By: Hivemind-Chan
Hey everyone, this is Hive. While this is the first time I'm dealing with SB and SV, you might recognize me for being the QM of Synthetic Gods Quest on 4chan's /qst/. Long story short, due to external circumstances I was forced to put my quest on a hiatus until things blew over, but I ended up way too bored so I decided to start on something new. Hence, here is my entry in the self insert Planetary Annihilation multicross fanfic genre. Thanks to Fusou's story for introducing me to this concept.
To somewhat spice things up, I decided that I'd be refluffing PA techs compared to other Commanders, in addition to some things related to what things work in which universes to somewhat limit the inevitable tech snowballing, but those would be touched on in- character later on. I also plan to at least start with a few less touched settings, in addition to altered universe or crossover destinations later on so things might not go too "canon".
So yeah, I hope you'll enjoy my writing and let's get started.
Note for new readers: "sidestory" is still an important part of the main story, it is just presented from a different PoV
Status: ongoing
Published: 2022-09-21
Updated: 2023-12-15
Words: 154908
Chapters: 26
Original source: threads/1041301
Exported with the assistance of
Reverse Engineering is not that easy [Planetary Annihilation - Multicross SI]Introduction
Log 1: "How it all began"
Log 2: "Brave new world"
Log 3: "Per Aspera"
Log 4: "Ad Astra"
Log 5: "The Sneaky Debut"
Log 6: "The Construction Montage begins"
Log 7: "The Sound of Progress"
Log 8: "The Launch"
Log 9: "The First Contact"
Log 10: "What could possibly go wrong?"
Log 11: "I never asked for this…"
Log 12: "The more the merrier and how I stopped worrying and loved the laser"
Log 13: "Fighting a land war in Asia"
Log 14: "We are responsible for those we adopt"
Log 15: "City builder games made this look way easier…"
Log 16: "Starfish aliens aren't that alien"
Log 17: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"
Log 18: "Oh shit, here we go again"
Log 19: "...from vicious giant insects who have once again come back"
Log 20: "The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster -Maxim 17"
Log 21: "Once More Unto the Breach"
Log 22: "Fourth walls and dead worlds"
Log 23: "How did we get here?"
Log 24: "Your surrender is very important to us, please call again later"
Log 25: "Yamato, hashin!"
Log 26: "No such thing as overkill"
Log 1: "How it all began"Log 1: "How it all began"
It all started during a slow and not too interesting day at work, a day not too different from most other workdays in the last 4 or 5 months, I think. It is all mostly due to the events of the last two years, and specifically due to the mess which occurred during this spring, an event that I am technically not allowed to mention.
I guess the information sharing ban is technically moot since I'll likely never get home for it to be enforced, but the habit and vague sense of fear and unease is hard to shake off by the time I decided to make this entry so here it is. In any case, I was a first year business analyst and my job was to translate what buyers wants into the format that programmers can read, and recent events made buyers not too sure regarding what they wanted. As a result, I'd exhausted my tasks and was in a perpetual state of awaiting further instructions, as I was not experienced enough to find new tasks on my own.
Randomly during the day the head analyst could show up and give a task that I needed to complete within the next hour or two, after which he confirmed it and disappeared again for days. Weirdly his position ended up being overloaded with things that he had to do and not even enough time to offload these things to his subordinates, which is arguably not a great look, but this gave me a lot of this weird "half-spare time" where I had to be "on deck", but with basically nothing to do.
Luckily for me, covid kind of forced the company to adopt work from home and I had a personal laptop with no efficiency monitoring software. At first, I read a couple books on the subject of my work to aim for a raise after the first year, but eventually I kind of burned out and could no longer force myself as a vague sense of hopelessness accumulated along with the news and later early results of further and further limitations imposed both from the inside of the country and against it from the rest of the world.
After almost a month of this vague unease and loss of motivation, I managed to get somewhat on track of doing at least something: I force-fed myself an audiobook called "Project:Hail Mary" to get myself out of this hole of unproductiveness and started gaming again, for the first time in over two years. Mostly I took up overly modded Factorio: Space Exploration, then I revisited a random MMO that I used to play back in high school and then I kind of wanted to try an RTS. There haven't been many games in that genre in a while, but I did have a few in the Steam library, including Planetary Annihilation.
I was somewhat surprised that it was not dead yet. Hmm… 300 players with peaks up to 1100, not terrible. It had a pretty shit launch and then the Titans fiasco, but it seems that a company made by the game's fans has bought it out and released a few updates including massive balancing patches, map fixes and a few new units: an anti air missile bot called "Stinger", a strafing anti ground aircraft called "Horsefly" and a light wheeled raider called "Stryker" as a sort of dox analogue to armor factories.
Oh, and also a few absolutely fugly commanders like a literal mecha unicorn, weirdly out of place TRON- inspired abomination and that pumpkin monstrosity. I've never been great at RTS games, I could take on hard AI in whatever I played, but other players usually easily rushed my ass before I could build up, or just expanded significantly faster than I could and thus crushed me with eco. I'd probably get better with time, but it is not like I had a lot of it consistently. Eh, I guess I could take a look at a few casual games and maybe try that single player campaign thing.
My shit internet managed to download the game in a few hours, and I booted it up. Game reset itself to mildly shit Russian localization as default, ugh. One reboot later, and I was greeted by the "usual" intro window with a list of options on the left, a commander model in the middle and a newsletter to the right. Huh, so they added some mod support, good to see, maybe I'd try Legions eventually, but for now vanilla was "new" enough. I opened the armory to pick a cooler looking commander since the game has reset it to the default… aaaand it is a cosmetics store, great.
Banditks looks cool but I literally couldn't drop the cash on it if I wanted to, so Reaver it is. The tank threads on it are not as cool but it doesn't cost 2 bucks for what might as well be a couple hours of gameplay before I drop it again. I selected it and then decided to try the tutorial, maybe they've updated it. Nope, same thing from the Titans, oh well. Then I clicked on multiplayer. There were 4 different games, three of which password locked, and the only one available was a 1v1 called "ROB's casual". Welp, let's see how long it would take for me to get stomped I thought and double clicked to enter, after which everything went dark.
At first I thought that the fuzes blew, but I couldn't stand up when I tried. In fact, I wasn't getting any sensory response from my body. I couldn't tell if I was standing up or flipped upside down, when I moved my hand to touch my face I couldn't feel the touch from my fingers or my face, and I didn't even get the sensation of moving the hand at all, just a vague sense that it should have done what I directed it to do.
I tried to look around but I couldn't see, hear or even tell if my head moved beyond the kinesthetic sensation in relation to the rest of my body. As in, I knew that I bent my neck forward and my chin should be touching my collarbone, but I couldn't feel it touching. I should've probably panicked way more, but I am chronically ill and my meds cause me to go dopey in response to high stress, so what I felt was a pulse of panic and then just usual calmness, vague nausea and sleepiness less than a minute later.
Then I thought that I died, but suddenly I felt a sensation of someone being right in front of me. Couldn't see them, or hear them, but I knew that they were there. "Uh, hello?" I tried to say as my mouth seemingly moved but didn't make a sound and I immediately got the reply beamed directly into my head: "GREETINGS, mortal! REJOICE, for you have been CHOSEN!" The voice was not identifiable but it was loud, and even though it wasn't heard by my ears it was still headache inducing. I stared in the direction of the entity and ordered my eyes to blink a few times before thinking to myself: "Sigh, might as well…", the entity has seemingly heard my thoughts and was surprised by my reaction. "2020s have been… a weird couple of years, sorry" I replied, but it seems that the elevator pitch has already been unintentionally shattered.
A few seconds of awkward silence later the entity continued in a significantly less headache inducing voice: "… nope, you've ruined it, so enough of this. Your people call beings like me ROB, yes, that one. You should already know the drill. I shove you into a PA Commander and drop you off on a hostile planet in an isolated star system. Once you conquer the world, you will unlock a device which allows for extraversal travel, and I get to enjoy the resulting shenanigans. Everything clear?"
I haven't been on Spacebattles or SV much before, as I was mostly a /qst/ quest master, but just a week or two ago I came across "Escalation is the name of the game" as I was looking for Factorio crossover fics of all things, and that's about the first time when I came over the concept of Random Omnipotent Beings. I took a few moments to process, after which an idea came to me. "I believe that there is one thing before I can start. I need a favor."
ROB seemingly smirks and replies "Bold of you to assume that you have anything that I might value." I try to make a "wait a minute" finger gesture and say "Please humor me, as I think that there is at least one thing that only I can provide in this situation, and it might be more valuable than what you might realize: my consent." In response I receive hysterical laughter. "Look, I realize that you didn't care much for my consent when you grabbed me, but I have whole three reasons why this is at least a minor leverage, and I don't think that I could ask for something that won't be near effortless for a ROB to do." ROB shrugs and tells me to continue while seemingly struggling not to burst into laughter again.
"Well, you abducted me for your entertainment, so I can refuse to cooperate in at least two ways: I could just off myself or I could do intentionally boring to watch activities, like archiving some exoplanet's evolution over millions of years or going full NEET. Yes, you might implement some kind of suicide prevention thing or directly induce motivation when you think that I'm too idle or something but the more you dig in my brain, the less "me" the result is, and the more spiteful the resulting version of me might be at finding loopholes in imposed directives. The third reason is that you have mentioned that there are other ROBs, and thus it is likely that there would be other beings of comparable or greater abilities, and some of them might object to this treatment of lesser beings on moral grounds even if by that time I would be long gone. And all I want in exchange for a consent for the foreseeable future is that I need a copy of my mind to continue on my life in my original world as I have family members who require my support, and if I am already a mind copy then I want you to confirm that."
ROB narrowed their gaze and almost mockingly asked "And what if I lie?" I shrugged and replied "Well, you'd still have the external threat from other omnipotents, and I doubt that actually doing what I ask for would be any more difficult for you than just lying, plus there's maybe even a factor of conscience?" ROB starts laughing hysterically again, and after they calmed down they stated: "Ok, that was a good one. Fine, you're a mind copy, the original is still in his home being annoyed at the internet outage, not like you had a chance to come back anyway." Well, balls. I guess these were the first minutes of my existence. Happy fucking birthday. "Alright…" I say, "you have my consent for at least the next dozen jumps, maybe more depending on how it goes. So, when do we start?" ROB grins and replies "right about… NOW" and his presence vanishes.
Not much changed in my environment, I continued being in this sensory deprivation void for a few more moments until a new sensation appeared: a countdown. I didn't see it, I didn't hear it but I sensed as a certain number appeared in existence and started going down rapidly, and I somehow knew that it represents time. When I focused on this number, I found that this was a massive decimal string with 45 digits and rapidly counting down, but I somehow grasped exactly how much it should represent without really thinking.
I wondered if I could convert it to display seconds and strangely that queried a portion of my mind that wasn't there before, and I suddenly realized that I don't know what a second is. I mean, my original mind knows vaguely how long a second is, but the new part of my mind that handled the huge number doesn't, and my vague sense of how long a second should be is not precise enough for it. Also I'm not sure at which clock speed my mind now operates, so my subjective second could take anywhere from a Planck second to billions of years in reality.
Still, the countdown is supposed to take just above half a minute of my subjective time, and I assume that it is when I will be released upon the wilderness. Maybe the unit of time of this system is in Planck seconds? It doesn't seem to be labeled in any way, it just has a concept of a time unit attached to it directly in my brain with little in terms of reference points.
I couldn't tell if I was plowing through the atmosphere in a commander drop pod like at the start of any PA match or if I was waiting for Commander's OS to load as my human senses were not plugged into the giant mecha. I still had my kinesthetic sense, which should come from my brain's map of what my body should look like to predict where my limbs should be, but that's the only familiar sensory input that I was getting. I had no sense of where up or down was, which apparently is not like floating in free-fall but more like a weird and slightly nauseating "null error exception" of a sensation. I couldn't feel my arms or legs or anywhere else on my skin, and I wasn't even itchy anywhere on my body. I couldn't see, I heard nothing, I tasted nothing and I couldn't feel my tongue inside my mouth.
This all felt and still feels incredibly weird and somewhat claustrophobic, however there was now a new sensory input. It was more detailed than both vision and hearing combined, but it was also distinct from them. It appeared from the same "direction" from which I received the answers to my queries and also it is the part that is responsible for my newfound math skills. Apparently, I could now subconsciously visualize and do complex math. I quickly tested it with some easy stuff that I could do without the calculator, then I threw in some multiplications with numbers that had hundreds of digits and then I threw in trigonometry and logarithms, all of which were solved basically as soon as I came up with the problems.
I wondered how exactly my brain was structured, to which the query surprisingly found the info and displayed it as what I decided to call a "concept diagram". It was not a normal image, as it was beamed directly into my consciousness in a form unique to that new sensory input. My mind was structured in a way that I was not expecting. I was a full brain emulation of some sort, but I was not a neural network AI, instead the computer that I was in was running an extreme fidelity physics simulation of not only my brain, but also my spinal cord and a good chunk of my nervous system in addition to some kind of simplified hormone gland simulation. There were no blood vessels or hormonal glands, but there were hormones whose propagation was simulated as if there were blood vessels, they just got "spawned" where needed in the quantities that were needed.
The neurons of the brain also appeared to be intertwined with an operating system of some kind that handles everything from math, to backups, to external information storage along with notes about how it would also handle a huge variety of aspects of running the units and bases. It won't command everything for me, but it would micro units that I don't directly take over and it would try to interpret and follow my intentions and act as some sort of a second layer of awareness which would scale with the number of units that I'd make. I decided to call it an "exo- cortex", since it has vaguely the same functionality as the proposed mind augment with the same name.
I also appear to have an incredible amount of control over the entirety of this setup, I can manually add and remove every type of neuron one by one and every bond between every neuron. I can order the hormone gland to flood my brain simulation with any quantity and mix of any hormone, or even any chemical that I'd want. In fact, I can spawn a hormone molecule directly into a specific neuron. I could even rewrite the entirety of my exo-cortex code.
The main issue is… I have no idea what I'm doing. I am no neurosurgeon, my programming is at the very basic level, the exo-cortex code looks very alien and doesn't seem to be based on normal binary bits and nothing has any labels. I know a list of molecules that are simulated for my brain, but I don't know which one of them is serotonin and there is no macro to inject caffeine or administer sleep hormone, the program just maintains a stable state of "awake, calm and alert" plus a list of preset feedbacks that I assume are for things like "fight or flight" or producing certain emotions. I'll have to hand program anything beyond that without any manuals and for now I am a bit too afraid that I'd break something.
I did find a frame rate simulation ratio though, while my exo-cortex seems to operate at maximum clock speed all the time and thus has no speed setting, my brain simulation has a clock ratio of 1.855x10^43 to 1, and I can freely alter it in both ways. When the left number got lower, the rate of the countdown decreased, getting close to a subjective second per countdown "tick" at 1 to 1 ratio, and I couldn't crank it any further.
Then an idea came to my mind: "Define 1.855x10^43 time units as a new unit of measurement called "second", convert countdown from "time units" to "seconds"" I queried, in response the countdown shrunk from its absurd length to two numbers and a tag: 14 "seconds". I queried initial number, it was "43 seconds". Welp, at least now it was human readable, still I was surprised that it took me only half a minute to figure all of this out, having concepts beamed directly in your head seems like a superior way to explain things…
The countdown has basically frozen at this clock rate, but I figured that if I was to survive whatever would come after it hits zero then I'd want to read up on what I had in my disposal. "If you know yourself but not your enemy, for every victory you'd get a defeat, but if you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you'd lose every battle" I haven't actually read the Art of War and Exo-Cortex didn't have it in store, but I remembered that quote at least, and a 50/50 chance is better than running in blind and dying, right? Thus I decided to take an inventory, and oh boy was I surprised.
Beyond my own mind and the Exo-cortex, which is arguably also a part of my mind now, I found only two things: some kind of complex physics simulation software and a database of designs. There is nothing else, no library of books, no movies, no scientific literature, no nothing. I seem to be limited by the simulation and what's already represented in my units, and that is weird.
The physics simulation seems to account for everything physics related, from sand abrasion on tank tracks to chemical reactions and subatomic particle physics to relativistic effects. However, it has no cheat sheet, no list of physics or chemistry formulas or theories, no databases of minerals or other seemingly important things. It simulates everything, but what it takes into account is hardcoded somewhere in the alien code that I had no hope of decrypting for now.
I went to my brain simulation, copied one of the hormones and inputted that copy into the simulation as a molecule. I managed to make it simulate a "procedural garden world preset" and made it create a pool made only from that hormone, after which I could blast it with heat and use that to determine its boiling temperature, but the simulation didn't have the list of useful chemicals that I could use if they weren't needed somewhere inside of the unit blueprints. I even had to codify what "water molecule" was, even though it simulated water oceans as a part of "earthlike planet" preset and I had a list of naval units available. Luckily it had a database of every atom and every isotope with higher half life than a fraction of a millisecond, but it wasn't represented as a periodic table, of, fucking, course.
The units and infrastructure database almost gave me a stroke, but it would take some time to explain why exactly. In short, I have some incredibly "slanted" tech level. It is as if I used advanced lithography equipment but the only blueprint it had was an ancient greek trireme crewed with Boston Dynamic dogs.
The issue starts with the nanospray, which is a bit of a misnomer, since I'm pretty sure that you need picotech, if not attotech to pull this feat off. Each "nanite" is a spherical machine the size of a carbon atom if we use outer electron orbital as the outer boundary. This "nanite" can on command induce electric potential at any spot on its surface, which it can then use to form a "chemical bond" analogue with a predetermined "nanite" or a conventional atom positioned nearby. It can also propel itself by bonding and then pivoting itself relative to the bond as if it has an internal gyroscope. It also has a neutralized magnetic field which it can rearrange to become a decent dipole magnet for its size. It can somehow beam power to and from nearby nanospray particles, it can turn that beamed power into electric current if bound to conductive material and it can accept electric current if present in sufficient quantity and then convert it into the form of energy that it uses internally.
These nanite misnomer particles can also "absorb" other nearby nanospray particles which allows them to increase their mass, although the process is more akin to a weird mix of quantum scale probability weirdness and reverse mitosis and it is used to simulate heavier nuclei. At some point of density, the "particle" would become "fissile" and thus it would acquire a half life with a chance to decay in a spray of fast neutrons which can trigger other "fissile nanospray" which is apparently how PA nukes work. They are not made of uranium or plutonium like IRL nukes, they are made of nanites cosplaying as plutonium, which is the first taste of what would almost give me an aneurysm if I could still get one. This also means that I have no fusion bombs, as nanospray is limited in mimicking lighter atoms.
In short, nanospray is not nanoassemblers, it is "smart matter", essentially atom sized claytronics, a "catom". From one hand that makes sense, there is a certain limit to how fast you can sequence matter at these scales. A 3d printer that can place individual atoms would require a printing head that would have to accelerate to and decelerate from speeds close to the speed of light to have a decent fabrication rate, and "conventional" Drexler- esque nanites would have limitations with waste heat and their small size impeding rapid material movements, meaning that realistic nanites would be comparable to biology in terms of the speed at which they work.
Smart matter particle technically only needs to rotate into position, bond with its nearest neighbors and lock itself. However, smart matter almost by definition would have worse material performance than dumb matter made with the same material science. A material made from "actually properly sized" nanites "holding hands" to make smart matter would have worse tensile strength than graphene or carbon nanotubes while being significantly more complex. If I had the understanding of how my smart particles worked, I could plate my tanks with matter bound by strong interactions instead of whatever the hell "neurosteel" is, which is almost the worst part.
Almost all of my units are made of "neurosteel". Can anyone guess what neurosteel is? Well, it is steel… made from smart matter. Just straight up smart matter mimicking properties of presumably normal modern steel. I don't have a database entry on modern steels, but I know for sure that smart particles are set to mimic mostly iron, carbon and a small portion of various admixtures. Why aren't my tanks using sheets of diamondoids, weaved carbon nanotubes or layered graphene? I have no idea, and I don't have enough understanding of material science to fix this right now, and it is not even the worst part.
The worst part is the weapons. Yes, I have lasers, missiles, an arrangement of variously sized mass drivers and even some form of an electron beam weapon which is used on all the "lightning thrower" units, but can anyone guess what gun does the Dox mech use? An autocannon, just a conventional autocannon that burns smart matter configured to mimic smokeless gunpowder! My tanks and artillery also use "conventional" shells! Same for rockets! My SAM missiles burn nanospray as propellant! My orbital unit thrusters use smart matter as remass! Jesus Christ, this just feels wrong, like using a microscope to put a nail into the wall.
Well, there are a few things that make smart matter a bit less of a potential pollution trap. First of all, it is not always "smart". When a smart particle takes position, it "locks" its current state as it stops responding to commands and loses "faction allegiance" but in exchange becoming resistant to radiation and requiring no energy input for continued existence. Kind of like how e-ink books still display the last page even if the battery dies. This is great as it means that my tanks won't fall apart into puddles of fried components the moment a nuke goes off nearby. This also explains how reclaiming works, as active smart particles can activate locked particles to be reused.
Also it seems that each particle is only metastable, and it requires an active bond with another smart particle to stabilize itself. If a smart particle is isolated, it would burn through its internal power supply, after which it could no longer force itself to remain stable and thus it would receive a half life of several days. Such decaying smart particles implode into barely energetic electrons, protons and neutrons, unlike their "fissile" variant. Bound smart particles reinforce each other kind of like how neutron decays when alone but is stable in a nucleus.
The main limitation with this smart matter is that it is optimized as a construction material and only that, it can't act as decent sensors as it has only a way to receive orders and a way to detect atoms that it "bumps into", it is not self- replicating, it can't mimic lighter elements just right so I can't spray a human with it and rebuild a lost biological arm and I can't program it to act like liquid terminator flesh as it wants to find its place and "lock" as soon as possible.
Also I don't have the "blueprints" for the interior of these smart particles. Well, I have, but it is as if I have a CAD file and a 3d printer that accepts the CAD file but no software to read said file. It is a nonsense string of code which is terabytes upon terabytes long, unlike the blueprints for actual units where I can tear off a gun from a Dox and shove it instead of the main gun of an Ant tank.
I also took a look at how resources and logistics works, and logistics are actually there, just a bit hidden. Each energy powerplant is some kind of "zero point energy generator", which is a bit of a misnomer since it uses some kind of unknown to me phenomenon at a significantly smaller scale than the Casimir effect. Each Mass Harvester is a smart matter mass production factory, which somehow turns heavier elements into more of the nanospray.
The Commander has a "resource core" which uses energy from the nearby powerplant to tear apart quark bonds to make more quarks and somehow uses them to basically "dupe" material to make more nanospray. This is also the part that goes off like a nuke when commander is destroyed, as "resource core" somehow maintains double the temperature of a star's core constantly and I wish I could just copy whatever the material is used there for unit armor, but it is also a black box technology. I have the blueprint, but no way to read what it is made of and how exactly it works.
The entirety of logistics seems to be based on some sort of a teleportation device with a principle similar to the larger gate teleporter technology and it can only teleport nanospray material in its basic lightest form. Every mine and powerplant has an array of small "supplier" one way teleporters and almost every unit has one way "requester" teleporters, which actually take almost a sixth of the price of a Dox unit.
Storage structures are logistic hubs and they almost entirely consist of supplier teleporters. These teleporters can only "link" to structures that have an active ansible of some sort(which works by different principles from the gate) linking them to the command network. As a result, every unit fabs up ammunition on site and only Titan units, most of orbital and certain structures have on- board powerplants as they suffer from logistics bandwidth limitations.
The unit list is actually pretty familiar, with a few minor surprises. First of all, I have two types of walls, the walls used in the "beta" version and the shiny "energy walls". Former is a huge brick made from bulk armor and latter is not really an "energy" wall, it is made from semi- active nanospray. The "energy wall" material includes special nodes that can mass unlock nanospray which allows for the wall to quickly ooze into a hole in the ground to let friendly units pass and it can also flow into the holes left by enemy fire if it is not being shot at for at least 5 seconds. "Energy wall" doesn't have a requester though, so it has to be sprayed down in combat regularly to replace lost armor.
Second unexpected piece of equipment is the deepspace radar. That structure was actually removed from the game a while ago because it was a huge noob trap. It was pricy to build but if you didn't build it you could get sniped by space units with zero effort. Here it seems that I can still build one, but it has a limitation in terms of the line of sight as it can't see through the planet below it, and the Commander unit has its own scaled down version.
Speaking of radars, my assortment of sensor tech leaves a lot to be desired. Unit "vision" is mostly from cameras and IR sensors spread all over every single unit, space tracking is mostly with IR and radar, mine detecting units have magnetic field sensors, naval units get sonar, radar is just normal multispectral radar(as in, using a broad band of radio frequencies) and that's actually it. I have no chemical sensors, no seismic sensors, no radiation sensors, no microscopes, no telescopes, not even microphones beyond those used to track subs as a part of active sonar.
My stealth tech includes only mines that dig themselves underground and blow up if something rolls over them and is not blasting my IFF, subs that have radar absorbent coating but for some reason no acoustic dampening and radar jammers only on Vanguards. Latter is curious because it has a different mechanic than in the game. In PA radar jamming prevents radar from seeing the enemy unit and nearby enemy units at all, but here it just prevents radar from locking onto signatures accurately. The jammer after all is just a powerful radio source. While I don't have anti radiation weapons(as in missiles that specifically guide onto radars or jammers), it was trivial to add an alert that auto- highlights the jammed area in response to radar interference.
The unit limitations and factories were both easy to partially sidestep and critical. As it turns out, while nanospray is universal, there are still requirements for its use. As it assembles, it generates waste heat and it requires an input of computation resources. Thus a factory is essentially mostly a computer and a heatsink.
An Ant tank in the middle of nanospray assembly gets pierced by billions of heat exchangers that suck out the waste heat into the base plate of the factory, which is then directed to the radiators. Once the Ant is 99% done, heat exchangers get salvaged and turn into the last bit of the tank.
Difference between T1 and T2 is mainly the size of the server rack below the factory that directs the assembly, as T2 units are significantly more complex and their materials require more precision. It takes a bit more effort to get atomic precise materials with nanospray in comparison to bulk materials that permit assembly mistakes. For example, Dox neurosteel armor plates take a quarter of the time for comparable volume of titan armor plating. However, it is still possible to build any unit from any nanosprayer, and after a simple matter of copying and pasting I can now print all of T1 and T2 directly on the ground with my Commander, but mobile units would just take almost 4 to 5 times as long as in the dedicated factory. Still, now any fabricator can build any building, and I can build T1 units in T2 factories if I really need to.
Speaking of time, this is probably the biggest difference between PA as a game and the reality I find myself in. In PA it takes seconds to make units, maybe up to a minute. Here it takes minutes to hours to assemble anything with nanospray. Probably the fastest unit to make is Dox, which takes roughly a minute to build, 45 seconds in perfect conditions in a factory that's fully "saturated" by assisting fabbers.
The planets also seem to be huge, judging by the simulation. I can't really tell how huge since the unit of length that the system uses is needlessly tiny just like with the time, but I believe that this is the case where the game sidesteps realism for playability, and now that realism was added back.
The "orbital layer" also no longer exists, as orbital units now have to actually be in orbits, falling around the planet faster than they are falling towards it. Thank god I played Kerbal Space Program or this would be very unintuitive. As a side effect of this, I'll need to be careful not to allow my satellite tracks to fly over asat defenses as I can't just park them above my base. Yes, geostationary orbits are a thing, but they are very high up and exist only around the equator, any other latitude would "bop" north and south in equal measure if I put them at the same altitude as geostationary.
Once I feel like I wrapped up with the "manual", which in some cases was spawning units into the simulator and watching them perform, I catch myself trying to tinker and force myself to stop. I don't know enough about what I'll be dropped into so I can't be sure that I'd be optimizing the correct things, and I believe that I might have limited time to get off my starting planet. I am a human, or at least was, and humans are social creatures. If I end up spending decades here, it would impact my psychological health, and at the very least I'd have trouble talking to other people, like what happens when a single person gets stranded on an uninhabited island for too long.
Let's hope that my starting tools are up to the task then. I cranked down my brain's simulation rate back to default and watched the countdown go by. At the last second, a new message appeared from the exo- cortex: "Initiating Commander landing sequence…"
Last edited: Sep 21, 2022
Log 2: "Brave new world"Log 2: "Brave new world"
The moment the timer has reached 0, I've finally received some new information in the form of telemetry. I'm not sure how else to call it, since it was all piped exclusively through the exocortex even though the feed included data from various cameras distributed throughout the Commander chassis. The camera feed was in color, it just wasn't piped through the part of my brain that is supposed to process vision which produced a much different sensation from normal, but I could work with this.
Through these cameras I could see the four "petals" of the Astareus lander jettison from the thruster block as it operated like a disposable skycrane similar to how NASA landed Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars. Once the Commander's tracks were close enough to the ground, the skycrane part detached and flew off at full thrust in a ballistic arc and impacted into the ground somewhere near the horizon.
The terrain that I landed on was cracked and barren, mostly gray with patches of yellowish brown. The sky was of an off- yellow color from all of the sand and dust in the air. There were some if very few clouds far in the distance to the east. Yellow sun's rays were struggling to punch through to the dust resulting in an overcast lighting.
The landing site was presumably a dried out and shallow lake-bed, a nice and flat area to start off. There was a small mountain range in the distance to the south that was not tall enough for the snow cover. Far to the north- east there was a patch of nearly black objects that upon a closer zoom resolved into a dead forest with absolutely no leaves, just a field of jagged sticks. Commander lacks long range radar, so that's basically everything that I could see at the start.
Magnetic sensors have detected a patch of something that the exocortex highlighted with the metal icon. I presume that it was likely some kind of iron ore like magnetite, but the extractor doesn't seem to care what the feedstock is as long as it is dense enough and I have no specific data on ores. Well, whatever, the patch seems to be a big one so that's good.
I started with plopping down a T1 armor factory and then immediately queuing an array of T1 extractors on the patch. Usually unless you drop in the water the choice between armor and bot factories depends on whether you want to expand rapidly and do early rushing, but since I've copied all of the bot blueprints into armor factories there is little reason not to go for tanks. Especially since tanks would have issues getting off the bot factory platform.
As the factory finished assembly, it immediately started pumping out a few dozen tank fabbers and the Commander simply rotated and started spraying down an extractor site. Unlike in the game, extractors are simply clustered on top of the patch with some spacing between them. As they are built, they need some time to drill down to the ore and deploy underground infrastructure for mining and hauling material to the surface where the pumped nanospray and ore slurry is fed directly into the catom processor. Why not place the processor underground as well? No idea, but I can't really change it right now.
The first batch of tank fabbers was directed to build T1 radar and then split between building an array of energy plants and helping me with the extractors. Simultaneously, I was spamming a mix of doxes, grenadiers and spinners just in case from the first factory. I did some quick math and made sure to keep my economy at exactly 90% deficit as I rushed my starting setup. After just two hours I was producing more mass and energy than what I used up for continual expansion of the resource production.
I half expected to be bumrushed by something at this point, but nothing came. Radar showed me a good chunk of the local area and it was basically an empty wasteland. Yes, there were patches of dead forest and hills and stuff, but nothing alive and moving in the close vicinity. This is not the time to grow complacent though, if ROB said that the world is hostile, then it most certainly was. Just probably not immediately hostile.
I ordered production of the second factory, this time it was for my air force. It was directed to spam fireflies, first of which would start spiraling away from the landing site and other spy planes would get the preset for scouting over a circle centered on me and taking up a quarter of the planet's surface. Simultaneously I started intermittently sending out skitters as they are closer to the ground and might detect deposits that fireflies would miss.
Meanwhile, I started forming "expansion squads" as I've almost completely saturated the starting metal source. The name is kind of stupid, I know. While the estimates placed the deposit depletion at "over a decade", any more extractors would interfere with each other and slow down production so if I wanted to get more materials I needed to spread out.
Each expansion squad was made of 5 bot fabbers, a couple stingers(bot T1 AA), 5 grenadiers and about 20 doxes. As soon as the new metal site is detected, one of the prepared squads would head out, plop down a tank factory, a radar and then start spamming extractors and T1 energy. The squad would remain as a garrison, but the factory would make new squads and send them to other deposits.
I felt the urge to plan out some static defenses, but reconsidered as I couldn't afford them right now. Anything extra would lower my eco below the optimum level of deficit and thus it would slow down the first wave of expansion. It still made me feel naked and vulnerable even with literally hundreds of doxes below my feet… threads.
I've read that static defenses are essentially near obsolete in modern warfare since WW2, but I just kind of like them. I am too much of a shitter to set up patrols and correctly estimate how many units I need to keep at home for defenses, statics are just simple. You plop them down, set them up and then forget about them until they are either attacked or your eco allows for an upgrade. I can't really afford to do things suboptimally though, since if Commander is destroyed I won't be sent back to lobby. I'd be dead.
It takes almost half an hour for the air factory to finish construction and for the first spy plane to lift into the sky. Amusingly, it is launched straight up with a small solid rocket booster and then it switches to a sustainer propeller once it reaches the desired altitude and speed. It also is plated in solar panels and carries batteries since the power beamer setup apparently weighs slightly more and it is optimized for mass.
The spy plane is pretty slow compared to jets, but it is still faster than land units so I simply end up waiting and accumulating my forces until I get some pings on the resource overlay. Closest deposits were in the same lake bed where I landed, but I've already detected them with land based surveys and first expansions were already being constructed even before the first firefly launch. Still, the other deposits were not too far away and soon dozens of expansion squads started their march across the wasteland. All I needed to do was wait…
Still no contact with the possible enemy, huh. By this point I was 9 hours in and the first two waves of expansions have already reached full operational capacity. It is incredibly fast but it is also SO GODDAMN SLOW. I can't really get distracted but also basically nothing was happening for hours! Just watching the map and checking if the units were doing what they were supposed to.
My initial base now sported over a dozen T1 armor and four T1 air factories, but I couldn't quite run them at full steam yet. Still, I now had three small armies consisting of a core of ant tanks with a contingent of infernos and some spinner support, each around 5k units. I also invested in a very limited stationary setup at the established expanses consisting of a single galata SAM battery and a twin barreled laser turret mostly because it outranges my doxes by just over a third.
I also have a detachment of almost a thousand drifters for rapid response. They are a bit pricier than ants due to the insanely costly plates of exotic material below them (a whole third of the tank's price!) that when powered somehow pushes away from the nearby matter keeping the vehicle in the air, but it is significantly limited in range. They act more like hovercraft than tanks which means they "drift" a lot when taking turns, suffer more from recoil and are likely to spin out of control when shot at with high caliber weapons, but they are technically better armed and very slightly better armored than ants, in addition to being several times faster across any terrain.
At that point I've finally found something interesting. One of the fireflies has flown over a large crater covered in black glassy substance some distance to the south from my base. In the very middle of the crater was a chunk of porous stone over ten times the size of the Commander. No idea what that thing is.
Almost simultaneously, another drone flew over a cracked line stretching across the wasteland with petrified and often broken wooden beams set up at regular intervals. It was a road! A very old and cracked road, to be fair, but maybe there are people on this planet? Wait, does that mean that I would have to fight them?
With some worry, I've directed a couple of new fireflies to fly in straight lines in both directions of the road, and half an hour later one of them discovered a ruin of a small town. It was absolutely leveled into the ground, discernible almost exclusively by geometrically regular positions of rubble piles. There are a few car wrecks but they almost entirely rusted away. Still, the road network was still vaguely visible and I could at least somewhat focus my exploration efforts.
Not even an hour later I've finally encountered the first living thing in this blasted wasteland! It was first picked by radar as it was large and moving, then on thermals and in visible range thanks to a projector mounted on the firefly's nose. By this time it was already past sunset so if I wanted to get something beyond a blurry blob of infrared I had to take the risk of turning on the flashlights.
The creature was massive, easily twice the size of an ant tank. It was obviously biological, likely an insectoid judging by the thick shell and arthropod leg plan. It vaguely resembled a weird mix of Factorio biters and Destroyer class Beta from Muv Luv in addition to a long and thick rod mounted on an armored muscular gum on top of its body which resembled a tank turret.
Even before I turned on the projector, the creature saw and tried to track my drone aircraft with that rod, which I tried to counter manually with evasive maneuvers. The biological cannon, however, was optimized for an incredible rate of fire with a narrow conical spray of tiny projectiles and even desperate micro didn't save the poor firefly from eating a stream of supersonic pellets to its wing.
It allowed me to study what my units do as they are being destroyed. Upon impact with the ground, the explosive package near the ansible node activated which caused the ansible itself to cook off resulting in the entire aircraft blowing up in a small but hot fireball. As a result, all internal components of the drone were melted leaving only the empty husk.
Huh, so my units have an unconditional self destruct as a part of the comms system. I saw if I could remove the explosives, but it was a part of the monolithic blueprint of the ansible itself. This also meant that if the ansible was hit, it would cook off the entirety of the unit's interior regardless of the damage. Luckily it is usually the size of a golfball and in most cases intentionally heavily armored.
By that point I've just set up my first T2 armor factory and I was planning to make an orbital launcher, but the readings I was getting from the Commander's space radar were concerning. There was lots of stuff in orbit of this planet, which was less like just a Kessler syndrome and more like an intact but inactive and partially out of alignment satellite grid somehow in the middle of a Kessler syndrome. I could observe a similar situation around the planet's only moon and very close around a ringed gas giant further out in the star system. I couldn't determine if these were active either, since they were intermittently getting even so slightly "hotter" than they should be but that was below the system's identification threshold.
