Log 11
Planes have left, heading back in the direction they came. I made sure to note down that direction, because there was probably a GDI base thataways.
I had a Firefly follow them, flying low to escape notice, its smaller profile and stealth systems helping with that. It'll stop when it finds signs of civilization, where I could hopefully listen in on broadcasts and the like.
If I could get the location of GDI bases, abandoned or otherwise, that'd be helpful to say the least.
In the meantime, I checked up on the Orbital Radar.
That thing had a hell of a range, let me tell ya.
Lots of shit in orbit, satellites and satellites and satellites.
Ion Cannons, orbital infrastructure, communications satellites, millions upon millions upon millions of pieces orbital debris and waste.
I'm not seeing the Philadelphia station up there. Coupled with the abnormal amount of debris... everywhere and Tiberium's current form, I'd say that it was probably destroyed.
Which puts me at during the Third Tiberium War, at the least.
I also picked up an odd interference near the edge of the solar system, just past Pluto, similar to the interference I got from Tiberium.
I was 99.99% certain that was the Scrin.
If they're not here yet, or even coming yet, that probably means that the Liquid Tiberium Bomb hasn't been detonated yet, which in turn means that Temple Prime is still intact, placing me at somewhere between 2047 and 2049.
Hope they were coming soon. I'm not going to be waiting for years, even if I have to go to them rather than have them come here.
Alrighty... Simple enough.
Planning time.
First things first; amultiple bases of operations. Speed and stealth are two advantages I have, so I should abuse the shit out of them until such a time that I'm either forced to work in the open, I get what I want or stealth becomes useless.
Second; operation objectives.
What do I want?
Well, starting and reiterating; the technology of the GDI, Nod and Scrin factions. Preferably all of it, but specifically: GDI Firestorm, harmonic and rapid construction technologies; Nod Obelisk, Stealth, Tiberium and Cyborg technology; Scrin wormhole, phase, Tiberium, Teleportation and mind-control technology.
Firestorm would be good to cover a key lack in my technology; defensive shields / area denial by way of force fields rather than lasers and missiles. Not that there was anything wrong with lasers and missiles, force fields just held a different kind of appeal, speaking as the one who went All The Shields, All The Time in SupCom.
Harmonic technologies for more offensive and defensive options. Always pays to have more of both, especially since most technology I already had access to defaulted to horribly lethal with a side of ohgodwhy. Neutronium artillery shells, nuclear weapons, a variety of lethal lasers and plasma weapons, and, of course, gigantic death bots, death tanks and death planes in every other direction.
Great for death, destruction, chaos and mayhem.
Not so great when you're not trying to go full out war.
Variety is helpful.
Rapid construction technologies; including MCV's. If there was anything in there compatible with my own technology, it could help quite a bit. Nod's and Scrin's tech was also included in that, for much the same reasons.
Nod's stuff was obvious. Obelisks of Light for that extra defensive option, which was a bit different to my own laser towers.
Stealth, again, if it was compatible with any of my stuff, would be another layer of protective technologies.
Tiberium technologies was obvious, as Nod had a much more advanced understanding of Tiberium and the uses of it than GDI did. Scrin stuff was, subsequently, equally important if I could capture it, since they were much further beyond Nod than Nod had been ahead of GDI.
Cyborg was equally obvious; variety and capabilities. The bots that I already had access to were big, fast and good at killing. And not much else; Cyborgs offer a different kind of edge that could be useful in different kinds of situations.
Scrin stuff was the most important things I was after. I was going to try my hardest to get my hands on it.
Wormholes, naturally, offer an element of strategic and tactical mobility, separate from my Teleporters that, quite simply, weren't feasible to use in any conflict that was being perpetuated on a short-term scale. Mostly because any such conflict would be over long before I got enough Energy Generators up to feed the Teleporter-to-anywhere feature. Scrin wormholes didn't seem to eat up nearly as much power as my own did. Either that or they had superior energy generation, either one would be useful.
Phase technology is also hella-useful, given that it rendered things effectively invulnerable to conventional and non-exotic attack. Without figuring out a way to bypass or disable the phasing on Thresholds, there was simply nothing I could do about them unless I destroyed them prior to being fully constructed. Admittedly not that hard for me, given how the GDI managed it with their comparatively more limited technology and only missed Threshold 19 because Nod intervened and defended it. If I could replicate that effect for my own structures and units, well...
The Scrin's Tiberium-tech and knowledge is useful for aforementioned reasons.
Personal-teleporters aren't a thing in my army. Getting my hands on them would prove to be such a hilarious tactical benefit that I'm not sure I could express it fully without breaking down into laughter entirely. Moving the Commander to safety, navigation, executing surprise strikes, dodging, closing distances... so many uses, if perhaps limited in range compared to Wormholes.
Mind-Control, while perhaps unethical, inspiring of hundreds of morality debates and feelings of ill-at-ease, is still an incredibly useful tool when used correctly and in the right situations. If nothing else, simply having the option of Mind-Control is better than not having it, even if I never actually use the tech.
Getting off-track again.
Other things I need is the Tacitus; mostly for technology and the many times aforementioned Tiberium Control Network.
I need the Tiberium Control Network because of how easy it would make it to save this planet from eventually being converted entirely into Tiberium, or from being harvested by the Scrin. For all of how this world kind of sucks and is facing war every couple of years to decades, there are still billions of people living here that I don't want to see killed. I did not approve of genocide and I was going to try to prevent it, if at all possible.
That about sums it up.
Acquire technology, 'borrow' the Tacitus forever, save the world.
Simple enough.
Log 12
My Fireflies have followed the aircraft to a base.
There is slightly less Tiberium there then there is everywhere else, perhaps courtesy of the GDI harvesters currently... harvesting Tiberium.
There's only 2, but, well, Tiberium everywhere.
My Fireflies came into range of the base, automatically intercepting a transmission from the unpacked MCV near the center.
'- nothing?'
'Apparently. The pilots didn't see anything, nor did the scanners they have.'
'Great. 2 megaton explosion in the middle of Italy, and we have no idea what caused it.'
'I'm sure InOps will figure it out eventually.'
'On a good day, InOps might be able to tell us that Tiberium is green. Pack up and get out of there, the Commander is less than an hour away from Sarajevo, and I want someone covering him so he can focus.'
'Yes sir.'
Well, that's interesting.
Both that my stealth was confirmed, and that Sarajevo is going to be assaulted.
Sarajevo is where Temple Prime is located.
If I remember correctly, anyway.
Which gives me a nice, solid timeline.
That is; less than an hour before Temple Prime goes up in a 2 gigaton explosion.
I definitely don't want to be around for that one.
At least I know where I am now.
Italy.
Smack dab in the middle of the largest Red Zone on the planet, soon to be host to the Scrin's Relay Node at Tiber River (otherwise known as Ground Zero), and Threshold 19 at Rome.
Joy.
The GDI base is being packed up.
There wasn't much over there, just the pair of Harvesters, a Tiberium Refinery, the Construction Yard and the Airfield.
All of which looked brand spanking new, but that was an asides.
I had my Firefly continue to follow them, intel was always useful.
Tiberium sure is useful.
I'd prefer Metal Deposits, but in the absence of the latter, the former will do. In fact, I might have even used them both in conjuction, if I wasn't 98% certain that the reason there was so little of the latter was because of the former.
Still, easy matter.
My Fabricators finished a T2 Air Factory, supported by the material intake from both myself and another set of Fabricators reclaiming Tiberium enmasse. That I had access to flying Fabricators made this process so much easier and quicker, the flight doing more than a few favors to reclaiming ground.
God damn it would have sucked to have been limited to ground only. Limited by speed and terrain... ugh, disgusting.
Air Fabricators are awesome.
Speaking of; T2 Fabricator.
I want some T2 Radar. T1 is nice, yeah, but T2 is a hell of a thing. Double the range, a more powerful sensor package that could pierce through all of this interference.
That it'd effectively double my normal Metal intake was a side effect. Naturally, of course, completely unintentional. As was most certainly the case with my Energy generation, too.
Totally unintentional.
Just one Fabricator for now. First the T2 Radar, then the Extractor, then the Generator.
My other T1 Fabricators continue to reclaim Tiberium, slowly but surely feeding my pair of Metal Storages.
