of the four questions were linking anything directly to the RDA meant that some high-up people were taking this VERY seriously.
Some soldiers walked in, armored in the sleeker exoskeletons she had seen being fabricated, and carrying one between them. No two. She could see two helmets. "Quartich, what are those doing here?" She pointed at the suits. "We are just going to ask some questions."
"Protocol for First Contact." The reply was immediate and gruff. "Category 6 Hazmat suits, in case of radiation. Internal air supply and type-7 sealed armor in case of breach into vacuum. All are standard for first contact with a more advanced culture than our own."
"The culture of the Na'vi-"
"Does not count. A more technologically advanced culture." She could feel his glare without looking up. "The Na'vi, for all their 'living in harmony with nature', are less technologically advanced than the Native American Indians were when they encountered the first Explorers from Europe." He tapped on a panel around one wrist, and this side of the airlock opened. "Would you like assistance with your own suit, Doc?"
Augustine looked up at his face, and scowled. "I will forgo-"
"Protocol." The Colonel interrupted the start of a rant. "It's not up for debate. If you are going walk in there with me, you WILL wear the suit."
-
The majority of my focus was hundreds of lightyears away.
I had FINALLY managed to rectify the majority of the tech bases I had assimilated, and the physics behind them matched up near-perfectly with the data my tech was based on. An unexpected windfall, but I began running simulations for adjusting the different technological paths into my own.
Kinetic weapons were easy enough to integrate- especially with differently-shaped slugs being the main difference, I simply set up a rotary cycle so that the inbuilt-fabricators that constructed all the ammo for my ammo-based weapons could adjust to their targets. Shield-penitrators, shredder rounds, the equivalent of a space-based shotgun round filled with needles, rounds that could be calibrated to penetrate to dedicated depths and explode- the list went on and on. Hell, a design of round that used a miniaturized FTL drive would allow my larger vessels to toss FTL bullets that skipped in and out of reality!
Physical torpedo technology was simplistic, but the encapsulated energy projectiles that the more advanced entities in that real used were interesting. I set those aside and let the massive Libraries digest the concepts behind them- an Annihilazor torpedo would be EPIC, but antimatter torpedoes were more indiscriminate than I would have preferred.
The communications were stone-age tech to me- well, most of it. There was some stuff that tied into psionic tech in the later levels, but overall my FTL communication system was superior in every way.
Energy weapons were more varied, but compared to the annihilazor, well, none compared really. There were some interesting force manipulation technologies (graviton beams, tractor beams, inertial effector cannons, etc), but all fairly basic. I set some of the ideas aside in another Library que to see what integration methods were proposed. Meson weapons were new, but the properties of my standard armor material prevented significant penetration of the weapon.
Energy generation methods were not advanced persay, but the wave amplification technology was a step in the right direction that might have led (eventually) to the ex-nihilo energy generators that I had access to.
The shields were ALL new, none of them using methods that my tech had covered in any way. Graviton shields which could deflect planets but let radiation through. Meson shields that could stop nearly everything from penetrating given sufficient energy. Deflector 'Mirror' shields that let matter through but robbed it of almost all forms of radiant energy. Intangibility generators that prevented a vessel from directly interacting with anything other than a very small band of light by slightly altering the resonance effects of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces... Just so many tasty pieces of tech to consume!
The Biotechnology had quite a few applications (especially coupled with the customizable cloning chambers that humanity had developed in reaction to discovering the Na'vi), and I would be able to soon build my own custom body.
Psionics though... That's where the REAL treasure was. The mechanics of biologically-generated 'magical bullshit' were subtle, but worth the investigation. My methods of manipulating matter and energy were brute-force methods (admittedly, highly refined and advanced brute-force methods, but still), and yet the Liir had more finely-tuned and energy efficient methods. Admittedly not many, but they did have a few things that my tech didn't know in the fields of micro-manipulation. What's more, they developed, after the Loa woke up and became a sovereign culture, a way for their synthetic 'siblings' to use the same sorts of methods.
Long story short- the Loa managed to crack the actual reason behind why Psionics was a THING- active quantum macroeffects. It's the same sort of principles that were used for my TUNING FORKS... But along an entirely different chain of concepts. Biomimicry development, as the Loa could naturally do this sort of thing... It just boggled even my mind.
Didn't mean that I wasn't going to abuse the crap out of it.
Telekinesis. Clairvoyance. Empathy. Farsense. Iron Will. Glamour. Lifesense. Metakinesis. Precognition. Holy leaping monkey giblets, all of these were, on their own, GAMEBREAKERS. I sent a probe with a order out for a single Library for each topic. In the next few minutes, 25 Libraries would jump in, and the topics were already queued up. I would be able to pull of a decent Reaper impression before I left.
Oh, and last, but not least (and having spent most of the processing power up to now), the different forms of FTL drives were integrated.