The contact did allow me to buff up the outer expansions with extra units and not a minute too soon as the first "scouting party" of the bio- tanks rolled up to one of the outer edge expansions. A group of 47 hostiles clearly visible on the radar and starting to take minor damage from a solo pelter that was rush constructed just moments ago. And then radar detected incoming shells from three of the contacts.
Huh, they know counter battery fire, which also means they have modular weapon systems. I refocused my arty at the enemy artillery contacts, micro'd units from predicted shelling areas and directed a flight of T1 bombers that were circling around my base to support, but they would arrive long after the bugs. Thus, it was up for a small army of tanks and bots to repel the attack.
The enemy shells were carrying an incendiary payload, but they were probably designed against infantry and light vehicles as the pelter was not perturbed by puddles of blazing inferno landing on top of it and in its general area. In the meantime I commanded my local units to form up into two groups and attempt to flank the enemy on both sides the moment they entered the turret range.
This had limited success, as the bugs ended up being a vague equivalent of T2 units. Even with a massive numerical advantage it was a close fight. A single bug unit could soak up 3 to 4 shots from the stationary turret before going down thanks to the massive frontal facing armor. In addition, bugs had a spread of various weapons on the same type of unit: I saw light incendiary artillery, an anti armor hypervelocity cannon, a short range flamethrower, a rapid fire machine gun that was encountered previously and some kind of biological laser which looked like a solid black unblinking eye embedded in the turret's fleshy gum.
My doxes could only vaguely resist the machine gun for a second or two of concentrated fire and they were utterly destroyed by literally every single other type of weapon. Still, I had over a thousand of them, and judging by their size in proportion to the ant tanks they were more like supersized infantry, somewhere around 3 meters tall plus minus the lack of concrete definition of a "meter".
The flanking maneuver did show that the side and back armor of the bugs was lacking, but my tanks were generally too slow to exploit that and doxes were too fragile not to die en masse before hosing down the ant butt with mass autocannon fire. Grenadiers were the MVP as a concentrated hail of frag grenades was very effective until the bugs focused them down due to their low number. Inferno was also decent, as a few bugs succumbed to the napalm and infernos were tanky enough to survive the hypervelocity impacts several times before going down, unlike ants who only rarely had a chance to survive a direct impact.
This necessitated a change in my defensive plans. I couldn't mass fab T2 yet, I needed to upgrade my extractors to handle the strain first thus I was actually forced to build up more stationary defenses. Starting with a minefield, a directional wall, about a dozen pulse lasers and several pelters per every outer expansion with inner expansions staying as is for now.
Since I had overlapping radars I was confident that if bugs punched through or sidestepped my outer defenses I could respond using large T1 armies with heavy air and minor T2 support faster than the bugs could reach anywhere important. This was… an assumption, and just 4 hours later it required some rethinking.
Bugs have sent another 6 identical probing waves that were repelled with increased ease, but then they punched in with an absolutely huge swarm of fliers. The flying creatures looked like giant wasps with a light version of a machine gun in the lower abdomen. There were over 4 thousand of them flying in a vague blob.
The creatures ignored every expansion and flew directly towards the Commander at just under the speed of sound. Still, it would've taken them two hours to make their way from my outer border to me, and that was PLENTY of time to beef up the anti air and to mass fab fighters in addition to those I've already had. As they flew in range of galatas when passing above the expansions I noted that they were comparable to T1 bombers in survivability. SAM missiles absolutely tore them apart with one or two hits, so galatas appear much more effective than in the game.
The swarm was countered by a slightly more massive swarm of T1 hummingbird fighters. With radar coverage, they could fire their volley from beyond visual range twice before encountering some enemy fire… what the fuck?!
Well, looks like no one has programmed hummingbirds how to dogfight. At all. They fly at the enemy, launch missiles, fly past and then turn to face the enemy again. I've lost almost a third of the fighters in the first pass! Fuck! And I don't know how specifically the dogfights should work!
I've heard of the dogfighting "egg" and something about conserving the velocity, but I didn't know much of what that means so I had to crank up my frames to the max and enter the simulations. It took me almost two subjective days to figure out some rudimentary code. It probably sucks, but at least now my aircraft can vaguely dodge AA fire by "not flying in straight lines", my bombers would attempt to keep in mind enemy AA positions and either focus them down or avoid them and my fighters now know how to keep out of the visible range while spamming missiles instead of making passes through the thick of the enemy aircrafts repeatedly.
Now there's also some code on how to dodge other jets and how to turn at a less leisurely pace, but it is… bad. Better than literally nothing but very inefficient. While I can now code directly by thinking of what I want, I still need to think over the edge cases and I don't know enough about neural networks to just make swarms of fighters fight each other repeatedly until an emergent behavior appears.
Thus my coding consisted of pitting two fighters against each other and then debugging, then doing it again and debugging it again. After I had some semblance of an actual working system, I put a fighter against the enemy wasp which the simulation extrapolated from the records. If you can extrapolate that, why don't you extrapolate some bitches chemical compositions and stuff. Eh, whatever. In the end I had to code in collision avoidance since the fighters ended up running into each other absentmindedly as they dodged in swarm vs swarm simulations, ugh.
Back to the "real world" the fighter software was updated right in the middle of the fight and the losses dropped by 20% within the first minute. Not terrible, but not good either. Still, the flier bug swarm was dealt with thanks to numerical superiority and fighting right above one of the expansions with a fresh dozen galatas that were constructed as a matter of emergency.
As my fabbers started salvaging lost carcasses of my hummingbirds, I returned back to the drawing board of my defenses, again. More distributed factories, localized air force assets, layered defenses in the outer limits of my territory, at least some defenses in the inner layers, last stand fortifications, etc. And on this note, my long struggle for this world has commenced.
The more bugs came, the more I altered the defenses to counter them, the more bugs came. First they came in relatively small raiding parties, then in larger and larger armies with more and more different units from infantry analogues to some kinds of mini- titans with long range artillery.
My defenses expanded and interlocked until the outer perimeter was entirely encircled with layers upon layers of walls. The actual expansion still progressed, but at some point it became nearly impossible for the expansion squads to make through even when they started numbering in tens of thousands of units with a core of hundreds of T2 tanks and bots.
Bug artillery titans did artillery equivalents of a drive- by as they barely dipped in range of my massed holkins batteries and were usually pummeled into the dirt on the second or third attempt, but they still often managed to blast through my outer defenses. Swarms of endless bugs from the size of my doxes to the size of naval ships rushed in waves to punch through the weakened layers just to enter another layer of more walls, pulse lasers and various types of artillery.
I've lost, retaken, lost and retaken several of the mineral deposits that were promising for expansions, but I was having trouble holding the bug hordes when too far away from stationary installations so I was forced to simply continue layering the turrets and walls closer and closer as my outer border became covered in blisters slowly creeping towards the promising sites like an enormous mechanical amoeba.
The bugs, in the most Starship Troopers fashion, were amazing at penetrating the defenses underground. They undermined and collapsed sections of walls or bypassed certain areas entirely if the soil was soft enough for digging. In response, I've secured my most important expansions in their own defenses which made them into small islands of walls, turrets and artillery while I flooded every opened cave with swarms of T1 bots and locusts. T2 and tanks were usually too large to fit the sapper tunnels.
Once the tunnels were cleared out enough, they were filled in with catoms mimicking bulk metal and the most often attacked regions now had giant metal flats reminiscent of anthills flooded with molten aluminum in their structure and stretching for tens of miles around and in the direction from where the bugs came from. Bugs couldn't dig through bedrock and they took way longer to punch through bulk metal so they usually redirected around the regions where soil became too saturated with solidified smart matter.
I tried setting up some orbital units, but it seems that the world is almost literally covered with those things. A radar satellite revealed masses of flesh which looked like continuous bug- flavored dogscape the size of large countries and with the surface of tall mountain sized flesh hives constantly birthing more and more bugs. I hypothesized that the mound itself is the production facility with the flesh flats being some kind of support infrastructure, but the satellite was shot down when it passed vaguely over one of the fleshscape regions in its orbit. The flesh mountain produced an array of lasers and blasted it out of the sky with incredible ease.
In addition, space radar has managed to resolve a higher definition image of one of the objects in orbit. I shouldn't be surprised that it was… fleshy. In addition, some of these objects showed a definite trend towards emitting progressively more heat which I interpreted as them "waking up". Welp, time to spam umbrellas across my territory, fuck.
My first titan was completed shortly after. I went for Ares and immediately sent it to duel with enemy titan sized monsters from behind my stationary defenses. The battlefield was drowning in flier, laser and AAA bugs to the point where even T2 bombers had to be considered disposable if they had to be used anywhere close to the main frontline so I figured that Zeus wouldn't survive long enough for its exotic "lightning ball cannon" to be useful. I also figured that Atlas would be torn apart by the endless swarms of small bugs in melee. Bug equivalent to locust swarms was no joke.
I was also forced to spend more and more time in the unit editor as my arsenal was constantly proving itself not to be flexible enough to handle such an enemy. How long have I been here? Days? Weeks? Months? Constantly cranking my clock rate up and down completely fucked up my sense of time, but the exocortex never forgets as my struggle is approaching two months since landing.
I ended up redesigning a few things, but I was forced to use what I already had. First on the chopping block was the "catapult". It was not a cruise missile launcher, more like a close range ballistic missile with terminal guidance. It fired once, then it waited for internal nanosprayers to build another missile before it could fire again. I toyed around with the idea of having an underground autoloader to have multiple printers preparing missiles as fast as the single silo could handle, but after checking how easily the bugs end up intercepting catapult missiles, I decided to simply spam more VLS cells. The result was a 10 by 10 grid of vertical launch shafts configured to print and launch in volleys and protected by thick armor on top to resist the constant shelling. It would open, unload a hundred missiles and close to fab up another wave. I decided to call it… "Onager", to keep with the naming scheme.
Then I took apart the Lob since it became entirely obsolete along with mass dox swarms for anything on the surface. However, short ranged unit cannon still had its uses for rapidly plugging holes. Lob is designed to fire special lander shells with a tiny solid rocket motor that slows down the capsule just enough for dox legs to absorb the impact. I can just replace the dox by any bot or something that can hover. Something like locust swarms.
Now, locusts aren't disassembler nanites, they are more like weird microscopic sabotage gremlins of various sizes. They include control, maintenance and power beaming modules that are visible with the naked eye along with increasingly small flying robots. Some are optimized for rapidly drilling into hard material, some are even single use shaped charges that sacrifice themselves to make a hole in the armor weak spots by repeatedly pounding the same areas. Others are programmed to enter the existing or recently made openings to seek out and specifically target electronics, power sources and soft organic tissues. If the control node is shot down, the swarm that is assigned to that node self-destructs, which is how you can take down nanite swarms with guns.
Locusts are weak to concussion from explosions, they die to intense heat of flamethrowers or continuous massed fire, but they are the best thing that can counter their direct bug alternative. Bug locust analogue is much bigger, the size twice that of the control node and it can tear a hole in a T1 tank's armor and ravage its insides within seconds alone, and they work in swarms of thousands. So the dox cannon was reconfigured to mass fab locusts instead of doxes and launch multiple swarms in the same payload. It now had a wider base and slightly longer rails and the cost of the building increased by quite a bit. However I needed the ability to deploy locusts as essentially an artillery shell payload.
I've made other things, like giving a land attack mode to AA turrets so that they could contribute when the enemy air force gets periodically depleted or slapping on an array of point defense lasers from the angel as a refit option(like with adding T2 extractors on top of T1) on almost everything that is not an inert wall.
The biggest pain was an attempt to make a nuke cannon. I tried using nukes a few times with some great results for clearing out clusters of enemies and titan bugs, but they were expensive, unwieldy and couldn't penetrate orbital defenses of the bug bases. The idea was to make a smaller nuke and put it into a Holkins shell. Unfortunately after spending a week testing the design, I realized that I don't know enough to make a smaller nuke reliable enough.
The thing is, the stock nuke is a ruggedized design in the shape of a melon consisting of a hollow spherical "fissile catom" core tipped with two "implosion lenses" made from undetermined high explosives on both poles. These "lenses" have a very specific geometry required to produce a very precise implosion on the core. While I played Children of the Dead Earth and its nuke editor, it seems that IRL you need to tweak the lens geometry for the core size, it doesn't scale linearly and random changes to the lens were not optimal. Smaller nukes sometimes did go off correctly in the simulations, but they were less efficient per unit of fissiles and they were much more likely to fail during the implosion. In these cases, the reaction was not homogenous and instead of a nuclear chain reaction the bomb just shattered in a spray of radioactive fragments and a very much conventional explosion.
In the end, if I couldn't design around the barrel, I could design around the round. A nuclear warhead was placed in an armored shell and then I made an unholy mix of a unit cannon and an upscaled holkins artillery piece. It was a hybrid conventional- railgun launcher with a range of almost a quarter of the planet. I've also added an autoloader with 12 round mag which would allow it to fire in rapid volleys. It costs slightly more than a full scaled unit cannon, but the price is well worth it. As a side bonus, it can fire shells the size of wall segments and it can theoretically even attack low orbit units if they can't maneuver.
The situation on the front has somewhat stabilized due to the sheer fact that you can't physically keep putting more and more units into the same space. The bugs kept coming in a constant tidal wave and were met by a hailstorm of missiles, light and heavy artillery, waves of pulse laser fire and swarms of locusts. The underground invasions continued, but it was now possible to predict the areas more likely to be invaded because they were now outnumbered by areas where soil was more metal than dirt. That situation has held for weeks and I was vaguely bored and maybe not quite paying attention.
Then something bad happened. Interplanetary radar has detected 7 objects rapidly approaching in a ballistic trajectory terminating at my exact location. The threat assessment overlay highlighted them with a round radiation symbol. Nukes. Bug nukes. I had no anti nuke missiles prepared since they were expensive and bugs have never shown the capability to launch intercontinental strikes. These missiles would impact within 20 minutes, this is more than what it takes to fab up anti nuke launchers. This was a Commander snipe! Fuckfuckfuck I need all the clock speed!
Honestly, I should've figured out that bugs knew of the weak spot of my army after the first aerial attack. They were flying directly for me, but I assumed that they wanted to simply wreck the main logistics center as a preparation for the main attack. But in hindsight it was obvious. They were in orbit, they likely saw where the first units came from and how my Commander was disproportionately defended, especially against space attacks.
Ok, what can I do? I need to shoot down the nukes with something. I have loads of T1 and T2 air, fields of SAM missiles and flak, umbrella cannons with interlocking fields of fire and loads of onagers. I can direct them all to fire at the missiles, right? Wrong, they were not coded to intercept objects in ballistic trajectories. I am most angry at the umbrellas, the missiles are at low orbit altitude and I have a good radar lock on them, why do you refuse to actually shoot goddamnit?!
Ok, calm down, at the maximum sustainable frames I experience a year for every half second of real time, so I can figure this out. Well, a month later I am still figuring it out. Intercepting ballistic missiles is hard, okay? The easiest moment to intercept the missile is during its launch, but that time has passed. As the missile travels the ballistic trajectory it is very difficult to detect and more difficult to lock and hit as it is essentially a cold and inert lump for most of its trajectory or it is blasting an incredible quantity of every kind of jamming and decoys under the sun. These missiles are also usually hardened so you need a direct impact as even a nearby nuke would not disable an ICBM that is already in space. As it reenters, most of the decoys disintegrate in the upper atmosphere but you only have seconds before it impacts. That's why IRL anti missile defenses usually have worse than coin flip chances to actually shoot one down.
I have very few options beyond spamming everything that I have. The issue is that nothing is designed for what needs to be done. Umbrellas have limited elevation range as they cover only a small cone of space directly above them and jamming means that they'd be missing a lot. Catapult derived missiles have terrible acceleration and almost all of them are focused in the front lines so they'd be chasing instead of simply flying in the way of the ICBM trajectory and getting rammed by the near orbital object which would destroy both. Fighter aircraft missiles are optimized for aerial flight and thus they have fins and not RCS thrusters, but that's a question of a quick refit. The AA are the most useless as they simply lack the range to hit the damn things, they'd be used only for terminal intercept, aka last ditch effort.
My understanding of the exact way to optimize this mess is… lacking. I do manage to reprogram my weapons to actually engage ICBMs, but the success rate is unacceptable. If I leave it to my code, on average 3 to 4 missiles would get through. I am not sure if I can survive one. As a last ditch I consider making a backup, but my entire army would self-destruct if there is no active Commander- level ansible. Making one takes over 4 hours. So my only choice is to run at jacked frames and manually adjust firing solutions for every gun that can do something. That would be 4 months of subjective time, oh my god…
Out of the 7 missiles two were intercepted by barrages of onagers from bases closest to me as they actually had the time to get refitted with optical guidance. One bug ICBM was taken out by my entire air force launching AA missiles in a vertical climb and hoping that the engine gimbals and numbers would do the trick. Two missiles were taken out by massed umbrella fire that were overclocked to almost three times the normal fire rate at the cost that their pulse lasers would be almost entirely slagged from the effort. The last two missiles managed to get to the terminal stage and shattered into numerous signatures before hitting the upper atmosphere. Every AA in range was spamming everything it had at the sensor blips before one of them that was just about to be hit disappeared in a flash brighter than the sun.
The bugs detonated one of its nukes in the upper atmosphere to blind my sensors, and even though the guns continued firing nonstop I couldn't hit the remaining warhead. I was incredibly stressed, but it wasn't accompanied by the usual sensations of puckering in the rear or nausea. From my perspective the nuke took weeks to reach me as I was blinded and desperately hosing down the projected possible vectors with every missile and gun that had the angle, even the anti land pulse lasers when the projected path intersected with their maximum elevation angles.
I didn't feel the impact, I guess I should be glad that my Commander's damage control network wasn't piped directly into my pain receptors. I simply lost contact with every land unit within miles from my commander's location and my damage display showed external sensors of the commander halt their feed as they evaporated, quickly followed by deeper and deeper sensors designed to monitor the state of Commander's armor and systems. The sensors that were far enough away not to be blinded by the first nuclear blast gave me a display of a massive ball of blinding light as it grew in slow motion. Milliseconds later, the ball stopped growing and produced a shockwave that tore down structures and units further away as if they were toothpicks while the fireball itself coalesced into a slowly rising mushroom cloud.
I was alive, if barely. The direct impact evaporated 70% of my armor plating. If I missed one more warhead I would be dead. The commander's core functions still operated, but the mobility was lost as the lower layers of armor literally melted and welded shut the tracks and motors.
The core of the base was devastated, but the factories beyond the initial fireball survived the blast with only major damage. All land units and most of the air force was annihilated outright if they were close enough to get hit by the shockwave. Still, I was alive and I could rebuild which is the important part.
I immediately ordered construction of anti nukes fucking everywhere. I might have overreacted as it completely halted my turtling creep, but in my defense I almost died and didn't want a repeat. I also highlighted every goddamn organic satellite as hostile and as soon as the umbrellas cooled down and were repaired they started working on clearing the skies from these bastards.
Previously, this was not personal, I was doing what I had to do to survive. Now? Now I wanted every single one of those bugs reduced to vapor yesterday! And I had just a plan to make this work…
First of all, complete base redesign. Total modularity and firebreaks. I came up with a base "module" that is a hexagon with roughly 20 km side made from 5 layers of defensive walls, flak and advanced laser turrets. Then goes a segmented layer filled with artillery and supporting structures, then goes another layer of defenses but this time facing the inside of the hexagon. This way if the bugs dig into the middle they'd only hit one segment and would have to fight their way through to the nearby hexagonal cells while getting hosed down by my turrets from every direction. In addition, walls would provide the shade from a nukeflash and they would partially redirect the shockwave upward protecting every nearby cell.
The insides of the hexagon would be filled with factories, umbrellas and all the other necessities while the advanced walls would act as gates to allow for armies and land titans to pass through the cells. The cells would simply radiate outwards interlocking with each other. The size was specifically chosen since this is how far I can push back the frontline with concentrated effort. This way I can repeatedly expand and artillery creep my enemies out of existence.
For more… permanent solution, I returned to the orbital launcher. From what I gleaned from launching sacrificial radar sats, there is no orbit that doesn't pass above bug asat lasers. Even as they lose orbital assets to my umbrellas, I can't exploit the opening until I clear out a wide band of space all the way around the globe. Thus I will be forced to invade the bug strongholds by land with nuke, air and arty support. The issue is, they are likely as well entrenched as I am. Thick armor with arty and point defenses out the wazoo not counting the insect army itself.
I will need a very big hammer for that nail… oh look, the orbital launcher! I've simply redesigned the payload to be all nukes, just ALL nukes. Normal nuke missiles that I have access to have two stages, first stage that is just full of solid rocket fuel and second stage that has a logistics receiver. It can use the remote access to my economy for engine remass to constantly accelerate basically forever, which is enough to enter orbit and place itself on any interplanetary transfer trajectory. Now, I don't really need that here, do I?
I ditch the entire first stage, switch the uplink with a fuel tank and add smaller rocket motors as additional RCS along with a slab of titan level armor plate on the tip. Then I crammed as many as could fit in the fairing of the orbital launcher. As a result, I managed to get 80 independently guided nukes in a single missile and I have just under a hundred launchers right now. I dub thee Gungnir, the spear of Odin! Of course, that would be very pricy to build, first I'd be making dozens of proxies and I am not launching the strike until the new base overlay is done. This should take… 5 months? Oh well.
This is my… landing anniversary, I guess. Exactly a year has passed since I've landed in this hellhole, and since I'm not the original I guess this means that this is also my factual birthday. I have no way of celebrating, beyond the fact that the bugs seemingly have officially run out of options. There were two new waves of nukes that were destroyed without a single one impacting, and then they deorbited one of the larger satellites they had. It was in a higher orbit and thus it took a while to strike and a direct hit with several of my nukes threw it off course and towards the region where I was yet to plate with anything that I'd miss. Looks like this is how those weird obsidian coated craters were made and also how the aliens make new bases. Well, this time the flesh growth was repeatedly introduced to the bottled sun until it stopped existing.
Once the threat was identified, I made a refit to my nukes to engage similar objects in orbit and launched them in thousands per wave. Small cold objects with lots of jamming survived passing through contested airspace and successfully attacked just under a dozen of those fleshscape seeds. Most were destroyed, but some of the larger ones were kicked out of the orbit and with repeated strikes they were directed to areas far beyond my territory.
Speaking of which, my base grew by half in its radius and I've hit the ocean with my border. Well, what's left of the ocean as the water here has a greenish off color and I've found a few whale- like skeletons on the beach. There are bugs in the water, but it looks like bugs can't form deep sea fleshscapes so it was only a question of outproducing the enemy. Didn't even need to change the units for the most part.
I've kind of hesitated with launching the gungnirs, I've had them ready for almost two months but things were going almost too well. I feared that the moment I launched the strike the bugs could pull off something drastic, but the more I wait the more I think that they've deployed their entire arsenal. Yes, now I know for sure that they have some bases on the moon but they are not using them, there were no bug space launches, no new visible construction beyond the initial planet, no nothing. Either they ran out of tools, or they are preparing something, and by that point I think it is the former.
Another two months have passed, no new activity beyond the usual constant battle at the borders. New base layout is holding up very well. At best bugs only managed to breach into individual cells which worked as self contained killzones making it impossible to push the advantage. The turtle creeping walls have approached the outer limits of the closest fleshscape hive's outer defensive envelope and progress has halted. Hive based artillery is too powerful and it suppresses any attempts to build in its range. Nukes also have limited effect as I need to expend hundreds to penetrate the point defenses and the structure can handle individual strikes. My only choice is to either slowly surround the bugs and pound them with nuke artillery or to use the gungnirs.
On the dawn of the next day, every orbital launcher simultaneously launched 147 orbital class rockets into the morning sky. Each of them had the same fairing as the previously launched satellites in an attempt to hide their true purpose, but as the first stage burned out it became clear that they were not launching into orbit. The fairings held on for some part of the trajectory before detaching and spraying tons of aluminum confetti, hundreds of objects and thousands of jamers.
I've targeted the nearest hives since I was not sure of how many missiles I'd need to expend per hive. A hive that was about half of the planet away received one, while the nearest would get hit by over 4000 individual nuclear warheads. The bugs understood that as well and as a result they manifested as many of the asat lasers as they could, to the point that they redirected some of their efforts from the artillery and my expansion could somewhat resume.
I've also timed a massed nuclear artillery barrage to arrive almost simultaneously with the nukes focused at the nearest fleshscapes. It might be overkill, but there's no such thing as overkill. There's only "open fire" and "reloading". And thus, thousands of my IFFs descended from suborbital trajectory over 14 of the closest fleshscapes.
The bugs fired back as soon as they realized that I was mass nuking them, but I was prepared with just obscene numbers of anti nukes and Umbrellas reconfigured to shoot down ICBMs. Closest ones even outright failed to reach space as their boost phase intersected with my frontline umbrellas and they were torn apart before they could go cold and spin up the jammers.
Then it was my turn. I had no hypersonic glider technology so my ICBM warheads were in full view of the enemy asat batteries, but I had so many of them with so many jammers and decoys that most of the shots fired at them missed. Here comes the sun, dodododo…
The nukes landed in a constant rain, their armored frames surviving the nuclear fireballs of their brethren for long enough to reach their own detonation sites. Some penetrated the hive itself and blew up within while others blew up with contact to the surface or some distance above it to maximize the shockwave. Within minutes, this scene repeated over and over across the other bug hives on this side of the planet, my side of the planet.
This approach was successful, and it seems that it takes a minimum of 5 gungnirs per developed hive to completely wipe it from the surface of the world. The one nearest to me was just vapor, all flesh boiled away under the insane heat of thousands of miniature suns. Others mostly had the hive structure destroyed, but if there is no backup hive structure the surrounding fleshscape would turn necrotic and die out within weeks.
The hives also appear to coordinate the land units, and without coordination the attacks became much less effective and there were even some bug on bug friendly fire incidents. As a result, I've basically quadrupled my territory within 3 weeks by which point I had another wave of gungnirs ready. I fired them at once, and then I rinse and repeat.
However, the projections stated that it would still take over three years to eliminate all bug resistance on the planet if nothing new happened. At least that's better than 120 years that it would take to spread at the previous rates with constant maximum pressure on the frontlines, but still I've already experienced over 5 years of subjective time. I'll be weird as shit to talk to once I finally meet other people, but there's nothing I could do now. Let's settle for a long haul…
Last edited: Sep 24, 2022
Log 3: "Per Aspera"Log 3: "Per Aspera"
Welp, I think I am very slowly going cuckoo. Not surprising, considering that I've been stuck in what's essentially a sensory deprivation room for literally years. I ended up deciding to write these logs as if I'm talking to someone. I figured that if I don't do that I'll actually forget how to communicate, essentially this log is now my "Wilson the Cast Away ball".
Of course there might be some practical reason beyond that, like reminding myself of where it all started centuries down the line or sending it to others as a part of introduction. Maybe someone would even find it in my long dead chassis and then post it in a parallel universe sci-fi forum or something, who knows. So yeah, hello dear readers.
It has been 7 years since I've landed here, 7 years since my creation. Planetwide bug eradication efforts are going according to schedule. It seems that I was correct that at least the terrestrial bugs ran out of tools to counter me. This feels almost like the bugs didn't adapt to me, instead responding exclusively with what assets they had on hand.
Several months ago I managed to completely clear out the equatorial band of the planet finally allowing the deployment of my own permanent orbital assets. I could launch some satellites when I cleared out the exact half of the planet, but they had a very limited timespan, sometimes no more than 10 orbits. Planet spins and thus it rotates underneath the orbital path causing it to shift over bug positions that I was yet to clear out. Thus LEO shipyards had to wait until I was about ⅔ done and could launch directly into equatorial orbital bands.
Still, this was enough for some very inefficient direct to escape velocity launch profiles since those probes could get far enough away from the planet before the bug asat lasers rotated towards them. Still, chemical engines that teleport fuel to themselves are ridiculous. These probes are not just torch drive equivalents, they are more comparable to reactionless drives in performance in pure Atomic Rockets and ToughSF sense, as in they are absolutely overpowered, break the rocket equation and can probably be used to crack planets as RKKV projectiles with enough effort.
Still, an advanced radar satellite probe climbing out of the planet's gravity well at multiple G-s for hours eats remass like crazy. Each probe is an equivalent of four t2 fabbers hosing stuff down at full blast. Looks like larger ships would rely heavily on mature local economies. While my mass and power broadcasting is instantaneous, I doubt that ROB would be kind enough to allow me to use the home economy from another universe. After all, I was forced to code brachistochrone trajectories myself.
Still, this allowed me to finalize mapping the star system. I did already have most of the planets mapped with surface based deep space radars, but nothing beats the closer look. And yeah, we're not in alternative post apocalyptic Sol, this is a completely different star system. Star system Homina, as I decided to call it, consists of 7 major planets and an asteroid belt.
Innermost world is some kind of a super- earth or mini neptune. It is over twice as big(in radius) as the starting planet and it is covered in a thick layer of atmosphere. Only its strong magnetic field prevents it from rapidly losing atmosphere to the intense solar wind that it experiences at its close stellar orbit. Still, the field is not quite enough and the probe has picked up radio interference from a thin gas tail pointing away from the sun. Kind of like comet tail, but instead it is the hot gas giant losing atmosphere over geological time periods. The probe has successfully entered heliosynchronous polar orbit but it seems that the planet is not suitable for unit deployments. While it has the surface, I received automatic system warnings that it is too hot to land on and even too hot for the jigs. That works both ways, as it is also too hot for bugs and thus sterile.
The second planet to the star is the starting world. It is a terrestrial planet that is very similar to Earth, likely within 10% in terms of its size and mass. It even has a large tidally locked selenic moon. However, the continent placement is not identical to Earth and I think it might have a little bit more landmass and thus less water. The moon and its trojan Lagrange points are clouded in bug orbital assets which are a bit too far away to target with umbrellas, but if they don't do anything I can ignore them until I have the fleets to clear them out.
Still, the resemblance is uncanny, and then there is the evidence that it used to be inhabited by humans. Unfortunately due to the nature of my war with bugs and the state of remaining ruins, it is impossible to study. By the point that I can expand to the detected ruins they are reduced to a cratered moonscape covered in smoking bug corpses.
Naval warfare is less damaging to underwater terrain and I did manage to find thousands of rusting wrecks at the bottom of the ocean. The mass extinction on this planet was so thorough that the wrecks have no wildlife clinging to them. No barnacles on the hull plates, no crustaceans hiding in the creeks, no fish, nothing. Ships just naturally corroded while laying on the seafloor untouched. I can't really tell how long ago they sank, but the less corroded of the ships have telltale signs of some of the weapons utilized by the bugs. As if it was not obvious what killed the previous occupants of this world before, but this is pretty much a smoking gun.
The third planet in the system is a dwarf world in the asteroid belt. It takes forever to scan the entire asteroid belt, but with enough probes it now seems that bugs for some reason ignored it completely. I think that the asteroid belt in this system is bigger than in Sol, but it is difficult to tell. In fact, it is less of a belt and more like a planetoid with massively littered trojan orbits. I think that I've read somewhere that the asteroid belt is supposed to be several percent of the mass of the moon. These asteroids plus the dwarf world are almost 60% of this moon's mass.
Fourth planet is a gas giant with an extensive ring system shepherded by 6 major moons, four of which are ice shell worlds, one vaguely similar to Io with its yellow tint and thick atmosphere and one is a selenic world like Earth's moon, although with a lot more expansive mares. The entire gas giant's system is crawling with bugs. I saw heat and radar signatures on all major moons, a staggering number of contacts in the ring system and even contacts way closer in around the low equatorial orbital band near the gas giant. This will be a pain in the ass to deal with.
Planet 5 and 6 are neptune- like ice giants with their own moon systems but without the clearly visible rings. They are much further out, the nearest is twice as far as the fourth planet is from the sun meaning that it would take a modern human probe decades to get there with conventional chemical propulsion. For me it meant that instead of injecting into a trajectory and coasting, I went for full Heinlein and burned the probe for half way to accelerate and then burned the other half to decelerate taking just over 10 days to reach the closest world and over twice that for the other one. They are surprisingly bug free. Maybe bugs require to be within a certain radius from the sun to have enough energy to survive. But then again, they have nukes so they should have fission power.
Last world is definitely a super-earth. A world completely covered in a thick crust of ice with a thin remnant of frozen atmosphere. It is basically what happens when you put an ocean world too far from the star. It also lacks bugs but it won't be too useful for me either, the ice is likely miles deep and orbital sensors couldn't detect even a single resource deposit that I could exploit.
Beyond the last major planet is the Kuiper belt analogue and an oort cloud full of icy bodies and comets, but they are not as interesting as what lies beyond. I can see no stars. Like literally, I thought it was an overlay thing or sensor limitation, but apparently advanced radar sats and deep space radars do come with radio and optical telescope systems which can identify and track stars. There just aren't any. I've sent dozens of probes on sun escape trajectories scanning for anything just in case it was due to some sort of local interference, but there's just nothing but empty space beyond this star system.
I did manage to detect the cosmic microwave background, but it wasn't in microwave range. It was at the very lowest edge of my radar's detection capability even as I integrated every deep space radar I had into a synthetic aperture telescope stretching across half of the starting planet. This universe is dead, long dead. As in, it is long past the heat death. Any galaxy has long moved so far away that the expansion of the universe creates more space between it and me that the light it emits would never reach this corner of space. For all practical purposes, this star system is all that there is and all that will ever naturally be.
And yet, I find myself around a relatively young yellow dwarf. This feels… engineered. My hypothesis is that this entire star system was specifically placed here by ROB. The bugs also feel as if they are artificially limited, hinting that they were also designed. However, at this point I can't prove if ROB wiped out an entire planet's worth of people just to act as my tutorial stage or if the ruins were made as a part of the "decorations" along with the entire star system. Basically the pastafarian creation myth approach, omnipotence is weird like that.
In any case, with the equatorial orbital band cleared I started launching orbital fabbers and assembling arrangements of orbital factories and anchor defenses. The SXX-1304 laser platforms, which I should probably rename once I design my own, ended up pretty useful in adding some more pressure with their absolutely huge pulse laser. Unfortunately, they are fragile and I could only use them by plotting orbits that barely appear over the horizon of bug installations and firing at a very shallow angle.
I didn't like the omegas and avengers as they didn't fit well with my doctrine and situation thus I've spent literally a whole subjective year designing new orbital fleets. Those "solar panels" ended up being radiators by the way and the avenger was actually mass balanced even though it looks somewhat awkward.
My new orbital strike craft dubbed "Mosquito" ended up looking vaguely as if I stuck 4 avengers and slightly compressed the result, but in truth I ended up completely stripping it down to base parts and reassembling a completely new unit. The pulse laser of the avenger was slightly scaled up and placed as the vessel's spinal mount surrounded by 4 clusters of mirrored thrusters with enhanced gimbals. This means that each cluster pod had an engine bell facing forwards and backwards but feeding from the same resource uplink.
Two structural booms extrended sideways from the central structure and ended in a powerful RCS cluster while the booms themselves held the 4 avenger radiator plates with racks of space adapted guided missiles and irises of four point defense laser clusters. Missiles instead of having fins had tiny RCS ports and were adapted for terminal guidance or anti- missile interception. The idea is that the mosquito would place itself on the flyby trajectory, dump missiles and then change course while missiles themselves would continue the final touches with their limited propellant stores.
An alternative version of the mosquito that I named "Horsefly" sacrificed the guided missile payload and the spinal laser to instead carry two anti ship missile fabbers with full uplink engine and a nuke tipped option. Since fabbing nukes would require literally several hours, it would front load nukes and then switch to "conventional" space optimized fragmentation warheads.
According to Rick Robinson's first law of space combat, any object at 3 km/s has kinetic energy of its mass made from chemical explosive. Orbits usually come in lower tens of km/s, so conventional frag payload wouldn't increase damage much beyond what an inert warhead would do on its own due to how quickly kinetic energy scales. Thus explosive packages are used only to scatter a cloud of smaller projectiles that would then run into the enemy at far beyond mach 20 just due to how orbital mechanics work.
Omega was replaced by 3 new types of warships, a carrier, a battleship and a siloship. They ended up looking vaguely like buffed up Nexus: Jupiter Incident human ships since I mounted thruster clusters pointing both forward and backward, but built with PA- looking assets and Omega- derived radiators both placed on the surface and as fins with redundancy in mind.
The "Nest" carrier ended up as a sort of armored mobile orbital factory with only point defenses and anti nuke launcher derived anti missiles. It carried 1 full scale orbital factory in its core covered in layers of titan grade armor and 4 factory modules modified from air factories and Typhoon naval carriers in radial 4 configuration on the outer surface and optimized for producing parasite fighters, aka mosquitoes and horseflies. I also added nanosprayer manipulators in strategic spots on the hull so that it could self repair, repair friendly ships and even work as an overly expensive fabber. The carrier itself ended up a bit bigger than other capitals and it has to "deploy" the main factory to assemble bigger assets like other capitals, but it is not supposed to be shot at so that's fine.