I turned around to assist my Fabricator with the Radar array, noting the lack of Tiberium in my immediate area, a courtesy of my continuous reclaiming.
T2 Radar is hilariously overpowered.
Interference? What's that?
But more seriously, T2 Radar is not giving a fuck about the interference that both my Orbital Radar and my T1 Radar had encountered. Didn't have nearly the same range as the former, though it had double the radius of the latter.
'Advanced Radar' is, much like the Orbital and Deepspace Radar, not quite accurate as a name, given that Radar was only a single part out of... 9? different systems it operated off, but the name was simple enough that its purpose was conveyed in two words.
And I guess that's all that matters, isn't it.
Anyway, yeah, Italy.
The Radar is overpowered enough that I can get a good map of everything within 1200 kilometers, and a less detailed scan of the terrain up to about 3600 Kilometers. I'm somewhat west to a place called Bari, a coastal town. I've been there before, actually, nice place if I remember correctly. Then again, that was years ago.
The T1 Radar had, thanks to the interference, barely been able to cut to 150 KM.
Sarajevo is about 323~ KM from Bari, and as such is about 350~ KM from me.
I'll note that yes, I can detect Temple Prime. From 350 kilometers away. Really hits home on the Commanders being planetary siege units thing.
Oh, and Progenitor Super Science, but that was a given.
It might have been a bit harder if Nod had attempted to stealth the place, but, well, they didn't.
Oh well, their loss, my gain.
Log 13
Temple Prime isn't the only thing I can detect. There's Tiberium crystals in every other direction, certainly, but there's also a few more things of interest.
There's a group of GDI vehicles heading towards Temple Prime; presumably the same group in-game that assaulted the wars and eventually destroyed the Ion Disruption Towers. I could see some of GDI's troops down in Albania, where they had established a foothold into Nod Territory.
GDI weren't the only ones running around, there were a couple Nod bases here and there. The Tiberium concentrations in those areas seemed lesser than the immediate surroundings, so I guessed that Nod was mining those areas. I marked all three as targets of opportunity, pending recon. Grabbing some of Nod's technology this early would be quite helpful, especially since it would probably let me grab GDI's tech a bit easier.
There were also a couple of small buildings here and there, filled with what my Radar insisted were moving Tiberium crystals intermixed with organic matter.
The Forgotten, probably. See if I can't help them when I get my hands on the Tacitus/Scrin Tech, if they want the help.
I sent off 7 of Fireflies to each, one to each of the three bases, 4 to the structures that were in every other direction. I also sent three T1 Fabricators to each base, hoping to get as much tech as I could before Sarajevo blows up.
First, and closest, base is a golden opportunity. There is a Construction Yard, small amounts of people, no defenses, a single Reactor and two refineries. I don't think this particular group was meant to be out there for long, since all they're doing is mining Tiberium.
I had my Fabricator build a Teleporter while I, for the second time since I awoke as a Delta Commander, constructed a T1 Bot Factory.
I rapidly constructed a few Doxes, ordering them to line up in front of the Teleporter.
Doxes... Doxes were fun. Cheap, weak, plentiful and surprisingly painful in large numbers. Nevermind that they were still several-meter tall robots, and thus quite a bit tougher than one might have thought, given their... popcorny nature in the game.
Don't get me wrong, still popcorn. But popcorny in that hilariously advanced kill-bot way.
To go alongside them; several Fabricators, for capturing. A given, since Bots were a tad bit sneakier than Aircraft.
The Teleporter came online, and I promptly opened a connection and sent my small cadre of Bots through. Not too long though, I closed the connection the instant after they were through.
No point in taking any chances, is there?
I hadn't had the Teleporter built within visual range. It was actually fairly far away, but not nearly so far as to inconvenience me.
My Doxes and Fabricators are stealthy. To Nod, anyway. I had my Doxes cover the few entrances and exits into and out of the clearing where the Nod Construction Yard was currently housed.
My Fabricators, on the other hand, kept walking straight up to the various buildings; the two Refineries, the Reactor and the Construction Yard.
Nothing reacted when they got close.
Not even when my Fabricators came close enough to start picking up on the conversations going on inside the Construction Yard.
There wasn't much, the Construction Yard itself seemed understaffed, with few people on the inside.
Delicately, the Fabricators at the Construction Yard stepped closer, raising their arms and carefully spraying a small amount of nano-globs at it.
The nanobots went to work quickly, spreading out and seeking ways into the structure, perfectly coordinating as a swarm. Some entered gaps in the structure, seeking out wiring and power, before tracing both to the inside, into the command center. Finally, a group reached the computer system, before stilling as they waited for the other groups to do their work.
I directed them towards communication arrays, alarms and power. I didn't want Nod to know that I was there, so I wouldn't give them a clue that anything was wrong.
One group took control of the communication arrays, preventing a potential broadcast that would give up the game, all the while continuing to broadcast all-clears to Nod's HQ. Another took over the alarms, preventing those that were here from doing something... unfortunate.
With those potential concerns out of the way, the first group promptly started to interface with the computer, taking it over silently, quickly and efficiently. There were a multitude of designs hard-saved into the Construction Yard's database, which I didn't hesitate in copying into my own. Blueprints, mostly, but there were also a few maps of the area that I happily took.
Others weren't, the computer merely accessing the designs from a remote terminal elsewhere. I copied as much of those as I could, sending information requests and receiving it automatically soon after. Not too much, though, I was capable of getting the designs, but the underlying principles behind the technology was something had got an immediate information-denied reply, which would make it that much harder to adapt the technology to my purposes.
I noted that one of the people inside the commander center was reading a book; 'Kane: The Messiah'.
I rolled my nonexistent eyes.
I tracked the signals as they came and went, attempting to locate the place where the information was being broadcasted from so I could simply go and hack that. Each request, each sent signal shaved off kilometers, narrowing it down.
France, I noted. Perhaps underground. Every time it sent a transmission, I nailed down the area further and further, eventually restricting it to a relatively small area only a few kilometers across.
Finally, having collected as much data as I could in such a short amount of time, I had my nanobots self-destruct, leaving no trace of my... interference. Following that, I had my Bots retreat through the Teleporter, then had my Fabricator non-violently reclaim my teleporter as a whole.
Right, time to head to France.
Due to another schedule conflict, you guys get this one 2 and a half hours earlier.
Log 14
There is a GDI Satellite swinging into geosynchronous orbit above Temple Prime.
That is; an Ion Cannon Satellite.
The Liquid Tiberium Bomb is going to be detonated soon, which means that a significant portion of europe is going to get showered in radioactive materials.
I guess I have about 50 minutes before that satellite lights up and that bomb goes off. I'm outside of the blast radius, and whatever does hit me shouldn't have nearly enough of a punch to be a threat.
I could stop it if I wanted to. Send a Fabricator over, not even close to the battlefield, just build an Umbrella and have it shoot down the satellite; prevent the bomb from going off and prevent most of eastern europe from being devastated.
I saw the explosion on a computer screen, once. It had been beautiful, when I hadn't thought about all the lives being lost because of it. I'm having trouble waiting to see what it will look like in real life.
The explosion is going to kill a lot of people.
The Scrin were going to kill even more.
Ground Zero, Tiber River; soon to be host to the Scrin's oh-so-precious Relay Node, which would allow them to survive and operate upon the Earth. The second I gained access to the Scrin's technology, I fully intended to bomb it into oblivion, alongside the Scrin's Phase Generators and Threshold Towers.
It would save a lot of lives, it would kill the Scrin, and it would handily prevent Kane's Ascension in one go. Can't wait.
But until then, I burrowed into the ground. Or, rather, a hoard of Bot Fabricators did, slowly constructing an underground compound, a storage area for my units, where I could hold a lot of them, hopefully without drawing any more attention that was strictly necessary.
Inside, I was going to store bomber and fighters. Lots and lots of bombers and fighters. The fighters for the express purpose of protecting the bombers, and the bombers for the express purpose of bombarding the shit out of the Scrin's Relay Node, Phase Generators and Thresholds.
The phrase 'blot out the sun' comes to mind, which is what I fully intend to do when the time comes. I'll have one sun-blotting layer made entirely out of missiles, another made entirely out of bombers, and another made entirely out of fighters.
And maybe a fourth made out of SXX Laser Platforms.