First: Hiver FTL. An indefinite-ranged portal system, which exploited a slightly-different form of quantum-uncertainty exploit on a macro level that made it more likely that an object, passing through one portal, would appear in another, specific portal, at an undefined time every moment.
It had several advantages over my own portal system (indefinite range between portals, lower energy consumption, the ability to 'cast'-teleport to a random point several lightyears in a set direction, and minimal infrastructure needed), and a couple major disadvantages ('cast'-teleporting was as able to accidentally transpose and obliterate the payloads out on a random higher-dimensional scatter if the exit point was within another object, the teleporters are not open entirely between both points so the traffic had to be staggered, the system had a maximum 'bandwith' that limited number of ships of set size through the system, and compared to Progenitor tech, it didn't have a long shelf life).
So Hiver teleporters would be useful for teleporting clumps of drones or missiles if I wanted that sort of attack. Good to know. I designed a version for testing this idea, and moved on.
Second: Liir FTL. The 'Flickerdrive', a short-range version of the inverted quantum effect that Hivers used, it make the ships more likely to be 'there' rather than 'here', where the distance between the two was about half-a-meter. By rapidly pulsing the drive, a vessel could 'translate' faster than lightspeed.
I had no equivalent, so I designed a model for a probe, and moved to the next one.
Third: Zuul FTL. The 'Rip' and 'Rend' drives, which tore the universe a new one and let their vessels transfer through the space at FTL speeds.
I had no equivalent, and personally I thought the drive effect was a bit weird- the culture KNEW there were natural 'Nodes' that they could ride, so why didn't they use them? Oh well- I took the back half of their drive designs, and built it into a module for a probe. Maybe I could figure out why they didn't use this method.
Fourth: Loa FTL. The 'Neutrino Gates' or 'Accelerator Hoops', which pushed things up to FTL speeds if they drove through the hoops for a few lightyears.
These were actually USEFUL. I mean, they were limited to pushing materials that were, well, smart-clay (a material the Loa used to build variable ships which I couldn't use unless I just wanted temporary structures that were WAY too flimsy for anything other than fleshies) or a solid mass design. IE, no moving parts larger than a 2nm switch. Perfect for a gun system, as my projectiles didn't need any complex parts.
FTL bullets would be nice. I designed a gun system to use it, and applied it.
Fifth: Tarka FTL. The 'Warp' system, and one I really wanted to see. The star-trek version, not the Alcubierre version that the Progenitors had been playing around with.
The difference was that the Progenitor version was very, very dangerous- it used a method of numeric manipulation along fundamental universal constant flaws to force space to *bend* in a very specific way, first generating a bubble of impenetrable space-time, and then *twisting* that bent space in a method that causes instantaneous velocity of the bubble that can be on the order of trillions of times lightspeed, with rather interesting side-effects that needed to be compensated for. Violations in causality, the fact that the warp bubble could go through STARS without noticing, the fact that there was an compression wave of particles that were trapped on the surface of the bubble that exploded out with momentum built up from being forced to move FASTER THAN LIGHT with the force of a Pulsar Beam... Yeah, there were some problems with it.
The Tarka Warp Drive generated a 'depression' in space-time, that 'softly' 'ripped' the space behind the ship, forcing the vessel forward rapidly as space expanded behind it. It would 'bounce' off of planets and stars, and was safe... But it would make a KICK-ASS missile. What's better, is that if you just wanted a vessel to move at a set speed that was faster-than-light, you could build it into a single, solid structure.
FTL bullets or missiles that moved at a set speed before dropping down to STL? Hell yes! I designed a version of the bullet version, and one that could be scaled up for my cuttle-ships.
Sixth and finally: Morrigi FTL. The 'Void Blades' were interesting indeed, as the effect stretched and compressed the space between the wings, weakening the rules of space-time slightly around the vessel with a minute imbalance that catapulted the vessel forward into the newly-weakened spacetime at superluminal speeds. What was more, the Void Blade method STACKED!
A fleet, if within a certain distance of each other, could piggyback on each other's FTL ability, to the benefit of the fleet. The lead ship could devote most of it's power to the stretching effect, and the rest could provide thrust as a group. As most of the energy demand was spent causing the passive space-stretching, the result was both faster and more fuel efficient.
It had the potential to work well with the principles behind the Tarka Warp drive, so I designed a version of the Void Blade drive with and one without a built-in Tarka Warp drive. It might explode, or it might cause the speed to increase exponentially.
I had set the production order and testing areas within the current middle-point of the entire gate network JUST as the airlock-door into my 'cell' opened and the two figures walked in wearing powered hazmat suits.
As they sat down in the chairs opposite side of the table, I leaned forward and grinned. I had deliberately not listened in on the communications between Earth and the people here, so I had the chance to be surprised.
Would I be surprised? Probably not, but it would be nice.
-