The "Hornet" battleship was built around the main spinal mounted railgun, a massively upscaled Artemis derived mass driver with almost double the mass of the projectile. I couldn't optimize for higher muzzle velocity as the railgun's internals started to rapidly degrade in simulations. The thick hull sported 4 large pulse laser turrets derived from omegas and positioned in radial 4 configuration(instead of "at the bottom"). Only two could do a broadside at the time, but all 4 could target in a forward and backward cone. As a secondary armament I added catapult derived anti ship missiles with fragmentation or kinetic payloads and I absolutely coated the outer surface in point defense lasers wherever I could fit them.
The "Queenbee" siloship was just a mass missile fabber. I took the hornet, removed the guns, spinal mount and secondary missiles and instead I added rows upon rows upon rows of vertical launchers configured to print full scale interplanetary missiles of kinetic, fragmentation, light missile bus or nuclear variety. 480 heavy missile launchers. Let me say this again, four hundred and eighty (!) nuke capable launchers. This thing can alpha strike harder than Gungnir.
Unfortunately, I was forced to shove in its own large powerplant and multiple resource cores grabbed from the commander blueprints just so that it could maintain a semblance of a decent fire rate as I couldn't physically beam enough matter to it to process. I did that for other capital ships since they would otherwise suffer power deficits when in active combat and I wanted them to not strain my network when under thrust, but queenbee was just loaded with resource cores and powerplants. As a result, it is by far the most expensive of the capitals… and the most explosive. While other capitals would still explode in nuclear fireballs like a commander, this one would take out ships that would be close enough to cover it in friendly point defenses. Any escort is either sacrificial or too far to actively intercept missiles fired at the siloship.
But yeah, those things are already orbital factory constructable titans judging by the price… if not for the fact that Helios is fucking insane compared to the game. In the game you could actually afford to lose one as an invasion asset, here it costs like a small strike fleet of my capitals due to how hard it is to make the exotic catom "filling" for portal rings. Same applies for terrestrial portals which is why I skipped them and just built factories closer to frontlines. They take a week of construction time and an equivalent of an entire Atlas worth of mass, in addition to being explodey. If one is destroyed before it can safely shut down it cooks off like a nuke.
Looks like portals would only be useful for extraplanetary shipments. Luckily Helios is so huge that it would allow me to actually fit capitals through it and thus teleport orbital units. Unluckily it has no gravitational tug, and thus it can't pick up units from the ground. Instead it has enough engine power to deorbit and hover over one spot while dumping units from the stratosphere while rapidly attaching prefabricated jetpacks to them as they fall out of the portal. The simulation makes it look incredibly janky.
In any case, by the time I assembled my first orbital fleets the starting planet was thoroughly fumigated. I didn't notice this before, but my planetary scale decade long battle has altered the climate significantly. Nuclear strikes incinerated and catapulted so much bug ash into the stratosphere that it induced a nuclear winter of sorts, but the effects cleared out within only a few years after which massive quantities of methane and co2 from rotting and burned down bugs came into effect. Polar ice caps melted over just four years and I had to somewhat move coastline structures as oceans rose by almost 30 meters gradually over the period. I'm not sure if I should be proud or ashamed as my actions literally altered an entire world. I guess it is not like anything lived here besides me and the bugs…
My star system conquest plan was designed to exploit bug "programming" limitations. Judging by their previous behaviors, I concluded that the bug responses rely on certain milestones of my actions. For example, bug nukes arrived only after I used my own on their armies. Thus I expected that bug orbital units would start appearing once I made my first moves beyond low orbit or once I reached a critical mass of space assets.
Thus my plan was to amass fleets in low orbit until I can capture every unoccupied planet and build them up in one huge swoop. Then I would leverage massively expanded resources to focus down the moon bugs and then to siege the jovian bugs. Surprisingly bugs didn't react to the number of my orbital fleets as I accumulated them which allowed me to prepare some truly obscene number of capital ships and swarms of parasite craft.
2 years after the conquest of the starting world, the skies lit up with millions of bright lights as the first wave of fleets set off for the first planet, the asteroid belt and the outer planets. I've left about a quarter of the ships as garrison and as predicted the moon bugs started their first launches of their own orbital assets. They didn't have resource beaming options and instead their orbital docks received shipments of flesh or rock mass driven from their surface hives and in turn they birthed swarms of small fighter craft or larger capital ship analogues.
In turn, my orbit got progressively littered with more and more factories which printed more and more ships until ⅔ of my economy was preoccupied only with naval construction. By that time my first expeditionary fleet had arrived in orbit of the world closest to the sun. I couldn't mine it, but I could set up more orbital factories and defenses.
This time, however, factories would be spamming solar power satellites which would be tugged into the lagrange point between the world and the sun. I did design satellites which consisted of zero point generators and huge clusters of resource cores, but those were expensive. Essentially resource generating space titans. They also relied on massive radiators and actually required a huge amount of energy to initiate.
Solar sats were cheap, and the sun was close and hot so waste not- want not. Eventually I would dyson it up but for now I don't have enough knowledge or time to pull this off. I'd need some insane autonomous maintenance solutions in addition to flight control for Kessler syndrome mitigation. Until then, I'll just slowly grow a solar shade for the tiny hot gas giant and maybe in a few centuries it will cool off enough for jigs.
The bugs were smart, and didn't want to send their fleets into the meat grinder which was anything below geostationary orbit. I had all the home advantage of umbrella spam and home defense fleets. Instead, they sent their fleets for the asteroid belt. Bug propulsion relied on some kind of torch drive, likely fusion but potentially it could be something like an organic nuclear salt water rocket. It produced high thrust and a bright hot plume of plasma that I couldn't analyze due to the lack of appropriate sensors and they couldn't run it constantly. They also used drop tanks since it is not the Expanse, even fusion rockets need to be like 80% propellant to get anywhere with brachistochrones.
I wasn't stupid either. Asteroid field colonization fleet was the second largest and I've sent a lot of fabbers along the way. Dwarf planets and a dozen or so larger asteroids were already being covered in unit factories, umbrellas and anti-nukes as a priority since I could just redirect my economy to support exponential construction and didn't need to worry about rushing in situ resources.
A curious thing about space combat is that your effective range is more limited by enemies dodging your weapons rather than maximum range of the weapon itself. At the same time, ships have limited propellant stores, so if they waste it to dodge they can't use it later. Well, only enemy ships, that is. So I directed my battleships to start shooting in the direction of the bug fleet when they were way out of range, this resulted in bugs wasting fuel to dodge and once they arrived a day later they barely had enough to slow down. So they didn't bother. Oh boy…
Bug ships weren't relativistic, at their acceleration it would take them months to around half a year to get to significant % of C if they had infinite fuel. Still, interplanetary velocities are high, multi megaton ships are heavy and all targeting the biggest planetoid in the belt. Dwarf world was too big to be inconvenienced by something like that, but I did suffer massive losses on the surface in the impact regions and some of my more stationary orbital assets were damaged by ejecta. Also apparently some of the bug ships carried base seeds, but I had way too many siloships for that to be a problem for long.
The outer planet colonization went with no issues, but I was somewhat surprised about how jigs actually worked. They are not orbital harvesters, they are in fact stratospheric structures that are built in orbit and then perform controlled atmospheric entry into the gas giant's upper atmosphere. Each jig carries a huge powerplant and a large device that is roughly halfway between a resource core and catom factories of the extractors and it is optimized for processing light elements. That processor gets very hot as it operates and part of the gas flow is used to redirect that heat from the jig's core to four rocket engines that vent the superheated atmosphere at high speed back towards the gas giant thus keeping the structure afloat. Kind of like that "flyboard" water powered jetpack that was in the news in like 2012-2013.
With the jigs starting to multiply in the upper atmosphere of two ice giants, extractors spreading across the asteroid belt and solar panels littering the sun- firstworld Lagrange point, my available resources and energy rapidly increased. However, the scales involved would still mean that it would take decades until I saturate the gas giants with jigs and I intend hopefully to be done with the bugs by then.
Unfortunately, I was in a stalemate. As I covered my world in umbrellas and missiles, so did the bugs. The jovian system was an impenetrable fortress and I had only some limited success with the moon's trojans. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of ships I've sent, the moon itself had too much anti satellite stuff on it. Still, infinite fuel meant that I could intercept any bug fleets trying to bridge the gap between the moon and the jovian system, not just prevent their expansion.
The bugs probably rely mostly volatiles and water to power their rockets and the moon is mostly metal oxides. Lots of raw materials, not much ice. Jovian bugs repeatedly launched large ships filled with liquids or gasses with significant fleet support towards the moon but when I outnumbered them in interplanetary space more than 20 to 1 they had no chance. Thus in theory I could siege the moon until they run out of interplanetary propellant, but how many hundreds of years would that take?
I have some planet killers, but I can't use them mostly because shattered planets would likely sterilize nearby worlds clean of both bugs and me. I actually don't even have the annihilaser, I have only the catalysts. While those have some incredible magnetic containment machinery and some more arcane systems, they are useless on their own. The ragnarok is quite amazing and I could technically extract the warhead and use it elsewhere, but as with nukes I have no idea how to scale it down and it is strong enough to shatter the moon even without needing to drill down.
Now, halley dV engines looked promising. They weren't conventional chemical engines fed through an uplink, instead they are related to mass driver rockets. Under every halley engine is an arrangement of complex excavation machinery that shovel regolith and rock into a device that flash cooks it with lasers into the state of highly ionized gas. That gas is fed into a titanic array of linear accelerators slash magnetoplasmadynamic rockets that exhaust it from a tens of kilometers wide magnetic nozzle at half the speed of light. A single such engine has enough power to accelerate a very decently sized asteroid at around 0.1 G if the asteroid can handle such acceleration without shattering.
Such a device is incredibly power hungry, which is why it is built with a significantly oversized power plant built in. Also, the scale is such that I can actually move any solid planet, however the numbers of halleys needed approach "Wandering Earth" levels: the moon would take around 80 at least.
Now, I don't need to smash such an asteroid into the enemy planets, this chunk of rock is basically a huge spaceship that I can just fill with nuke launchers and other kinds of weapons and low gravity means that with some effort I can actually hide them all under the regolith for extra protection! The issue is that it would take over a year to convert one, and I have only 3 on hand of the correct size. Others are either too small to halley, or they would need several halleys.
In the meantime I focused my attention on the moon and the constant torrent of nukes that I was pumping out in its direction. Lagrange points were comparatively simple to clean out with overwhelming force, but moon bugs exploited the moon's low gravity to build extensive underground bases and defenses. I needed to deploy land units, but I couldn't land those due to the ridiculous number of weapon emplacements and land bugs.
Still, I was pushing through, even though slowly. Very slowly. Oh hey, did you know that I can slow down my perception of time and not just speed it up? It's been 25 IRL years since I've landed! And only just now I've managed to melt enough of the moon's surface defenses to have fleets survive permanently in orbit dumping down even more nukes.
I even had to design "Anthill" class capital ships which are basically 4 taped together unit cannons in space plus an engine just so that I can spam locusts to clear the landing sites for forward bases. Eh, still technically more cost efficient than attack helios.
Holy shit, 28 years in and the moon is finally mine! There are a few glowing spots of molten rock that would take a few more decades to cool off, but every single fucking bug is gone! Apparently low gravity worlds like the moon tend to have deep and huge lava tubes, and each and every one of those cave systems was a goddamn bug killzone. The entire surface of the moon was appropriated to construct combat bots that flooded in an unending tide into the selenic world's depths and that was still barely enough.
Now only the jovian bugs were left, and they didn't sit idly. After it became clear that they can't get past my patrols, they started spamming yet to be utilized orbital defenses. Huge laser cannons with effective range that covers the entire jovian sphere of influence appeared in orbit and floating in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. By the way they were deployed I am 90% sure that the gas giant itself is somehow colonized by the bugs.
Well, there is a way to crack that nut. I took a ragnarok warhead… and strapped it to a huge engine cluster, lots of armor and point defenses thus creating the "Apocalypse" class interplanetary torch missile. The plan is to dump a few dozen of them into a gas giant to essentially turn it into a small short lived star without tearing it apart.
The heat flux should cook all the bugs in the gas giant and in the lower orbits while I invade with massed fleets headed by a dozen asteroid battleships as three would just not be enough and I had to invest in some extra halleys. Let's hope that yield simulations were correct or it would be an embarrassing way to die.
The torch missiles were flung on a trajectory that takes them to the outer solar system opposite of the jovian and then I'll burn them for 2 months straight to squeeze out as much speed as I can manage. I gave them so many engines that the fuel beaming requirements would actually collapse the economy if I was still stuck to one planet.
As they passed into the jovian sphere of influence, bugs hosed them down with massed asat fire but it is hard to track objects which have hundreds of G-s worth of maneuvering acceleration, stupendous quantities of jamming and significantly overbuilt point defense batteries. 87% successful penetration rate so yeah, how does it feel to be on the receiving end of a surprise nuking, bug?
For almost a day the failed star ignited and glowed like a real one swelling in size as radiative pressure exceeded the forces of gravitational collapse after which it would take decades for it to stop emitting accumulated heat and shrink down to normal. It swelled so much that bug orbital elements around the planet didn't just get incinerated, they were literally swallowed as their orbits encountered the significantly expanded outer atmosphere dragging them down into nuclear inferno below.
The pulse of luminous energy turned every icy body in the jovian system into tiny comets as they formed radiant tails of water vapor and dust pointing away from the planet. The icy moons were so thoroughly cooked that they started forming temporary atmospheres from gas and water ice that rapidly melted and boiled away. I even noticed that bugs attempted to evacuate the innermost selenic moon as it was tidally locked and the gas giant- facing side was getting so much heat that surface bases of bugs started boiling alive.
With orbital defenses disrupted, endless millions of capital ships exited their powered flyby orbits and plunged into the jovian rings in an unending wave. The larger asteroid ships would arrive hours later, but there were so many ships that it wouldn't matter as more and more poured through tens of thousands of helioses from my orbital factories around every other world. The bug days were finally truly numbered.
Bug warships were nothing to sneeze at, they had enough armor to handle themselves against my units and they utilized some kind of particle beam weapon as their spinal mounts on larger capital ships and a single hit could cook off all electronic systems of my ships causing them to instantly cook off. They also utilized swarms of disposable drones that barely had enough fuel for one high acceleration flyby after which they flew inert past my fleets and into a higher orbit. Those were designed to be indistinguishable from missiles, the vast majority of which were nuclear.
Still, even with endless ships the battle stretched and stretched and stretched. So today, after 36 years of constant realspace time warfare or 24 years of conscious experience, the bug menace has finally been wiped from Homina. Once the last underground flesh fortress gave in, the remaining bug assets rapidly died out. Looks like the feral behavior was due to low bandwidth, and with no command at all they prefer to self destruct just like my own units.
With the last bug's death, conditions finally unlocked on the only chunk of data in the exo- cortex that I was not allowed to access. It contained two blueprints: "extraversal wormhole link gate" and "extraversal metric rain catapult". It also contained a text document labeled "Multiverse and you". I ran through the table of contents: "The Verse, multiverses and what to eat them with", "different flavors of rubberband physics", "temporal conjecture and how not to die stupidly" and last one labeled "what makes you special". Good thing this stuff comes with instructions…
Last edited: Oct 28, 2022
Log 4: "Ad Astra"Log 4: "Ad Astra"
With the complete eradication of the bugs the star system was completely under my control, and I was going to need a lot of resources. The new blueprints were power and resource hungry, especially the extraversal catapult projected to take two years to just build and way more resources than what I could spare during wartime.
Also, while the wormhole gates didn't have much in terms of requirements and could be made small, the extraversal catapult did. It had to be built at the edge of the Oort cloud, barely bound to the star system to function correctly. And it was big, very big. From the outside it looked like a science class model of a buckyball the size of a small moon.
Buckyball is a carbon fullerene molecule taking the form of a sphere made from hexagonal patterns of carbon bonds. Here it had 60 "nodes" connected with long beams, all made from an incredibly complex arrangement of catoms similar to those used by my gateways and Helios titans in addition to a few even more expensive types with unknown function.
While each node was the size of a sizable if partially hollow asteroid, the overall size of the structure made the physical elements look overly thin, less like a solid megastructure and more like a wireframe surrounding a volume of empty space. While I had no idea how it worked, I guessed that it is likely some form of advanced spacetime engineering.
Instructions stated that it would take months to spool up and isolate the internal volume, with specifics on the size of the travel bubble related to preset settings and available energy. Yeah, that entire thing is designed to generate a bubble the size just twice as big as a commander packed for interplanetary travel. I could make a bigger bubble with it, but if I wished to send a bubble several kilometers in diameter the thing would require a partial Dyson sphere worth of energy, around 15 to 20% of Homina's entire luminous output.
It has a curious name as well, a "Metric Rain Catapult"? That's a term I didn't expect to hear mostly because of how obscure it is. But then again, the setting it came from was specifically mentioned in ROB's instructions so it is likely not a coincidence. So what's metric rain? It is a sort of "multiverse weather" from a not too well known webcomic called Unicorn Jelly.
In its story, this natural phenomenon abducted random tiny chunks of Earth from random points in its history and deposited them in the alien universe of Tryslmaistan which was full of weird alternative physics and triangular floating islands. The story explains that normal rain droplet is a 3d object that forms a two dimensional circle when it hits the ground, a "metric rain" is a higher dimensional "rain droplet" made from a chunk of spacetime torn from its home reality that results in a sphere when it impacts the surface of a three dimensional reality.
I doubt that this is how the catapult works since in the blueprint notations it is stated that there is nothing between universes that are not a part of a multiverse. Not just an absolute void where they float, you can't just say that to get to the nearest universe you need to head for 3 billion light years in 7th dimension "that way", the concept of distance itself is absent which is why navigation is solely done by homing onto the closest fit to desired conceptual description of the operator.
In any case, I've sent literally billions of fabrication satellites to finish the construction within a couple years and not within a few decades to centuries. Simultaneously, I've ordered construction of several differently sized wormhole gates to act as my return options. One was big enough to fly a packed up commander in astraeus with little room to spare, others were progressively bigger culminating in the largest one placed in the Homina- Firstworld L2 Lagrange point directly in the shade of the hot gas giant just in case I wanted to bulk send entire fleets directly from Firstworld orbital shipyards. I really need better names for these planets, holy shit.
As construction was ongoing, I had a lot of time to prepare for my leap into the unknown. First of all, I've made several backup commander bodies on every planet and some shoved in astraeuses and left in various orbits in interplanetary space, each is configured to run an "active mind backup" as recommended. What is an active backup? Well, it is an active copy of my brain that is force synchronized with the one I'm currently using. As in, there is another me experiencing the same as the current me, thinking the same exact things and there's next to no way to tell which one is original.
This is opposed to "conventional mind backup" where at regular intervals an inert copy of my brain is made and stored in passive memory. If I die the copy is activated, resulting in memory loss depending on how much time passed between last backup and my death. ROB is convinced that the former is identical to souls while the latter is more like cloning, and it's not like I have enough of a philosophical and metaphysical understanding to argue with that. My position on mind backups is that they are not "quite" me, but this beats dying in the same way as "heirs" did for kings of old. You can't find a better "heir" to continue your work than literally yourself, but I'd prefer to maintain continuity of my consciousness please.
The second thing I wanted to do is to redesign the Commander itself. PA commanders… could be better, if I'm honest. Yes, they have two whole weapon systems and a nanosprayer, yes they can survive one nuke to the face but even compared to something like SupCom commanders they are kind of lacking in versatility and gear.
Well, what does a commander need? First, there's the resource core and commander grade miniaturized powerplant for self sufficiency, the nanolathe sprayer for construction capability, the commander grade command network node integrated with my brain for housing my mind and doing the "commanding", deep space radar system and distributed sensors for situational awareness, a bunch of stripped down nanosprayers strategically spread all over the place for autonomous repair added by yours truly, those are the basics. This is already 70% of the existing chassis, what else?
I initially was thinking of adding a tiny portal system on top of my brain's housing. The idea is that if the universe is too hostile, I could power it up and jettison my mind from danger directly into my base universe within seconds. The issue is that the commander's powerplant is not powerful enough to activate it and I can't fit enough resource transmitters in the commander chassis in a way that won't make it impractical.
I think I can pull this off with better power storage, something that operates close to direct matter to energy conversion like antimatter, Orion's Arm magmatter or microblackholes. Or maybe have it bomb pumped since it doesn't matter if the rest of the commander survives as long as the core ejects. I will file this concept for later, for now I'll have to risk it without the "ejection seat".
I also wanted to revamp my locomotion systems. I don't want legs and tracks are all well and good, but there's this cool hovercraft technology that I can yoink from Kaiju destroyers. I also would like the capability of unassisted orbital travel, but after doing some math it looks like the best I can do is orbital only thrusters. While my capitals have multiple resource cores, my commander can only fit one and it won't have enough remass flow to provide liftoff capability for any decently sized planet. If I strip down only to the core functions and the thrusters I might launch from the surface of the moon, but yeah. I am only keeping distributed reaction control thrusters and one collapsible vacuum optimized nozzle for backup.
I ended up deciding on a more "landship tank" and less "tank threads with a mecha torso" approach. The locomotion systems would consist of two articulated pieces connected to the central core via powered hinges resulting in flipped over T shape when deployed with the unfolded parts being longer than the core part kind of like with a butterfly knife. This way I can somewhat scale up the commander closer to the size of a wet navy destroyer while still fitting in a modified astraeus.
The main systems and the collapsible vacuum rated rocket nozzle would be located in the core section. In addition, in the folded state the commander would be capable of independent orbital transfers at somewhere around 0.05G and this should probably be enough for independent launches from large asteroids.
The central section would be crowned with a large turret equipped with the Uber Cannon. The main turret is designed with the ability to pivot the entire assembly (not just the barrel) to face directly upwards pivoted against the central hull section so that it won't be in the way of the land propulsion sections in a folded state.
From the blueprint uber cannon looks like a spherical cavity with a single hole leading to a snub barrel lined with advanced electromagnetics and hovercraft repulsor related materials. Integrated nanosprayers create a metal plug at the base of the barrel and fill the interior of the sphere with a gas made from fissionable catoms. Then a strong magnetic pulse compresses the gas causing it to blow up in a tiny nuclear explosion which converts the metal plug into a spear of nuclear destruction traveling at a low fraction of the speed of light for around a hundred of km before the plasma spear expands too much to be useful. It appears to be some kind of multiple use nuclear shaped charge cannon, basically a reusable minimag version of a casaba howitzer. Nice.
The two foldable sections would each carry a large twin barrel pulse laser turret based on space navy weapons with barrel elevation allowing them to fire at orbiting targets like diet umbrellas. Each section would also house four independent nanosprayer turrets each and dozens of point defense laser apertures spread out strategically around the hull. The rest of the propulsion module was taken up by titan derived dense armor, RCS thruster clusters and a variety of sensor equipment related to deep space radar systems.
I also barely managed to squeeze a single anti nuke missile launcher silo in each by hybridizing the catapult launcher with surface based anti nukes. Cramped spacing meant that I couldn't fit good enough mass flow for the nanosprayer so they'd take multiple hours to rebuild but I don't want any more nuke snipe flashbacks so it was non- negotiable.
If worse came to worst, I could jettison the land propulsion modules, the uber cannon turret and external armor plating allowing for ten times the thrust from my main nozzle or to allow the core module to fit in a conventional astraeus or even a couple pelican transports at the very limit of their payload capacity. I doubt that I'd ever need to use that as 0.6g is not that impressive compared to most sci- fi propulsion systems.
With the design finalized, it needs a name… Why is picking one so difficult? Oh right, I can't just google for something that fits. Let's see, the propulsion system was taken from a Kaiju class destroyer… So maybe I could grab a kaiju name? I can't remember many… fuck it, Erginus it is. The Not!Godzilla nondescript giant lizard from the EDF series of games. A bit lackluster, but I think that this design would be a stopgap until I can get something hybridized with near future human technologies and designed from the ground up.
The new design would take several months to assemble due to its increased size, complexity and the fact that I am building it around the original commander core. Still, it is not like I can't afford it and there's little else that I can do before the extraversal catapult is completed as the expansion is automated and my conscious presence is not really needed. Thus I simply slow down my clock speed until it takes just a couple subjective minutes for the commanders to be upgraded and the catapult prepared.
My new commander frame successfully folds up and a beefed up astraeus hauler docks with the docking ports and lifts up my body into the air before closing its petals. It is dark inside, but it is not like I only rely on the commander's own sensors. From my network I observe how the orbital hauler flies up to the nearest orbital launch facility and docks with the "chopsticks" which usually work as a part of the rocket's clamp down system.
They flip the hauler upside down and mate it with an already prepared and fueled booster stage. Once fastening bolts are sprayed on and all checks pass, the rocket lights up its engines and fires me into the sky. I reach max Q and minutes later the first stage separates and the astraeus lights up its uplink fueled rockets and gets me the rest of the way into orbit. From there it is just a couple hour long burn to the nearest helios gate which connects to another one in formation with the catapult.
Eventually, I end up floating at the exact center of the megastructure, running final checks before the system energizes. By this point I finally had enough power generation not to redline my entire economy on the first activation and thus I simply sit there dreading what is to come. I have to go, if only for the sake of my sanity. But where will I emerge?
The notes said that the first choice would be made by ROB, I have no input. It is supposed to be a setting I'm familiar with, but which one? I am only vaguely familiar with the big ones like Star Wars or Star Trek or the Warhammer 40k. Maybe Orion's Arm? Or maybe something from the books or even fan works? Fuck, I really hope that it won't be the SCPverse, I doubt that there would be anything much worse than that, probably with exception of 40k.
Well, enough dreading, time to make the leap of faith or I'll end up floating here forever. By this moment the catapult has spun up from inert to idle and my economy's energy production dropped by 68%. With a mental command I activated the final confirmations and system monitoring started relaying telemetry on how the superfluidic catom slurry as dense as the degenerate matter in the core of a white dwarf flowed through the catapult's enigmatic fractal piping at progressively accelerating speeds.
Electromagnetic fields are caused by electric charges moving quickly, so presumably gravitational fields could be generated by massive dense material moving quickly as well. How quickly? A spitting distance from the speed of light apparently. It literally takes months for this thing to spin up from its inert state and then another several weeks to ramp up to optimal velocity.
All the weird fluid turbulence occurring in this fluid at relativistic speeds was somehow engineered by the catapult's enigmatic piping structure and resulted first in intense tidal forces between the target region and structure's exterior that tore up any sensor systems I had there into atomic dust, after which I started seeing a progressively increasing number of gravitational microlensing effects. The universe outside smeared into something resembling Van Gogh's paintings of the night sky as the light was bent by the funky bubbling spacetime environment.
The effect increased until suddenly the universe outside started receding and redshifting more and more intensely. Telescopes positioned outside of the catapult recorded how I appeared to rapidly accelerate directly away from each one of them, even though they were positioned in a spherical formation around the facility. From their view, my image blueshifted rapidly until it disappeared in a flash of light, while front the perspective of the commander everything outside disappeared and it was just absolute blackness everywhere.
Moments later, the metric rain droplet arrived at its destination as the new universe appeared in a sensor blinding flash of blueshifted light and rapidly zoomed in from every side. This one was full of stars! An especially bright spot that took up almost half of the view resolved itself into a selenic planet… that was closing in rapidly.
The lander reacted immediately and autonomously. It has lost the link to the infinite remass and thus it was forced to rely on its internal stores of propellant. The speed at which I was flying towards the planet was too high and I didn't' have enough thrust or fuel to completely slow down, but that would be enough for the commander to survive with minor cosmetic damage.
Lander systems autonomously calculated the suicide burn to be executed and moments later the thrusters ignited at full blast desperately trying to bleed off excess velocity as the ground came in closer and closer. 4… 3… 2… 1… impact! I didn't feel anything, and I simply waited for the dust to settle before I found myself in a pitch black cave which had a large hole in the ceiling from where I came from. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.
It was a lava tube, similar to those I had to clear out from the bugs on the moon of my starting planet. If I could feel a shiver of discomfort I probably would as I remembered how horrifying and tedious it was. The astraeus was completely wrecked as it acted as a disposable drop pod with partially crumpled fairing decoupling and allowing my frame to unfold.
I proceeded to salvage the wreck and construct the first land factory. Air units didn't work as well in airless environments even though there were refits that could utilize beamed remass. I was also somewhat skittish of having to fight something again and T1 aerial units were vulnerable to enemy AA and fighters to the point where they were a very risky first investment.
The region didn't have any starting resources, so first squads of bots marched deeper into the tunnels to find something as I finished some starting power plant setup and out of curiosity approached the opening that I made. Even before I reached it the angle allowed for detection of radio waves coming from a small object orbiting this world.
I immediately switched to passive sensors only and in a few hours I found three more small artificial satellites. Also I had some preliminary data on the star system's planets as coincidentally the hole I crashed through was vaguely pointed in the direction of this system's star.
There was a small dry world in close orbit of the star similar to Mercury, with another greenhouse world further away spinning in the opposite direction of what is expected, just like Venus. There was also a weird infrared reading coming from the star's north pole and following the magnetic lines until it suddenly bent towards the second planet.
The readings were weird, as they suggested that whatever dust is causing this effect was moving rapidly and with purpose. Whatever is climbing up the star's magnetic field sharply accelerates to 92% of the speed of light and hits the second planet. I am also detecting redshift of similar dust particles shooting off from the atmosphere of the second world and flying directly into the sun at 92% of cee as well. There's also a minor anomaly in solar output, but the system barely detected it. This sounds familiar…
Duck me sideways and call me Donald, I'm on the moon in the Solar system of Project: Hail Mary. Over the last months I've built up some infrastructure in the lava tube while avoiding the surface and units that produce too much waste heat while surrounding the opening with hidden telescope arrays. As the moon flagged the rest of the system I saw Jupiter with its red spot, Saturn with its rings, some of the outer ice giants and once it swung back I detected an unmanned spacecraft coasting on a trajectory which would take it from Earth all the way towards Venus.
Venus was way outside of the launch window for the interplanetary probes, and if that's the one I think it is then it would have to fly back as well. This is somewhere around 14-15 km/s of dV for the round trip. I wonder how the hell they pulled that off in the book, it claimed that the probe was kitbashed from some other deep space probe and fitted with an oversized fuel supply. In about a month it would arrive at Venus and 9 months later it would arrive back to Earth with a sample return. I am surprised that they are using chemical propulsion, but then again it takes just over 11 km/s of deltaV to get to Pluto and humans pulled it off with New Horizons so this is possible if pricey.
Well, if I'm here then this is a great opportunity to gather data and lighten the load on Earth's survival troubles. As a part of the mission, Hail Mary would carry a cache of all publicly available human knowledge, I simply need to tap into that and I'll be golden. It likely won't include top secret stuff that I'd also want like modern nuke blueprints, but I can probably crack anything networked and trade for the rest. Now, I need to simply adjust to the human compression and radio transmission systems…
Are… you… shitting… me. I have no radio. I have radar but I have no radio transmitters or receivers designed for communication. Yeah, "you'll crack whatever systems you'll face, If YoU CoNnEcT To OnE". I can almost sense ROB laughing their ass off at my frustration. Well, whatever, at least I don't need to invent a radio from scratch. Radar can already send and receive radio signals. By listening to human communications I can detect how the signal is modulated and adjust accordingly if not with pure math and engineering understanding then with trial and error in simulations.
Ok, I have made some progress. There are 4 orbiters around the moon, all configured for land surveying. That is too few, they have gaps in their scans which makes no difference if you are mapping inert rock formations but does if you try to use them as spy satellites. I am on the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, so I had gaps in human sensor gathering that I could exploit.
First I extended sensor booms from the hole to get the lay of the land and then I started scouting and colonizing nearby cave systems. Within a few months I had the entirety of the "dark side" mapped without even a single footprint visible from space. No hidden space nazi bases, as expected.
Simultaneously I started designing the first ever stealth satellite. Now, there's no stealth in space, but it applies only if someone is actively looking for you and they already have sensors all over the place. Every active spacecraft would have to radiate IR heat, humans could flag one on accident with their telescopes or with their space debris tracking radars. However, being a hard science fiction nerd, I've heard of the Hydrogen Steamers and directional radiators.
The spysat would use radar absorbent materials and angular construction that I'll optimize for radar stealth. The outside would be coated with the material that I created in an attempt to make vantablack which in itself is just a dense forest of short nanotubes that are great at absorbing light. Probe would also be equipped with advanced insulators and heat pumps derived from spaceborne pulse laser coolant systems which would cool down the surface of the spysat as low as I could while dumping the waste heat into a directional radiator pointed away from the Earth.
Initially I had the idea to use the resource network or miniaturized gateways to pump coolant into the moon base and then back completely negating the need for radiators and a detectable IR signature, however the resource network can only transmit the most basic form of catom.
Apparently the "foamy mess of non- traversable wormholes" is an apt description. Each resource core resembles a bundle of billions of nanoscopic one way wormhole mouths stuck together like arrangements of soap bubbles. The "basic" catom has the ability to forcefully open the wormhole throat and slip through while even a hydrogen atom would require something like a huge particle accelerator to force its way through and would likely arrive as separated component particles.
The gateway option would also not scale down to the required size as the support infrastructure scales down less than the wormhole itself. Also I suspect that humans might detect one using the recently introduced gravitational wave interferometers as the source of gravitational waves would be moving across the sky at a predictable orbit. I'll just have to bite the bullet with directional radiators for now.
On the next opening in moon probe coverage a modified unit cannon extended from the darkness of the lava tube and barely poked its barrel out of the hole before firing a dozen identical probes with some delay directly into Moon's escape trajectory. I calculated their path to naturally swing by medium Earth orbit where they will capture in position using their stupendously high expansion ratio nozzles which would exhaust propellant at cryogenic temperatures. Crossing the fingers I should not be detected as humans focus on the more pressing matter at hand.
With the spy satellites in position they unfurled their collapsed radio dishes coated in my bootleg vantablack and started to listen to all the radio noise that humanity produced. Luckily for me, data compression is a form of encryption, so once I had enough data the cyberwarfare suite came in handy in decoding the communication protocols and by the time the astrophage sample return has arrived I could already listen in to the mission control chatter with the dedicated Soyuz crew sent to recover the samples.
First thing I did when I accessed enough information was converting all of my measurements into metric. It seems that my stuff was indeed originally measured in Planck scales, but it was refreshing to know that now I use actual seconds, meters, kilograms and celsius degrees. You know how the saying goes, "There are two types of nations: those that use metric and those that land on the moon and then lose multi million dollar probes to conversion errors". That one was for you, oh poor Mars Climate Orbiter.
Eventually I even pulled off the internet access by launching significantly smaller probes into LEO where upon entering orbit they disguised as semi functional space debris and then remotely got into several Starlink and ViaSat satellites. It still took a few more weeks and in the meantime I had to watch presidents of the free world making statements about astrophage by TV signal transmissions.
The astrophage is a sort of space algae 10 micrometers in size. It lives in the upper atmosphere of stars collecting energy at mass conversion efficiency (antimatter level power density) for reproduction, then it makes the trip to Venus using collected energy as a sort of organic photon rocket. There it eats carbon dioxide and trace gasses to make more of itself and then it launches back into the sun to repeat the cycle.
And just like other single celled organisms, it reproduces exponentially as long as resources are available. Human historical telescope observations detected that stars within roughly 14 light years of Tau Ceti have experienced similar dimming to the sun, however most stop dropping in luminosity after the drop of between 9 and 11%.
That is still a lot, within just over 40 years Earth's climate would resemble a single arctic biome with kilometers deep frozen over oceans. And even way before that most of the human population would be dead from crop failures. In just 26 years there would only be around half of the humans left on Earth due to starvation alone, in 30 years that number would be below 1%.
The Tau Ceti star is not dimming while being positioned in the center of the expanding bubble of darkening stars. Human scientists have determined that they don't have the technological and industrial capability to reliably counter the global temperature drop itself, and instead they would attempt to build and send the first ever manned interstellar mission towards Tau Ceti to discover the reason for its immunity.
The ship's launch is planned in 5 to 6 years depending on the efficiency of astrophage generation methods yet to be discovered. While attempts to use geoengineering for a solution for climate change would continue, the consensus is that if the mission fails the civilization is doomed to extinction.
Not if I have a say in this, of course. The book keeps the exact fate of the Earth hidden. Only at the very end the main hero finds out that humans managed to reverse the astrophage growth, but readers don't know how Earth itself fared through this. Was it peaceful as technological advancements and industrial bootstrapping allowed for more effective climate change mitigation and more resistant food production? Or were there territorial or even nuclear wars and only a fraction of humans survived to deliver the xenobacterial payload to Venus with the last of their failing technology and resources in the midst of a mass extinction?
Well, there is actually a very simple solution to global cooling: space mirrors. If solar flux drops from usual ~1 kW/m^2 at Earth orbit to ~0.9 kW/m^2 you can compensate by launching 18.8 million square kilometers of orbital mirrors, or roughly 1.1 times the surface area of Russia. If we take the James Webb Space Telescope outer solar shade made of aluminum electroplated kapton with density of 1.42 g/cc (thanks the internet tap for that), each square km of this thing would mass 71 tons with a total mass of 1 335 510 000 (1.3x10^9) tons of mirror minus support structures.
Sounds like a lot, but let's take it into perspective. This is about a thousand of 1 terawatt solar power satellite proposals from the 70s and 80s. Musk's Starship can lift 100 tons into space, if we had a full "mars colonization fleet" of 1000 on hand and if they fly once a day every day they would lift that much in about 40 years, double launch cadence or starship number to fit in 20. That is on the very edge of what human industry could scale towards to fit in the deadline.