My Fabricator slowly passed through the clouds, heading towards France. Or, more specifically, that one particular 8-kilometer-wide circle where I had pinned down Nod's Intelligence Database.
There were less Tiberium gasses there, in the Yellow Zone compared to the Red Zone. I'm not surprised.
I might have been worried about Nod detection, but my Fabricator's stealth had been proven so far. Time to grab the rest of Nod's stuff.
Fabricator arrived. I was right, Nod's Intelligence Database was underground.
Cleverly hidden actually, but somewhat useless thanks to the fact that I could detect the signals it was letting off.
It was self powered, hooked in a network of subterranean tunnels that spanned quite far. Further than my Fabricator's sensors could detect, actually.
Nod's fabled Global Subterranean Network? Perhaps.
But yeah, Intelligence Database. Nod was big on hidden backups, I guess. I don't think that GDI would have been able to find it, especially since France was a Nod-controlled Yellow Zone, but I digress.
I sent a Bot Fabricator into the tunnels, directing it through the labyrinthine maze and straight towards the Intelligence Database.
It was, as was probably natural of a hidden, self-powered, buried back-up node, undefended. There was nobody nearby, nor were there any static defenses aside from easily-bypassed traps, and easier broken disguises.
When my Fabricator finally got close, I had it hacked the crap out of that thing.
And it contained just about everything I wanted.
Nod's technology, Nod's intel, Nod's important locations and plans. Fucking perfect, really.
Seems that after the Brotherhood Archives had been destroyed, Kane had all the important information decentralized so he wouldn't lose another couple of centuries worth of technology and research should something happen to important, central building. Again.
To that end, these Intelligence Database Nodes, which had been placed throughout the world, throughout the Subterranean Tunnel Network.
It filled in the gaps that I had from the Construction Yard from before. I already had the blueprints for quite a bit of Nod's normal military technology, but it was somewhat more lacking in the principles and the technology behind said blueprints, two things that I didn't want to attempt to figure out on my own. I probably could have done it, but the time investment behind such wasn't something that I wanted to do.
Anyway- Nod tech.
It's in here, it's useful.
Nod's knowledge of Tiberium is advanced and useful. I looked through the scientific studies they'd done on it, read the notes that Nod's scientists had placed for it. I checked their theories, downloaded their ideas, copied and categorized every single piece of technology they used it for. Chemical weapons, explosive devices, power plants.
Liquid Tiberium.
I saved it all, and moved on.
I took the Obelisk technology, analyzing how the technology worked, how the complex network of mirrors and focusses worked and acted, how energy was gathered and stored, then ultimately released as a blast of angry doom. Saved it. Saved the derivative laser technologies, too, including the laser weapons both handheld and vehicle, as well as the Laser Walls and other laser techs.
Then came the construction technologies. The Construction Yard built prefabricated modules, which were then deployed in the field to unfold into the buildings they represented. I probably wouldn't be able to use the same technique in my own buildings, as they simply weren't designed that way, but there were other things I could do with that technology.
I took the data that Nod had on subterranean vehicles, drills, workers, supports, everything. Never know when it might be useful, when I could adapt it for something else later on.
I hit upon Nod's knowledge of Cyborg Technology, and downloaded all of it. They were considerably powerful and complex for their size, and I had no doubt that I would be making use of them at some point in the future. Subsequent in the Cyborg knowledge what Nod's genetic knowledge; specifically genetic enhancement, but also a lot of knowledge about the human body in general. I could definitely make use of that, too.
Last was Nod's Stealth technology. Download, download, download. Adaptive camouflage bubble, cloaking fields, Stealth Tank, Specter Artillery vehicle, Disruption pods and the Disruption Towers. I took it all, and left nothing behind.
Then I started looking into other things.
Nod's databases are surprisingly extensive. They had a lot of information about GDI; their communication channels, their bases, locations of their research facilities, and more.
I took all of it.
I was quite interested in the first.
I tried not to think about all the people who'll die from the explosion. Who would die, from the resultant secondary effects. Who would suffer, from the Scrin's eventual invasion, GDI and Nod's continued conflict.
The thoughts crept up on me regardless.
The bomb... 50 minutes was enough time to stop GDI from detonating it. Even from this distance, by force.
Millions will lose their lives. I could prevent it; it'd be simple. Easy, even; yet I have taken any of the steps to do so. Because I wanted tech.
The Scrin's tech.
If I act, I can save countless lives.
But, in turn, there was the possibility that I could lose the tech that the Scrin would offer me.
Millions of lives just for the Scrin's tech. Putting it lightly; I'd be kind of a bitch if I let that happen, wouldn't I?
But the question is, how greedy am I, and how willing am I to throw away lives?
heh
What a stupid question.
Log 15
It wasn't worth it.
Millions of people shouldn't suffer for it.
I made a call.
Quite literally, made a call.
I drew on Nod's knowledge of communication networks, and then promptly spliced my own signal into them.
Nod had long since figured out how to do that, and longer still communicate without being traced, so I simply copied it.
Fun fact; Nod had the phone number of Redmond Boyle; GDI's current Director.
And now, so did I.
"Who is this?" Came the deep voice of Director Boyle.
Hmm.
"My name is unimportant, Director."
"Who is this?" He repeated, his tone significantly lower, as if to sound threatening.
Ha.
"I have important information about Nod, Director. Specifically; information about Nod's Liquid Tiberium Bomb."
There was a pause on the other side of the line, a slight lag involved thanks to sheer distance.
"Go on." He stated, suspicion evident in his tone.
"They are currently storing the Liquid Tiberium Bomb underneath Temple Prime. I would advise against using the Ion Cannon on that location, Director, it will cause the bomb to detonate and lay waste to a considerably large portion of Europe. Millions will die."
"Who are you?" He asked.
"That matter is currently irrelevant."
I hung up.
Boyle is an idiot, but I don't think he's stupid enough to order the Ion Cannon Strike if he knows the Liquid Tiberium Bomb is there.
I hope he isn't that stupid.
I put Nod's technology to good use.
By which, I meant that I hid more and more of my base underground. My Energy Generators worked just as well underground as they did above ground; just about flawlessly. Tiberium isn't a problem, my structures proved just as resilient to the solid material as they did to the Tiberium gasses. It was the exact same defense that my nanobots had been using, which was quite useful.
Nod had been unable to make use of most of their subterranean technology thanks to the underground, chaotic crystal growth of Tiberium, which led to Tiberium poisoning in both vehicles and infantry, something that Nod had been unable to stop.
Something that wasn't a problem for me. I had a fleet of Bot Fabricators working; digging tunnels and caverns. The caverns I filled with buildings, while I expanded and reinforced the tunnel network so that an unfortunate quake wouldn't cave everything in and require my Fabricators to dig everything out again.
I would not want to be the unfortunate shmuck raiding this place, got to admit. Long, metal hallways, a complete lack of cover, lacking in light, detection systems that were perfectly capable of monitoring everything within, dozens of factories that would be extremely eager to start churning out hundreds of tanks and bots which will be so hilariously lethal in such a wide open environment.
If it were me, I'd just nuke it to oblivion instead. Subterranean doesn't work so well when you're fighting other Commanders, since you'd be all but conceding the above ground and all the open space to your enemy. Not worth it; unless you were fortifying the system and held a presence beforehand.
Or if you were fighting low-tech beings that didn't have the capacity to get at you, in one of the most immediately hostile areas known to their kind, when they didn't have a clue about your existence or your capabilities at all.
Hah.
All the rock and Tiberium that I'm reclaiming is actually fueling my growth here; what I get is more than what I spend constructing the supports, the buildings, and blocking off the buildings that don't need access to the hallways. Which is so many of them; all my Generators are blocked off, alongside my storages and my Advanced Radar.
I feel like a Minecrafter.
I don't mind that feeling.
Boyle is, evidently, that fucking stupid.
I estimated 50 minutes.
I'd been spot on the mark.
The Ion Cannon is warming up even now, a multitude of targeting lasers spinning in a circle to come directly down in the center of Temple Prime.
Boyle is going to order it to fire, even after I gave him the warning.
Jesus fuck.
That's a callous bastard right there.
The beam itself was brief, a thin, white line that briefly split the sky, before it was drowned out entirely by a resounding thoom, a blinding flash of light, and a shockwave that I felt from three hundred and fifty kilometers away.