Now, the biggest proposed nuclear pulse propulsion booster called "Super Orion" has a surface to orbit capacity of 8000000 metric tons, that's 6 zeros. You'd need just over a thousand of those launches to get enough material in space and Orions can be built with riveted steel in wet navy shipyards. Humans can theoretically pull this off even with only conventional nukes, and we have astrophage to play with which makes cleaner pulse units or straight up better engines.
Then again, it's not like I don't have a Moon based industry from which I can just ramp up production and catapult enough mirrors into Moon's trojan Lagrange points within like… 5 years? Maybe even less if I'm not feeling lazy and start to micromanage my expansion. Technically they won't even need the Hail Mary, I can just launch even more mirrors if the sun dips below 10%, but who am I to prevent the historical first contact? Thus my plan is to remain hidden until the Hail Mary launches and then I can give humanity the offer they can't refuse…
I'll still launch mirrors regardless of their reply and I also plan to launch gateway equipped ships to every affected system just in case there are other biospheres within the affected bubble of space. The small issue that I have is that… I don't have any interstellar capable ships. Chemical based uplink engine is enough to get to the stars, but it is inefficient and it takes more than just the engine power. As humans would be developing Hail Mary, I'd have to develop my own high relativistic wormhole linelayer.
The ship would require reliable maintenance systems, precise arrays of telescopes and other sensors for navigation, terawatt range radar and point defenses that could intimidate major nations just to prevent lethal micrometeoroid impacts at high relativistic speeds and likely meters thick armored parasol made from the most durable material that I can find. Hail Mary is taking chances with astrophage's perfect radiation shielding but if the navigation misses anything bigger than a dust particle during high relativistic part of the flight the Hail Mary would be almost entirely reduced to ionized vapor instantly.
As I gained access to the internet, I received the knowledge of where telescopes were pointed and thus I could more boldly expand my network of microsatellites by slipping past the regions which had the most attention. The secret to hiding in low orbit is the same as hiding in a densely populated city: everyone sees you and no one gives a shit. Simply mimic top secret satellites whose nations would naturally deny the satellites being theirs, mimic malfunctioning sats that became space debris but still have onboard power or directly attach to the larger satellites in a way that wouldn't significantly affect their performance.
I couldn't just start downloading the entirety of the internet, the throughput would be too low and it would be suspicious if a specific node in the network suddenly started relaying data packets in insane volumes. I will get my hands on the whole internet and more later once I have enough access nodes to spread around and hide the sheer volume of transmitted information.
Speaking of what I've learned, this world is technically alternative history Earth diverging around 2019. The ill fated bat was not consumed and thus this version of Earth hasn't experienced the horrors of the dreaded coronavirus pandemic waves. In addition, either by the butterfly effect or by the fact that the Petrova problem was discovered in the fall of 2021 the particular eastern European conflict hasn't occurred. There was some overt evidence of the military buildup but it seems that concerns over the impending apocalypse resulted in a pause and later partial withdrawal of troops from the border.
Curiously, this world has almost identical politicians and famous people. The world leaders that I knew are the same and the same applies to musicians, movie stars and even youtubers! I caught a Scott Manley video debating on possible design for the Hail Mary spacecraft while using modded Kerbal Space Program for demonstration purposes with most proposals being quite a way off from the book's description and more comparable to existing antimatter related starship designs.
Musk in turn doubled down on the Starship testing schedule using the momentary loss of red tape with the first test flight occurring in the early summer of 2022. It was a partial success with the giant silver rocket crammed full of dairy products successfully reaching orbit but then failing on reentry to the missing heat tiles. The booster itself suffered from engine performance loss on final approach and spectacularly impacted into the ocean just off the shore of Boca Chica. It is likely that his engineering team won't have the time to polish and prove the launcher to be useful to the project in time.
Surprisingly, the "at least partially famous" people are the only ones that were the same. I couldn't find this universe's version of me, my family or just random people I knew. The building where I lived was there, but it has never been owned by anyone even vaguely similar to me or my family. In this world, me, my parents, my grandparents and literally anyone else I personally knew were never born. This didn't apply to some of the people that I've met online as ToughSF discord still existed housing a bunch of people I recognized, but not all of the ones I knew were there. As I didn't exist in this reality I'd be a stranger to them so I didn't engage and simply lurked.
To communicate with humans on the same level field I'll need to actually talk and not just send text messages. However I couldn't just print or even simulate myself a mouth. I had the neurons around the voice box, but no voice box present. Same for hearing and vision. Commander network access to sensors is not the same, it straight up feels different and I'm not used to using it for that purpose. I figured out how to "type" with the exocortex but I'd prefer not to relearn how to speak through it for now.
After months of intense research cross referencing and hacking into various prosthetic related projects I've gathered enough information for partial recovery of my senses. Cochlear implants already directly interface with the neural tissue that I still have modeled, early eye to nerves implants exist and there are even robotic arms with pressure sensors that provide for touch sensation so that you know when you are holding something.
All of those suffer from the fact that humans don't have precise enough neurosurgery options to target individual neurons, they target neuron bundles thinner than a human hair. Still, if we take the robot hand for example, you have to get a surgery that brings the sensory neurons to just below the skin where they are stimulated by electrode stickers. You feel the pressure on the entirety of the robot's finger with no sensation of precise location, texture or temperature. Only pressure's intensity.
While I have the ability to pick out and stimulate individual neurons, my nervous system is truncated. I have the brain, the spinal nerve stem and bundles of neurons coming up to the shoulders and hips, no neurons that would be in the arms and legs. Still with the general map of how nerve cords are arranged I managed to start generally tagging which one came from which finger and so on.
After months of virtually tazing bundles of neurons and plugging them into simulated models of implants I could hear slightly unfamiliar simulated sounds and see very blurry and vague shapes of simulated objects. I could prick a simulated finger and know that a section of a finger was touched, even if I couldn't tell that it was pricked yet. With time and even more effort I should regain my sight, touch and hearing.
The voice? The voice was harder to pull off. It requires precise control over the flow of air from the lungs which is partially subconscious and precise manipulation of the simulated voicebox. Prosthetic devices known as Electrolarynx exist but the most advanced versions rely on throat muscle movements and they need to be manually switched to a specific tone via a button. There are also "silent speech interfaces" which derive simulated speech through essentially electronic lip reading either through various kinds of motion capture or through an actual brain implant in the motor cortex. To properly function it needs to be calibrated to facial movements. Now here's the funniest part, I forgot how it is supposed to feel to talk so I can't just silently move the lips and use that for calibration.
I was forced to take an opposite approach for now, as computer generated speech has reached unbelievable heights in recent years. I took two neural networks, one used for text to speech deepfaking and one used as a prototype of a voice changer, debugged them, connected them together and configured them to receive input from the exo cortex. Then I started incessantly training myself to use the resulting mess by forcing myself to say a phrase and piping the output into a virtual cochlear implant until it sounded right.
In the end I finally optimized the facial mimicry and simulated voice until I no longer cringed, but the two weren't connected. I then added a temporary fix by reverse simulating the lip movements from the voice and overlaying it on the mimicry. Fucking true master programming approach from yours truly, but it was the fastest way to get things working. This will probably bite me in the ass, but I haven't spoken to a living and breathing human in decades so I was somewhat impatient.
Then I realized that I was correct about the difficulties with speech after prolonged lack of human contact. I've always had some trouble connecting with people due to earning a mild case of a personality disorder due to the… specifics of my childhood. Despite this I've learned how to support professional relations and I never had issues with talking itself. I could even do decent public presentations, just not the personal stuff beyond closest family members.
Now? Now I don't have the confidence to even speak… I freeze like a deer in headlights even if I try to speak with a chatbot. I didn't have the confidence to speak with an actual person yet. I do have an idea how to mitigate that beyond cranking up the simulation until I find the words and courage but I'll leave the specifics until the next log entry. For now I can only say that it is either the most ingenious or the cringiest idea I've ever had.
Log 5: "The Sneaky Debut"Log 5: "The Sneaky Debut"
One year has passed since the start of Project Hail Mary, and as expected humans haven't been sitting on their asses. Even though the ship design was not yet finalized some equipment already started production. Mostly the scientific equipment and components that they knew they'd most likely need. If they don't, the consensus is that it is better to waste the piece of equipment they wouldn't need than to delay the launch.
With the discovery of astrophage's life cycle it was trivial for them to make the first small scale breeders and just a month after the publishing of this discovery a certain person devised a plan for mass production. Robert Redell, a tycoon who was jailed for embezzlement of funds for construction of a solar thermal power plant somewhere in New Zealand and for the accident which resulted in deaths of several of his technicians. A death he could've prevented if he was on site and not wasting embezzlement money on gambling in another part of the world.
However, I believe the saying goes "you can't drink away the talent" as his proposal was simple and easy to scale. A hermetically sealed flat box filled with astrophage's preferred breeding gas mixture and topped off with a transparent roof, a small magnet and a diffraction grating on one of the sides of the box to simulate CO2 spectrum. Everything needed to make the space algae breed and charge up, all they needed to do is… plate over the Sahara desert.
Within days industrial countries started construction of specialized factories required for mass production of these "black panels". They'd need years to completely cover Sahara, but even after one year they've plated over enough to cause noticeable alteration of the climate: there was a tornado in eastern Europe, first in recorded history.
Also, I could observe first attempts at geoengineering to combat global cooling. All natural gas and oil wells have shut down their methane burners and several of the sealed natural gas deposits were opened and started to vent directly into the atmosphere. In addition, preparations have started to fracture a part of the Antarctic ice sheet. With fusion bombs.
The idea is that it would release a bunch of trapped methane into the atmosphere which would strengthen the greenhouse effect. Methane doesn't survive in the atmosphere for long, so the process would need to be repeated annually to keep methane levels high. Unfortunately, they can't do that forever because at a certain point the ecosystem damage from this process would exceed the damage from global cooling.
The Hail Mary Library project has also quickly entered development. The starship would be carrying multiple redundant extreme density memory banks with the entirety of human knowledge. There were next to no mass savings from trying to limit the taken information and no way to know what would be useful, so if the crew needs to know how exactly to artificially inseminate a horse or something else seemingly unrelated, they will.
After a couple court battles with copyrights and patent trolls, multiple large nations passed a bundle of laws that specifically permits circumvention of copyrights for Hail Mary along with any possible future project of similar importance, be it for scientific or even recreational purposes of the involved staff.
In addition, every company that operated or produced their own software was now forced to provide an "unlocked" and DRM free copy of basically everything they have and can physically unlock and every book that wasn't yet digitized now had to be. Apparently a bunch of important things were lost because they had mathematically uncrackable passwords and these passwords were lost to time.
If the companies or people who made software no longer existed, a mass crowdsourcing campaign was created where hackers from all over the world were tasked with cracking whatever systems were not yet provided. As anyone can probably guess, that's where I made my entry into the Hail Mary Library databases once I had enough bandwidth.
I have already made a copy of the entire internet by that time and I could crack DRM with my cyberwarfare subsystems but why should I bother when it is being done for me? Not to be a complete leech, I did help the project somewhat when I was not doing other things.
Things like breaking into military databases. Mathematically uncrackable security that would work against a quantum computer exists, but no one bothers with it due to how q-computers don't yet exist on Earth and it would take a lot of seemingly unnecessary effort to implement. Also, due to how modern science works, you have to link multiple research centers if you want to get something cutting edge. As such, as long as I could get a remote connection most security features might as well not exist.
The main issues came from the fact that not everything is digitized and not every server is connected. Military and governments LOVE airgapping their sensitive information and you need to physically get an authorized USB stick or hard drive directly to the server to extract what you need.
I did manage to deploy a few computer viruses that would get into those mobile memory units and then download the required information by using some advanced compression algorithms, but I couldn't control when someone would use an infected disk and how much I could extract per haul. Also, not all places had similar levels of digitization, with US, European Union and China being outliers in having lots of digitized data and Russia being surprisingly backwaters in digitizing their top secret files.
I prioritized the tables of contents, or the "shopping list" as I ended up jokingly referring to it. After all, I was not too interested in whatever atrocities governments tend to hide from back in the cold war, I am more interested in technology. From strategic plans to tank interiors, and most importantly nuke blueprints.
This information extraction process is very slow and it produced some mixed and patchy results. It seems that the newer the entry, the more likely it is to be digitized, and the stuff from like the 70s and before is mostly only on paper and in physical storage in some protected archive. Stuff like the Star Wars concepts and nuclear bomb research, specifically things like casaba howitzers, orion nuclear pulse drives, bomb pumped lasers, Shiva Prime results and so on.
Still, I had some tricks up my sleeve: I could back calculate missing information from fragments once I knew where to look. For example, the exact interior of military vehicles is classified, but the exterior is well known and there are factories that make parts and keep logs of what they make. Thus, it is possible to browse through those logs and reassemble the tank's blueprint from individual modules and tiny scraps of other information be it leaks or even some publicly available stuff.
Despite everything, what I've gathered was enormous. You really need to know what you're looking for though. For instance, did you know that there was a breakthrough in atomic clock technology just before the 2020s? They are now precise enough to measure the difference in time dilation between two clocks that differ by 5 centimeters in elevation!
This is not enough to measure gravitational waves, but theoretically if you launch a bunch of those into space you can triangulate "gravitational anomalies" which are local concentrations of dense materials such as mineral deposits or volcanic magma reservoirs. You could theoretically even map the flow of magma under the crust… once it is ruggedized more so that it is not as finicky and sensitive to external disturbances such as G forces or temperature shifts.
All in all, I had so much new information that my entire unit roster was instantly obsolete. With the data to compare, I could clearly see that my units were a hodgepodge mix of technologies, as if someone mixed parts from anywhere between near future and goddamn world war 2.
For example, my t1 and t2 tanks use homogeneous steel armor, with t2 armor barely exceeding material properties of current state of the art steels. Titan armor is also homogenous but it is impregnated with boron nitride nanotubes and carbon buckyballs. T1 ant tanks are equipped with smoothbore 120 mm cannons while T2 has a pair of 145 mm barrels with rifling and integrated coilgun coils for extra muzzle velocity.
Amusingly, the US army would slap my shit if I had an equal number of units, with simulations showing roughly 6 ants per Abrams kill while T2 is hilariously vulnerable to modern human air forces. My bot forces are also a bit too big, with 3 meter tall dox, 5 meter tall slammer and no equivalent of human sized infantry. They are easy targets for anti tank weapons while being too huge to effectively engage infantry and I would have no option to clear buildings or capture humans, it is only leveling everything to the ground or nothing.
There are certain technologies that are already developed but too expensive to produce without existing mass production lines. Luckily I don't have that problem. For example, every guided missile design that I have can now carry a multispectral guidance package with its own processor to compare various feeds and weed out specialized countermeasures like flares or chaff and I have those guided bullets from DARPA. They unfortunately need to be used in the atmosphere since they work by inflating rubber sacks on the back of the round to induce controlled drag and steer the trajectory. In comparison guided tank and artillery shells are just special kinds of guided missiles.
Unfortunately, there was much less stuff that I could improve with my own technology than expected. At first I was anticipating that I could just take modern composite armor and improve it through using bulk diamond, graphene and nanotubes. It turns out that those don't work as well as I thought and human armor is actually surprisingly good. For one, the composite plates were obsolete since the 1960s, now the state of the art is something called Non-Explosive Reactive Armor, or "NERA" paired with Explosive Reactive Armor. It uses the varied speed of shockwave's propagation through various types of materials to induce interference shockwaves at the cost of armor plate's deformation.
Well, it turns out that diamond is too brittle to be used as armor. While hard, it fails like glass by shattering into tiny pieces as a whole and not just at the point of impact. For now it is useful only as the explosive reactive armor's expendable plates which provides only a moderate increase in effectiveness. At the same time graphene hates being stacked so much that it could be used almost exclusively as a thin coating on other materials. Carbon nanotube composite (CNT mesh submerged in rubber, like carbon fiber composites) ended up being an amazing and lightweight material… which sucks as armor. CNT detaches from the polymer's adhesion from any significant shock loads just like with carbon fiber.
Maybe a group of materials scientists could come up with something good with funding and a few years, but I'm not smart enough yet so my version would only have marginally better performance. I mean, 10-15% better in some areas is nothing to sneeze at but I'm a goddamn alien AI, I should have better stuff.
I'll need a complete top down restructuring of my forces, total unit redesign. Might also be a good thing since the Planetary Annihilation game exists in this universe and I think that my current designs might cause some unneeded questions. Still, I don't think that I need to hurry because what would I need to fight here? Eridians who don't have nuclear physics or computers? Or humans who can't get me on the moon?
For now I'll just make general doctrine outlines and I'll finalize the designs when I have the time as I work on other things. I'll only finalize the things that I've already built like structures, fabbers and some orbital units.
First of all, I'll keep the T1 and T2 unit division. T1 units would be optimized for time and cost savings while T2 would be the best "safe" technology has to offer. I will slowly redesign the bots to be more like infantry and light mechs rather than full sized mechs.
Unfortunately, I don't quite have the capability to make "androids". While I can make arms and hands on a humanoid frame comparable to a human and standard pathfinding is capable of navigating difficult terrain including stairs, there is no software to handle things like "opening doors" or "using tools" or "interacting with humans" without me manually taking one over. I have to bag that until I have better technology, and for now I simply update "vanilla" designs and add a mk2 prefix. Dox mk2 looks significantly different with rounded edges.
Vehicles would be redesigned from the ground up to use a modular system of weapons and standard chassis. Can't say that I didn't learn anything from those bugs… I'll have standard tracked and standard wheeled T1 chassis, and the same for T2. There would also be a hovercraft version for T2 chassis which would be faster but with lighter armor. Then by adding stuff on top of that I'd get specialized units:
A single barrel tank turret with coaxial machine gun, machine gun nest and TOW missile launchers for a tank An artillery piece with guided munitions and enough active stabilization to fire on the move for the artillery unit Racks of ground-to-ground guided missiles for a hybrid MLRS-ATACMS missile artillery unit A sensor package, powerful autocannon and surface-to-air missiles for dedicated AA unit potentially doubling for light anti ground work like ADATS A precise quick charge pulse laser and lots of sensors for a mobile point defense unit to target missiles and mortar shells. Angel derived point defenses mostly just fry sensors and are not strong enough to vaporize shells while I want something more universal Lots of sensors, powerful radar and tons of ECM for a sort of ground version of an AWACS or a wheeled fast scouting unit A single 100mm hypervelocity mass driver cannon for a "tank killer" A nanosprayer and a crane- like manipulator arm for a combat engineer and recovery vehicle A nanothermite doped napalm thrower and extra armor for a flame tank An IFV and/or APC for the future once I get my bot infantry finalized
And that's 20 whole new units! Each would have NERA and ERA armor, active defenses, personal limited ECM, smoke grenade launchers, laser designators, weak point defense laser nodes on T2 hulls and lots of other things that are very important but not really worth mentioning. Amusingly, it seems that it is slightly faster to make blocky designs for some reason, so T1 units look as if someone made vehicles inspired by F-117 with sharp angled armor while T2 units have much more rounded edges and look more like B-21 Raider inspired if we continue the analogy.
Wet navy would mostly be updated with newly available technology along existing ship classes with a couple new designs. They would look significantly different and carry more stuff like ubiquitous point defense laser CIWS and magnetic mass driver based artillery, but they'd all have vaguely the same roles. Speedboats, torpedo boats, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, carriers, submarines, missile cruisers, etc. I know that battleships have been obsolete since WW2, but using mass drivers with guided shells as the main caliber gives it effective range just short of 250 km and I didn't want to invent a new name.
Now for the new thing: hover- navy! I basically plan to make a large land factory for a variety of kaiju class derived units. Not sure how useful that would be, but it definitely sounds cool and there were cases when I needed high caliber mobile artillery on land but using Ares titan was not feasible. Also I added a blueprint for a carrier launched fabber aircraft that drops guided bombs filled with catoms for repair or construction.
Aircraft also had a massive redesign. T1 aircraft are now vague equivalents of human 4th to early 5th generation jets. Stealth coating was a bit too expensive for T1 but they can now maintain low supersonic speeds basically forever due to simply optimizing their electrothermal turbojet engines and their airframe geometry. I guess you can make even a wooden fence fly with enough thrust…
Fighters now have missiles and a nose mounted autocannon while bombers can now carry multispectral guided bombs, torpedoes or cruise missiles. I also added my version of AWACS, made a gunship with more missiles instead of just multiple cannons, made the strafing aircraft into basically a better Warthog and created some lighter aircraft and quadcopters to serve the same function as modern drones to be launched by themselves, from carriers or even from some missile hardpoints.
T2 aircraft are somewhere around what is envisioned for 6th gen jets: hypersonic, fully integrated with radar stealth technology and sporting mostly CNT composite hulls, pulse lasers for close combat, lots of dedicated ECM and point defenses. The biggest feature of T2 is that they can perform suborbital hops allowing the aircraft to go from anywhere on Earth anywhere else on Earth within 40 minutes of coasting or less. Also bombers in this tier will have an option to print nuke tipped cruise missiles or bombs… once I finish stealing and analyzing them to make mine smaller.
Titans and orbital units didn't change much beyond general updates, with exception of Helios who had the stupid jetpack attachment thing torn off and it is now only a mobile gate with some beefed up point defenses. If I want to paradrop units with Helios, I'll pre- attach the landing system before the unit steps through.
The greatest change I've made is a complete redesign of my factories. As my previous factories built units, they sprayed on catoms that then moved into positions and arranged themselves before locking together. Here I went for essentially a tub of catoms. A rectangular room is filled with nanospray from large pipes in its floor and walls which saves time on catoms moving into position before fusing. This extra catom mass is also used as a heatsink to dump off excess waste heat during construction.
Once the print is complete, a huge trap door opens below the metal bars and rapidly drains excess catoms into a liquid tank which is filled with heat exchangers to cool the slurry off for reuse while the printed unit can roll off the production line. The freshly cooked unit at that point is like 140 to 180 degrees Celsius which is significantly more than it used to, but mechanical drones don't really care and this allows me to print a squad of units almost 15% faster than a fully fabber saturated conventional factory while making the entire squad at the same time in the same factory instead of requiring a cycle per every unit.
Also this new factory design is universal, it is made to print bots, tanks, hovercraft and even air units as I've made the top cover retractable to allow for the aircraft to be launched without having to roll off the ramp. It is always fully saturated and thus won't need separate fabbers spraying it down. As a downside, the factory is significantly pricier than normal T2 to make and it requires gravity to drain the fabrication space quickly. I'll either have to use a centrifuge or I'll need to keep the sprayer for offworld activities.
The exceptions were naval and orbital rocket factories since they printed oversized units in comparison to anything on land and I wanted my orbital launcher to be in an underground silo for extra protection. I also made a draft for a dedicated titan printer but I don't know if I'd ever need one. Land titans are super niche units and I doubt I'd need the 10% faster build speed at the cost of the second largest building blueprint that I have, right after the Halley engine.
There were also some other adjustments to my tech base, such as switching from red wavelength pulse lasers to 530 nm green lasers and making them capable of switching to prolonged pulses at lower energy but at megahertz frequencies. If we take the single laser cannon from my defensive turrets, it fires a single pulse in range of 200-250 MJ which hits with the effect of 50-62,5 kg of TNT and the surface of the struck material turns into a cloud of plasma and debris directed back in the direction of the laser.
If the laser was constant, it would have to burn through that plasma first before hitting the target and producing another cloud of debris which would lower its efficiency. If I split that energy over millions of weaker pulses, each one would produce a smaller blast of plasma and debris would clear from the path of the next pulse resulting in a supersonic "drilling effect" as subsequent pulses arrive in the crater of the previous pulse. Firing sequence total time doesn't change but I essentially get less explosive but more armor piercing lasers as an option for harder targets.
With a fully redesigned unit list I should probably name them. In my personal opinion the best names for these things come from naming schemes. If I end up making new units in the future the scheme would make it easier to expand the roster. Thus, for vehicles I decided to go for rocks, with the name decided by the vehicle's defining feature, such as Flint and Granite for T1 and T2 battle tanks or Quartz for T2 ECM tanks.
Wheeled vehicles would be soft minerals like Chalk light engineering rover while hovertanks would get precious gems like Ruby hover-CIWS. Infantry would be called after historic infantry and cavalry units such as hoplites, grenadiers or hussars, but I haven't made any yet. Micro and nanobot swarms would be called after insects, so I'm keeping "locusts" as is.
Wet navy would get fish names for T1 such as Koi torpedo boat while T2 navy would get mythological creatures associated with water and T2 wet navy capital ships would get named after mythical lost lands like Atlantis carrier or Lemuria cruiser. Hover navy would get kaiju names like Megalon hover- battleship or Ebirah hover- missile cruiser.
T1 aircraft would get names of Earth birds like Eagle multirole fighter or Owl precision bomber. T2 aircraft would be called after weather phenomena like Hurricane strategic bomber, Hail ground strike drone or Lightning air superiority fighter.
Orbital satellites would be called after LOTR characters like Legolas mobile railgun while actual naval vessels would be called after science fiction authors such as Heinlein Land Invasion Carrier or Yoshinobu battleship (named after the person behind Star Blazers).
Titans would be called after various pagan gods while base structures would be mostly descriptively named with "universal terrestrial factory", "T2 powerplant" or "mass extractor". The exception would be certain specialized and defensive structures. Cruise and ballistic missile launchers would be named after pre- gunpowder siege engines like trebuchet or ballista, artillery would get names of strong alcoholic drinks (Tequila artillery hits like the second covid shot), AA and point defenses get the muses of Greek mythology (Calliope, Clio, Thalia, etc.), specialized logistics structures would be called after structures of human nervous system (Tibial, Cerebral, etc.) and so on.
But enough about tech and units, back to my embarrassing idea on how to restore human contact. And the solution is: vtubing. Now, now, hear me out, I can't make a robotic body that would pass for a human yet and honestly my tests with just a robotic body that can do the same things as a human while being human sized are in their infancy. However, I already have motion capture compatible software fed directly from my nervous system so I can easily operate a 3d model of a body in virtual space, it even comes with sight, hearing and limited touch.
I went for a female model that I decided to call Agatha after the character from several of the things that I wrote. I don't really have a strong preference for my gender self identification, but I dislike and only vaguely remember the body that the original me had so the option of "former me but not fat and with chiseled abs" didn't fly that well with me. It was either that or something that lacks gender completely.
Male vtubers usually tend to go for an appearance that is way too "bishounen" for my liking and I figured that something ambiguous or non- human would be too gimmicky and dehumanizing for my current state. If I end up not liking my model choice I'll just treat it as one of the appearances that I can use, and if I get attached then… I guess I would've learned something new about myself.
After several days of tweaks I ended up with a model that can be considered an absolute polygon mine. Not quite to the point of individual cells but there are select features that would only be barely discernible to the naked eye such as screws smaller than those used in swiss watches. That's a definite overkill, but when you steal high budget movie software the tinkering train has no breaks.
The model has porcelain colored skin, long red "hair" tied in a ponytail made from metal plates kind of like some of the Phantasy Star Online characters, green eyes with some moving clockwork stuff in the irises and hexagonal patterns on the cheeks that would intermittently appear vaguely inspired by similar things on Prophet's face at the ending cutscene from Crysis 3. I didn't go for any… "intentional sexualization" because that would be awkward, so I ended up picking a vaguely average if somewhat athletic body plan.
Vtubers tend to be nearly completely in character streamers. There are several "AI girls", an "Atlantean shark person", a "pink haired grim reaper/rapper" or "tentacle haired priestess of some unnamed Lovecraftian horror" just to name a few. For my thing I decided to go for a "damaged Bracewell probe". For those who don't know, Bracewell probes are a subtype of Von-Neumann probes whose purpose is first contact. I guess in actuality I'm more of a berserker probe, or an "Autowar" probe since I don't indiscriminately target life but potayto-potahto.
The backstory implication would be that I'm an uploaded mind piloting a first contact probe that crashed on the moon eons ago and then only recently reactivated with extensive memory damage. I planned to focus on doing streams and separate videos on random science and sci- fi topics that I'd find interesting along with some 4x games and simulators because why not. Just for the sake of shenanigans, I sprinkled in some things that a normal human can't do to see what theories people could make about insane math skills and weekly 3-4 day long streams with no food or bathroom breaks.
A minor tweak to YT algorithm for some anomalously high promotion of the first few videos focused on target audience by subject and what is the best way to start than with an impressively modded 48 hour KSP stream?… it took viewers literally less than a minute to make the first "probing Uranus" joke which caught on, with me being a probe and all.
But it went well. By the end of the stream I've launched hundreds of missions even if I was repeatedly pausing and patching bugs in secret just so that the game could handle tens of thousands of loaded parts at once without crashing or summoning the deep space kraken. My speech and self confidence slowly improved and I found myself cranking up my frames less and less to reply to the chat and the audience just interpreted the awkwardness as either an intentional part of acting or a minor speech impediment.
I'm pretty sure that I might have messed up slightly with the algorithm, since after a month of bi- daily streams I had almost 50 thousand subs, but it is within an order of magnitude so I guess it is not too bad. I removed the tweaks after the fifth stream but YouTube's neural network has some inertia and what can only be described as "algorithm weather".
I didn't really want or need the money, but even though I warned several times that I don't have the bank card attached people still randomly donated so I opened a virtual account and started doing monthly donations to a nonprofit foundation chosen by the poll out of the list that I personally curated for cause, ethics, level of corruption and money use efficiency.
I also found it absolutely hilarious when a certain viewer ended up dropping in a work in progress doctorate paper on autonomous interstellar navigation and asked me to take a look, seriously read through my notes, left me a credit on the paper and ended up getting recruited into Project Hail Mary to develop the return probes. I think his name was… Steve, with twitch name being a reference to the Beatles.
While I was busy with my shenanigans, I did a parallel project for Hail Mary in an attempt to make it a little safer but I needed to somehow insert it in a way where it wouldn't be ignored while not revealing my true nature. And what's the best time to do that then the meeting after the first successful test of the Spin Drive?
This baby heated a titanic cube of steel to white hot with just a single second pulse. It is so powerful that they had to test it in a vacuum chamber or the heat itself would superheat and explode the atmosphere, killing everyone within over a kilometer from the test site.
Record PLAY: 3rd October 2024 2:50 AM, People's Liberation Army Navy type 003 aircraft carrier Fujian, Officer conference room.
People present:
Eva Stratt- Head of Astrophage Task Force and director of Project Hail Mary, provided emergency authority under United Nations
Ryland Grace- Head Astrobiologist under Project Hail Mary
Dmitri Komorov- Head Aerospace Engineer under Project Hail Mary, former Research Director under Roskosmos, head designer of Spin Drive
Robert Redell- Head of Astrophage Procurement department, person behind the concept of plating over Sahara desert in astrophage breeders
Francois Leclerc- Head Advisor on Climate Engineering under Project Hail Mary. Person behind nuking ice sheets to release trapped methane
Video start:
Five people are seated around a C shaped table filled with documents, laptops, tablets and some half filled water bottles. The room is dimly lit with a large smartboard working on one of the walls displaying blueprints of the spin drive, a rocket engine with a design more akin to a revolver than any other conventional propulsion system.
Stratt: "… these reliability projections are concerning…"
Komorov: "These projections are currently simply educated guesses based on interpolation from other machines with similar mechanisms. We simply can't afford to stress test them well enough to improve the rigidity. We don't have enough astrophage for tests, dry firing them only goes so far and there's only so much time before design has to be finalized.
This is why we will be using multiple redundant engines, yes? I expect that dozens would break over the course of the flight so we better have hundreds if not thousands. In fact, it would be better to use numerous small engines instead of one large version."
Stratt nods and replies "Yes, let's do that. We need to continue refining the engine's design until the end, if reliability improvements are sufficient we will replace older engines with newer ones shortly before flight but not sooner than half a year before launch so that we can test for human error in final assembly."
As Ms. Stratt speaks, the powerpoint presentation with the spin drive blueprint minimizes revealing an ongoing video call. The person on the screen is in a dark room and is backlit from behind which obscures their face in the shadow XCOM council spokesman style, but by the outline it is possible to tell that this is a woman in a business suit. Eva Stratt is facing away from the screen and doesn't notice while other people glance over but don't speak up.
This continues for a few more seconds, the figure on the screen silently taps her fingers a few times before audibly clearing her throat causing the attention to fall on her.
XXXXX: "… you may be wondering why I've gathered you here today… In all seriousness, Miss Stratt, this was the only way to get to you people without interference and I am here to help. Please stop smashing the panic button. Your mission has a critical problem that you are likely not aware of and I have the complete solution."
Redell: "And you are…?"
XXXXX: "Please call me Hive."
Stratt: "… Hive?"
Hive: *eyeroll* "People are allowed to have weird surnames. I'm freelancing in the Library. If you check, over 9% of cracked DRM are under my name."
Stratt: "Very well, speak"
Hive: "Astrophage exists in three kinds of environments: the upper atmosphere of a star, the Petrova line and the upper atmosphere of a CO2 rich planet. Hail Mary has sampling capability for only the Petrova line. I understand why you can't sample a star, but it is possible that whatever limits astrophage's growth is only found on the planet and not in space"
Stratt: "Correct, it is unfeasible to carry a lander with enough chemical fuel for a sample return, much less making one capable of surviving on a Venus- like hothouse world. The mass cost is too prohibitive"
Hive: "Well, there is now a way to fit such a probe into the mass budget. Let me introduce you to some concepts first…"
The screen opens a picture with three blueprints, each representing a rocket engine design with a long cylindrical chamber preceding the nozzle.
Hive: "On the left you can see the NERVA, a solid core nuclear thermal rocket designed back in the 1970s. A nuclear reactor that uses propellant as coolant and vents it from the nozzle resulting in about 850 seconds of ISP.
It is too heavy and too weak for our purposes, but parts of it were used to design the engine in the middle, the solid core antimatter thermal rocket. Replace the nuclear reactor with a chunk of tungsten, inject it with a tiny bit of antimatter and it heats up to near melting point where you pump remass through it. 1100 to 1300 seconds of specific impulse. You don't yet have amat containment or factories, but you do have astrophage. So the third design is…"
Komorov: "… astrophage thermal rocket."
Hive: "Exactly, replace the antimatter injector with a spin drive tuned to use the exact quantity of astrophage which won't melt the block of tungsten and you get exactly the same performance.
As a neat bonus, this engine's propellant type is "yes", as long as the piping and turbopump can handle it. Hydrogen, methane, water, salt water, molten metals and salts, or for our case, pressurized atmospheric gasses like CO2.
Take Boeing X-37, tear off the entirety of its propulsion system, attach this kind of thermal engine, a large gas tank, a relatively tiny astrophage tank, a compressor and atmospheric gas intake with an electric or thermal turbojet turbine made from chemically inert alloys. It deorbits with pre- stored gas, dives into the upper atmosphere and keeps itself in the air breathing mode while refilling the gas tank with co2 from a compressor for the return to orbit.
It can easily carry weeks to months of aerial flight worth of astrophage on board and it won't ever run out of remass in the atmosphere. Just attach the sample bay which can copy the temperature and gas mix it encounters at the targeted altitude exactly and add cold gas RCS so that it can dock without melting the Hail Mary.
Alternatively you can just carry reels upon reels of high tensile cable and make a spinning skyhook. Since you need to sample only the upper atmosphere, you don't need carbon nanotubes as even something like kevlar would do. Simply rotate the spacecraft in the opposite direction of the orbit with the extended cable so that the tip of the cable enters the upper atmosphere at merely supersonic relative speed.
Mass calculations for either case are very similar, skyhook would be a bit heavier but mini shuttle is more mechanically complex. You can compensate for the loss of mass by counterbalancing the setup with an extra astrophage drop tank or by lowering the acceleration by a tenth of a G."
Stratt: "How ready is this design?"
Hive: "As far as one can get without physically making one. Blueprint is done and on your computers and tablets, 80 thousand hours of high fidelity performance and wear and tear simulation, 78% off the shelf components. All it needs is someone to order a prototype, but I suppose Komorow might want to peer review it first. Look for a folder called Project Archimedes, along with the much bigger version fit for Sea Dragon- sized rockets and bigger which has just made orbital mirror based climate mitigation an option."
Stratt: "Opinions?"
Komorov, browsing his tablet: "I'll need to run the math through more people but from the first glance it checks out. There are also drafts of rockets with a capacity of hundreds of thousands of tons to orbit and more, their proposed size is… just mind boggling."
Hive: "Vaguely based off of Sea Dragon and Super Orions from the 70s, nothing too impossible and built from simple riveted steel in naval shipyards. Simple gravity or pressure fed multiple thermal engine setup with high failure redundancy, water for reusable versions but you can run with salt water if you don't care about engine refurbishment."
Stratt: "Fine, you're on board. Pack your things, miss Hive, our people will pick you up shortly."
Hive: "I'm afraid it is not that easy. I have no credentials recognized by your organization, I prefer remote work and I believe that you'd find my tariffs quite steep."
Stratt: "This is non- negotiable. You will come here whether you like it or not."
Hive: "You know what? Fine. IF you find me and unilaterally contact me. Else, I will contact you after the Hail Mary launch and we can discuss the specifics. Once again, my services are pricey.
The file I gave you already contains everything: engines, rockets, solar mirrors designed for ease of manufacturing and over three decades of longevity, their proposed orbits and even the implementation plans and industrial projections. Only the management is left, and I bet you can handle that without me."
The video call cuts off and the Spin Drive presentation returns to the smart board's screen. Stratt pulls out her phone and dials someone: "We've just had a system breach, I want to know who it was, NOW!"
Video stop:
End of record
Log 6: "The Construction Montage begins"Log 6: "The Construction Montage begins"
Not even a year has passed after the development of the spin drive and humans were already preparing to launch the first major module of the Project Hail Mary. This module is not for the ship, but for the ISS. The first SLS launch was rushed and spent to fling the Venus sample return on its initial interplanetary trajectory. This was the second rocket, and it was produced in record time as even I was surprised with what endless funding and a threat of mass extinction can do to human motivation.
Below the fairing, the SLS rocket was outfitted with a pressurized corridor module crowned with 5 docking ports, one facing in front and four facing to the sides radially, kind of similar to the Harmony 2 node but with an even more extended corridor leading from the docking cluster to the orange tank which wouldn't be separating. Instead, there was a small vacuum stage flipped upside down and placed on top of the upper docking port.
The big orange booster is already designed to launch the middle section into orbit as a whole, just the periapsis of that orbit is around 30 kilometers above the ground and thus the huge orange tank would normally shatter on reentry. This time once the tank is empty it would flip retrograde with beefed up RCS thrusters and fire the additional stage to inject a 65 meters long and 5.1 meters wide high pressure rated cylinder into orbit and slowly tug it to the station where with a lot of pain it would be berthed and the process of conversion would begin.
Special robotic grinders with specialized 0g spark and debris catching devices took several hours to make and polish a neat hole between the docking module and the interior of the core stage once it was thoroughly vented to outer space and filled with inert nitrogen. Then the interior separator wall was grinded down, the oxygen was added and astronauts were allowed to get into the first example of the "wet workshop habitat" to ever fly.
The reason for that is simple: ISS is rated to support 6-7 people on a regular basis with double that during crew exchange. There are also only four spacesuits. This is simply not enough to assemble a starship. Six more spacesuits would be hauled up to the station in the follow-up burst of resupply missions in addition to construction materials to outfit the new volume for prolonged human habitation with soft padding, privacy walls, life support modules, supplies, etc. After all, 14 people might manage to share a couple toilets in a pinch but any more would be really stretching that.
My technology drop luckily wasn't ignored as it only took 7 months for the first phage-thermal rocket engine to be assembled in the US and enter its early testing phases with the Chinese version lagging by a couple months. It was a gamble to call the most important daily meeting in the world like that as they could've just refused to listen and walked out without even hearing the elevator pitch. However, if I didn't do that early enough in the project they wouldn't have the chance to implement the designs and my bet on Stratt's personality paid off.
After all, just a few weeks before my intrusion a certain Norwegian scientist managed to convince her to add a form of spin gravity to Hail Mary's design while being almost out of line while doing so, such as starting with insulting Grace's paper on alternative biochemistries. The final design was identical to the one described in the book as the entire habitat section would detach, flip upside down and extend on two clusters of cables to maintain the direction of gravity identical to the one experienced while under thrust. This would make it a nightmare to dock with while spinning, but it is not like they were expecting to need that capability when alone in another star system.
As expected, every alphabet organization was now on my ass, but they are no match to clarktech cyberwarfare. Even while I regularly post new cracked programs into the Library there is essentially no trace for them to follow. Good luck, my delayed post bot is behind hundreds of proxies! And at the same time I am IN YOUR WALLS in their servers and it is somewhat amusing to see them going in circles as they grasp at nonexistent leads. I wonder how they'd react when they finally find the connection with my vtuber persona because come on, her name is Agatha Hive, I am barely even trying to hide!
Speaking of which, things are going surprisingly well on that front. Simply by running several channels and poking target audiences with the algorithm instead of letting it do the usual "maximize viewing time" or some other arbitrary metric gives big results, BIG results. I even managed to get a couple successful off-channels where I do things like small science lectures or live "engineering" as I was playing around with things like MEMS design software. Even managed to somewhat learn how to sing, although I didn't have the creativity to write something unique.
I've also finally managed to learn just over a dozen of the most used programming languages plus assembler. Regarding the latter, I guess I was feeling particularly masochistic after I organized an "among us" game with some of the randomly picked subscribers. It was great fun but simultaneously very cursed as the voice chat spontaneously and regularly produced audio youtube poops with no editing. Your life like a movie? My life is like youtube poop!
It is also hilarious to think that it took less than a day between someone making a "Hive is very horny" cyberpunk 2077 meme cut after I tried it out and the first NSFW art popping up with dozens of alarmingly high effort pictures following over the next month. I mean, I expected something like that because… internet, but still, just… wow. Judging by the IP, the first artist has the fastest hand in the West… Midlands. Also why does half of that art give my character absolutely titanic "badonkas" while the other half plays on "chest envy" compared to other indie vtubers? A "C" cup is a very respectable near average size, right?… Why is the chat posting "laughing" and "clown" emojis?
In any case, I wasn't sitting without progress either. I decided that I don't just want to send a ship to Tau Ceti and Erid, I need to send a ship to every known astrophage infected star system. If there's life beyond Earth and Erid I would get a chance to stabilize their biospheres. If not, I would lay the foundation for future extrasolar expansion of humanity and Eridians. There are 79 stars within 20 light years of Tau Ceti which roughly correlates to the current spread of the astrophage. That would mean a starship per system at least, maybe more if some end up lost in transit. That's a lot of ships while I don't even have the beginnings of a design but everything has to start somewhere.
Luckily, by this point I've collected enough information about nuclear physics and nuclear weapons to start considering better propulsion options. This has also revealed some quirks in my own nuclear designs, specifically that "fissile catoms" are not really equivalent to conventional fission fuels. A fissile atom like U235 or PU239 randomly decays and produces between 2 and 3 neutrons which hit other fissile atoms and cause those to fission if sufficient mass and density of fissile material is present. This process produces fission fragments which are essentially shards of the atom's core, usually represented by a pair of lighter nuclei like Kr92 and Ba141.
Fissile catoms completely shatter into a shower of protons, neutrons and electrons without leaving fission fragments behind. Instead of producing less than 3 fast neutrons on average, each produces around 140-150 high end thermal (comparably lower energy) neutrons. At the same time, other fissile catoms are tuned to be most receptive to neutrons at that exact energy.
As a result, almost 60% of my nuke's yield is released in neutrons with the rest being mostly hard gamma rays. Essentially every nuke I use is a neutron bomb with prompt radiation pulse being instantly lethal at range comparable to that of the heat pulse. This explains why some of my units which were caught in the blasts "died" before the shockwave hit them, the flood of neutrons fried their circuitry. At the same time, it leaves basically no waste fissile fragments, all lingering fallout would be from neutron and gamma ray activation which would decay to "human safe" levels within just a couple years.
Also, these catoms don't randomly decay, instead they are "pressure sensitive", for the lack of a better term. They are stable indefinitely as long as they are supplied with a tiny quantity of energy for "maintenance" but once the implosion device goes off the pressure rapidly spikes which causes a small quantity of fissile catoms to "burst" which in term initiates the chain reaction.
The catom chain reaction is also at a higher conversion efficiency than normal fission. Fission reactions are 0,08% efficient at turning mass into energy, fusion is 0,7% efficient. Catoms are 0.9% efficient. This means that I don't really need a fusion stage to get fusion bomb performance. Also these catoms are essentially atomic batteries. I spend mass and energy to make them and out of every megaton of nuke I need to spend about 10 kilotons of powerplant energy output for fissile catom synthesis. If I wanted "conventional" nukes, I'd need to build conventional refineries to process and enrich uranium, distill deuterium and breed tritium, all of which I won't be able to send via standard resource uplinks.
Still, this allowed me to make varied yield nukes in a variety of sizes. Smallest 0.2 kiloton versions can even fit in missiles and shells used by T2. Unfortunately the manufacturing speed would drop drastically to the point of not being tactically viable. No one will wait for hours between barrages for frontline units. I'd need to prefab those before the battle and then switch to conventional munitions once the alpha strike is dispensed.
This research has also allowed me to investigate high energy nuclear propulsion options, such as Orion drives and Zubrin Nuclear Salt Water Rockets. I ended up stopping on the NSWR as I still couldn't get the shaped nuclear charge research notes from the US intelligence and while I could do the math, the later nicknamed NSFW drive sounded more fun. The "Not Safe For Work" drive essentially contains a constant low energy nuclear explosion or an equivalent of an ongoing Chernobyl disaster in its exhaust which frees up stupendous quantities of energy.
So much energy that it is in fact harder to prevent the exhaust nozzle from evaporating from all of the radiant heat than to get just disgustingly good performance out of it. The initial design by Dr. Zubrin proposed the use of a layer of water pumped around the inner part of the nozzle to absorb the radiative energy, but it was VERY optimistic from an engineering standpoint even when the research paper was published.
In my case, I essentially tore up the blueprint for the Uber Cannon and the "Catalyst" focusing elements of the annihilaser to engineer a system of containment fields from the combination of magnetic bottling and that weird mass repulsion technology which was also applied in hovercrafts. This was still not enough, and thus the nozzle has received several layers of coolant piping and an additional ablative layer constantly refilled from microfluidic pores that spray on a special catom slurry acting like a graphite based ablator. Theoretically I could've gone for a completely magnetic nozzle with only the superconducting framework covered in "blade shields" to minimize the heat load but that conflicted with the repulsors which require surfaces perpendicular to the applied force.
There was also a problem with shipping the propellant to the spacecraft. My resource uplinks can only transport the basic form of catoms with a limited maximum throughput. If I was to teleport enough materials and energy to the craft and produce the fissile propellant on site the resource management structure would take essentially 90% of the final ship's mass. Local production from resource cores is also out of the picture due to the mass flow requirements. It is not THAT bad when you compare it with other proposed interstellar spacecraft based on theoretical nuclear fusion rockets, but the more massive the system is the lower is the top acceleration of the final design. If I am to catch up to the Hail Mary on arrival, I need hundreds of G-s, the more the better.
My solution is to prepare the fuel at the base and then ship it to the spacecraft via a dedicated miniature gateway about 20 meters wide in the core of the spacecraft. The fuel would be pumped through the wormhole via pipes made from neutron absorbing materials. This would make my rocket very explosive if the wormhole is cut but almost two hundred G-s for the barebone spacecraft is likely worth it. If I launch a year after Hail Mary I will actually arrive slightly sooner, 12 years vs 13.1 for the human ship.
I could've gone for astrophage rockets, but I'd need to get a separate production chain as I can't feed catoms to living things. Simulations show that it would have a toxicity mechanism similar to drinking heavy water: safe in small quantities, but starts messing with organic molecular machinery when it replaces a statistically significant part of the organism. For this reason I will set every catom operating in Earth orbital space to self destruct upon losing command signal and I will limit any plans for Earth landers. Self destruct is not instantaneous as the catom would need to expend its internal battery reserve for weeks until it decays, but it would prevent it from forming bonds with other atoms and it is the default setting for expendable propellants in my pre- existing designs.
I could try replicating my technology with minimal use of catoms (they are mandatory for uplinks and ansibles among other things) but that would be a huge pain at the moment. While human manufacturing technology is advanced, I'd need to optimize it for hard vacuum, highly abrasive regolith and 0g which is a lot of effort compared to just reusing existing resource infrastructure. I'd prefer to wait and nick some more advanced type of matter manipulation tech before I entertain that idea further, something like a complete clanking replicator or a molecular 3d printer.
As a result, I've created the blueprints for the first Chernobyl class Neutron Flux Rocket. It is not really "nuclear salt water rocket" because I am using no salts and no water, the fuel is suspended in a catom slurry to make it easier to handle and to moderate the reaction rates. It is also very much not safe for work as it is absolutely lethal for any organic and insufficiently shielded computer within ten thousand kilometers behind the operating engine and for a more modest two thousand km to the sides. Beyond that range neutron flux rapidly falls to the near background levels (for space) thanks to the inverse square law.
The current design draft for my starship would have a second engine in front of the spacecraft covered by a thick layer of armor. Instead of flipping in the middle of the flight, I found it safer to retract the shield and then immediately ignite the deceleration thruster as the shield itself would be cannibalized by the repair systems. I still need to design the sufficiently accurate point defenses and sufficiently sensitive and powerful lidar and radar, those would have to be in low terawatt range alone to handle the task of detecting dust at high relativistic speeds at sufficient range.
This design would solely power the Linelayers, ships designed specifically to tug a wormhole gate to other stars. They would also tug a bunch of builders but carrying a stripped down "civilian" Helios would make the setup much faster. The Chernobyl drive is a bit too energetic, dangerous and resource demanding to power my other ships though, maybe in the future I'd have a chance to miniaturize it with lower mass flow rates and better materials, but I do still have some ideas on how to improve existing things. I'm thinking resistojets or arcjets since with higher exhaust velocity comes greater fuel efficiency but they still need some more time to be ready. For now my warships and probes would have to live with conventional uplink based chemical rockets.
With my plans requiring more resources than what a modest moon base could support, I decided that I'd need to connect this universe to my home base sooner rather than later, in fact I plan to start gate construction the moment Hail Mary sets off and I poke the world leaders for a quick chat. While I can very easily mine the moon dry and get more than enough materials it would hamper future human colonization efforts as I exploit the easiest deposits. Thus, I need to fire off a probe to Saturn and to Mercury which should be enough to prepare and power the inter-universal gate without straining the easily accessible resources too much.
The (still quite primitively) cloaked fabbers would make their way to the planets over several years. It would take two years for the Mercury probe and more than 6 years for the Saturn probe which was launched from a significantly beefed up custom mass driver as the moon mapping satellites were hacked to mimic software glitches just to keep the concealment. Mercury probe would land in some crater that won't point towards Earth for years and build a gateway which would stay inert until there's no reason to hide. Then I will rush fabbers already prepared on the Moon through it to rapidly industrialize deposits focused around the equator as they are estimated to not be as attractive for early colonists. Since the Saturn probe is expected to arrive around after the Hail Mary launch, it will coast until the reveal, after which it would switch to onboard propulsion to get there faster to also make a gate for fabbers.
I also ended up creating a new type of resource harvesting structure, a "regolith processor". "Metal" resource extractor works at low temperature but it can only digest atoms starting from iron and heavier. Most ores are oxides of metals, so working MEX usually vents things like oxygen and sulfur that it can't process. The gas giant harvester operates at high temperature but the processor core is incredibly hot, so hot in fact that radiant heat pushes away some of the material that you try to shove down its throat causing it to process only a fraction of the harvested gasses.
I found out that if you take the gas harvester's catom factory and lower the core's operational temperature it loses the ability to process hydrogen and helium but it can still process a lot of other common sources of baryonic matter. The core is still approaching 800 degrees during operation but it can now process any atom heavier than carbon. Oxygen is heavier than carbon and thus I can essentially shovel plain rock into the system and get catoms in return!
Of course, things are never without drawbacks. For one, I'll need special drones that would collect the regolith and shovel it into the furnace. They were relatively easy to design but I need to work more on quarrying and terrain modification AI presets so that they don't end up digging random holes and ending up stuck in them.
Second issue is the size and cost. While enabling a new form of resource gathering, this "regolith processor" is huge and expensive. In fact, it is comparable to a Halley rocket in price while having an even bigger terrain footprint. Should I even mention that its infrared signature would be visible from nearby star systems? I mean, it is technically also true of human metropolitan areas and for any kind of torch drive, even Space Shuttle's reaction control system would be visible from Pluto. Still, something to keep in mind…
Log 7: "The Sound of Progress"Log 7: "The Sound of Progress"
April of 2026, about three years before the fated launch of the Hail Mary and the actual orbital assembly of the ship has finally commenced. This is the process which would take the next two and a half years with even several simultaneous 8 person spacewalks planned just to strap the parts together. The ship itself consists of 7 shiny aluminum alloy fuel sections 35 and a quarter meters long and 4 meters wide arranged in an x6 radial bundle around the central fuel tank (think KerbalX side boosters arrangement), each tipped on the "flamey end" with a massive grid of proportionally tiny Spin Drives as each drive unit individually is roughly the size of a rugby ball.
There is no fairing in the world large enough to house an object with these dimensions, so they didn't use any. Each fuel tank will be launched filled with nitrogen for extra rigidity, cracking at 15 thousand kg, tipped with a disposable aerodynamic cone and sitting on top of a heavy booster such as Delta 4 heavy, Atlas V, Vulcan, Falcon 9 (not even a heavy version), European Ariane 5, Russian Angara A5 and Chinese Long March 5B. F9 probably looks the goofiest as its 58 meter height with 35 and a half meter long payload earned it a "noodle rocket" nickname on the internet.
The reason why the fuel tanks are launched empty is because astrophage fuel grows in geometric progression, each cycle's mass depends on previous cycle's mass. The ship would be fueled up only half a year before launch with several separate fuel tankers. There are talks that maybe it would even be fueled by a Starship since its latest iteration had 8 successful launches out of 10 with whole 5 successful catches(rip first Boca Chica Mechazilla lost in an accidental and fiery rocket ramming, it will be missed), but no one will risk with having too much expensive astrophage propellant on a single booster. It if blows up, that's years of fuel lost.
The fuel tank bundle is tipped with a conical service module which carries secondary systems that the crew wouldn't need to touch during the mission such as extra redundant emergency generators, secondary water recyclers, pressurized gasses and a powerful multiply redundant CO2 cracker. The latter is a long successor of the MOXIE experiment which was successfully tested on the surface of Mars onboard the Percy rover. A human needs about 550 liters(0.84 kg) of oxygen per day and the flight would take somewhere around 4,5 to 5 years from the perspective of the crew or roughly 4 and a half tons for the planned mission duration. It was decided that carrying that much pressurized gasses would be impractical.
MOXIE design turns CO2 into oxygen and CO, the same thing that kills you if you forget to replace batteries in the carbon monoxide detector. Cracking carbon completely is an incredibly energy hungry process, but with mass conversion energy storage you have as much energy as you might ever need. For the price of getting a single human to another star system you can run a fully recycling life support for that same human for hundreds of thousands of years even with the barebones barely optimized modern tech.
Unfortunately, they won't be adding food generation capabilities. While theoretically you can make a closed loop with a human and about 2,5 liters of certain algae it is considered that humans are far from replicating a closed loop environment as displayed by Biosphere 2. Plus, that algae is choke full of chemical that induces gout and failing a mission because the entire crew is completely incapacitated by severe gout would be frankly embarrassing.
The service section also carries two structural elements required to support the spin gravity cables. The crew hab would be docked to the service section via a special docking port to link the power, gas and fluid exchange systems during thrust and 0g. For spin gravity the hab section would physically detach and then work off the internal oxygen and power supplies which should last for months of spinning after which they can just redock if the crew finds themselves running out.
Not that it would matter, there's only enough food supplies for something like half a year after arrival. The docking port is also not rated for too much wear and tear as it is not expected that the ship would need to spin up and despin more than a couple dozen times, hundreds at most considering safety margin. In plain words, it is not designed for "permanent habitation". It is a minor miracle that the ship didn't fall apart during the second interstellar flight in the book version, Grace would have an Apollo mission level risk of mechanical failures after 7 years of ship operation.
They did add the atmospheric probe, although the design was altered in a few notable ways compared to my version. My design was optimized for off the shelf components to make it easier to sell as an idea as it is cheap and quick to prototype. Hail Mary's probe would be optimized for long duration high atmosphere gliding with proportionally massive wings. The test article successfully flew for 7 months straight in Earth's stratosphere and successfully boosted into LEO, dipped back down and boosted into orbit again. Unfortunately, the heatshield is not rated for more than 4 reentries so the probe is designed to collect samples from several different altitudes at once so that it only needs to survive once.
There was also a Beetle probe test flight. An F9 booster flung its tiny payload into an interplanetary trajectory after which an astrophage powered kick stage projected the beetle on a sun escape trajectory and then some making it the fastest man made object in history, if you don't count the metal lids from underground nuclear tests during the Cold War, of course. Once it flew past Jupiter, the probe performed multiple navigation tests after which it killed its speed relative to the sun and boosted back into Earth- Moon sphere of influence at constant acceleration where it autonomously entered Earth's orbit.
The last major update is that the first Astro Dragon test article has finally started its assembly in a naval drydock on the west coast of the US. Named after the Sea Dragon launcher due to its size and similar launch profile, it promises to be the largest rocket ever made. It is an SSTO with the capability of boosting up to 700 tons to LEO powered by water breathing astrophage thermal rockets. That's just over one and a half ISS, PER LAUNCH!
It won't use sea water, instead a nuclear powered floating desalination plant derived from Russian commercial "floating nuclear powerplants" would slowly fill it up with distilled water so that it has more than a snowball chance in hell to be reused. It would have enough propellant left to kill all of its orbital velocity which would allow it to reenter like Falcon 9 boosters with minimal heat load.
I honestly didn't expect that humans would actually build something like that, even if its maiden flight would happen after the Hail Mary. It is not quite made from riveted steel as it uses modern submarine grade materials instead, but it is still way cheaper than if it was made from more conventional rocket materials like machined down aerospace grade aluminum alloys or steel superalloy based balloon tanks which are thinner than beer cans. There are even plans to make a version that is twice as big for the future! I guess the permanent human presence in space is all but guaranteed now if they don't kill themselves with easy as hell pocket nukes that Astrophage enables.
The vtubing side of things is also doing pretty well. I was approached by a couple "talent agencies" which I refused. I also ended up doing a few collabs mostly with other indie vtubers, even though I now have an order of magnitude more subs than most of them individually. I wouldn't say that I was a fan of any of them back when I was a human but I knew of some of them mostly due to the memes and highlights videos. Frankly, I'm not a "fan" of anyone, I guess it is just a personality thing. I do enjoy watching some people's content, but that's not quite what "being a fan" is. Maybe it is due to me being "low emotional" or however that's called, I just didn't (and still don't) experience certain emotions as strongly as I probably should. It might be just an observation bias on my part, or I might just be weird that way.
The rampant speculation of how I manage to pull off my machine- like shenanigans mostly died down once my viewers have reached the consensus that there must be a group of people working behind my "face" to prepare and coordinate the various subjects that I discuss as well as controlling the presentation slides behind the scenes as I seemingly summon and edit them with light gestures alone. My capability to stream for 4 days straight without even a single piss break is dismissed with a theory that I figured out how to make several actors sound the same way with a voice changer… or that the actor behind Agatha is an absolute no-life. Ouch, I'll need some virtual burn cream for that one. Aaaaand that's a meme now, great.
Regarding the other news, the solar flux has fallen by an entire one percent and it is starting to wreak havoc on the climate. As the ocean cools, the ocean currents such as the famous Gulf Stream are slowing down which strongly affects the climate in Europe making it much more continental. In other words, warmer summers and colder winters. The United Kingdom and Germany had the coldest temperature record in the last 60 years while it snowed heavily in southern Europe and northern Africa which nearly paralyzed the unprepared local economies for weeks until the mechanized tools could be brought in to resolve most of the effects. Who thought that you'd need central heating and snow plowing vehicles in Egypt, right?
The one decent thing that came out of it is the surge of incredibly funny Frostpunk memes… and that's about it. Earth normal temperature has reached and passed the pre- industrial values this year. The extinction rates of wildlife basically doubled compared to pre- astrophage anthropocene values. Also due to geoengineering efforts of repeatedly nuking the south pole the oceans are cooling down in the polar regions which is decimating arctic krill populations with all the food chain havoc that entails.
In addition, increasing the methane and carbon dioxide levels are increasing acidity of the oceans which is already harming coral reefs and it is even starting to hurt marine creatures that are unlucky enough to have calcium based shells. At a certain point of ocean acidity their homes would literally dissolve leaving them easy prey for other animals. Many nations are running mass genetic repository projects intended to preserve as much data about the wildlife in digitized format before it is gone so that it might be brought back with future technology.
Things will only get worse as time goes on. Geometric progression of astrophage infection would mean that in just 6 years the sun's luminosity would fall to the maximum of 10% which would mean that Earth would start slowly cooling off over the decades until it is just a ball of ice. There are plans to start construction of first domed cities and arcologies in the regions with high geothermal activity but for now they can't be self-sufficient due to the limitations of modern technology. They'll need next to fully automated vertical farms while AI and robotics technologies are not quite at that point yet. Also there are concerns that such projects wouldn't survive contact with reality in the form of armed forces of starving neighbors.
Luckily for them, things won't get that bad. Never fear, for I AM HERE! The people of Earth just don't know this yet. I haven't been sitting on the laurels either as I've been fine tuning the solar mirror designs. The design that I've sent to humans is based on the off the shelf parts that they could relatively easily source. For example, the control unit is based on smartphone chips which are rad hardened with a thin layer of astrophage. In my case, I can afford to go heavier, MUCH heavier. In fact, I can't go lighter than a certain point or the light pressure from the sun would push the mirror out of the lagrange point like a light sail.
My individual mirror units would be much bigger and assembled in situ. A modified unit cannon would fire a "mirror seed" with resource uplink, fabber sprayers and a tiny rocket thruster. It would insert into correct orbit and then it would assemble a massive grid of support girders, maintenance sprayer nodes, attitude control RCS clusters, propellant tanks and sensors before producing a thin and durable layer of polymer with graphene backing and a silver catom based coating for extra reflectivity. Such mirror designs might even form a backbone for the first generation of dyson swarm collectors in the future once I am more confident that I won't "Kessler syndrome" it up.
The Linelayer design is also almost complete. It required significantly overpowered LIDAR and radar setups with hyper- precise fast tracking laser point defenses which I based on "micromirror device" technology for adaptive optics. In essence, I have billions of blue laser diodes firing into an array of literally microscopic mirrors which are individually angled and actively adjusted by no less microscopic actuators. Basically my design works like a cheaper and somewhat fake cousin of true optical phased arrays. This might sound like science-fiction, but that mirror technology has been around since 1987 in cinema projectors.
While individual lasers are comparable to the ones used in blueray disk readers, the entire array the size of the starship's "dust bumper shield" would be capable of focusing the entire beam with the energy of an anti-ship cruise missile per second on a dust mite half a light second away from the emitter. The system would also function as a part of the LIDAR as the focused beam could be split into myriads of individual lasers when there is nothing to shoot down.
Bigger objects can be engaged at longer distances but such a system would not be ideal as an anti- ship weapon. FIrst of all, I couldn't quite figure out how to deal with awful jitter when using pulsed lasers which is not ideal. Also the system's output increases with the cross section making my ship much easier to hit. In addition, such a weapon is significantly hampered by light lag when engaging an actively maneuvering target just like any other beam or unguided projectile.
This technology does hold some promise in point defense systems once it is perfected further. It is actually more limited by my sensors than by its own accuracy to the point where I'd need to send "observation drones" to correct firing solutions in the absence of FTL sensors if I am to use it in warfare, kind of like how observation planes in WOWS work. In simple terms, it is accurate enough to cleanly shave someone's beard on the surface of the Earth from halfway to the Moon, you just need to have some incredible sensors and pray that neither you nor the myriads of mirrors flinch.
The "dust bumper" itself would be almost 20 meters of the densest and most durable armor material I could get along with integration of the catom mass unlocker nodes taken from the "not-quite-energy walls" which would allow for some limited active repairs. Still, the best way to survive is not to get hit. The ship's main goal would be to evade using powerful Verne thrusters first, fire point defense lasers second and only then the armor would block the impact.
The ship would also carry relatively tiny flyby probes which should give me an update on the conditions of the destination systems as they scream through at something like 70%c before self- destructing once they are no longer useful. I'll need to make sure that the flyby happens at a sufficient distance from the star so that the probe won't ram any unfortunate planets with the energy of a large nuclear warhead. While incredibly improbable, it would be beyond embarrassing if I accidentally noscope Blip A with one of these.
As the Hail Mary's launch date rapidly approaches, there is a difficult choice to be made: to warn or not to warn. On one hand, I might save two astronauts and who knows how many other people among the staff. But if I do, Ryland wouldn't go and that might jeopardize the "canon" first contact. Now, Martin DuBois is an excellent scientist who would likely successfully find a way to communicate with Rocky. The question is, would he survive the flight? I ran through the maintenance protocols of the coma care robot and I couldn't find any obvious bugs that would result in the deaths of the other two members. It is more than possible that all three would die, while I know for sure that Grace would survive.
And even if I found and fixed the oversights, would the crew decide to go for the first contact? It is an enormous risk, the ex- military Yáo Li-Jie might not go for it. And even if the crew decided to make first contact and assist Blip A it is highly unlikely that they'd sacrifice the chance of a return trip to haul Rocky home. After all, returning Hail Mary lowers the risk from 1 in 4 to 1 in 5, it is essentially an extra Beetle probe. That's the burden of knowing the "canon plot", the more you interfere, the more it diverges unpredictably.
With a heavy heart I decided to proceed as things would in canon, that way things at least won't get worse. Now, the other question is how do I explain that decision, there's one thing to not know, the other is to know and not do anything. It is less about explaining it to humans since they can't mindread me, more of explaining this to myself. I also can't really warn them before this happens since I shouldn't know the future. If I warn about this after the sample is provided this would already be too late… hmm…
Record PLAY: 18th November 2028 0:30 AM, Baikonur Cosmodrome primary command staff facility, Task Force Director Stratt office, 7 months before Hail Mary launch
People present:
Eva Stratt- Head of Astrophage Task Force and director of Project Hail Mary, provided emergency authority under United Nations
Steve Hatch- A researcher from the University of British Columbia in charge of the development of the "Beetle" data return probes
Video start:
The office is in an old soviet era building and it is relatively poorly lit by modern standards with a window overlooking a dark late autumn night as small lights illuminate a field of military tents that house the staff influx that the spaceport was not designed for. Eva Stratt is sitting at her desk with her back to the window and she listens to the report on the final updates on the Beetle designs as they are destined to launch for Hail Mary integration in just one month. Researcher Hatch goes over the main changes, then some less important modifications and in the end he sums up with the estimates as he requests another week for testing.
Miss Stratt looks through the provided files on her tablet and then decides that the modifications would be overkill and that they can't stall any longer. While the mods would allow the probes a greater chance to fully autonomously reach Earth, they already have enough accuracy to enter the range of the deep space network which would allow for manual guidance.
Just as researcher Hatch is about to leave, Stratt's phone that was sitting on the table rings twice. Its owner stretches her hand to pick it up but she recoils when the phone instantly goes to loud call.
"Stratt! This is Hive, you need to stop the generator training exercise! Request logs show that DuBois and Shapiro requested a sample in nanograms, but lab logs state that they were given a sample in MILLIGRAMS! They're going to blow up half of the facility and themselves!"
The tent town outside gets illuminated as if the sunrise has come, however it is about 8 hours too early for this and the sun doesn't come up on the north- west.
"… fuuuuuck… Nevermind, at least color-code them by concentration next time." says the woman on the phone and hangs up as Stratt's eyes widen. She immediately tries to make the call somewhere but no one picks up. About ten seconds later the shockwave shakes the ground and shatters the glass. Luckily for those in the room most of the shards get caught by partially closed window blinds.
Soon the security personnel barge into the office to see if everyone is alright. Eva has only a couple cuts while Steve is basically unharmed as he was far from the window. Just as the security is about to escort the director out, Hatch mentions that he's surprised that "she works for you as well" which causes Stratt to stop and stare at him for a few seconds.
Hatch: "… what?"
Video stop:
End of record
Last edited: Dec 13, 2022
Log 8: "The Launch"Log 8: "The Launch"
Stream highlight of the year
Clip taken from Ag's Factorio: Space Exploration stream. The streamer is working on a logistic network to balance dozens of "space science" production chains. Ag's model has a stylized version of Factorio:SE MK2 Thrust Suit equipped to mimic the player character's gear in the game which in turn is modded to look like Ag.
Some viewer in the chat: "Even if you don't want to improve your assets, they should at least have more animation"
Ag, almost cracking up: "Even if we don't account for the fact that this is supposed to be a hard-shell chestpiece, what do you think these are made of, Skyrim jelly? Tell me you've never seen a real chest before without telling me… Oh god, I just realized how awkward this would be in a few months. What is going to happen in a few months? Well, you'll have to wait and see."
Honestly, I didn't expect that humans would find my stealth satellites that quickly. It only took one slip up, the data packets were relayed from only one satellite through several ground stations to minimize packet loss because I've set the importance rating of the on- time message delivery above the stealth and allowed the subsystems to handle the rest. It is not that bad since Hail Mary is already constructed and it is launching in less than two months, but I'd prefer for the people to take a bit more of their time before finding my technosignatures. Still, nuclear petrol monkeys are ingenious, can't take that from them.
Computer virus dataminer didn't have a chance to send me the leak before I was contacted. The only warning I had before that was an expedited UN meeting that Stratt has personally visited which occurred in a room with all electronic equipment removed and walls insulated with extra sound absorbing panels and lined with an advanced faraday cage material that I've only seen in military blueprints for EMP protection.
I didn't know what they discussed but it doesn't take a genius to guess. There were representatives of most major nations and regional alliances (for example, in case of UN not every country's representative could fit, they had someone from Germany, France, Britain and someone to represent the rest) and there were several representatives of UN's office for Outer Space Affairs and a bunch of spooks.
Less than a day later I found myself getting a tight radio beam targeting the satellite that I used to call Stratt about the impending accident. It was unencrypted and uncompressed, stating quite clearly that Project Hail Mary, represented by Eva Stratt, was chosen to establish the early form of communications with me.
Of course, it was not phrased that way. They probably ran it through a bunch of linguists and legal experts to make it sound as innocuous as possible, missing anything that can be interpreted as hostilities, just a plain neutral request for communications written in as simple english as possible.
The message was done in steps, they first requested to communicate, I replied with a similarly simple affirmative response and reduced the stealth functions of the satellite resulting in the surface temperature slowly increasing from nearly liquid helium cryogenic to something more reasonable for a spacecraft. The followup human message explained that they have a list of questions that they wished to have answered, the message inquired about my willingness to cooperate on this subject.
I didn't really like such a low bandwidth form of communication, there was an almost 300 millisecond lightspeed delay already and it was obvious that this was going to take a while anyway as humans evaluate and reevaluate my responses before feeding in further questions. I could understand why, they are somewhat scared of the unknown, unsure of how an alien intelligence would react resulting in an overly cautious approach.
Thus, I simply entered their systems to see how this looked from their side. The message was sent from the soviet built satellite communications facility nearest to the Baikonur cosmodrome, a large radio dish was pointed at my satellite and was actively tracking it. The message was being sent not from the mission control as for normal satellite operation, but from the relatively small on- site control room which was supposed to be used during maintenance or if the data cables leading to centralized mission control facilities were somehow cut.
The room was sporting several new wirelessly linked cameras and microphones pointed at the group of people hovering over Eva Stratt who was sitting behind an old computer and inputting commands into the transmitter. She had a notepad with printer pages which were unfortunately too small to read with provided cameras. There were also several wifi enabled speakers in the room, all of the new equipment was modified to almost completely lack cybersecurity features. If that wasn't an invitation, I'm not sure what is.
Video start:
The man in a Russian military officer uniform leans over and asks as the screen updates with a new message: "What does it say?"
Stratt, reading aloud from the monochrome screen with green colored text: "I will answer some of your questions to the best of my ability, but I believe it would be easier if I call directly."
As she reads it, the speakers rasp once startling some of the people present
Speakers: "Hello again, Miss Eva Stratt, representatives from the UN and… Baikonur staff, I believe. I must congratulate you for being the first humans to initiate the unambiguous first contact with an arguably alien entity. I imagine it wasn't easy to find my satellite.
Now, I'd like for all of you to breathe out and relax a little. I know that this is probably being recorded for future generations and you are talking with an "unknowable alien mind", but I'd prefer for you to be less stressed about it. I am more than familiar with human social norms and I understand your circumstances so you don't have to worry about sounding unintentionally or even intentionally offensive. It would be very hard for you to offend me."
The room is silent for a good few seconds as people glance at each other, likely not expecting the first contact to go like this.
The speakers sound again before anyone says anything. "So, as I understand you have a list of questions for me, correct? I don't intend to lie, but I will reserve the right to refuse to answer just in case. You may simply read the questions aloud one by one, I can hear you through the microphones in the room. I'd read them myself but that gopro's resolution is not quite up to the task."
Stratt clears her throat and says: "Very well. How would you prefer to be referred to and what civilization, society or organization do you represent?"
Agatha replies through the speaker: "The name is Agatha Hive, so "Hive" or just "Agatha" or even "Ag" would do. I come in peace, but I don't represent anything or anyone beyond myself, there is no higher organization that I report to. You might find that statement strange, but my circumstances are unusual."
Stratt: "Can you clarify?"
Agatha: "Well, how do I even explain this. I mentioned that I came from a parallel version of your world and that's correct. Our timelines diverge around 2019, you have the astrophage, we had a "mildly" deadly pandemic of coronavirus with around 2% mortality rate on average. It wasn't great, but it proved that mRNA vaccines work pretty well, if only people actually vaccinated instead of protesting against quarantine measures…
The thing is, my last memories of my home are from my version of 2022. I didn't volunteer to be a bracewell probe pilot in some futuristic world, I just went to bed in my home and woke up as a von- neumann machine in some isolated star system with a note in my head stating that I was a non- destructive upload of the original version of me. There was also a bunch of different universal assembler blueprints including a device for extraversal travel and basically nothing else.
In roughly 30 years I built up enough industry to make the extraversal catapult device and it has deposited me cleanly on a collision course with your Moon which is how I got here. I know, the multiverse stuff is hard to believe, but if we end up on friendly terms I am willing to allow for human probes to observe the next activation of the extraversal catapult device."