I was right.
It was pretty.
The shockwave buffeted my air units, temporarily throwing them off course and control. I was too heavy, on too stable a ground, to be thrown around like my Fabricators, Hummingbirds, Hornets and Bumblebees.
Staring into the light of the explosion was like staring at the sun, on this was soo much close, and seemed so much brighter. It might have seared the eyes of a normal human being, but I simply stood there and basked in it.
I was too far away to feel most of the force, though I nevertheless felt some of the power, even this far away. Tiny, Infinitesimal compared to the full strength, weakened so much that it failed to even damage my armor, but the sheer scale and distance involved made that a certain kind of impressive all on its own.
My burgeoning underground base felt the shockwaves, shaking it. The metal, and the supports held, thankfully.
The material being thrown into the air as also impressive, ionic particles thrown up and producing a blue static, seemingly, which reached up into atmosphere, then further into orbit.
It was mere minutes later that I began to detect movement from the Scrin ships, seeing their energy spike, and the ships themselves begin to accelerate, speeding towards Earth.
I ran some math. If they continued accelerating up until the halfway point, then decelerated at the same rate, they'd be here in...
18 hours.
Hmm.
I could turn the entire planet into a fortress in that time.
This was going to be a long wait, I can just tell.
Log 16
I tried not to think about the millions who just died. The millions who would die.
I failed, utterly.
It didn't quite set in at first; intellectually, I knew that all those people died, but at the time I'd been more immediately concerned about the explosion.
I'd distracted myself with it.
The anger came later, not when I considered the number of people who died, but when I considered the number of people.
A hundred is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic.
All those people had lives. Good, bad, isolated, connected. They had families, friends, lovers and haters. They lived, and were just as complex as any other person on this planet, with hopes, dreams, desires.
It was only then that the anger began to set in.
I'd never been the most emotional person, not now, and not before when I was still Human. I just... never felt emotions too particularly strongly, things that affected others tended to not hold nearly as much as an effect on me.
It was almost hard to rile up that anger now. I considered the casualties and didn't feel the anger until I stopped and reminded myself that the casualties were people.
And even that didn't bring out the anger I'd expected.
I wasn't -initially- angry at Boyle for killing millions, I was angry at him because he'd ignored my warning. Until I considered the lives lost as lives, that was the only reason I was angry at him.
It was, to say the least, unlike me.
If I was being perfectly honest -and I was-, I could have very easily stopped the Strike.
If I'd made preparations. A single Umbrella would have been more than capable of wiping the Ion Cannon Satellite out of the sky, even from this distance.
And yet, I'd considered the warning I gave Boyle enough, and I hadn't even considered building an Anti-Orbital Defense.
Even when I knew full well that Boyle was the same idiot who, after witnessing the destruction a Liquid Tiberium Bomb, ordered another one to be built.
I'd given my warning, and had only given the barest consideration that Boyle might not have listened, a consideration that I hadn't acted on, hadn't planned a contingency just in case.
I was angry. Angry at him for ignoring my warning, angry at him for consigning millions to death.
Angry at myself for only barely doing anything to prevent it.
I really should have reminded myself who I was dealing with.
Director Boyle was the same idiot who ordered the construction of another Liquid Tiberium Bomb, after witnessing the destruction caused by the first, and then planned to drop it on Tiber River itself.
The worst Red Zone on the planet.
Where the consequences would be even worse.
They say Hindsight is 20/20.
God damn, I feel like an idiot.
Never again.
I approached that situation again and again, considered it from every angle, pointing out every flaw, every stupid decision; both on my behalf, and on Boyle's. I let myself feel angry, let my anger grow, and kept every idiotic decision in mind.
From prior experience, I knew it would galvanize me, I'd simply feel so angry at letting it happen, for being so stupid, that I wouldn't let it happen again.
The fires anger became the lava of rage.
A friend of mine had once said it best.
'When she's angry, she's irritable. When she's really really angry, she's calm, pleasant, and about three seconds away from planting the object of her ire face-first 6-feet into the ground.'
I made another call.
It took me several minutes to actually get through on this one, and I wasn't surprised about that at all.
I wasn't calling Director Boyle. I was directly contacting GDI's Command Center; bouncing my signal off of several of GDI's satellites.
I'd honestly would have had been surprised if my call had made it through on the first attempt; GDI's Command post probably would have been swamped, what with the recent gigaton explosion and everything.
"Director Redmond Boyle, General Jack Granger." I greeted cordially.
I was kind of surprised, actually. My voice didn't contain even a hint of the sheer fucking rage I felt for Boyle at that moment.
Nor the rage I felt at myself.
I couldn't actually see them, but I had no doubt that the both of them were still in GDI's Command Center. Audio only contact, in this case.
"You again..." Director Boyle sounds sullen, a glimpse of horror hidden within his voice.
"It's nice to see that you completely ignored my warning, Director. Millions have been consigned to death because of you."
"Who the hell are you?" Jack's voice buts in. I don't blame him.
"A concerned being," I note, purposely being as vague as possible. "One who would've been quite a bit happier if you'd listened to my advice and not Ion Strike'd Temple Prime."
"What are you talking about?" He sounds angry.
"Oh? The good Director here didn't tell you?" I asked, keeping a light tone. "Well, that's okay, I don't have any problems saying. I contacted the Director about an hour or so ago, informing him of the location of the Liquid Tiberium Bomb. I asked him, quite clearly, to not direct an Ion Strike on that area, as it would detonate the bomb. Fast forward an hour, and here I am, talking to you about doing the one thing that I asked you not to do."
There was silence on the other side.
I opened a visual feed through, just a blur of static with the outline of a Delta Commander hidden within. A few seconds later, they accepted that transmission, sending a feed of their own back to me.
Oh wow, the General looks pissed. Boyle isn't looking so great, either.
Good.
"And, unfortunately for you, that explosion has attracted a certain kind of attention."
That got the General's attention; he turned towards the screen that my static outline was being displayed on.
I saw him glance over to one of the assistants in the room, who nodded.
"Attention?" He asked. His tone was remarkable flat, chilled to the bone one might say. I noted Boyle flinch.
"Oh yes. An alien species known as the Scrin," Wide eyes all around the room. "You didn't think you were alone in the universe, did you? No matter; the Scrin are an advanced species who possess knowledge and technology far above your own peoples."
I swapped my static for a 'top-down' view of the Solar System. I labeled each planet, then placed several icons on the current locations of Scrin ships, which were still close to Pluto.
I also threw up an ETA timer, ticking at just underneath 18 hours.
"A race of harvesters; they seed planets with Tiberium, wait for it to grow, and when an extremely large Tiberium explosion occurs from mass buildup, they awaken and come to harvest everything. You set them off early; the Liquid Tiberium Bomb explosion was enough to awaken them. Fortunately for you, though they are an advanced species, this is just a mining force; a force that you are capable of fighting and defeating. Unfortunately for you, the Scrin are aware of this as well."
I paused for long enough to give them a chance to disseminate what I've told them. I see some of the assistants writing down things, typing up information. Probably what I was telling them.
"You have just under 18 hours to prepare your defenses, General. The Scrin will attempt to land in Red Zones across the planet, and attack Blue and Yellow Zones to divide your attention. Sonic Weapons will hold a great effect on them. Any questions?"
There was a sort of stunned silence throughout the Command Center, which brought out a certain kind of schadenfreude from me.
Got to give it to the General; he adapted quickly.
"How do you know all this? And who are you?"
I tutted. "Like I said, I'm a concerned being. As for how I know; well, let's just say that I've seen this happen before." Technically, anyway.
Being technically correct was the best kind of being correct.
"Time's ticking, General."
I hung up.
I had my own preparations to do.
Log 17
Both Little1 and I worked on disseminating the technology I'd captured from Nod.
Little1 was most interested in their laser weapons technology. The Obelisk of Light, of course, was at the forefront; but the Laser Turret, the Beam Cannon vehicle, the Avatar Warmech, and the Redeemer Walker were also present.
Can't blame him.
The laser beam on the Obelisk of Light was a powerful anti-vehicle, long range weapon; well suited for countering GDI's armored support.
Note the phrasing; GDI's armored support.