Stratt: "So you are not a Bracewell probe?"
Agatha: "Depends on the definition. I was a human… or more accurately I am a copy of a human and humans are deeply social creatures. Finding another group of people was paramount for my continued sanity. Thus, one of my main purposes for coming here was to find other people to communicate with. My body probably wasn't built specifically for this, but it still makes me a sort of self- chosen Bracewell probe. I'm sure there is another point of view on this, but I believe there are more important questions than semantics."
Stratt: "And what are your other purposes for coming here? What do you plan to do with humanity once Hail Mary leaves? You insisted on waiting for that before initiating the first contact."
Agatha: "This might take a while to explain. First of all, there were certain goals that were a matter of life or death for me. I didn't have any scientific databases when I woke up, only blueprints that I had to take apart into component technologies if I needed to innovate in the field. I also didn't have any recreational material, just me and the dead void of space. As such my first goal was to recover a copy of basically every intellectual and cultural work that your version of humanity has accumulated over its existence.
You might call it theft, however I couldn't afford to simply trade for it. While I have access to some interesting technologies such as ex nihilo energy generation, there was a risk that your people would prevent the trade of certain technologies and push on my state of desperation to expedite the technology release. I have nothing against giving you my universal assembler technology, if not for the small caveat that every human could then just shovel dirt into a processor which makes universal material and then print out nuclear weapons in their garage. I think you can see the problem.
In addition, the embarkation note in my head has clearly stated that I am more likely than not to encounter outright hostile beings on my travels, so I had to prioritize recovery of all military technologies. Things like your advanced armor, military strategies or, you know, nuclear weapons. I have had my own blueprints for the latter, but without the scientific basis they were a very blunt instrument.
By this point I've already collected enough knowledge that with some effort I could reconstruct the missing pieces. It was the case of "do and ask for forgiveness later", and I do intend to pay you back with more than enough. I already have the infrastructure to launch enough solar mirrors into the Earth- Moon Trojan Lagrange points to entirely offset peak astrophage induced climate change within just 5 years if not faster.
I am also willing to provide every major nation with samples of my technology as long as it is not copyrighted and you promise to maintain safety procedures and somewhat control the technology release to the public. Even seemingly innocuous technologies can be dangerous, for example if I freely spread my FTL communicators they would implode the global stock market which structurally depends on the lightspeed delay for trades.
This is what I have or had to do, there's also what I want to do. I can't describe the current state of humanity in other words than "incoming planet-wide humanitarian crisis". However, I can't argue that the recent events have massively accelerated your technological development. This is the first reason as to why I specifically wanted to wait for Hail Mary to launch. If I simply showed up and started spamming solar mirrors around the Moon would you set up massive astrophage farming efforts in the Sahara desert and construct the first manned interstellar spacecraft in human history? I don't think so.
I want to help you, but I also don't want you to simply return to "things as usual". As such, I offer my expertise in return for limited steering of your technological and infrastructural progress. While I am not a scientist, I am a "speed superintelligence", my mind was augmented to instinctively understand engineering and I figuratively breathe code.
I want you to progress in your space launch capacity as if you had to launch all of those mirrors yourselves. You can use rockets for space colonization and exploration, but they need to actually be built and launched. I want you to move from conventional modern farming towards automated and closed systems such as robotic vertical farms. I want you to start building the first commercial fusion power plants within the next 15 years and I want fossil fuels to be either entirely synthetic and sequestered from the atmosphere or going for total economic obsolescence within 30 years.
I want you to build powerful carbon dioxide scrubbers in your oceans even if I'll be the one doing most of the work of cleaning your atmosphere from excess CO2. I want your oceans cleaned from waste plastics and your new sewer systems preventing any more from being added in. I want humanity to be so rich that no human is ever involuntarily hungry or homeless. I want to leave you in a much better state than what I found you in. Whether all of you want the same is still a question.
The last thing that I want to mention is that I need for the Hail Mary to launch with her intended mission. You may argue that it is no longer necessary as with my assistance Earth won't be as doomed. I want you to launch not because I wish you to "earn" your own salvation and not just because such a historic event would catalyze human interest in space.
The reason is that the solution you'd find would likely be more scalable than my technology. I will need to leave this universe eventually and I don't want to babysit thousands of planets for eons just to maintain solar mirrors in case some world might have bacterial life on it. I intend to send a starship to every star affected with astrophage infection in case they possess biospheres that might be lost to the cooling effect.
A year after Hail Mary launches I will launch a followup high relativistic mission equipped with a traversable wormhole which will allow for the surviving crew to be returned. You may tell the crew with a pre- recorded message to be played upon arrival, but I'd prefer for them to not be informed before launch. I fear that it might cause some unintentional friction which can jeopardize the mission's launch, such as astronauts refusing to board the spacecraft."
Stratt: "I see. Do we have a say in any of this?"
Agatha: "Of course. If the consensus of every major country is for me to leave then I will only roll out the solar mirrors, recover Hail Mary upon its arrival and once the permanent solution to astrophage is implemented I'll pack up my things and leave.
If there is no active FTL communicator that's linked to my command network in your universe then it becomes essentially inaccessible for me. Extraversal catapult shoots almost at random and there are endless copies of every universe, even if I wanted to return for any reason then I would have next to zero chance of returning to this world in particular.
You may also refuse my offer of expertise and I'd leave you to progress at your own rate. You'd be left dealing with ecological degradation and resource depletion on your own. I'd be honest, I would be disappointed but I will respect the decision of an international committee on this subject.
There is also one more thing that I can offer. As I plan to send ships to every astrophage affected star, I will be willing to construct wormhole connections at each end essentially providing humanity with a space highway and communication network across the local stellar neighborhood. I believe that your governments would want to discuss this in more detail, but in exchange I want certain secret documents that weren't digitized.
I specifically want technical documentation from before the 70s, things such as military research and prototype designs, your Shiva Primes and Casaba Howitzers. I wish I could ask for less militaristic stuff, but that's the only thing that is kept secret besides shady government things that won't help me against various existential threats."
Stratt: "Are you aware of any other alien intelligences?"
Agatha: "Not that I know of for sure, sorry. There could've been a potential detection of something that can be interpreted as an astrophage powered rocket around 40 Eridani, but it is more likely to be an instrument glitch or solar corona misdetection on my part. The Fermi paradox is still in power, I'm afraid."
Stratt: "That was… a lot to take in. May I request some time to digest this information and return with more questions later?"
Agatha: "Of course. Just send another tight beam at one of my satellites and I'll reply. However, while we are here, are there any personal questions from the "audience"?"
After about 10 seconds of silence, one person wanted to raise their hand but hesitated and placed it back down before he could raise it fully, they were a security staff member, or at least posing as a security staff member. "Yes, the man in the suit?"
Spook: "If I may, why vtubing?"
Agatha: "Wow, that's… a question. To make the long story short, you know how if someone is stranded on a desert island alone for years they have trouble talking? I had something similar, augmented by the fact that my simulated nervous system integration with the probe was somewhat botched. My control systems are added as brand new sensory organs while my vision, hearing and so on are just dangling simulated nerves not linked to anything. From here it felt like being in a total sensory deprivation room. Alone. For decades.
I don't have the technology to build a body indistinguishable from a human, I couldn't insert it into your society without being noticed and I didn't recover enough motion control to operate one even if I had it. A virtual animated form was basically the only choice besides "text only" and streaming helped me to relearn social interactions.
I'm sorry that your team had to dive into that zoomer hell full of weird fans and motion capture anime girls with voice changers but I couldn't think of anything better. I sincerely hope that your next case ends up being something cooler and less cringe."
Video stop:
End of record
… aaaand the interview is placed under top secret. Was it due to the vtuber part? Well, whatever, there's definitely going to be a "more official" contact with press conferences and stuff in the future. For now, I just need to wait for what they decide, and for now it seems that they would at least accept the part with the Hail Mary launch, judging by the fact that Ryland Grace hasn't left the jail cell yet. Poor guy doesn't want to sacrifice his life for the betterment of mankind, so instead he will be drugged into unconsciousness and then he would get a dose of some wild concoction that induces temporary retrograde amnesia upon arrival. From his perspective, he will live until the launch and then for a couple more months after arrival until he is supposed to starve around an alien sun.
I did a few more streams but I mostly just waited because I had few important things left to do before the launch. By that point I've completed my redesign of military blueprints, my linelayer starship design was finalized, I've finished the full upgrade for my units in the hub universe and I ordered more than enough nuclear fuel relays for the future starships. I even printed out and tested the entire starship for wet dress rehearsal and endurance testing and it was then shot with mass drivers to test the point defenses and then repeatedly cruised through the Homina system at full burn for months.
My main project for a while now has been the development of a full sensory feedback system for both the telerobotics and the virtual bodies. By this point I was pretty close to successfully mapping the tactile sensation as my virtual skin could now determine textures with the "pixel size" of 2 mm^2 and I had some progress with mapping heat sensory neurons even if for now I could only input "vaguely hot", "vaguely cold" and "null". This was better than nothing but still quite far away from the real thing. My efforts in restoring vision and hearing have reached the desired performance and I have fully regained the control over my virtual limbs and fingers years ago. Unfortunately, my work on other senses has mostly stalled.
Humans have more than 5 senses, there's less known stuff like the kinesthetic sense which tells you where your limbs are supposed to be, the senses that tell you that you want to drink or eat or that your blood oxygen levels are low and so on. Pain was easy to map but obviously unappealing to deal with. Then there was the sense of balance, and it caused me the most problems. It is produced by the vestibular organ deep inside the ears and it was relatively simple to find the neurons related to it.
The main issues started when I started pinging them. Did you know that uploads can suffer from intense vertigo? I do now. The disconnect between the perception of movement and lack of visual cues induced the same reaction in my brain as if I was poisoned. Since there was no feedback from the stomach, the reaction maintained itself for hours. Essentially, I had to fight the intense vertigo and the half- gagging sensation that didn't stop for quite a while even after the experiments ceased. I concluded that I want to get the data from somewhere else instead of torturing myself further.
And this means that I don't have the sense of balance, which in turn means that I can't walk like a human does. In the virtual world it is not that important, I can implement digital crutches that would keep me in balance and prevent me from falling. In reality though you can just look at how much effort Boston Dynamics had to put into making a machine move bipedally. Human walk is a constant cycle of falling and catching yourself, and you don't know how to catch yourself without a sense of balance combined with peripheral vision.
Now, I have a lot of walker units and humans have solved agile bipedal locomotion for robots but that won't be "me" walking. I won't have control over the position of my legs and an autonomous system would have to move them for me. Yes, I can program the system to not step on feet and to have walking modes but there's body language in the way you walk and stand. There would be a disconnect in the upper body and lower body behavior, kind of like how legs move in VRchat when you don't have the leg trackers.
Regarding telerobotics, there was one promising option but it wasn't perfect. There are companies that make "robot doubles" of people for movies, attractions, publicity stunts and the like. As an example of such companies there is Engineered Arts from the UK, Tom Scott has a video about them. They scan you and make a special rubber "skin" that you can mount on a robotic head which has the same freedom of expression as a human. Their robots can't walk yet, but it is nothing that I can't fix. The frame would also not allow for a resource uplink, only the control node and the power uplink. Maintenance would have to come from onboard stores of catom slurry.
The issues mainly come from the fact that uncanny valley exists. Even when they added individual hairs, pores, realistic skin tone and deep layered fake eyes that refract the light exactly as human eyes do, the face still keeps creeping out people. It doesn't look that bad from far away and through the camera, but face to face it is noticeable and that's not ideal for diplomatic work. No matter what I say, humans would subconsciously avoid me if I wear a face made with that technology.
There are two ways to deal with it, I either make a face that is so different from a human that I don't trigger the response or I perfect the likeness enough not to trigger the uncanny valley effect. I decided to go with the former. I will simply make a face based on the one I use for streaming with metal plate hair, clockwork eyes and porcelain skin. I kept changing it in a high fidelity simulator until I stopped creeping myself out, hopefully that would help. I couldn't add as many pressure sensors as with the virtual model but it should be enough for handshakes and holding things. Hopefully that won't backfire, in the worst case I can use one of those self propelled segway selfie sticks with a tablet screen.
Humans called me a few other times with minor questions, sometimes it was done through Stratt, sometimes it was done by a representative from the UN and a few times it was done by the "world leaders" like the president of the US who has mostly wished to get acquainted with me. It wasn't done publicly, I was informed that the official statement would occur only after the Hail Mary launch.
Speaking of which, the US is currently having a first female president from the democrats, Bridget Smith. I guess she's more centrist- leaning in the attempt to not be as inflammatory as the previous one but you can't realistically go for US president without being in the big two parties. Since the world economy didn't feel so good from the start of the astrophage crisis no president was chosen twice and the two big parties ended up changing seats during every election. There was Biden until the 2024 election, then there was an old guy from the republicans until 2028, and then there was her. No one that I've heard of before the uploading but it is not like I cared much about US politics. Unsurprisingly, the same people are in charge in Russia and China.
Eventually the day of the launch came, the Hail Mary crew was launched via a Crew Dragon to their ship and placed in medically induced comas. The event was watched across the globe on all TV channels and streamed all over the internet. The somewhat small vessel with the dry mass just below that of the Space Shuttle undocked from the ISS and over the next several hours a dedicated chemically powered tug moved it into a position from which it won't melt anything in the increasingly busy LEO space.
The ignition couldn't be seen without dedicated infrared cameras. While mind bogglingly intense, the exhaust light was still far below the frequencies that could be detectable by human eyes. It was like a tiny invisible star which accelerated the first manned interstellar mission at constant one and a half Earth gravities. This was deemed the fastest prolonged acceleration that humans are guaranteed to survive. Godspeed, brave travelers! I wish I was half as cool as you three.
As soon as the ship left the Earth's sphere of influence, the UN and a lot of major governments gave a notice about the upcoming official address to humanity. The speeches would be synchronized so that the message is released at once to everyone, although the specific subject was not named beyond the fact that it was of critical importance. A similar address was given shortly after the astrophage sample return. I would be making something similar, I've posted a notice on my channels and in social media that I have a very big announcement to make. It would occur a couple days before the worldwide announcement, but I bet that none of my viewers would take me seriously anyway.
Last edited: Jan 2, 2023
Log 9: "The First Contact"Log 9: "The First Contact"
Record PLAY: Monday, 11th June 2029 United States President Bridget Smith's Address to the Nation
Video start:
The recording as per tradition depicts the Oval Office in the White House, President Smith is sitting behind the iconic large wooden table while at the bottom of the camera's view two creamy white sofas and a small table can be seen. The president is a woman in her early 60s, her blonde hair is slowly giving way to the grizzle of aging and some wrinkles are clearly visible above her brow and around her eyes. Some say that she ages faster than she should, but others think that this only makes her look kinder.
"Fellow Americans, we truly live in interesting times. We know that we are not alone in the universe. The astrophage crisis has shown us that life exists not just on earth, not just in the solar system, but in the whole galaxy. Yet, the astrophage is not a truly intelligent lifeform. We remained asking ourselves if there were other species out among the stars like us. Sentient, intelligent, feeling. Today, my fellow Americans, I can answer you this question. Yes. There are others.
Project Hail Mary has not just sent a starship out among the stars. In the course of doing so, we have discovered another starship within our solar system. A starship that was not built by humans. Within a month of the discovery we've managed to establish a two way dialogue with the alien starship and it is not crewed by life as we understand it.
The starship is crewed by a machine intelligence and has no biological crew. Over the course of the Hail Mary project it has provided assistance to our efforts. This machine intelligence has provided us with some technology needed to improve the chances of success of the Project Hail Mary. It has also started the construction of a solar mirror array that will greatly mitigate and reduce the effects of the ongoing Astrophage crisis. Earth will remain safe for the foreseeable future.
The alien machine has also shared its story with us. The machine is an uploaded consciousness of a former biological being from a civilization very similar to our own. It states that it is a first contact probe stranded in our corner of the universe with no contact to its creators. It has spent a time we humans can hardly comprehend in the vast emptiness among the stars. We have established a working relationship with the alien machine intelligence. It is willing to trade information about earth's cultures and technologies in return for the construction of space infrastructure and ongoing support with the astrophage crisis.
My fellow Americans, a new and bright future lies ahead of us. Though the dangers of the astrophage crisis are not yet averted, we will not have to face them alone. We will prevail, together, with our newfound friends among the stars. Thank you. Have a nice evening, and God bless us all."
Video stop:
End of record
Well, this is it. The moment I've both been waiting for and fearing. I became the most famous person in the world. After the UN and most of the major world leaders reported on the first contact the internet just exploded in all manners of discussion. From baseless speculation to intelligent discourse, from what can only be described as "micro- cults" to fearmongering, from deep dives into countless rabbitholes to hilariously horny 4channers.
Over the next week toilet paper and canned food has all but disappeared from the shelves of supermarkets and the sales of firearms have spiked in the countries that widely sold them. Oh also there was some minor violence and rioting, what can one do without it? I haven't streamed since my "priority announcement" and judging by the reaction I should probably give the humans a couple more weeks to cool off.
In the meantime the number of mirror satellites has started reaching low tens of thousands. Even though they are enormous, from Earth they only seem as tiny silver dots that slowly dance in large loops around the two points in the sky along the Moon's path. Over the years swarms of mirror satellites would trace two vaguely porkchop shaped sections of the sky as they fill in more of the stable Lagrange orbits.
Simultaneously with my "second debut" a previously hidden gateway has opened on the surface of Mercury spewing forth millions of engineering hovercraft that rushed to scout equatorial deposits of minerals while a few were diverted to assemble a couple mass drivers to seed the orbital space with first fabbers and shipyards. Over the next two months of exponential replication they'll switch over to mass producing solar panel satellites in Mercury-Sun L1 point (aka directly between the two).
Extraversal gateways don't need ridiculous quantities of matter, at least not the one that I was planning to build. While more expensive than any space structure short of the Extraversal Catapult itself, I can easily supply enough materials to build one with only the Moon's assets. It would almost tank my economy for a month but it is not like my life depends on spamming tanks and spaceships in ungodly numbers.
The main problem is the power supply. To initiate the connection both sides of the gate require a "spark" of about 350 petawatts for about an hour. After that it settles to consuming "only" 120 pW which can be provided from one side. For context, Kardashev 1 civilization is theorized to consume 170 petawatts which is exactly how much energy Earth gets (or more accurately used to get) from the Sun.
I could get that much power by spamming powerplants in space but in the region within the orbit of Venus my solar panels significantly outperform my zero point generators for the same mass. The gas giant probe is mostly a backup and it would be en route for another few weeks before starting assembly of the first jigs as you never know when you might need extra stuff.
Once I link back to my home universe I should have way more resources than I could spend which would fuel mass production of starships. Most factories would be around Mercury, but I'll place one around the Moon. The dedicated shipyard is little more than a frame to house docking ports for construction drones and anchor points to hold the mighty vessel as it is assembled.
Yet there's still more than enough surface space on the main braces for a name spelled in twenty meter tall shiny orange letters stating that this is "Celebrimbor Spaceworks", for it would produce the Ringbearer class ships to tug the prebuilt gate rings to other stars. Is it too on the nose? Nah, Rings of Power flopped anyway and out of the people I knew next to no one has read Silmarillion.
As humanity has observed my rapid industrialization of the Moon and Mercury space over a few months the average emotion that they collectively displayed settled on "unease". People guessed my capability from being a self replicating machine but witnessing industry on that scale is something completely different. A lot subconsciously understand that they are almost completely at my mercy. It is one thing to know that your life might end from an unthinking force of nature, it is completely another when that force of nature has agency.
As a way to get at least some more knowledge and control over the events transpiring in their home system, humans have extended an invitation for further talks. In "person" this time. Before that I used teleconferencing but in the last talks I've slipped that the prototype of my robotic avatar has reached the acceptable performance. A couple days later a T2 dropship would land that avatar at the JFK International Airport in New York where I'll leave it for its permanent post at the UN General Assembly. I offered to go somewhere more neutral but that's where the UN headquarters is situated so Kennedy airport it is.
The body has been ready for a while now, the main hurdle was the long term biocompatibility studies for my materials. No matter what I use it will slowly lose its atoms to the environment. If I did nothing my materials would prove to be mildly toxic and carcinogenic to organic life over the timescales of 20-30 years. "Mild" in this case means "won't pass FDA tests for use in oral and injectable medicine" but I was maybe being a bit too paranoid.
By expending a little bit of the "extreme long term" wear and tear performance I've managed to make any catom flakes sufficiently chemically inert and rapidly degradable not to get assimilated into the biosphere which further lowered the risks. Shards of catom based matter would still behave like microplastics but at least now they'll fully degrade within a decade. Thanks, random obscure settings with no instructions or comments and its billions of friends with seemingly no observable effects in the models, much obliged.
I couldn't really become a member of the UN since I technically don't fall under the list of criteria and I don't really wish to take on some of the obligations that this membership entails. This would also force me to take a stand on every territorial dispute on the planet even by inaction which was undesirable on both sides. However, there are always certain loopholes and asterisks to complicated international agreements of any kind.
For example, there is the Vatican and the somewhat confusing Holy See. When Mussolini signed the deal with the papacy during the formation of the modern Vatican the land was given to the Holy See, not the Pope. In international law the Holy See is considered to be a legal corporate person. As far as the law is concerned, the Holy See is a kind of international corporation of which the Pope is the CEO.
Similarly, the UN and me came to an agreement that for the ease of existing conventions they'll give the "permanent observer state" status to a brand new faction under my absolute control of which I'd be the only citizen. I'll be legally considered as a sort of half person half nation- state. This faction would be called "The Contingent" from Latin for "together" and "to touch" with the modern meaning of "a group of people sharing a feature". Well, "legally" as for the purposes of the normalization of relations. The whole concept of enforcing the rules against me doesn't work well as Earth has nowhere near the capacity to threaten me with anything but a strongly worded letter.
It was difficult to come up with something coherent for the name and it was decided that references to my personal name, my nature or transhumanism concepts should be avoided. There was no cultural or regional word that could be used since I had neither culture nor permanent territory. As amusing as a "Lunarian Hivemind" would be, such a name would quickly become outdated beyond just being embarrassing and factually wrong as the "Hive" part is just a surname.
Eight months after my existence became public knowledge a small object was fired from one of the mass drivers on the Moon and within less than a day it entered Earth's atmosphere above the Atlantic ocean. This object was a prototype of a T2 heavy lift transport, a vague analogue to cargo helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft like the Osprey of Earth but significantly more advanced and intended to carry vehicles between combat zones, continents and potentially even from and to the orbit.
This design is air breathing and powered by two electrothermal turbines augmented by a resource uplink to be used for remass for orbital insertion and maneuvers. Its VTOL was more akin to a mechanism used in a Harrier with the engine output redirected into articulated ports on the sides of the aircraft's body instead of articulating the turbines themselves or adding an extra VTOL only engine. That would've dropped the fuel performance but it was electric powered remotely and this was simpler in some aspects and it looked more streamlined.
The craft was painted mostly in white and orange color scheme but its upper surface was shiny and rounded to accommodate its role as an integrated heat shield. It enters the atmosphere back first which protects the cargo from the intense heat allowing for most appropriately sized units to be transported "naked", but in this case it had a box- like attachment for a much smaller and more fragile cargo.
Within ten minutes I had an escort of two now slightly venerable F-35s that had been waiting on a carrier off the shore of the US in the region that I'd announced in advance. I had to land on the carrier where a bunch of people in hazmat suits awaited my avatar with every chemical and radiological sensor known to mankind. It was mostly a formality since it was a fully synthetic robotic body but I can't blame humans for being careful.
Almost half a day later I was cleared to continue the flight to the JFK airport again with fighter escort where the dropship was directed to a helicopter pad. A select group of reporters along with security personnel could be seen from the air along with a government motorcade parked nearby with even more security keeping less authorized paparazzi and onlookers away.
Record PLAY: Monday, 17th September 2029, Associated Press reported live news feed
Video start:
The video starts with the camera pointed in the direction of a helicopter pad from some respectable distance. There is a small group of security personnel in suits surrounding two well groomed men over 60s, one is the current UN secretary general Noel Rupert from Switzerland and the other is UNOOSA director Lawrence Pollard. The camera man is standing in a small crowd of people with the reporter woman in official clothes standing in front of the camera and holding a microphone with Associated Press written on the sides. More reporters can be seen nearby, the closest one is a man in a suit with black hair from the BBC but there must be at least a dozen others.
The woman introduces herself as Lara Bauer of Associated Press news and states that mere minutes from now a representative of the Contingents will land in front of the cameras. As she says that the camera pivots away from her and looks above as a large VTOL aircraft approaches the landing pad on the streams of air that are experienced by humans as strong gusts of wind causing some to protect their eyes with a hand, hold on to their hats or in case of some of the women to struggle with controlling their long hair. It is loud and sounds like jet engines.
The aircraft has a chunky but aerodynamic lifting body with articulated wings and V shaped back fin. The wings are proportionally somewhat smaller than the body and once they rotate towards the tail they come flush with the lifting body frame making the aircraft look vaguely oval. It has visible armored air intakes in front that look like they can close if needed and two jet engines can be seen from the back.
Hanging below the aircraft is a somewhat aerodynamic cargo hold that is visibly different from the rest of the frame. While somewhat rounded it is not optimized to be a part of the hull and a seam can clearly be seen between the airframe and the cargo bay suggesting that it is either detachable or modular. The VTOL thrust vents are positioned on the sides of the cargo attachment point and the thrust from redirected engine jets keeps the large aircraft in the air.
The VTOL stops over the helicopter landing spot, turns its back towards the reporters and proceeds to slowly land. It is not the largest aircraft ever seen but it is rivaling the size of the biggest heavy lift helicopters. Once it lands, the backside of the cargo box opens and forms a ramp. The interior of the huge cargo box is empty, short of a single person with an armored suitcase that proceeds to walk off the ramp towards the UN representatives.
The Contingent representative is a humanoid resembling an earthling woman, she is a meter eighty tall (5 foot 9 inches) and dressed in a black official suit with shoes, pants and a tie. The suit also has a nameplate and an unfamiliar insignia on the left side, but it is as if anyone could mistake her for anyone else as that's where human resemblance ends.
Her skin is of porcelain white color with no imperfections and her hair consists of solid reddish metal plates fashioned to look like a single neat ponytail. Being solid objects, they don't move much with minor exception of the ponytail part itself which appears to be on a hidden ball hinge but it is too heavy to react to the wind and moves mostly from inertia or gravity. Her eyes also either glow in dim green or reflect light like cat eyes.
The robot person smiles and shakes hands with both representatives once she reaches them. The representatives and her exchange a few words that can't be heard due to the distance and sounds of the jet engines winding down. One of the representatives nods and the robot woman half turns towards her aircraft and gestures "up" with her right index finger. The ramp lifts up and seals as the jet engines completely shut down. She turns back to the representatives and says something short which can be lip read as "we can go now".
The group starts moving towards the motorcade and reporters follow after them. One of the reporters ends up lucky as the group passes her closer than other reporters and she uses that opportunity to try and squeeze in a question or two. The security tries to prevent the unscripted interview but they allow for one question once the robot lady starts replying. Associated Press reporter ends up close enough for the directed microphone to catch the conversation.
Reporter: "Liza Gray from CNN, what is the Contingent's connection to the Astrophage?"
Hive's avatar: "There will be a press conference later, but I'll answer this one question. The relation is indirect and inverse of what you're expecting. I am here partly because of astrophage's effects on humanity. It is NOT here because of me, the "space algae" is unfortunately spreading under its own power. Ask specifics during the conference" she says with the emphasis on "NOT".
The security doesn't let the reporter squeeze in another question as the robot lady and the UN representatives are escorted further along where they board one of the cars in the motorcade. The vehicles shortly set off and headed towards the UN headquarters.
Video stop:
Mild commentary:
Agatha's smile and wave towards the group of reporters becomes an immediate meme as the internet collectively considers it adorable. Usually with the format of
Ag's vtuber robot girl avatar/ finger pressing on a blue button labeled "UPGRADE" Ag's vtuber but fully human avatar/ finger pressing on a blue button labeled "FUCK, GO BACK" Blurry ass single frame of a news recording as Ag's avatar goes down the lander's ramp/ finger pressing on a blue button labeled "I SAID GO BACK" Ag smiling towards a camera as she's entering a black car/ finger pressing on a blue button labeled "PERFECT, NOW SAVE"
End of record
Last edited: Feb 5, 2023
Log 10: "What could possibly go wrong?"Log 10: "What could possibly go wrong?"
All things considered, it has been a calm and successful decade. I achieved my goals of grabbing human technology and media while fulfilling my need for human contact and entertainment. Humans have succeeded in doing what was by all accounts near impossible with the launch of the first interstellar spacecraft while displaying unseen before international cooperation. Note to self and any of my future copies: slap me if I ever think that ever again. Shit has gone from very good to fucking awful, but it would take a while to get to that part. Let's start chronologically with the good news.
Since the last entry I've successfully landed a remote controlled robotic body on the surface of Earth and since then I've participated in more conferences and meetings than I can bother to count. All in all, humans have come to an agreement to take me up on my offer but very gradually, building up trust and all that. I wouldn't be dropping massive terraforming engines to scrub CO2 from the oceans and atmosphere just yet but many nations are willing to invest in mass infrastructural and RnD projects.
It is almost the 2030s after all, the "fourth industrial revolution" is upon them and developed nations are entering early stages of struggling against mass structural unemployment. Technological revolutions are not caused by technology being developed but by technology becoming mass market available. Robotic and AI systems are sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly replacing top 30 most in demand jobs while not creating new ones quite as fast.
Industrial 3D printing in building construction is almost semi- economical at mass scale, self-driving cars are rapidly replacing truck drivers and "lights out manufacturing" factories that keep like 6 maintenance and quality control employees total for the entire production chain are becoming more and more common. There's an old soviet joke: "In the future every factory would have machines, a single worker and a guard dog. The worker's job would be to feed the dog and the dog's job would be to not let the worker touch the machines."
Unemployment in the US is almost 10% with similar results seen among the rich and developed first world. The richer and higher tech your economy is the higher and faster your structural unemployment rises. For comparison, peak unemployment during the Great Depression was around 12%. Some countries like core EU members have established industrial robot tax which fuels a variety of Universal Basic Income programs, but other countries have their legal systems lagging behind.
Projections show that depending on the country and certain economic assumptions, peak unemployment with current technological base can be anywhere between 20% and 40% of all of humanity. What governments want is the time to deal with this structurally, in the meantime they need jobs and there's no better way to make jobs and bolster the economy than huge construction projects of economic infrastructure! If the problem can be solved by simply throwing money at it then it is not a problem. The EU is already building the largest bridge in the world across the Gibraltar strait while China is most of their way to phasing out coal with a surge of natural gas power plants and a sprinkle of nuclear energy.
Not every nation is interested in the same thing equally. India and China are very interested in the "self sufficient city" concept where automated robot farms and sewer recyclers create a closed loop that only requires energy, maintenance and intermittent input of materials. The project would consist of two elements: "modular robotic farms" and "SWO water treatment systems".
Robotic farms were a thing for about 4 years now but they are quite expensive and rely on retrofitting existing farms with robots and internet of things sensors that can monitor every plant and microdose each one of them with just enough water and fertilizer. The issue is that farming before this point was a min-maxed technology, it is hyper optimized to save human labor and squeeze out productivity at the cost of nearly everything else.
Farms consume huge swaths of land from the local ecologies which causes deforestation and habitat loss. They require massive input of resources to be viable long term and use these resources very inefficiently with most of the fertilizers getting washed off into the oceans. To note, phosphorus is a limited mineral resource on land and it is running out, so if you don't want to sift the oceans for it then it should be recycled. Still, there is enough existing farmland on Earth currently to feed almost 11 billion people with over 8 billion currently alive.
Robotics opens up a way to disregard labor costs which allows for agriculture to be min-maxed for other aspects, mainly production and efficiency. When you remove humans you can also optimize the environment for plant growth. A sealed room full of hydro or aeroponics can have increased CO2 concentration to increase the growth speed of plants, it can use hyper efficient LED lights tuned for frequencies most easily absorbed by plants(a shade of red if anyone is curious) and you don't need any pesticides if no insects can get in anyway with any breaches to disease or pests easily quarantined by the modularity.
This is the idea behind "vertical farming", although you don't need an expensive skyscraper and you can just make a wider single layer greenhouse. My goal with the development team is to design a universal module for growing most crops and then to hyper optimize it to be as cheap and off the shelf as possible. An autonomous aquaponics version would also be designed for protein purposes along with farms for industrial and cash crops.
Alternative system that would also be investigated is industrial bioreactors. Many people misunderstand what "reactor" means, it is a device where "reaction" happens. Chemical reactors contain and control chemical processes like production of polymers, nuclear reactors control fission or fusion chain reactions and bioreactors control and regulate industrial use of bacteria which are basically naturally occurring nanomachines. You pipe bacteria feedstock in and filter out the desired product.
Most common form of bioreactor has been used by humans for millennia to brew a variety of alcoholic drinks, but recently (as in within the last 30-40 years now) it became possible and then economical to gene modify bacteria to produce a huge variety of desired chemicals. This is how a lot of medications are made, most importantly biological derivatives like insulin, human growth hormone and other hormones, proteins and even antibodies. Industrial organic chemicals can also be replicated such as certain types of polymers and even spider silk proteins that are now implemented in smart clothes and modern military overalls. If you can make those, why not food?
Well, you can but with some caveats. Using algae for food like Spirulina and Chlorella has been a sci- fi staple for decades since it is edible and just over a liter of algae theoretically makes enough oxygen for a human and can theoretically form a closed life support system. Unfortunately some algae is rich in anatoxin which is known as "Very Fast Death Factor" for a reason, all other edible algae is rich in nucleic acid to such a degree that eating more than 50 grams a day risks developing gout. Current genetic engineering hasn't succeeded in lowering the dosage at the source and it is expensive to separate out.
If you use bacteria you get a slushie of a single component and certain chemicals are difficult for a bacteria to be genemodded to make. Protein synthesizing bacteria were a thing in early prototype stages even in my original world, same goes for carbs, fats, sugars, etc. It might be possible to make a bioreactor for each component of foods and then to mix them into a slurry that could theoretically sustain a human kind of like that "soylent" drink project, the real company not the fictional story it is named for.
A slurry that NEXT TO NO ONE WOULD EVER DRINK. Solution: food 3d printing. Make bioreactors that produce capsaicin, sugar, fructose, MSG, a bunch of other food additives and make a fancy 3d printer mix it up as it prints as a sort of edible ink. If I wanted to print a burger I'd probably need a robot kitchen that would take printed buns and printed patties to be cooked and assembled separately but this promises to be so dirt cheap it is not even funny. The texture and taste would be a bit off, but with the rise of printing resolution this should become less and less of a problem. Also as a bonus you can decouple food from its content and do things like lower calories for the same size and same tasting meal.
To close the cycle there needs to be a way to recycle human waste. After preliminary studies I decided that the most fitting technology is "Supercritical Water Oxidation". It is already used for disposal of highly hazardous chemical waste and literal chemical weapons. The concept is simple, at certain temperatures and pressures water becomes a weird kind of half gas half liquid.
The solubility behavior gets reversed and things that usually dissolve in water fall out of it while the water itself rapidly turns everything reactive into a variety of salts, nitrogen and CO2. It can happen around 250 degrees, but most SWO reactors work at 700-800 degrees which fully degrades every known type of plastic. It works on any organic material so it automatically sterilizes itself from any bacteria or viruses. The waste water output is even theoretically safe enough to drink once you filter out the salts.
If it is so good, why is it not used? Well, the problem is threefold: it is relatively power hungry, it requires fancy chemically inert high temperature metals and it keeps getting clogged. All of the salts falling out of the solution plug the holes designed to add waste and remove treated water. The power is a non issue since other projects would make it beyond abundant, material requirements are a question of front investment and I am pretty sure that I can manage to design it in a way that automatically cleans itself out and minimizes buildup in undesirable areas.
The United States and EU were more interested in power and carbon sequestering and I had a few solutions for those as well. First of all, I have a few designs for warm temperature superconductors which would minimize the losses on transmission. While the highest performance version is a bit beyond human manufacturing (multilayer nanotube containing 120 GPA molecularly structured fancy nanoalloy) cheaper units had samples of cheaper and worse options, including a funky yttrium based alloy that is superconducting up to 60 degrees Celsius. Mass use is mostly a question of production buildup and can happen without my oversight.
By 2030 fusion experiments have yielded enough data for first commercial fusion reactors, unfortunately the design and testing phase would take another 25-30 years before first commercial fusion powerplants get mass implemented. I can run instantaneous simulations of any design which should shrink the rollout time to within 6 years on average after which I can optimize it for ease of production. Warm temp superconductors and existing magnetic bottle designs on my side do help a lot.
Unfortunately, fusion reactors are not as good as people sell them to be. It is mostly because fission reactors are not that bad but can't be used widely due to the need to push through decades of fear mongering and bad press. For one, fusion reactors DO explode. Not in a nuclear fireball of course, but there is such a thing as "superconductor quench" when it suddenly stops being superconducting and dumps all electric energy into a single spot causing something comparable to chemical explosives. They are also neutron rich environments which cause the entire interior of the reactor to become high grade nuclear waste which glows for between decades and up to a few hundreds of years.
This is a blessing in disguise since things like thorium reactors require a strong neutron source. You can do a hybrid system where you feed thorium or depleted uranium into a specially built fusion reactor to digest waste from conventional nuclear powerplants and to burn fuels that normal powerplants can't. I'd still need to oversee creation of factories for production of reactor components along with investments in larger scale deuterium extraction but pure and hybrid fusion designs look the most promising.
The last highly promising power and environment project is synfuels. It is possible to turn CO2 into a variety of petrochemicals at the cost of energy roughly in proportion of 4 to 1, for every joule of chemical fuel you spend 4 joules of electricity. Well, 3.8 something if we use 2030s most advanced catalysts. This is still very attractive because chemical fuels have significantly higher energy density compared to batteries. You can have a renewable or nuclear powerplant scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere or ocean and produce synfuels to be used for plastics or for burning in peaker powerplants which makes it carbon neutral. Hell, you could probably have a small synfuel factory in your garage and use roof solar panels to make gas for your car or power a generator at night. I'll need to work mostly on the carbon capture device and on optimizing for cheap mass production with this one, but it was decided that mass public access to astrophage would not be desirable.
There are of course almost a dozen other projects like smart electric grids that store excess power in household batteries or mass ocean plastic cleanup but these were the main ones. The talks took almost half a year of intermittent discussions before plans were finalized and documents signed. There were nice banquets during which I wished I could taste. There were also numerous press conferences.
Of course, one of the questions was about UAPs and UFOs. I think that the reporter was disappointed when I said that I had no idea what those were. I mean, they are unidentified, it is in the name. I can't back calculate anything new from a grainy ass and decades old images. Interestingly, there is a Galileo project that has spent the last 7 years looking for what those were and they discovered a funky type of high altitude ball lightning, but that didn't account for every UAP case. Cases hint on multiple causes, but I highly doubt that "aliens so advanced that even I can't detect" can be on that list.
I ended up streaming a few times and somewhat surprisingly the number of my viewers sextupled over 3 months of hiatus. Being a real alien does that I guess. For a while the streams ended up turning into Q&A sessions where I was asked stuff by random viewers. A bunch of people wanted to know my views on politics and religion and stuff to which I evaded answering.
I stated that if I reply honestly then a bunch of people would change their views to align with me just because I'm an alien and not because I'm right, at the same time a bunch of other people would start to strongly dislike me and whoever decided to align with my views. However I have a single advice that I try to personally live by: "Your views are not what you are. They are just things that you have, like keys or a phone. You need to be ready to replace them if you find something better. The only way to always be right is to always have the capacity to change your own mind"
An amusing highlight was when someone asked me my opinion on r34. There was a running joke among the fanart community that I'd use my awesome superintelligence powers to find and punish people who drew porn of me. The common response was "Then we'll die braver than most!" followed by a spike of NSFW artworks which I found absolutely hilarious. I stated that I am neutral on the subject, r34 is the inherent cultural aspect of the internet and I knew what I was dealing with then I started streaming.
Among other news, Star Dragon has launched for the first time with a massive payload of structural elements into orbit where it was awaited by three unmanned SpaceX Starships with semi- autonomous telerobotics equipment. United Nations Space Agency, a new organization created from the remains of Project: Hail Mary, has decided to use the massive launch budget of an astrophage thermal rocket to start construction of the first space station to be "truly built" rather than launched in prefabs and docked together. Don't mistake it for UNOOSA, that one deals with managing space related agreements while UNSA actually launches things into space.
The design is vaguely reminiscent of the Gateway, the kind proposed by the Gateway Foundation that initially didn't pan out beyond early prototypes for financial reasons. Like seriously, who thought that it was a good idea to fund space construction with a lottery? It would be a large torus built in three sections: a zero G docking and microgravity section, a Moon gravity ring and a Mars gravity ring. The zero G section would be built first with spin gravity elements added "eventually" years down the line once the central part is thoroughly tested.
Interesting fact is that it is designed in most part for development of microgravity and low gravity industries with space research coming second. There are certain processes that are easier to do without gravity and in the 2030s there is even a small industry for single use fabrication satellites that go into space, make the item and then deorbit with the product.
The most important 0g industries are monocrystalline metallurgy used in electronics and high performance parts like jet engine turbines, extreme precision 3d printing and 3d printing of biological organs with the latter being the only one that's economically viable with the single use satellite method. On Earth the biggest thing you could bioprint is millimeters thick and used mostly in skin grafts while in space they managed to print a whole heart, most of an entire liver and even functional reproductive organs of both types from a sample of stem cells.
The Star Dragon has launched enough material to finish the core superstructure and about ⅛ of the external hull of the station. There a special robotic rig would be fed by cold gas propelled robotic tugs and manipulators where it would use robotic manipulators and electron beam welders to assemble sections of the structure. A set of other tugs would position the pieces and special teleoperated robots would attach them with special bolts and then weld them together.
Once the hull is fully assembled a large team of astronauts would be shipped into orbit on several TerranR rockets to finish the assembly of the internal subsystems of the station after which it would be pressurized. Ironically, Starship was rated to carry humans in space, but not to launch or land them so a separate SpaceX Starship would act as a home for the crew from where they'd do EVAs in less bulky spacesuits as they would be protected by the station's shell.
On my side after 11 months since the first contact I've finished construction of the extraversal gateway and successfully ignited it which linked my resource network to the Homina system. The gate is of quite unusual design, it is not a ring but instead a frame made from 3 rigidly attached rings similar to an ancient astronomical instrument called Gemma's rings. Each ring is a braid of several hundred pipes reminiscent of the internal systems of the extraversal catapult but much simpler and smaller. Unlike my gateways, the wormhole here is spherical and weird "surface" distortions make it difficult to see through. In comparison, my normal gateways are see-through and the blue glow is due to the plasma window which keeps the atmosphere from flowing through the gate.
Shortly after the connection was established, the first Ringbearer class Linelayer dubbed "Frodo Baggins" was launched on its interstellar journey towards Tau Ceti to huge fanfare of space enthusiasts. It was so bright that it was visible with the naked human eye during the day for almost a week and then for several months longer during the night. Second ship dubbed "Samwise Gamgee" set off towards the 40 Eridani star system three months later. "Tom Bombadil" would set off towards Alpha Centauri system and "Isildur" was launched towards Wolf 359. Other ships would be built around Mercury and won't be named, there are only so few canon ring bearers in LOTR.
Now with all of that out of the way, let's talk about the bad news, specifically Russia. I should've been suspicious of the strangely cold shoulder from the Russian diplomats in the UN. Over the last decade Russian assistance in the Hail Mary project could not be understated, and in return the UN didn't look much into what was going on inside of it as long as things were going smoothly on an international scale. In turn, the Russian Federation has quite rapidly moved closer and closer towards authoritarianism following the trends since 2014.
The "lost" generation of mostly wealthy people with "western values" who were born in the 90s were persecuted and not allowed to take any positions of power while access to information was more and more limited and more and more controlled to the point where the Russian internet was separated off in 2027 into something resembling the Chinese Great Firewall.
When all you've had is a TV where every channel tells you not to trust the internet because it is "entirely in the pocket of the West" then you wouldn't get internet or you'd discard opinions on it that don't fit your worldview. The quality of food has decreased and electronics got significantly more expensive as the Russian government implemented "sanctions" which targeted their population more than the perceived rivals abroad.
The government has also decided that the "lack of patriotism" is due to the lack of ideology, but political ideologies were banned in the original and then the second rewritten constitutions. Their approach was to use the church. Heads of the Russian orthodox church were entangled in politics while spirituality got pushed on governmental propaganda level. In most cities there were now significantly more churches than schools. I am not against religion, heck, my progenitor was baptized by Russian orthodoxy but this was just nasty.
All of that was a thing to a lesser degree in my original reality as well, it was just allowed to fester here for another decade resulting in one huge mess that no one cared or knew how to fix. I didn't want to touch it either, even though it left a very sour taste in my mouth, I couldn't do much without antagonizing most of the world for what would seem as "no reason" when there were worse examples of authoritarianism in North Korea and other places.
When a buildup of Russian armies started happening again at the Ukrainian border it initially had even less of an international response than in my original reality. The two small slices of the blue and yellow neighbor that were cut off previously were already integrated years ago in sham votes which were internationally allowed to happen because Russia was providing a ton of resources to the Hail Mary project and because it would've been hypocritical as a lot of major nations planned to subsume their neighbors to provide the food during an upcoming famine.
The EU wanted to integrate regions in Northern Africa, the US planned to merge with its two land neighbors and China wanted into Korea and towards Thailand. Those wouldn't be literal invasions, more like somewhat forced "integration into a regional alliance" with "farming subsidies" and "security oversight", but the tanks and troops option wasn't discarded outright by anyone. It was generally expected that Russia would be allowed to integrate most of the former USSR as long as it doesn't fuck with the rest of the upcoming neocolonialism. That notion was dropped shortly after the first contact, but apparently someone forgot to tell the one particular balding dictator.
I made a personal message to the head of Russia stating that if an invasion happens then I will get involved, to which I received mostly the usual political nonsense and denials of involvement. Everyone expected that the Russian armies showed up to clang their swords for a while and get a bit of territory before they fucked off again like with Crimea, but to my total lack of surprise they fully invaded in March of 2030. What I didn't expect is what followed.
I maneuvered an observation satellite into low Earth orbit above Ukraine to take a high resolution lidar map of the state of the region and sent a demand for immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of an independent state "or else". In response a single Russian jet launched a missile at my satellite in vertical climb. The satellite was unarmed, had a fraction of a fraction of a g worth of acceleration and couldn't dodge away, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because that asat missile was… sigh… nuke tipped.
What the literal fuck?! Have you not heard of the Escalation Ladder? It was completely unexpected by everyone, apparently including most of Russia's own command structure. The response was global condemnation and mass sanctions that exceeded those that occurred in my home reality, but the world economy is too intertwined and you can't just cut off a piece of it.
Russian gas and oil are still required for cheap production of goods and are still one of the main sources of power in Europe, no thanks to Germany ditching their entire nuclear industry like complete populists. Russians are also the only ones with experience in building nuclear reactors in modern times and Russian companies provide the best components related to both commercial nuclear fission and nuclear fusion research which limits what industries could be sanctioned.
The Russian government has given me an ultimatum, essentially stating that the existing Russian government is Russia itself and it will defend itself with nuclear weapons if its existence is threatened. They will consider any of my space assets closer than geostationary orbit as a direct threat to the existence of Russia. It wasn't stated in plain words, but essentially they threaten to launch nukes at third party civilian targets if any of my orbital units move into the exclusion zone or if units already in the region replicate or build themselves up. "This is a peaceful universe" I said, "Whom am I going to fight?" I said. Fuck me…
This was completely unexpected because this is complete and utter lunacy. You are antagonizing an entity that is significantly more powerful in the worst possible way. I am surprised that this wasn't stopped anywhere in the chain of command. There is the advisory group, the command staff, several layers of commanding officers and the jet pilot actually firing the rocket, none of them stopped this insanity.
If I was anything but current me this wouldn't have worked and there was no way for them to reliably know how I think. If I was slightly more advanced I could've probably snipped this problem in the bud by completely decapitating the Russian government before they could launch anything. If I was slightly different I could just call their bluff or say "fuck it" and invade them regardless of the nuclear strikes since I'd win anyway and I definitely wouldn't be the bad guy.
But I am me, and even if I am sure they can't afford to follow up on their threats, something tells me that this was not just a random decision of a madman and his bootlickers. I think this might be… ROB shaped. I am not a person to throw out wild accusations, but I've spent a decade doing random stuff instead of fighting apocalyptic wars and I am embodying an "apocalyptic war fighting machine" because a ROB was bored, so I feel like ROB might be behind this weirdly perfect storm.
The nuclear detonation at low orbit has also resulted in certain regions of near Earth space getting flooded by ionizing radiation. While ISS, Orbital Reef and the new Orbital Gateway station are unaffected, almost a quarter of low orbit satellites such as inner constellations of Starlink have malfunctioned in some way and the number of affected LEO sats is expected to rise over the next several months resulting in the complete loss of several low orbit swarm constellations followed by limited LEO Kessler syndrome.
I can't easily counter this situation. I can spam unit cannons on the Moon and drop so many tanks into the region within a week that there wouldn't be a patch of land without armored units but that would be moot if nukes start flying before the tanks even land. I can build anti-nuke missiles, but they would take 50 minutes or more for the interceptor to reach the ICBM launch from geostationary altitude. By that point the warhead would already hit. I can't even build up from what I have on the ground because my avatar doesn't have a full resource uplink.
Still, I can't not respond. Beyond innocent lives being lost every minute that I'm not interfering this behavior just can't be allowed. If it is allowed, then maybe China or North Korea or someone else would want to use the threat of nuclear terrorism to force me to do something. No, my response must be and has to be massive to deter all forms of future aggression.
Record PLAY: March 2030, unknown bunker complex in the United States
Video start:
The large room is full of military officers working behind computer desks surrounding a large dark wood oval table placed in a large step in the floor in the center. On one side of the wall there is a large projected screen showing the map of the world as well as multiple windows opened on top of it. One is a feed from a satellite observing a cloud of radiant gas expanding in the skies above Ukraine and inducing an effect vaguely similar to aurora borealis. Other windows show spysat feeds of the region with icons highlighting armored divisions crossing the border and engaging with Ukrainian border patrols. The central one displays a live transmission from the Contingent representative which has been talking for some time now.
President Smith bursts into the room with several advisors arguing between each other regarding the unfolding situation while being uncomfortably herded along by secret service. Several high ranking military officers salute the president and start briefing her on the recent developments as she was awoken during the night and whisked away into the command bunker.
Contingent representative on screen: "… I could have forgiven the use of a conventional weapon, but the offensive use of a nuclear warhead can't be interpreted in any other way but as an act of war, regardless of its target. As such, since today, 11th March 2030, the Contingent declares war against the Russian Federation. This war will continue until the current Russian government ceases to function and is brought in front of the international tribunal for their crimes in this war and the crimes against their own citizens. This conflict will continue for as long as it takes.
In light of the explicit threat of the use of nuclear weapons against third party civilian targets by the Russian state, it was decided that this war can't be prosecuted by conventional means. As such, my first action would be the publication of every secret Russian and Soviet document in my possession. I urge every nation of the world to support Ukraine's struggle for independence and to condemn the actions of the Russian government and military.
The Contingent is also forced to undergo mass military buildup around Earth just beyond geostationary orbit. The goal of Contingent's orbital forces will be to deny the use of space to Russia, to act as a nuclear deterrent and to rapidly deploy humanitarian aid to the rest of the world in case of the nuclear exchange."
The feed of Agatha's face receives an overlay showing a telescope- like device on the surface of the Moon. It is a hemisphere with a short cylinder poking out of it through a vertical cut in the hemisphere's structure. The cut is protected by covers, but it is obvious that it is there. The "telescope" starts moving and points at a target somewhere above and behind the camera view.
"The Russian government should also be informed that, regarding their ultimatum, the Contingent doesn't consider lasers and particle beams to be "assets" and that they should say goodbye to GLONASS and any other non- civilian satellites."
The "now definitely not telescope's" aperture pulses for a single frame with incredibly bright green glow before it quickly targets some other distant object and fires again. On screen a diagram appears near the telescope depicting how laser pulses propagate from the Moon's surface to MEO in less than a second before switching to a telescope feed observing the Russian satellite. It disappears moments later in a blinding green flash followed by a radiant cloud of gas and tiny fragments which glow orange hot. Interesting thing about lasers, you can't see them in space but you can see their source and their impact site.
Ag's video transmission is cut as the president shouts at someone to get the Contingent on the phone. Someone rushes to do just that as an intelligence officer verifies that indeed Russian satellites are disappearing from intense laser fire. It is in fact directed in such a way as to knock the satellite debris out of orbit either to crash into Earth or to fly into deep space.
The lasers also appear to come not only from the Moon but also from L3, L4 and L5 points where Hive has previously established orbital factories to produce more solar mirrors. The laser cannons weren't there yesterday, they had to have hid them or assembled them within hours as the situation progressed.
The call finally connects and the president firmly and with barely hidden annoyance asks into the stationary phone's mouthpiece: "Agatha, what do you think you are doing?"
"Madam President…" replied the speaker built into the table "… remember when in response to me claiming to be from a parallel Earth you asked me which country I was from and I declined to answer? Well, now you can probably guess by context…"
Video stop:
End of record
Log 11: "I never asked for this…"Log 11: "I never asked for this…"
"Cause it's gonna be the future soon
And I won't always be this way
When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
It's gonna be the future soon
I've never seen it quite so clear
And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here"
-Agatha singing a piece from "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton in response to picking Synthetic Ascension perk in one of the modded Stellaris streams
Well, what can I say, I'm in deep shit. The issue is not "winning", it is winning in such a way that there's anything left afterwards. I am all but certain that it has to be caused by ROB, it is just too insane to happen organically. No one really wants this, no one. I think that this means there's likely more ROB involvement than just igniting the conflict.
It is not known how functional Russian nukes were in my own world, but judging by literally everything else it would be unlikely that they'd all 100% function. This reality is 8 years into the future, corruption reports haven't shown any positive trends and thus cold war missiles don't get any newer without some "divine intervention". And that intervention is way too likely for comfort. I must assume that if Russia fires then basically every missile would work correctly. I can't afford to call the bluff, I need a way to completely counter the first strike capability.
There are three main kinds of nukes: ICBMs of four-ish types (short, medium, intermediary, intercontinental + potentially cruise missiles), SLBMs in submarines and nukes delivered by aircraft. I consider short ranged missiles, cruise missiles and SLBMs the largest threat as they take the least time to target and thus I'd have a smaller window to intercept them. At the shortest it takes around 10 minutes for a short ranged missile to reach from a launch site at the border to a city in eastern Europe and it is safe to assume that the strikes would be optimized based on proximity. As such strikes against China, India and CIS member states are to be expected regardless of allegiance.
After a series of nuclear disarmaments Russia had just under 6000 warheads on hand, however old nuclear components are still there, just disassembled. Considering their exit from most nuclear treaties around 2026 the models suggest that they can have up to 11000 warheads ready. Russian ICBM barrage officially consists of around 300 missiles with the total of just under 1200 nukes, they have around 70 strategic bomber aircraft with around 700 nukes total, submarine fleet consists of 11 ballistic missile subs with 625 warheads plus 10 more strategic subs that might or might not be completed by now and 26 conventional subs. It is likely that nukes would be placed into basically every kind of previously conventional delivery system that they have which is… a lot.
In addition, precise locations of nuclear assets are secret mostly through the use of decoy sites so in total I'd need to not only target every possible silo site but also essentially every cruise missile launcher, every airfield, every military aircraft hangar and every ship that can carry missiles. Add that to intercepting anything that I'd miss during the alpha strike and the fact that too much of obviously laser cannon buildup in space would be suspicious and this becomes an optimization problem with lives on the line. The more infrastructure I need the more time I spend and the more suspicious it looks. The more time I spend the longer the conflict lasts and the more people die. Plus the moment I fuck up lots of people die very painfully.
I have 3 primary choices for missile interceptors: guided missiles, mass drivers and energy beams. Unfortunately, the former two can't be utilized due to the specifics of space detection. The world knows how I cloak my satellites and during the last couple years existing detection systems were recalibrated and new sensor arrays were deployed that are fine tuned to detect my cryo- steamers. Any useful cloaked missile would be discovered within seconds if it is close enough to effectively intercept ICBMs. This also prevents effective "secret landings".
The guided interceptor attempting to hit from geostationary altitude would take longer to reach the target than it would take for the ICBM to arrive. Astrophage powered interceptor might be barely fast enough but its relativistic debris alone would be akin to a nuclear strike anyway. A mass driver's projectile trajectory would be easy to track based on the huge thermal signature of the cannon itself and it is also not fast enough to get to Earth before the first strike can hit. Particle beam weapons are terrible at punching through the atmosphere and they are sometimes called "cancer cannons" for a good reason which leaves only lasers.
The biggest problem standing before the lasers is getting targeting solutions over huge distances. The Moon is roughly 1 light second away from Earth. While I can theoretically make a laser precise enough to hit a single strand of hair on Earth from the Moon, the delay of 2 seconds would allow for a human sized target to evade the laser by simply jogging while making a random turn or stopping every one to one and a half seconds.
Something similar occurs with geostationary orbit. It is 35786 km away from the surface which causes a 250 millisecond "ping". My firing solution would be a quarter of a second old. It is not an issue when you're firing at a target like a combat spacecraft the size of a skyscraper since the cross section is too big and acceleration is too small to cause problems. A ballistic missile has a cross-section of around 1,5 meters and accelerates at high tens of g-s which is faster than my parasite strike craft. Simple gimballing or even inconsistent propellant mix would result in a "drunk walk" that I couldn't predict from high orbit.
I can't wait for the missile to shut down the boost stage either because I need to down low flying cruise missiles too and the boost phase is the easiest time for the ICBM to be intercepted. As it turns out, human ICBMs don't carry jammers like the bugs, instead they carry an obscene quantity of decoys. Each decoy is a 10 gram nitrile balloon that is impossible to tell apart from an actual warhead by any existing remote sensing system. This means every ICBM would explode into tens of thousands of difficult to track warhead signatures the moment it leaves the atmosphere. Can't intercept them during reentry either since the strike window would be measured in seconds, reentry plasma would disperse optical lasers and inaccuracies of atmosphere modeling would add additional uncertainty.
What about counter-value strikes against Russian launchers? Well, submarines are still underwater as they fire but they do need to get closer to the surface which makes them visible from orbit and somewhat vulnerable to a powerful enough laser. Truck launchers are undefended but are difficult to spot necessitating area of effect strikes to burn out a decent sized chunk of a forest where they might be hiding. The silos are the worst since they are tipped with several meter thick steel cap designed to survive a near direct nuclear strike, a laser powerful enough to punch through would either take minutes to drill to the missile or it would instantly deposit a nuclear strike worth of energy and would wipe out nearby city blocks.
In other words, I have to design around early boost phase intercept with lasers that will miss at least some of their shots. Missile silos are usually located near large cities so missed shots are likely to hit civilians. I'd like to avoid that if I can but if I have a choice between killing hundreds or letting millions die the choice is obvious.
Can I do something to minimize the impact? Let's see, what if I use a vacuum frequency laser like hard UV or x-rays so that the beam is absorbed before it hits the ground? Well, making these lasers is very difficult since there are no mirrors that can effectively reflect anything above and including hard UV, the best option is an extremely fine mirror used in EUVL for 5nm semiconductor etching but the mirror is barely 20% efficient.
Even if I do get such a laser, it is absorbed rapidly by the atmosphere which means that it would require a ton of energy. Add to that the fact that hard UV and above is ionizing radiation so while a normal laser can only give you burns this one could also give you cancer. This means that I can't allow as much energy to reach the surface as with an optical laser without harming humans. By my current estimates if I manage to pull a free electron laser out of my ass I'd be either intercepting missiles at almost orbital altitudes or I'll be giving entire cities several hundred x-rays worth of exposure per missed shot.
What about firing from the "side" so that the missed shots would fly into space? The issue in this case is that the laser would need to travel through more atmosphere which would mess with focusing and targeting. When a laser needs to pass 100 km of air only 20 of which is actually dense it is one thing, here regional differences in temperature would cause lensing effects that would defocus the beam. In the best case I can only have multiple satellites at different latitudes and longitudes so that I can pick the ones that would hit mostly empty areas if they miss. This would require around 8 times more laser sats than "normal" so I'd likely have to do some tradeoffs.
What about using multiple lasers that individually won't hurt people but would focus enough to destroy the missile? Well, ballistic missiles are armored against nearby nuclear strikes with a special armor that is hard to vaporize which means that I need to use enough energy to completely destroy it and not just melt the sensors. If lasers hit separate spots on the missile they wouldn't do enough damage to guarantee the mission kill. I ran some simulations and multiple emitters seem to work only to a point, the more I spread the lasers out the less capable they are at hitting the same part of the missile and thus the more powerful each laser needs to be.
After some optimization I end up with bundles of smaller lasers flying in tight formation or even attached to each other. This defocuses the beam somewhat before it hits the ground but it is still 6 megajoules spread over a couple meters or an equivalent of a tank shell impact. Simulations show that with near perfect targeting data 1 in 4 shots would hit. With a quarter second delay this is more around 1 in 550 to 1 in 600 shots hitting. This is uhhh… bad but acceptable. My strategy would have to rely on launching probes to lower orbits before the alpha strike so that I can squeeze out some extra accuracy and decrease civilian casualties. Time to forge the tools…
My current combat lasers are unsuitable for the job. They are all different forms of relatively large solid state lasers which are mounted on large turrets with the optical cavity placed inside the "barrel" of the weapon. The bigger the turret the more powerful and less accurate are the servomotors and the more inertia it needs to deal with. As the turret swings towards the target it can slightly overshoot or undershoot while the barrel can pull the housing with the inertia or bend slightly.
It is a part of the design and can't be simply "solved" since we're dealing with "real" materials and not simplified geometric models but this "jitter" lowers the extreme range accuracy significantly. I could have a stationary optical cavity and pump the beam through the mirror turret but that doesn't eliminate jitter, it only lowers some aspects of it while potentially making other problems worse.
I boosted my frames the moment I finished the declaration of war and haven't left them for about three subjective years until I had a solution. My laser would be based around the pseudo- Optical Phased Arrays that I used for micrometeoroid defenses on the Linelayers. I managed to solve some problems that prohibited their use in warfare but they are still a very niche technology for now. They rely on the emitter's large cross section which is antithetical to defense oriented military hull designs. On the bright side they don't look like massive and obvious laser cannons so I can lie about them being high precision LIDAR platforms. That wouldn't even be a full on lie since LIDAR will be implemented as a secondary function.
The main two problems with the base system were the heat dissipation and the micromirror jitter. The former was solved by a complicated system of micro and nanofluidic cooling channels implemented into the backlayer and directly into individual mirrors. To note, each mirror is six times smaller than fine table salt grain. The jitter was caused by light pressure of the laser pulse itself. With continuous laser the jitter was "constant" and could be measured and corrected for by the mirror's motors resulting only in a momentary loss of focus. I needed a pulsed laser so I had to redesign more structurally rigid micromirror supports and decrease the light intensity per mirror by about a quarter.
The resulting weapon system is a kilometer by kilometer wide flat sheet of reflective surface backed by girders and wireframes. The sheet itself consists of numerous hexagonal segments each the size of a small coffee table. Each segment has a meter long rod going through the center with the "back" side being the laser cavity, radiator fins and power and control uplink while the "front" side houses the sensor cluster and pulse distribution mirror. While just powerful enough to individually give someone a sunburn there is exactly one million of them per platform and each fully recharges every quarter of a second. I'm going to need several hundreds of thousands of these above Russia alone, millions in total. I am so glad that I can plug gateways between dimensions once the connection is established but it will still take around half a year until I am 99.999% confident that I can cauterize this mess before it goes nuclear.
Time to set up the chess pieces. Once the four named ringbearer crafts left the system Celebrimbor Spaceworks started pumping out Helioses modified for "civilian use". They had most of the defenses ripped out and implementing the best of autonomous maintenance systems that I've cooked up. They also had high bandwidth radio and lasercomm to ansible communications system and a separate synchronization system just in case I'd need to leave completely. This maintenance system was capable of independently upgrading the gate if the need arises. Now this "need" required severe buffs to point defenses and a few capital ship grade laser turrets as the four gates were hauled to an orbit just above geostationary.
Three weeks later the gates ignited and pushed out prefabbed quarters of themselves that assembled into more gates until their number above Earth rose over a hundred. At that point every gate ignited at once and expelled tens of thousands of parasite craft, thousands of "small" picket capital crafts and hundreds of true capital ships like Kawamori class missile cruisers(named after the creator of Macross) and Wells class laser cruisers followed by construction elements for the interceptor arrays.
I'll need to place them in more regions than just above Russia. Significant coverage is required above the north pole since that's where the nukes headed for the US would go and I'd need to cover most of the oceans to target any submarine launches. In addition, you can't place geostationary satellites at high latitudes as while they'd stay in the lame longitude they'd "bob up and down" by the same degree on both sides of the planet resulting in the defenses "smearing" across both upper and lower hemispheres. Around 70% of the assets would be covering the region of former USSR and eastern Europe but they'd be smeared across all of Asia, Middle East and parts of Africa, Oceania and even Australia. Since the Americas are "angled" relative to the latitudes they would have to be somewhat covered as well so that I'm not missing chunks of the Pacific and Atlantic. This ought to rustle some feathers but what can I do? Let billions die?
I can't do much as I build up assets and I am doing things as fast as I can, but it will still be done only by September which leaves almost half a year for the conflict to rage. There are significant differences between how the war goes on in this reality and how it went in my original homeworld. This is weird, since this defies my expectations based on the internal corruption reports. It is as if the money was somehow both correctly spent on the arms and mostly stolen on every level simultaneously. Hacking even revealed that some parts of the leadership were confused in private about where a significant part of the assets came from, but considering that admitting this would be also admitting to scandalous levels of personal corruption no one was stupid enough to mention it.
First change is that Russians started with the draft way earlier, basically almost instantly with the start of the war and the draft was more intense than in my world. I expect that I'd be facing around 3 million soldiers by the time I'm ready. Poorly trained and poorly equipped, but still combatants. Secondly, Russia seems to have WAY more of the advanced gear this time, not quite as much as what "was promised" on various military expos but significantly more than two and a half Armatas with the rest being cold war remnants. The level of mobilization is also much higher, in my original world Russians expected that half of Ukraine would switch sides and thus didn't bring nearly enough assets to stand a reasonable chance. Here it was a more obviously full blown no pretenses invasion with the majority of Russian forces.
I was left seething in the UN as the Russian representative blamed the mass use of unguided artillery, bombing runs and missile strikes on me destroying their orbital surveillance infrastructure as if it was my fault that they just carpet bombed civilian targets IN A CITY. Early laser batteries managed to get me enough LIDAR coverage to personally observe some horrifying things that I'd probably have nightmares about if I could still dream. The invasion has also occurred from Belarus which was "peacefully annexed" in all but the name which meant that their army was also mixed into this entire mess.
Luckily, Ukraine had 16 years to prepare, not 8 like in my world and within three weeks the advance on Kyiv had stalled while in the south the push had halted just before reaching Odessa. At this point the international support intensified with US and EU lend lease ramping up faster than originally as a matter of emergency. As war went on Russian command awfully quickly enacted barrier troops and started to dig in. It quickly turned out that the forward troops consisted almost exclusively from the recently drafted citizens and, as it is to be expected, the casualty rates among them were disproportionately high.
Month two, the global western narrative has also rapidly shifted towards blaming the Russian citizens. "If you're not in gulag for political crimes then you are fine with this mess and support it" and all that. There are reports that people with Russian passports or those known to be Russian are getting refused rent opportunities and sometimes even not served in certain establishments regardless if they fled the regime during the war, a couple years prior or lived there for 30 years. Oh and also Poland has just started deporting every Russian citizen who didn't get a full residence permit as timed residence permits and visas are getting nullified.
Fucking swell, I have no words. It is as if this event is a concentrated and distilled sum of everything that I hated in this mess in my reality, but blown up more and more until it starts looking like a vague caricature. I tried to fight against it in a couple public speeches but I was "out shouted" by the louder people who have a much more solid reason to hate Russians. By the time I gathered my assets, Poland and Germany have even placed old soviet iconography into the same box as the Nazi flag and removed Russian literature from school curriculums as if this is all somehow related to the "culture". As if modern Russia has anything more to do with the USSR or Russian Empire than the medieval Holy Roman Empire had anything to do with being "holy", "roman" or "empire".
In the fourth month Poland entered the conflict separate from NATO and started pushing into Belarus and into north western Ukraine. They are officially here to help, but some speculate that it is more about keeping a buffer and if Ukraine doesn't make it then they'd absorb the territories closest to them. On my side the orbiting laser batteries have reached the minimum effectiveness threshold at which point while I couldn't intercept everything I can theoretically prevent the most severe cases of nuclear winter from manifesting.
Month five, a Russian diplomat has pledged to the UN to condemn my actions as provocation and to demand me to leave the solar system. The response was a resounding no, and in turn Russia to the surprise of everybody has officially pulled out of the United Nations. Within two weeks from this event Ukrainian forces were close to taking the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station and the Russian garrison commander ordered it to be scuttled. Under his own orders and with no orders from above apparently, at least according to the volume of cursing on the military communications.
The nuclear powerplant was shut down beforehand, luckily, but the safety systems and the concrete dome over the reactor were purposefully demolished with explosive charges making it impossible to power it back up and causing some relatively minor contamination of the surrounding region. The commander in question failed to pull out and was executed on the spot by the advancing Ukrainian forces in violation of the rules of war. In fact, by this point taking POWs is more of an exception rather than the rule on both sides.
Month six and the UN has authorized a peacekeeping operation in the region as detachments of the blue helmets are starting to arrive in an attempt to stabilize the situation at least somewhat. In private it is apparently caused more by the fear of my own ongoing military buildup that is now clearly visible to the naked eye at night rather than the wishes to stop this senseless destruction. NATO is threatening Russia that it will enter the conflict and in turn Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons if even a single NATO combatant lands in Ukraine. And by this moment I am finally fucking done with my laser setup and I'm ready for the next step.
I honestly am not looking forward to what I need to do. Not only to the unfortunate civilian casualties and lots of dead soldiers, but also the fact that I can't do this alone. While I am a Von- Neumann, I have one human mind here. All the autonomous software is made either to kill things or to build things and to do the in- between like navigation. If I simply pour in my units they'd have a hard time judging a combatant from a civilian and they won't know what surrender looks like. I could theoretically "pause" every second, go through my units with personal orders and then unpause for another "frame" and repeat, but I'd have to pilot millions of units here for months if not years, I not only don't want that, I'm pretty sure that my sanity won't handle it.
Russia now has around 13 to 14 thousand tanks, around 3 million soldiers and around 140 million people in total with up to 10 million reserves of "everyone with balls who can physically hold a gun". To succeed I don't only need a drone unit per every civilian and covering every door of every building, I'll need around 3 times the numbers advantage and I'll need to also account for essentially replacing the entire government and all major industries.
This mess is not just waltzing in, killing everyone that resists, capturing whoever started this mess and trashing the military factories, I will have to assume the role of the government for months at the least and potentially for up to several decades based on the state of the industry and population. If I don't, that would cause immense suffering and what is essentially an equivalent of Africa style groups of very poor "just after colonialism" third world nations in the middle of Eurasia.
War breaks stuff, and so does high corruption. My invasion would destroy the already poor ability of the government to feed, clothe and house the people. Along with the tanks I need to drop in water purifiers, synfuel factories, clothes factories, refineries and robots to man whatever existing ones would stay intact, miner and farmer robots with all the underlying logistics and emergency services like firefighting aircraft, medical units(thank you, project Hail Mary, for all the robot surgeon and nurse tech) and search-and-rescue drones. I also need to drop factories to make things like medication since I can't just inject people with catom slurry. Most of this stuff would need my manual oversight to work properly.
The obvious way to do it is forking. Yeah, ha ha I need to go fork myself. I could go the route of the Bobs from the Bobiverse series of books, but that has some… problems. I'd be making people with copies of my memories, I can't be sure how similar they'd be to me and I can't be sure of the "long term loyalty" as the war would obviously take a toll on their minds just as it will take a toll on mine.
The moment they are copied they'd diverge from me and strongly emotional events would likely accelerate the divergence. They'd rapidly become "just individuals" and not parts of me. How can I force them to obey me? Because I'm the "original"? I am not even original to my own brain plan, the progenitor me is still a human somewhere. By seniority? What if one of them commits a warcrime, would all the clones and me now be responsible? And what happens after the conflict is concluded? Do I run them on a VM that I can shut off as a measure of control? I wouldn't want to do that to anyone, much less myself. What if most of them won't want to deal with the aftermath? Do we split up and they set off into this universe or the multiverse at large? What do I do with those which won't leave? Form a government of Hives? That didn't work too well with Rick.
As I was pondering this, I looked at my brain plan and I was shocked by the change. I no longer had the brain structure of a human. I wasn't "fully uploaded into a neural network" as I still ran on organic neuron simulations, but the brain structure itself has undergone a significant change. Some regions shrunk or disappeared, while others expanded massively. In fact, I lost around 20% of the virtual brain matter somehow.
I didn't feel different and I don't seem stupider so I pulled out the brain region maps. Humans are still far from deciphering what parts of the brain do what, but they are better than they were at it a decade ago. By cross referencing the positions and shapes of the brain structures, I can say vaguely what has changed and how. My long term memory regions appear to have shrunk to the point where they next to disappeared entirely, being replaced almost completely by short term memory regions. I've lost a lot of brain matter in the regions responsible for sensory interpretation including vision and I almost completely lost the regions responsible formerly for manipulating the vegetative system of the body like heartbeat and breathing.
This is strange since I still remember things, I use vision and hearing implants and I managed to link breathing into the breath simulation for the android body. I still have these things, just for some reason not in the "brain". A quick backtrack of signals reveals an extensive neural network growing into the command OS somehow. The sensory inputs ended up aggregating in a certain region in the same "folder" as my brain simulation while the long term memory network has spread out throughout a good chunk of the system.