The laser, to us, was so hilariously underpowered for anti-vehicle duty, it wasn't funny. It's utterly pathetic on almost every level, limited range, limited power, low firing rate, high cost.
Our Doxes had a higher energy output. And fired faster, to boot. Even when the power was being augmented with 4 Beam Cannon vehicles, it would still barely pose a threat.
To the Dox.
Nevertheless, its method of operation and capabilities interested us. The 'sweeping' capabilities for dealing with infantry; alongside the variable power output of the weapon.
It got us thinking.
And, to be honest, I was kind of offended that I had such a completely fucking underpowered device in my database. The knowledge behind it was nothing that I didn't already have access to, but since the design work had been done, may as well turn it into something useful.
And not offensive to us.
We upscaled the design to something more fitting of our defensive turrets, though the laser was still too underpowered for it to be a cost-effective solution to anything mildly threatening to us. We copied the original design and started altering it.
We replaced its energy transmission systems with our own; allowing it to handle more energy at a single time. Its internal capacitors went next; again replaced with our own; for a greater internal storage and thus a more powerful single-strike beam.
Laser cooling was next; half the issue with the fire rate was the inability to cool it as quickly as needed. Not a problem for us, we replaced it and enjoyed a higher fire rate that wouldn't simply melt the thing outright.
We continued in the same vein for quite some design, changing and editing over and over until we both had something we wouldn't immediately laugh out of the room if someone suggested actually using it for any remotely serious purpose.
Something I wouldn't, anyway, Little1 was still learning humor.
In the end, the final design was a continuous beam weapon with a variable power output; scaling with the amount of power that was actually available to us. To an extent, anyway.
Hypothetically, the beam would prove to have a powerful 'first strike' capability, followed by a continuous beam that would happily melt through Bots and Vehicles alike, with a just about instantaneous switching between targets.
Little1 tested it. It proved just as capable as we'd hoped.
We saved the final design, and incorporated it into our armies.
I had a feeling I'd find use of it, eventually.
'Refine' indeed.
I had interests of my own. They were many, and I spent more than a bit of time on a couple of projects, but this one was the one that I gave the most attention to.
Little1 too, when he realized its existence.
One of the more interesting things in Nod's arsenal was the Hub Defense System.
It was exceedingly interesting. The basic technology was used in Nod's defenses; a central node that deployed three types of turrets, Laser, Shredder, SAM.
If one of the turrets was destroyed, it was reconstructed, piece by piece, in the nano-assembly of the Hub, then redeployed out on the field for more combat.
Ideas.
I had them.
So did Little1.
We didn't work together on this design; the both of us had two, separate, thoughts.
We both got to work.
The Hub used a trio of black capables to transport completed parts to each turret node, which were stored there until it was ready to unfold into turrets.
I kept the Hub, the cables and the nodes. The Turrets, I had no use for.
When I was finished with my modifications, the Hub was a very different structure to the defensive emplacements of the Nod.
Fitting, since my version was for a different purpose entirely.
One of the limits to our construction capacity was simple; nanites had a finite power supply.
Nanobots were simply too small to place a transmitter on, and way, way too small to equip with their own power source.
They got around that though an internal capacitor, enough to last them a few minutes on their own. Their energy transmission was efficient enough that they could transmit energy from stores that they had physical contact with, including other nanobots. In theory, it was possible to 'chain' nanobots together, but in practise, this was met with the same problems that any long, thin chain met when it became too long and any sort of outside force came into play.
I kept the cables as a power feed, something that the nanobots could feed off easily, yet further away from most buildings and out of the way, as they were deployed underground.
First, a bit about our construction; Metal was shorthand for stores of elements ready to be made into nanobots and sprayed to form structures. Nanobots fused together and formed structures from the ground up; which was how almost everything in our army was made.
There were a few exceptions; Commanders being the most important. A Commander wasn't constructed by fusing nanobots, though nanobots were involved in the process.
But back to the Hub, the cable was also constructed in such a method. And like the Nod's version of it, my Hub was also capable of fabricating.
The difference being that instead of fabricating parts of a turret, mine fabricated nanobots enmass.
The Hub design was simple, it was a central unit with a powerful Fabricator, some armor, the same cadre of internal systems that everything else in my army had. The difference was that it had Fabricators more powerful than most, designed to build an excessively large amount of nanites.
The reason for that was simple; the nanites would then attach to the underneath of the Hub, building out on a connector port to form a cable, reclaiming the ground and going subterranean so as to not interfere in the construction above ground. The actual material input required isn't so high, thanks to the reclamation.
The cables themselves were also simple; a long cable carrying energy for the nanites to feed off; some minor, flexible reinforcement so that they didn't fall apart something happened looked at it funny, some mild stealth and some detection. Same defenses as the rest of my stuff had against Tiberium assimilation, so I would still be able to cover Red Zones effectively.
Most importantly; each of the 5 centimeter wide cables possessed a pair of accelerator tubes, where Nanobots could be moved throughout the network quickly and easily.
After every 5 meters of cables, the Nanobots would then construct nodes; a square block that connected the cables together, and places where the Nanobots could change direction along the accelerator network, or exit the network and crawl along the cables. Each Node contained a small internal Fabricator, alongside a resource transmitter. The Fabricator wasn't a particularly good one, with less than a third of the power of any given T1 Fabricator, but the nodes would be present in such numbers that it wouldn't be so much of a limitation, anyway.
The nanobots would burrow into the ground, then spread sideways in an ever-widening grid of cables, nodes and nanobots.
The initial construction of such a grid would be rather quick, with a small amount of space and a -to be honest- excessive amounts of nanobots. As the amount of space the grid covered grew, so to would the speed of growth, thanks to more and more nodes coming online.
The first Hub would come online, then construct a cable downwards and build the first node. That node, as well as the Hub, would construct cables in all 4 directions, with resulting hubs at the end of the 5 meter cables. Those 4 new nodes would then extend more cables, building 8 new nodes at the end of them. Then those new nodes would extend more cables for 12 nodes, which would then extend 16, then 20, and the process would repeat ad infinitum.
The design wasn't problem free; The main problem, of course, is the energy requirements of such a system, it simply wouldn't be viable unless there were an excess of generators, or until T2 Generators were online. More Generators would be needed as more and more nodes came online, though the nodes themselves would be able to build more. It also wouldn't be able to extend my reach on top of the oceans, though the cables, nodes and nanobots could go underneath it.
On the grid, however, is where things became interesting.
On the grid, with the excess of nanobots and nodes; it would thus be possible to direct the nanobots into constructing buildings, both above and below ground. No Fabricators necessary, just order the construction and whatever building I wanted would be built.
Including, I noted, other Hubs.
That'd be a funny thing to see on the enemies face, I really do have to admit; dozens of factories just popping up out of the ground, all at once.
Which brings to mind another thing; build limitations.
The reason the Commander can't build T2 structures?
There is none.
It's a completely artificial limitation, there only to prevent an idiotic Commander from wasting their economy straight up.
The Commander's fabricator is more powerful than any T1 Builder, three times more powerful than the Bot, Naval and Vehicle Fabricators, slightly over that for the Air Fabricator, while being 3/8th's as powerful as any T2 Fabricator that wasn't the Air Fabricator.
Building T2 Factories, or an Orbital Factory, early would be disastrous.
I disabled the shit out of that limitation. Both for myself and for Little1.
Speaking of Little1; his version of the Hub was completely different than mine.
I'd gone for an underground construction network; he'd taken the concept of the Hub, merged it with Prefabricates, the Hub's nano-assembler and the Unit Cannon design and turned it into what I can only describe as a Nanocore Launcher.
'Nanocore' as in 'The Empire of the Rising Sun'.
And really, that was it to the design, it was a small core with a moderately powerful Fabricator, resource transmitter and a whole cadre of stealth. The basic idea behind it being that it would be launched out of a cannon, hit the ground, burrow a small bit and construct a building above it, then burrow further into the ground where it would be a tad bit safer from detection.
It worked. The ballistic arc was pretty fucking awesome for transporting things quickly, and the Launcher could quickly fabricate many of these Nanocores and launch them just as quickly, something that would rapidly expand our construction capabilities over a large area without having to rely on Fabricators, which were quite a bit slow. Nanocores also had some limited mobility on their own, and though it wasn't much, it was something.
I also noted that the cannon had enough power behind it that, if we were on a lower gravity planetary body -like, say, the Moon-, we could use it to launch Nanocores into space and onto other planets. Not quite powerful enough to do so on Earth, but the tactical and strategic possibilities that opened up were immense.
I named my design the Hub Network. He named his the Nanocore Launcher, after I gave him a bit of context at to what a Nanocore actually was.
I fully intended to abuse the shit out of both.
Got to admit, it kind of amused me that we took the original concept and by the time we were done with it, effectively nothing of original remained.
Log 18
Well, a bit late.
I have a plan.
Nanocore Launcher is fun.
Hub Network is also fun.
The former, I've used to construct Metal Extractors at every single Metal Deposit I can shoot them too, which is a lot since I have over 1500 kilometers of range on that thing. The Fabricators on them are just as powerful as the T2 Fabricators, and they quite capable of constructing every single kind of structure.
The Metal Extractors are doing wondrous things to my economy. I am always in need of more Metal, even when I have more Metal than I could possibly use.
Metal is like Dakka, you never have enough of either.
The Hub Network, I am also making use of.
Mostly by building 4, all connected together, pouring resources and nanobots into an ever growing network that will, over the course of the next 8 hours and 43 minutes, cover just about the entire planet. I've already begun to prepare hundreds of T2 Generators, which will eventually become thousands and then tens of thousands, all just to feed the construction of the network.
I said it before, but I'll say it again; the Hub Network is exceedingly energy intensive. So much so that I'd probably never actually use it against any enemy that would be a threat to me, the benefits weren't worth the costs.
I could do it faster with Fabricators, but Fabricators are a tad bit more noticeable, and by the time that the Scrin get here, I'll have already covered everywhere they could land, and every single one of their targets.
When they get here, I'm going for a full smash and grab. Mostly grab. Use the Network to construct Teleporters to each of the landing zones, flood them with Fabricators and combat units, capture everything I could and destroy everything else.
In preparation for when they arrived, I'm setting up 50 Teleporters with 25 T2 Bot Factories to each, more than enough to overwhelm anything the Scrin will be sending, especially if I gank them before they can truly build up.
Which, since I can track them where they land if they happen to land on the Network (Extremely likely), and I can deploy hundreds of Bots anywhere I want in a couple of seconds, should be quite easily.
Mentally, I ratcheted down my expectation of how long it would take to completely ruin the Scrin's invasion plan; which had already been at the mildly depressing guesstimate of 30 minutes.
Oh well, nothing to do but wait.
Waiting is fucking boring.
17 hours passed way too fucking slowly for my tastes. I had half a mind to just say 'Screw Stealth' and cover the entire god damned fleet with nothing but Orbital Fabricators, and I might have even done it if it weren't for just how much I wanted that fucking tech.
Perhaps I went a bit... overboard when it came to my Hub Network.
I'd covered the planet 9 hours ago.
The only places that weren't covered were inhabited areas; and only because I'd wanted to escape detection for as long as possible. Just from sheer saturation, I now had the locations of every single GDI, Nod and civilian facility on Earth.
Including, funnily, the current location of the Tacitus, which is being studied in a GDI facility in China.
It was one of the few exceptions to the 'inhabited locations not being covered' rule in the Network, and even then, only barely. I'd extended a cable nearby the facility, carrying Nanobots that were meant to interface with the facilities' computers.
I was making quite a bit of use of the Nanobots capabilities to draw on energy directly; their own power was supplying my Nanobots while they downloaded everything from GDI's computers.
Lots of interesting shit they've pulled from the Tacitus. Lots of information they've saved and squirreled away.
All mine, now.
Another interesting location that I revoked the 'no inhabitants' rule; LEGION's Core bunker.
Out in a Yellow Zone, bordering on a Red Zone, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, away from help, with only a minor Nod presence nearby and relatively limited construction capacity.
I refrained from tapping into LEGION's systems just yet. But when the time came, LEGION was in for a rude surprise.
One hell of an Alpha Strike, coming soon.
LEGION's bunker and the Tacitus facility weren't the only places that had that rule revoked.
GDI's been mobilizing, fortifying Blue and Yellow zones as much as they could in such a short period of time as 18 hours. They'd been expanding their bases, harvesting Tiberium like crazy and building up on automated defense. They weren't quite as fast as they were in the games, and didn't have nearly the same convenience involved, but they were still quite fast, fast enough to construct, from scratch, even the heaviest armor in only a few minutes.
Problem is, they simply didn't have enough people to go around to defend everywhere, didn't have the capacity to train them as fast as they could produce armor, weapons and vehicles for them.
It was biting them in the ass pretty hard.
All this production capabilities and not having the capacity to automate their armies.
They were being spread pretty damn thin, though the defense were nevertheless extensive.
Sonic Emitters, I'd noted, were being built quite extensively. The General listened to me, it seems.
Good.
I placed down a bunch of Teleporters wherever GDI's presence was particularly thin. They concentrated mostly on the largest centers of population, leaving the smaller towns and cities alone; unless there was a particularly good set of conditions that would make defending easy.
Couldn't blame them; they were prioritizing the needs of the many over the needs of the few.
I'd pick up the slack for them.
The Scrin were only just arriving in orbit, where, even now, GDI's Ion Cannon Network was shooting away at them.
For all the good it was doing, the larger Scrin ships separated into Drone Ships when they were hit with Ion Cannon blasts, demonstrating a remarkable agility that they hadn't possessed in the game proper and dodging other blasts while heading to the planet.
I tracked each and every single one of the 39 ships that came through GDI's satellites, running a prediction on where each one was likely to land.
Red Zones across the planet, I already knew. Exact, specific locations, I did not. When I narrowed down the approximate locations of each one, I used the Network to construct a Teleporter nearby in preparation.
I didn't intend for this to last too long.
To make up for my being an hour late last time, this one comes an hour early.
Log 19
In a single minute, several things happened at once.
First; The first of the Scrin's drone ships touched down in Italy, near Ground Zero, releasing several smaller, agile units into the Tiberium Field below.
Second; My Network finished the construction of a Teleporter, which activated and formed a connection with one of the 5 Teleporters back in base.
Third; The first set of of 25 T2 Factories began to produce a constant stream of Doxes, each one moving towards the Teleporter that would take them to the first Scrin Drone Platform, accompanied by a grand total of 25 T2 Bot Fabricators.
Fourth; My Nanobots, which had been building up and slowly crawling through LEGION's systems and bunker, promptly and quickly began a massive, hostile and invisible takeover on everything within.
I hit everything. I took control of LEGION's sensors, his speakers, every camera, every light, every transmitter, everything that would in any conceivable way allow LEGION to communicate a warning.
I hit his database, I hit his circuits, I hit every wire, every last piece of everything that LEGION had access to, all at once, with absolutely nothing spared or held back.
I took control of system after system, leaving nothing behind.
I noted LEGION's Core heat up, the energy running through his systems increasing as he realised what was happening.
He couldn't do anything. By the time he had even an inkling, I'd already taken over everything that he could have used to alert anyone. By the time he decided on a course of action, I'd already restricted everything he could do.
Sorry, LEGION, I hardly knew ye.
Meanwhile, half the way around the planet, the very first of the Scrin Drone Platforms was currently not having a good time.
Or, that's how I'd describe it at least.
They were probably thinking significantly worse.
The very first Doxes came off the production line in seconds, traversing the hallways of my underground base, passing shoulder to shoulder with their fellows.
What emerged from the other side of the Teleporter was a constant stream of metal and doom.
Doxes didn't mean too much to our armies, but they were fast, produced quickly, cheap, fired quickly, and were capable of shooting at both Air and Ground units.
All this, combined, turned the Doxes into a surprisingly versatiles unit, when you had enough of them.
And here, against the much less powerful Scrin units?
They were death incarnate.
The very first one out of the Teleporter raised both arms and fired off a blast of a plasma, a weapon system much the same as my own, though much less powerful.
The first shot instantaneously annihilated a Shock Trooper, the small unit simply unable to survive the raw energies being thrown at it.
It was the first, it was not the last.
A dozen more quickly followed, scythed down by the enlarging stream of Doxes, who fanned out to maximise firepower.
Only a bare few survived long enough to fire back in turn, sending out green laser beams that did little more than singe the paint of my Doxes.
They actually hit? Could they see past my Stealth?
I left one alive and spread my Doxes around.
The Shock Trooper continued firing in the same area as before, the beam not tracking my units at all.
One of my Doxes fired, the shot sailing a bit too high, on purpose.
Sure enough, the Shock Trooper turned and fired in the direction of the Dox, though it didn't hit.
Ah.
Not seeing through my stealth; but tracking my weapons fire and extrapolating. Clever.
I had my Doxes destroy it.
25 Doxes can ruin a lot of things, yo.
I used the network to construct a Teleporter a tad bit closer to the Drone Platform, as the T2 Bot Fabricators I sent through next weren't exactly the fastest things around and I didn't want to waste too much time.
Speaking as if a couple minutes at best is a long length of time is odd.
I'm sure I'll grow used to it.
Right, Fabricators.
Come here, little Drone Platform, give me your yummy technology.
I didn't fight the urge to smile as 25 T2 Bot Fabricators began to spray massive amounts of Nanobots at the Drone Platform.
The information I'd pulled from the facility hosting the Tacitus was quite useful.
Mainly because, using it, it allowed me to interface with and translate the information I pulled from the Drone Platform.
That thing was surprisingly, annoying complex. It had little analog to the more... normal systems in use by GDI and Nod; the Scrin's stuff used Tiberium on every level. Not to mention, you know, being alien, to say nothing of the partially 'biological' nature of it.
Molecular Memory Storage, coupled with Tiberium based computers. Now wasn't that interesting.
Powerful, for the relatively small energy requirements, but nothing compared to my own processors. My hilariously, obnoxiously overpowered processors alongside the hilarious, obnoxious amount of information I could store.
I took a careful scan of the entire structure, right down to the subatomic level, preserving the Molecular Memory Storage for later, easier decoding, saved it wholly, then sent it off to Little1 whose available processing power currently outstripped my own, several billion times over.
With the data from GDI's computers, he'd be able to figure out the encryptions and translate everything into useful information.
Log 20
(Prepare for the longest chapter yet)
We cracked everything within the minute.
The sheer amount of processing power available to us, with the information from the Tacitus and a head start on decoding Scrin systems thanks to the similarities with the Tacitus made it almost easy.
Neither of us were going to complain.
We pulled information from Drone Platform's own memory banks; which was extensive and covered just about everything I wanted to get from the Scrin.
But there was more available, and I didn't let it go to waste. I used the Drone Platform and tapped into the Scrin's Warp Link directly.
I...
Wait, was it?
Holy shit, it was!
A central repository, containing within the sum total of the Scrin's knowledge, all stored at the Ichor Hub.
A small part of me -a part I vaguely recognized as a Network administrator- cried out in despair at the Scrin's complete lack of network security.
The rest of me crowed in utter delight at the very same thing.
Well, if you're going make it so easy for me to access and take everything, I'll just help myself.
Yoink.
I took everything. Culture, Society, Technology, Science, Biology.
Everything.
Tiberium Technologies. Mine.
Wormhole technologies. Mine.
Teleportation. Mine.
Shields. Mine.
Mind Control. Mine.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
It's all mine.
Little1 and I worked to assimilate as much of the technology as we could, identifying, categorizing, breaking the technology down to it's most basic principles and using that knowledge to further our own capacities.
Wormhole technology was the most immediately interesting, so that's where we started.
I'd been right on my first guess; the Scrin's method of wormhole generation and manipulation was a hell of a lot cheaper than our own, which was owed to the two different methods of operation between the two.
A Teleporter, in layman's terms, created a 'breach' in space-time. Scrin Wormholes, again in Layman's terms, 'tunneled' through it, connecting two points with an instantaneous 'bridge'.
Both functioned similarly, a Teleporter could keep the 'breach', the portal, open as long as enough energy was available, but would collapse when there wasn't. A Wormhole, likewise, would collapse without a structure maintaining it, though that was perfectly doable for the Scrin.
The differences in function, however, were obvious. It was possible to generate an anywhere-to-anywhere Wormhole, but such a Wormhole wouldn't last long in the best of cases, without a building to stabilise it.
Such a thing wasn't possible to do with Teleporters; it was either Teleporter-to-anywhere, or Teleporter-to-Teleporter. The former was much more energy intensive than the latter, but both could be maintained indefinitely so long as there was energy.
In contrast, Wormholes were either the short lived anywhere-to-anywhere, or the stabilised Wormhole-to-Wormhole. There was no stabilised Wormhole-to-anywhere. That particular niche was for Scrin Teleportation.
In both cases, anywhere-to-Teleporter/Wormhole is equally impossible, at least for a sustained connection. Go-to only, not come-back.
Another contrast between the two was simple; range. The anywhere-to-anywhere wormhole had a flat range limitation of some 8000 kilometers. (Worse than I'd hoped, better than I'd expected), while the Wormhole-to-Wormhole didn't actually seem to have a range limitation.
If it did, the Scrin hadn't encountered it. Given that it didn't meaningfully increase in energy cost as they got further and further out, there was no way to tell unless it simply stopped working at some point.
Speaking of power costs, the Scrin's power generation technologies meant that it was possible to use the anywhere-to-anywhere function frequently, though it was limited by the fact that Scrin didn't have the capacity to transmit functionally infinite amounts of energy at once. The Signal Transmitter could only consume and store so much energy at a time, which placed a limit on it.
Not so much of a limit for us.
There was another contrast between them, one which severely limited the capacity of Wormholes. The Wormhole-to-wormhole version had an unfortunate tendency to destabilise when something was sent through. Not for too long, and not destructively, but so long as the Wormhole was destabilised, it was impossible to send units through.
The mass and size of what was being sent through affected how long it remained destabilised. Mere seconds was the case for entire Buzzer Swarms, but things like Annihilator Tripods would destabilise it for 30 seconds+.
A fairly large amount of my stuff was bigger and heavier than Annihilator Tripods.
In conclusion, the Teleporter and Wormholes both had their advantages and disadvantages.
Wormholes were superior in point-to-point travel, and in anywhere-to-anywhere travel. That anywhere-to-anywhere-ness could even be weaponized; which was expressed in the Rift Generator.
Teleporters were superior in point-to-anywhere, capable of reaching across distances that Wormholes simply couldn't without a receiver on the other end. They were also better in sheer capacity; they had no stability issues to worry about and units could be sent through all day, everyday.
Both had their merits.
And we were going to abuse the shit out of both.
We actually used the Signal Transmitter as our base, instead of the Rift Generator. Mostly, that was because the Signal Transmitter was a hell of a lot smaller than the Rift Generator, and thus cheaper, Metal-wise.
Also because there was no real difference between the two; other than how long it took to charge the system, and how long the Wormhole stayed open.
That was, interestingly enough, variable, determined by how much energy was being dumped into it upon its creation, up to a certain limit.
As a side note; the reason why Wormholes couldn't be opened one after another by a single structure was simple; the act of opening a Wormhole introduced a sort of chaotic spatial 'phase', the internal components drifting out of alignment of reality for half a second.
Half a second unaffected by gravity, or any outside force. The phase didn't last long enough to cause too many problems; but it did have to be reconfigured back. For the Scrin, it wasn't too much of a problem. They waited a couple minutes for the internal semi-biological systems to re-align, and it was good.
For us, 'several minutes' turned into several seconds.
The other part was waiting for the energy to build back up, but again, not a problem.
The Signal Transmitter was also quite small, compact, saving on Metal as necessary.
Smaller still when we isolated that particular component. We hardly needed the rest of it, after all.
That particular component was small; at least on the scales we were working on. It was still larger than the average Human, but... yeah. There's your average Human, and then there's us.
Big difference.
It was, unfortunately, too large to mount on a unit without compromising the function, or the capacity of the unit in question.
Ooh, idea.
We placed it into a building instead, a relatively small 'pillar' design, with its own internal fabricators for repairing and realigning as necessary. Armor, stealth, the whole deal, but we were going for cheapness and production rather than super-survivability.
And ooh. It was cheap. Cheaper than the teleporter, at 75 units of Metal.
75 Metal for the capacity to move 8000 kilometers in any direction, with a required power eclipsed a thousand times over by a Commander's Generator.
It's a tactical maneuverability that far and away surpasses what we previously possessed. It'd allow us to cover a significant portion of the Earth with just a single one, or all of single planet if it was small enough.
I was happy with it.
And, much like the Nod's Hub, it was giving me ideas.
We called the building design the Warp Pillar. I intended to make use of them.
Scrin Force Fields were interesting.
Basic idea was simple; protective energy barrier designed to reduce the amounts of damage that a unit took, extending its lifetime.
Good idea. It worked, effectively, efficiently.
For the Scrin, against themselves, GDI and Nod.
Against us, the barrier was under powered. I sincerely doubted that it would take more than a single shot from my weapon, and it took far too long to re-initialize.
On top of a complete lack of natural regeneration, and a noted vulnerability to EMP, it certainly made the technology seem not so useful.
Seem.
The shield was capacitor based, stored within the shield generator itself. An energetic interference was created whenever it was generating the shield, which made recharging it just about impossible, for the Scrin. They had to physically disconnect the device from the rest of the systems in order to stop a feedback.
For the Scrin.
We didn't have that problem, courtesy of our transmission systems. Transferring energy directly into the generator, and directly from, simply meant that there was no way it could be overwhelmed. No feedback problem.
Remember, capacitor based shield. The more energy available, the stronger the shield.
It drained energy straight from the capacitors to keep it going.
Purely theoretically, an infinite energy capacity would lead to an invincible, one-way, shield. Practically, combined with the amount of energy we were generating, not needing to worry about overloading and our storage systems?
I could fire at it all day, every day, for the rest of eternity, and it would regenerate faster than I could plink away at it.
With enough energy stored up, I could tank nukes without ever suffering any damage. Alone, by myself, it would already allow me an incredible survivability.
Once I had an economy going? With storage, with more generators?
Hah.
Well then.
More ideas.
It wasn't actually as much as I was making it seem, by myself I only had a regeneration to stop about 6 times weapon's output, with enough capacity to tank 20 times or so. It wouldn't be able to stop a nuke, nor would it render me invincible against lots of smaller units. Still, it was added protection and I could use it.
Scrin Teleportation technology was interesting. Limited, but useful.
It functions by, in layman's terms yet again, 'folding' space, depositing the teleporter to the target point.
The Scrin used it in a couple of their units. Shock Troops, Masterminds and Prodigies. The Eradicator Hexapod was also capable of teleportation if either of the latter two were stocked inside. And that was it really.
The only other place that teleportation was used in construction. Drone Platforms, and Foundries, constructed buildings, then teleported them wholesale into the field, in a relatively large radius around themselves. The latter's production facilities were more limited than the former's, though.
Beyond that, self-teleportation was limited, others-teleportation was significantly less so.
Both were still limited. The former had a mass limitation; which was far too small to be of any use. The latter had a range limitation that simply wasn't useful on the scale we operated at.
Especially with Wormholes.
We left the technology to the side, for now.
Mind Control.
Very interesting.
It was achieved through something that the Scrin called a 'Manipulator Device'.
And, basically, it was a scaled-down Psionic Beacon. A wave of psychic power used to overwhelm the minds of the targets, which was quite hard to resist.
Quite hard. Not impossible, Nod's and GDI's respective commando units had the necessary mental fortitude and training to resist. Usually.
When dealing with psionics, never use precision terms.
It was, naturally, ineffective against machines and automated units. Like myself.
I noted that the Scrin had a wide-area method of blocking Psionic usage, though it wasn't used too much since it was easier to just kill the Mastermind or Prodigy in question.
Like teleportation, I left both on the side and moved on.
Tiberium -Ichor- Tech.
The Scrin had methods of controlling it, of harnessing it and using it that far, far, far exceeded that of GDI's and Nod's.
They had their own Tiberium Control Network.
Well, well, well.
Don't mind if I do.
Looks like I don't need the Tacitus anymore.
Also looks like I just gained another bargaining chip if I wanted to use it. GDI would kill for this technology, if I offered it to them in exchange for some of their own?
Well.
Firestorm, here I come.
Most of it was pretty useless to us. We didn't use Tiberium on any level, and our Materials Science far and away surpassed anything that we could gain from incorporating Tiberium. Other than a self-growing resources, naturally, but we kind of superseded that, anyway.
To the side and into the 'potential bargaining chips' bin for you.
Weapons.
Scrin use a lot of energy weapons in their arsenal, with a complete lack of conventional ballistic weapons aside from Tiberium-based stuff, and, to an extent, Buzzers.
Buzzers were a floating swarm of razor-sharp blades, which was neither useful nor viable to us. To the side with you.
Disintegrators had a Plasma Cutter, which was, again, on too small a scale and too low a damage to make use of, or spark ideas for us. To the side.
Assimilators did not possess any weapons.
Shock Troopers had a laser, which was useless, and could be upgraded with a Plasma Disk Launcher. The Plasma Disk Launcher was an interesting concept, but not one that was exceedingly effective. Or remotely effective at all, really.
Ravagers used Tiberium Shard Launchers. Naturally, useless thanks to the scale involved.
Masterminds, though they weren't normally equipped with it, had access to a disintegrator weapon. Anti-infantry capable, but not too effective against vehicles. It actually lost effectiveness as the target's mass increased. Not useful.
Gun walkers had a Plasma Cannon. It suffered, unfortunately, from scalability issues, on top of the relative weakness of it.
Devourer tanks had the Proton Cannon. Anti-Vehicle work, fairly good at it. Not too powerful, but there was a scalability in the design that we could make use of. I marked it under 'investigate later' and put it to the side.
Corrupters had a liquid Tiberium Sprayer. Functioned fairly effective as an acid, utterly decimating unprotected infantry and non-Tiberium based materials. It could also be used to heal and repair other Scrin units, but that was mostly because of the Tiberium part of it. It lacked in scalability, and honestly wasn't too effective against us. To the side.
Mechapede made use of a lot of weapons I've mentioned before. And, apart from the segmented nature of the Mechapede itself, it's nothing worth mentioning.
Annihilator Tripod (And the subsequent Reaper Tripod) use Proton Beam weapons. Same as the Devourer Tank, though more of them, slightly more powerful and much better at aiming.
Eradicator Hexapod used a Plasma Disk Launcher. One of the heaviest and most powerful ones, though its range was more limited than the ones mounted on the Devastator Warships.
Planetary Assault Carrier had no weapons of its own, though it could generate Ion Storms and possessed a number of smaller fighters armed with plasma cannons. I marked the Ion Storm generation technology for looking at later, and put it on the side.
The Lightning Strike defensive platform had, fitting of its name, the ability to generate lightning bolts and aim them at the enemy. Those lightning bolts weren't actually too powerful, though, and wasn't that effective against us to boot.
Finally, there was the Catalyst Cannon, wielded by the Mothership. Powerful, exceedingly so. Devastating enough to wipe out just about everything that wasn't a Commander in a single shot, extended further by catalytic reactions that gave it its name. Densely packed, weak units were not only ineffective, but actively counterintuitive.
The only real problems with the weapon was the long charge time as the Mothership built up energy, and the Mothership itself.
The Mothership is one hell of a tough airship, but it's also very, very slow. Not at all helped by its complete lack of anti-air or anti-land aside from the Catalyst Cannon. Offset by it's capability to self-repair, sure, and the sheer value of the unit meaning that it was never alone in the best of cases, but the speed was an issue in the best of cases.
Two issues that we would have fun getting around.
Phase Technology.
Not nearly as useful as I'd hoped. The reason for that was simple; the object being phased had to be within certain bounds of size and certain bounds of mass to be inducted into a stable Phase.
Both of which started at large, and ended at large. Threshold Towers weren't as big as they were just because, they were that big because the needed to fit within that bound. There wasn't actually much room in those bounds, either, and it wasn't possible to quickly phase and dephase.
Great for making big, invincible targets. Not so great when you're trying to protect moving, shooting units. Things that were in Phase also shot things in Phase, which was just as useless at harming the enemy as it was in the enemy trying to harm it.
There was an Anti-Phase Generator, but it was a short range 'Things in Phase move out of Phase' field, as opposed to the 'This really big thing is now Phased' of the Phase Generator. The latter was limited, and the former wasn't scalable at all. Cheap and small, but not scalable.
We put it to the wayside. We had other, more important things to examine.