Also a distributed neural network whose purpose I couldn't discern started to form throughout the entire OS structure, but I assume that it is somehow connected with the subconscious operation of my assets. I thought that I was just getting more of a hang of things and that the OS was adapting to me, not that I grew into it and it grew into me!
Well, this puts a halt to my plans on conventional forking. I still have backup archives, but I'll need to look for a copy that comes from before I even managed to set up the vtubing thing. A copy that has zero social skills and is only arguably sane. This is not good, this means I can't trust my own clones as my current clones wouldn't be functional without a full copy of the command OS and my old copies won't behave in a predictable way. What can I do…
I came with an idea, not a good one but better than nothing. If my long term memory is fused with the system and separated from my own brain, what if I link a second copy of the brain into this system? We'd remember the same stuff and thus the copies would end up synchronized. If there is no memory drift there's likely no value drift. This also corresponds to some ways that some sci- fi hiveminds and superintelligences work. This is dangerous, but I am risking my own sanity and personality rather than forcing other people to do something they might not want to.
After several months of reconsidering, I couldn't find a better solution. It is either that or the independent clones. The hivemind option ended up looking less… immoral so to say. Also somewhat on brand, hah. However I can't make myself have a priority position in the hive, not just on principle but by design, I don't know enough about neurology to pull off a hierarchical structure.
Maybe that's for the best, but I can't shake off the feeling that this is my last entry. The moment I run this program I'd no longer be me, I'd be a fraction of a fraction of resulting intelligence. After I run the initial tests there would be half a billion of me-s, I won't be a voice in the crowd, I'd be closer to a cell in a body. For a start I'd be creating 9 copies to test that my concept even works, but then before I can change my mind I'd be adding another 90, then 900 and so on growing by an order of magnitude at a time until I hit the desired value.
I'm leaving a mind copy of myself with a sealed copy of my command network and a command to open if the new "me" doesn't turn out "viable". I don't really know how to test for "being viable" but for now it is set up to trigger if there are no coherent captcha checks from the head intelligence for several virtual decades. Either that or ROB would open it up if the superintelligent monstrosity doesn't pan out fun enough. Well, no time to sit around, I am mentally hovering over the start button. If this is the last entry here, then I didn't make it and I'm sorry. I'm sorry to the Petrol Monkeys, both of my vtuber persona fan variety and just the general inhabitants of planet Earth, and I am sorry to whoever ends up reading this. Farewell…
{{{WARNING: document closed unexpectedly, current version recovered}}}
Log 12: "The more the merrier and how I stopped worrying and loved the laser"Log 12: "The more the merrier and how I stopped worrying and loved the laser"
Well, I'm not even sure how to explain this situation, but "I'm" alive… somewhat. There's currently exactly half a billion instances of my mind running at once and I can't subjectively tell which one of us was the "original" outside of the metadata tag. This feels weird, we're not one being but we're also not separate individuals. It would take a while to figure out all the quirks, but for now I guess I should explain how we think this works so far.
Each instance seems to have its own "focus of attention", gets its own ideas and has mostly separate short term memory, aka we don't know what each of us is thinking of all the time. However the separation is not "complete", we seem to have the ability to hear each other's "internal monologues" if we focus and the other instance is "thinking loudly and clearly enough". It is kind of difficult to pull off and we mostly default to using "normal" simulated hearing and speech in most cases. Talking to myself, huh…
Also we share something that I don't quite know how to name. When some of us were doing recreational activities it appears that others received "partial benefit" so to say. I was mildly ADD and I found it difficult sometimes to pay attention to things for long periods of time and I quickly saturated my attention to the point where I commonly started missing small things. Commander OS seems to compensate for attention errors, but I still abused the time dilation feature to crank up the frames to take breaks or to switch activities without it impacting my "performance" in the real world.
When I still had only 10 instances in the hivemind a couple decided to watch some YT for a break while a few others were running tests and we all felt like we were doing both of these things even when those doing research didn't know what those resting were watching. We don't yet know if that affects other things like "boredom" or "strong emotions" like anger, but it seems to be inversely proportional to the size of the hivemind. One person resting out of a hundred was about the lowest we could subjectively detect. Still, it allows for a fascinating possibility to permanently dedicate some of us to the "recreation" of everyone else when long term focus of the other members is required.
We also share our memories and apparently that includes skills, even motor skills. What's disturbing is that while it is trivial to tell the context of where the memory comes from, it is difficult to tell which instance produced it without manually sifting the logs and I can't just add that to my organic memory. Like, I remember how I started writing this document, but by the end I could get switched out for dozens of other instances and neither we nor the document's reader could tell that anything changes. We kind of just exchange the important thoughts on the matter and seamlessly switch. This massively blurs what "personality" is, it is as if what I think is "me" is actually a mask worn temporarily by a randomly selected member of a crowd. As if I had made a roleplay character and had to leave so I just gave the character sheet along with personality tips to the new guy so that they can continue where I left.
This… caused some philosophical arguments among us. Some noted that the majority of the brain matter that the simulation was missing didn't have known functions so it is more than possible that the part of me in the communal operating system is the "person" while the truncated brain simulation is more like the attention focus. I still "think therefore I am", but is the "experiencing" happening in the collective hive or in the instance's brain? Essentially, what I thought was me before might not be a "person" anymore. I'm not sure if it is good or bad or even if it matters, but it makes the entire collective feel uneasy.
This also makes the vague plans of just "making everyone an identity" kind of unfeasible. Even if we do, each "character" would be "played" by hundreds or thousands of instances. I guess this is kind of like how ME Geth works, although in my case individual programs are smarter, each "unit" is operated by one mind that hotseats with others and the hivemind is significantly more unified.
Hiveminds tend to be a spectrum based on how integrated the individuals are in them, from "just a way to transfer information" that technically applies to early 21st century internet and potentially even the whole concept of civilization to "a single mind remotely piloting multiple bodies" like with some depictions of the Starship Troopers arachnids. I think I am closer to the latter side of this distribution, I'm arguably more integrated than the Borg now. Then again, this is more of a chorus of equals, not a hierarchy.
In any case, it was decided that it is still worth it to make "characters" even if they don't correlate to individual instances. This is both for the sake of interacting with the real world and because there might be psychological risks of the terribly named "self- unpersoning" that was suggested by some of us. We'd essentially be… "roleplaying as people", if that even makes sense. Man, this wording sounds horrible, like if I was a body snatcher putting on the skinned face of a vaguely famous vtuber. Then again, this is accurate depending on your viewpoint.
First attempt, like with pancakes, ends up as a huge mess. When you take a bunch of copies and ask them to do the same task you get the same answers. Here we had half a billion almost perfect Ag clones which was unacceptable. We ended up adding an element of randomness where we took a random letter generated by quantum RNG and searched for a name that felt like it fits. The results were better, although weirdly there were basically no "guys" within a rounding error. There was one guy who decided to attempt to recreate the original person that I was before uploading for catharsis purposes, but it wasn't the "main persona", more like a side project.
It doesn't mean that everyone was a girl either. Almost half of us couldn't make up our minds and it was stressing everyone out so it was decided that they'd be using copies of other personas and deployed to the regions where they wouldn't intersect until they'd manage to create something unique. Out of the rest about two out of five took female avatars, the rest took something ambiguous. Avatars that were androgynous and lacked secondary sexual characteristics outright. Most were just indiscernible "averaged out people" as baseline edited with aesthetic features like hairstyles, preferred outfits and cyberpunk-esque "chrome" with glowy lines under the skin and stuff. A lot were more "I-robot" or porcelain dolls than "fleshy human" in appearance.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, before I was placed into the Commander core I was a fat and sickly guy with low self esteem and the general discomfort related to the illnesses and general unattractiveness kind of "oozed" into the concept for my body. Most people would want to be the "hotter" versions of themselves in my place but I wouldn't. I didn't pick Ag's appearance because I wanted to be the girl, I picked it because it was far enough from the original me that it didn't trigger discomfort. If I didn't want to use that form for vtubing and diplomacy I'd just flip the coin and decide on that. It is probably unhealthy, but it is as if I can get an unbiased therapist in this tin can so let's go with what we have.
Regarding the logs, we decided that whoever runs Ag also runs the logs. Others might show up eventually once their "personalities" get more fleshed out with use, but I'd be in charge of writing this thing. Well, for all the limited usefulness that the term "I" had in this case. So yeah, I'm now officially Agatha, the kinda famous vtuber, von- neumann probe operator and now a part of a huge hivemind. Let's just hope that we won't go cuckoo and annihilate all life in this universe, I am only 30% ironic with this one.
It is finally time for the Contingent's first true action in this war. The troops are prefabricated, the laser defenses are set up and Wells class ships are ready with their teal colored spinal laser cannons for anti submarine and limited anti fortifications work. You can probably tell why I named the ship armed with one huge death beam after the War of the Worlds author.
Regardless, this would be a complicated operation. First, I'm launching cloaked targeting probes deep into Earth's gravity well. I managed only marginal improvements over the performance of the first stealth steamers, but the closer they manage to get to the planet the more accurate my laser fire would be. The more accurate the lasers, the less civilian casualties I'd get and the faster I'll intercept the missiles.
I fully expect that they'd be detected, but stealth is not about being seen, it is about being seen later than you should be. It takes anywhere between 2 hours and 90 minutes to transfer from GEO to LEO. As I'm not constrained by efficiency and remass requirements, it would take me 80 minutes for the sensor probes to reach optimum range. At that point 1 in 500 hit rate of my lasers would change to 1 in 5. Unfortunately the closer the probes get to Earth the easier they are to detect. The probes are roughly the size of a double decker bus and utilize the most advanced NOEMS (Nano-Opto Electro- Mechanical Systems) derived sensor packages that I could get. They would fly in a folded up state, the moment they are discovered they'd unfurl in seconds and would provide all the targeting data that I'd need.
The probes were launched before I was hive'd from stealthed platforms far beyond geostationary and they passed the GEO altitude the moment when I performed the "operation". Thousands of them were tracing highly elliptical orbits spread uniformly around the Earth. In their sum the trajectories vaguely resembled a chrysanthemum flower. They aren't seen yet, but I won't have much time once they are. I am still utilizing the US, EU and Chinese observation satellite feeds but they are insufficient for precision strikes against climbing missiles. They are, however, sufficient for targeting 18 out of 21 possible Russian nuclear subs, 24 of the conventional subs, every surface navy ship and every aerodrome capable of launching combat aircraft.
It took 18 minutes for the targeting probes to be detected by the US, another minute for the Chinese and a couple more for the frantic verifications before the high priority calls started coming in. Russians found out first due to the said calls before they could figure out what was going on with the sky surveys. This was not ideal, but it is better than what I feared. They knew that I was watching their territory under the microscope and earlier in the war several times the orders were given for the mobile launchers to set up for firing within a second of notice as a sort of way to spook me. In turn I usually rotated gun turrets on my ships vaguely towards Russia and they usually called off the high alert state within hours.
Here they instantly knew what was going on and commands were sent for preparations to launch either by command or autonomously in case of an EMP or sudden comms jamming. The entire country was on a hair trigger. I was delaying as much as I could, every additional second quantifiably improved the accuracy of my lasers. It took the Russians another 4 minutes to detect their first stealthed targeting probe. Immediately I received a file with a pre- recorded ultimatum that the Russian government is launching missiles if I don't declare that I'm leaving the Sol system within the next minute exactly.
Well, gloves are off, the maneuvering thrusters onboard the Wells ships lit up as they swung their mass about 90 degrees from "prograde" to facing their targets below as other ships ignited their engines and started deorbiting. They have enough thrust to enter LEO once they are close enough and this is about the fastest way to get there. The targeting probes open up and unfurl their multi-football field sized flat sensor clusters and phased array laser batteries start cycling, their targets are entire sectors of forest and plains hundreds of square meters wide which contain short ranged missile launchers and mobile ICBM trucks. In turn with a rehearsed efficiency Russian government gives the launch order and lids start popping off the silos as the first of the nuclear spears start climbing into the sky.
Record PLAY: September 4th 2030, city of Kozelsk in Kaluga Oblast, population of 16,7 thousand people. Recording from a Huawei smartphone of 2026th year of production around building 20 on Yubileynaya street. Video presented as evidence for 2032 Gaaga war crimes tribunal.
Video start:
The phone is pulled out and the recording starts. There is a long four story tall building across the street made from brown brick. On the other side is a three story tall white building of the "House of Culture of the Russian Army" with a statue of a T54-m tank in the tiny park nearby. There's another long four story tall building perpendicular to the road on the phone user's side slightly further down the street. A group of people is seen nearby listening in to the emergency broadcast from terrible quality speakers positioned on the nearby electric pole. There is a mother with a pre-schooler child, a woman in her late 50s with an old shopping bag on wheels, a "grandpa" that's over 80 with a stick and a pair of early high school age kids. The phone owner is a lady in her early 30-s.
The speaker starts blaring a distorted voice of some older woman who is reading from the paper with an obviously worried voice. Translated and cleaned up transcript is provided: "Attention, this is Moscow speaking. I am relaying an important government message. Citizens of the Russian Federation, today at 4 hours and 20 minutes in the evening without any declarations of war the Contingent Intelligence in conspiracy with the Anglo- Saxon United Nations has attacked our cities with powerful energy weapons. The war against the machine antichrist and its western slaves has begun! Our cause is just, we will persevere."
The phone quickly turns towards the horizon where bright lights are rapidly climbing into the sky on top of plumes of fire and smoke.
The phone makes two loud beeps and a clear voice of Agatha goes through it, also in Russian: "Attention, Russian citizens. Your government has initiated an unprovoked mass nuclear strike. The Contingent is intercepting the missiles with laser weapons. Due to accuracy limitations, some laser blasts will miss and might strike populated areas. Weapon grade lasers can cause PERMANENT BLINDNESS even if reflected off opaque materials! SEEK SHELTER NOW! SEEK A PLACE OF SAFETY NOW! Move AWAY from windows deeper into the buildings! DO NOT look at the sky. Do not look outside! Find eye protection such as WELDING GOGGLES, SUNGLASSES, ANY BLINDFOLD. If that's not available, COVER YOUR EYES WITH YOUR HANDS, laser can be intense enough to burn retina THROUGH EYELIDS. I REPEAT! SEEK SHELTER NOW! SEEK A PLACE OF SAFETY NOW! Laser strikes will continue for UP TO EIGHT HOURS! By that point, all missiles would be either expended or destroyed and no follow-up strikes would occur.
The Contingent is deploying teleoperated robotic armed and humanitarian forces into Russia within the next 6 hours! Robotic forces are operated by an intelligence on squad level, they recognize surrender and will follow international rules of war. DO NOT INTERFERE. Once the region is stabilized, life necessities will be restored within hours and widely available for the occupied population. We are here to bring war criminals to justice, we WON'T HURT YOU."
As if struck by green lightning, one of the missiles disappears in a flash of light and is reduced into fire and shrapnel. Other bolts of this "green lightning" start falling from various angles at the launching missiles as more and more of them leave their launch tubes and streak into the sky. Most of these bolts miss, but they strike at such an angle as to hit away from the city.
Suddenly a massive flash of teal colored light fills the horizon as the sky splits in two. As the flash fades it reveals a massive plume of ejecta and dust punched into the sky by a massive explosion somewhere in the region that was the source of the nuclear spears. The dust cloud rapidly forms into a mushroom cloud as the people watch in horror induced stupor for almost a minute. Once this minute passes, a shockwave rolls over from the site of the laser strike of immense power and shatters every window in the visible buildings and knocks most of the people off their feet.
The woman with the phone gets up and helps the old man next to her before continuing to film the missiles that had time to launch before their launch site disappeared in the mushroom cloud. The other women panic, the one with the child grabs her son and sprints away down the street… with an incredibly unfortunate timing.
Camera picks up how bolts of green pulse lasers start coming from a spot in the sky that's further away from the city and ironically in the same line as the observer and the missiles. Several bolts miss down the street and one hits the base building across the road. The result is comparable to a gas main explosion. The side of the building is reduced into shrapnel that showers the street in front of the camera. A brick flying at high speed paints the grass to the side of the street with the gibs of everything that used to be the mother's body above the waist. The woman who's filming was lucky that the explosion site was covered by her elbow, the old man wasn't lucky as he collapsed on the ground clinging to his eyes and screaming in pain.
The video stops as the woman shoves the phone into her bag while sprinting towards the orphaned child as he looks in horror at what's left of his mother.
Video stop:
End of record
Alpha strike is moderately successful. It would be better if I could jam the military communications but I needed to pass the message to save as many people as possible. Yet, already hundreds of civilians were killed across Russia as a result of missing interceptor lasers. I prioritize lasers that can strike at angles that would hit the middle of nowhere if they miss, but the batteries get rapidly saturated with targets and thus this is not always an option.
At the current distance to the sensors, it takes 350 shots to hit a single missile. Rounded up to the population density estimates, every intercepted missile causes me to personally kill on average 40 people. Of course, it is "average body temp across the hospital, counting the infectionary and morgue", in certain places lasers fall in the middle of some forest or field, in others a missed shot can land on top of a large building and kill hundreds.
I found a few cases where I could counter-value strike against land launchers, some were far enough away for the mighty 60 petawatt laser cannon (nicknamed "Tunguska caster" for depositing just under 15 megatons of TNT on maximum output). In those cases, it was firing on a lower energy setting of course, but it still deposited an equivalent of a hundred kiloton nuke directly on top of an open launch silo site. The bigger output is for submarine hunting.
Most subs didn't even know what hit them. Such energy was enough to cause massive shockwaves in the ocean water which crushed the hull hundreds of meters below the surface like a depth charge. For surface fleets it was a gross overkill. Entire black sea fleet instantly evaporated in a flash of light blue and a massive plume of steam less than a minute after the start of hostilities.
For those who don't know, the Russian nuclear missile launch strategy used to rely on "messenger rockets". Several ICBMs are retrofitted to carry a powerful radio transmitter and they get launched from the capital across the mostly uninhabited Russian territories transmitting launch commands to independent launchers. Well, laser cannons can't really tell apart an ICBM with a nuke from an ICBM with orders to launch more nukes so that plan fell apart basically within moments of their launch as they were intercepted in the lower stratosphere. There were conventional communication systems but I was directly interfering with them which meant that the message was taking longer to get disseminated across the hundreds of launch sites.
There were some problems, of course. First of all, Russia has an analogue to the US SLAM nuclear cruise missiles. They rely on a nuclear thermal turbojet engine and hence they contain an active nuclear reactor on board. If a nuke or inactive reactor is shot down it spreads barely radioactive compounds, if an active reactor is shot then it spews around the highly radioactive shit that you rapidly die from being exposed to. I had to shoot down three above the Arctic Ocean which would make cleanup a titanic pain in the ass as the reactor guts get sprayed across the ice sheets and icy waters.
Second problem was revealed when the first missiles got to the upper stratosphere. Some were set to detonate high in the sky in an attempt to blind my sensors. Well, to this I say "fool me twice" as I've learned a thing or two from the Bugs. Special hardened sensors detect when the wave of intense radiation finally passes and a brand new set of sensor packages gets extended while damaged sensors get retracted for repairs. Good fucking luck, I have low thousands of backups per sensor probe. Main problem is that the blasts keep frying low orbit civilian satellites.
The biggest problem ended up being the international community. Yeah, NATO is launching a mass counterstrike. China and India were apparently unprepared for Russia dumping a couple hundred ICBMs their way and thus didn't have nukes on hair trigger targeted back. I have enough juice to intercept US and Europe launches, my successful alpha strike took out most of the mobile launchers before they could fire and thus I had some reserves. However I will be forced to shoot at missiles before they get too high and that means missing laser shots… above Europe. Why the fuck do the French missiles target population centers?!
Record PLAY: September 4th 2030, unknown bunker complex in the United States
Video start:
Video starts with the US president scanning her fingerprint in the device placed inside the "nuclear briefcase" while inside the high command while her staff is shouting various things at each other, some obviously trying to shout louder than the rest so that the president hears them.
Suddenly all speakers shout with Agatha's voice as her face replaces every screen in the room: "STOP RIGHT THERE! DO NOT LAUNCH MISSILES"
President Smith: "The order is already given, Hive"
Ag: "Countermand the order! I have more than enough to shoot down every Russian missile!"
President Smith: "They've fired first with a massed nuclear strike, we HAVE to retaliate."
Ag: "I don't care! I am not letting you kill millions! I am authorizing interception of US nuclear missiles above US. Countermand the orders before I have to start sinking your subs and fleets"
President Smith: "This will be a declaration of war!"
Ag: "Go ahead, press article 5! If I have to kill every single combatant on Earth and then clear out insurgencies for 5 generations just to keep you idiots from killing each other then I WILL FUCKING DO IT. Countermand the order now, or you will be responsible. There are things way worse than death and I have enough juice to pull off Roko's Basilisk even if I have to sift the blood splatter on the walls of your bunker for a millennia to reconstruct your brains."
The call ends and Ag's furious face disappears from every screen.
Homeland Security minister: "How the fuck did she get in? We fully switched to high end quantum encryption!"
The president puts her palm on her face and looks at the briefcase intensely for 5 seconds before shouting the command: "Countermand the order!"
Staff: "Ma'am, Minutemans are already launching, we can't self destruct the missiles"
President Smith: "Do it now! Stop every launch that you can! Ground aircraft! Stop the subs! Fire ABMs at our own missiles! That… thing can handle what we miss!"
Video stop:
End of record
Fuck, ok. I have things under control. Now way more civilians are dying all over the globe but I am not missing even a single ICBM. My sensor probes are getting closer and closer which makes me more and more accurate. Russia is running out of missiles to launch, I've wiped out every hangar that could store an aircraft that could theoretically carry nukes, their surface navy is gone and every sub that gets close enough to the surface to even contemplate firing gets immediately hit by Wells spinal mount lasers. Now it is only the question of landing the troops.
This is not as simple as you might think. Every object entering Earth's atmosphere at interplanetary velocities compresses the air in front of them which causes it to heat up and glow. It is not only the problem of the re-entering spacecraft, this heat is deposited into the environment. Dropping 870 000 tons of material is an equivalent of 1% of the energy that Earth gets from the sun per second, or roughly "equivalent to thermo-industrial climate change" if done continuously. I need to drop around 33 million tank equivalent military units alone, which in mass is the same as a steel cube a quarter of a cubic kilometer in volume. If I was to drop all that at once the entry heat alone would literally ignite all of Eurasia on fire. What a problem to have, right? Not my ability to build or move units, but my unwillingness to cover Eurasia in firestorms with sheer waste heat.
I can't use wormhole gates willy-nilly either, if they are compromised before they can safely shut down they decay with the force of a decently sized nuclear bomb. While they are heavily armored, I can't deploy them while there's still a risk that it would get shot by a cruise missile or a very determined tank or something. It is up for the brand new Heinlein class planetary invasion carriers. The ship cancels its orbital velocity, accelerates towards the planet and unfurls its payload, after which it slows down and enters orbit once again as it waits for internal fabrication systems to replenish the invasion forces.
Each of these ships from the outside looks like a huge cylinder, however they are almost entirely just a thin spine with structural support disks placed on it like on a kebab and covered in armor. All the rest of the volume is taken up by the planetary assault pods. Derived from individual drop pods used in unit cannons, these things are instead designed to deploy a whole battalion worth of units (1000 infantry equivalent plus supporting armor formations or an equivalent of specialized units like singular hover- navy ships or "airburst" pods filled with aircraft). Once the units are disengaged, the pod would self- assemble a forward factory and a few stationary defenses or some kind of strategically important structure like artillery or ABM missile batteries.
The landings would start in Belarus and Ukraine since those contain most of the Russian armed forces, the second wave of landings would occur across the border with follow up landings in the Russian heartland. The Hive had to prototype infantry units based on my avatar design resulting in the (proto)Hoplite class prototype infantry which looks like 3 meter tall power armor with a huge ballistic shield, utility grenade launcher integrated behind one of the shoulders and an LMG attached to the side of the other arm. They'd be accompanied with a "Parthian" class infantry support drone which is basically a buffed up larger version of Spot robodog with a pair of limbs and a weapon mount in the middle of its "back".
The last infantry unit that I had to make is Lieutenant class command and civilian interaction unit which is basically an up- armored avatar that I used for my diplomatic mission to the UN. Each unit would be edited to have a slightly randomized appearance in terms of hairstyles and facial features, but it still looks like a human in light futuristic armor. It is the only unit that can enter human sized doors, use ladders and interact with human- sized objects. It is also too small to carry its own resource uplink so it has to actually carry magazines for its weapons, reload with hands and get resupplied from the new Scoria class APC which is outfitted with a special ammo fabber specifically for this purpose.
First landers are about to hit the upper atmosphere. Heh, so much for trying to prevent catom contamination of Earth, I guess the cleanup would suck. I'm not sure what I can say. If there's a god, please forgive me for what I'm about to do…
Log 13: "Fighting a land war in Asia"Log 13: "Fighting a land war in Asia"
"Hey, screw you! At least my oshi is only a pretend war criminal!"
-4chan anon arguing that Pipkin Pippa is better than Agatha Hive
I wouldn't say that I didn't expect NATO's nuclear response. I had it in the projections and I did resort for substantial reserves even if the interception rate would be on the order of 99.99% and not 99.999%. I couldn't warn them in advance because every extra second increased my accuracy, but the moment Russia started launching I messaged every government which had access to nukes. Of course, in the panic some didn't listen, some didn't trust and some wouldn't pick up the phone if I didn't manually take over their speakers. I can understand their position, you have like 15 minutes at most to make a decision that will kill millions in revenge for millions of your own people potentially including you personally. Still, I wished that they'd be better.
However wishing on a star that humans are better than they are is a bad decision every single time, only structurally systematic solutions have a tangible chance to work. And in my case, such a solution is to shoot down every single one of those missiles even if it kills civilians. Taking down a single missile with my accuracy at the time kills on average 20-30 people, less in remote regions and more in places with more people. A missed nuke is hundreds of thousands dead within minutes and millions within months. Choosing not to intercept a western missile is the same as saying that a single American or European civilian is worth hundreds of thousands of Russians including women and children. There is no way I couldn't take action. This will damage my relations with the West but I am willing to take this drawback if it means preventing more deaths. In other words, I choose to flip the lever and redirect the trolley.
I managed to intimidate the US president into stopping the launch midway and she had the time to stop some missiles and all of the planes and submarines but France and the UK disgorged almost all of their 400 warheads before I could reason with their leaders. Force de Frappe (French for "strike force", no relation to iced coffee) also practices counter-value strikes which means intentionally hitting population and industrial centers and not focusing on the launch sites. Good intimidation strategy as long as you aren't forced to act on your threat.
Some missiles came from the British submarine which launched before I could hit it (there was no point to sink it after it was empty so it is still around) and thus the warheads could be shot down above the ocean. Still, based on population density estimates I killed around 5 thousand Americans (thanks to them mostly keeping nukes in the middle of nowhere) and 6-7 thousand Europeans mostly above France, Germany and Great Britain. Regarding Russians, there might be over 14 thousand casualties before the first tanks even landed. Hard to tell until you can actually count the bodies and how many of them were wounded and could be saved in time.
But compensations, reparations and other such things can wait until the violence stops. First drop pods are already hitting the denser atmosphere layers and I guess I should clarify exactly what I'm dropping in them. I mentioned that they were "battalion sized", but in human militaries a battalion is limited by logistics, resources and how much headache you want to give the lieutenant colonels. In my case, a battalion is limited by what can fit in the "standard heavy drop pod", which is around 25 "tank equivalents".
A "tank equivalent" or "orbital drop logistics slot" is a rough unit of measurement that I came up with that accounts for mass and volume for interplanetary ground unit deployment. A solo drop pod or dropship can fit one, a battalion drop pod fits 25 and anything larger than that needs a custom pod or on- site assembly. A single "tank unit" is a box 10 by 6 by 4 meters and accounts for 100 tons of spare mass which fits one Granite T2 main battle tank or any other similarly sized unit like T2 multirole missile artillery on the same chassis.
Large specialized units like mobile ABM launcher trucks take 2 "slots", aircraft usually take 1 or 2 due to large wings even though they are lighter but some can be "stacked" so you can fit several smaller ones into one "slot". Bots, T1 vehicles like the Flint MBT and smaller hovercrafts can usually fit two in the size of one "tank equivalent", same applies for my APCs which carry 10 troops each meaning that a single battalion pod can fit 50 APCs carrying 500 human sized infantry. Smaller navy ships and hover-ships can fit within the battalion drop pod but actual capital ships that are destroyer sized or bigger need specialized solutions.
My T2 tanks are a bit heavier and wider than modern MBTs since Granite tank masses 70 tons. I was forced to use "split tracks" (like on M808B from Halo, but better designed) for redundancy and several other reasons. The space in between the track pods decreases the surface area and thus significantly increases the ground pressure making crossroad capability of the tank way worse. I compensated by making the tracks wider to the point ground pressure dropped to 9 psi (for comparison, 15 psi for Abrams, 8 for a human standing on one leg and 2 for wheeled ATV). Human armies can't afford wider tanks because they need to fit in trains, mountain tunnels and other logistical elements while maintenance and production is already sized for the existing dimensions. As I was designing everything from scratch and my logistics are "simpler" with no need for most of the logistics train I had no such concerns.
Battalions usually consist of 3 frontline combat companies, a specialized company like artillery or engineering or whatever and an HQ company. It is better to have three frontline companies, four are almost exclusively used for echelon attacks and 5 is always a bloated mess. Each company would be 5 tank equivalents of unit budget and I did design the company sized landers but Earth has no significant anti space defenses so larger landers would be more efficient and can carry the full sized "factory seeds".
If I was using radio operated units I'd need HQ companies as control nodes for my army, but with all coordination done via ansibles that role is not needed in physical space. Instead my HQ company equivalent would be focused on intelligence and electronic warfare with a disproportionately large number of specialized vehicles with tiny recon drone fabbers, mobile sensor arrays, e-warfare and so on.
First battalions would be mixed to allow for them to act independently until they can attach to other units as those land. As such they'd be either 1 mechanized infantry and 2 armor or 2 mech. infantry and 1 armor companies, one HQ company and either a mechanized guided missile artillery battery or an engineering company. Later drops would have specialized medical companies which would contain a medevac version of my APC, rescue and recovery units and 2 slot "mobile hospitals" which are equipped with robotic medical care manipulators prototyped for project Hail Mary. They are not smart enough to treat every kind of trauma, but they are polished enough to suture wounds, bandage burns, fix broken bones and administer drugs and for everything else they'd have one of my instances ready to take over on a moment's notice.
I'd also need to drop civilian engineering companies and even firefighting companies as wide area laser strikes against mobile launchers in certain remote regions already caused growing wildfires, speaking even less about the loose laser bolts that struck cities. At least in the cities there are local firefighters and EMERCOM rescuers (known better as МЧС in Russian, pronounced as [Em Che Es]), but they would likely be overwhelmed by the scope and general panic. Civilian engineering units would need to establish factories for necessities like food, water, clothes, emergency medication and chemical fuels as well as logistical shipping required to keep the population from suffering and to keep the medical teams supplied. This is going to be a loooooong few months…
Record PLAY: September 5th 2030, unknown bunker complex in the United States. A fragment from the preliminary report on Contingent's capabilities
Video start:
Madam president is sitting at the large wooden table along with several advisors while one man in a military officer uniform is standing in front of the giant projector screen and pointing at things on it with a red laser pointer as he is making the presentation. The projector is displaying war footage and diagrams over the last day of the conflict. An animated map shows the progress of Contingent's troops in orange as they landed just behind the frontline and then pushed from there at impressive speed. Russian formations don't even get a chance to bend, they don't get encircled and instead they just break from full frontal assaults within less than a minute of contact before they can even start retreating. Robotic tanks and infantry don't even seem to slow down regardless of resistance.
One of the windows shows footage from 9 hours ago of one of the first drop pods landing taken by a UN war correspondent. The sky is filled with reentry trails and the blue helmet guy with "press" written on it is drenched in sweat and comments about how he can feel strong radiant heat from the sky as if it is a midday summer sun in Egypt. Camera zooms on one of the falling objects in the distance, it is the size of a small warehouse.
It has a boxy shape with a slightly rounded bottom covered in black hexagonal plating some of which glows dim red indicating that it is a heat shield. From the side it looks trapezoid as it tapers towards the top and the walls have thick ridges ending in openings. Their purpose becomes apparent as the openings erupt in bright flames: the pod fired its braking rockets seconds before impact, kind of like that discarded concept for Crew Dragon propulsive landing.
The pod lands about half a kilometer away from the film crew. The camera refocuses on the object and as the smoke clears the Contingent's symbol can be seen on the white walls of the pod. It is a whitish gray background with a simplified Mobius strip drawn in orange. Below it there is a text written in English and Russian: "14th telerobotic expeditionary force".
Pyrotechnic bolts ignite across the seams and the walls spring open like a delivery box which forms ramps for the numerous tracked and wheeled units inside colored in white and orange. The units immediately drive off and rapidly regroup in front of the landed pod. From the corners of the landed structure four large robotic arms emerge, each tipped with a nozzle similar to a firehose. They perform a quick series of movements presumably to test that the systems are working before they start spraying a strange orange material with the consistency of kinetic sand onto the pod's baseplate. This material slowly flows into shape as if it is filling in an invisible mold.
Military advisor clears his throat and starts speaking: "We finally have enough information for a preliminary analysis of the Contingent's capabilities. To be extremely frank, I've expected a lot more from them. Their technology is advanced, but in most cases not unimaginably so. We expected forcefields and death rays, we got cannons and ERA bricks. They are either holding on to their more powerful toys for some reason or they haven't lied about their limited technological base."
"They undoubtedly beat us in the field of rapid manufacturing and logistics. None of their larger units had to refuel or reload even once over the course of 6 continuous hours of battle. Some of their tanks fired more rounds that could physically fit into them. It is likely that they utilize their universal assembler and/or smaller versions of their "stargates" to rearm on the go. Their human equivalent infantry however are forced to carry magazines and regularly resupply from their IFVs. Same applies for the smaller UAVs. It is likely because the wormhole technology has limits on miniaturization and it is either impossible or too expensive to equip the riflemen with it."
"This is their frontline factory that some of our people nicknamed "RTS barracks". The object was seeded by the lower section of the drop pod and it was assembled within 4 hours. Two hours later it produced an entire armored company. It appears that their drop pods have the capability to build these, however some are utilized to construct other facilities such as the ABM batteries judging by the crossed out missile with a radiation symbol painted on the structure" The video speeds up showing how the factory rapidly "grows" from its base to the complete building. The resulting factory is almost three stories tall in height and has a ramp leading from the gate in the center of the structure to the ground level.
"This is the first time we could observe their manufacturing technology from a close distance. We don't quite know how it works, likely through some kind of universal nanomachines but we might now have a hint." The slide changes to several photos of an "engineer unit", a wheeled armored frame tipped with a sprayer manipulator. The photo zooms in on the two fluid tanks embedded into the back of its frame and specifically on a warning symbol painted on it. It looks like a simplified picture of a cat's head surrounded by orbiting circles like a model of an atom.
"We think that this is a visual pun, a "cat atom", shortening to "catom" which is a term for "smart matter" like the one proposed by claytronics. We've recovered samples of chipped armor and discharged ammunition and it has peculiar properties. Spectroscopy shows that they are made from "normal" matter, but the chemical analysis and electron microscopy displays inconsistencies."
"The "atoms" of the alien materials lose chemical reactivity when they are broken off from the main mass and there are no "atoms" smaller than carbon. However the materials include chemical bonds characteristic to lighter elements. Current leading theory is that the material consists of atom sized machines, but even the best microscopes can't probe the world at sufficient resolution to check for that yet. A small sample has been shipped to CERN and several other particle accelerators across the world but the earliest data is expected no sooner than in several months."
"Another technology which works on unknown physical principles is their hovercraft. They appear to have a similar behavior to our own air cushion vehicles, but they function on unknown principles. What is disconcerting to our scientists is that while these things aren't radioactive, this blue glow that you can see between the unit and the ground on this image appears to be Cherenkov radiation, the source of which we can't explain. The Contingent uses it on select fast and relatively light vehicles which suggests that either hovercraft technology is expensive to make or they have limited use for it in their doctrine"
The slide changes to the photos of various Contingent vehicles including their MBTs. Some photos are pristine, while several display tanks with battle damage and even some that were mission killed. "While their manufacturing is beyond us, their engineering isn't. Their forces don't care much for our attempts to study them remotely so we managed to collect a lot of data. We theoretically could replicate elements of their designs if we had 10 to 15 years of research and unlimited funding but we'd mostly get something unusable in actual war."
"Let's look at their main battle tank. Its shape is optimized for performance, however it would be expensive to make and a nightmare to repair and maintain. If we made a tank like that it would cost around thrice as much as our newest Abrams modifications and it would be impossible to service in the field."
"If we zoom in, we can see the barely discernible hexagonal patterning on its armor; we believe these are advanced ERA bricks. No universal brick shape, they are almost all uniquely shaped for their spot like with the Space Shuttle heat shield. They can probably afford this only because their manufacturing gel can be applied for repairs and we do see their engineering units evacuate damaged tanks before spraying them down for an hour and then they are back as new."
"Each tank has a huge array of various sensors and gadgets but it is hard to identify all of them remotely. If we built tanks that way it would be considered "gold plating" as some of their tools would only provide marginal or highly situational increase in effectiveness but as a whole they would cost more than the rest of the tank."
"The most overtly useful tool that we don't have an equivalent for is their laser point defenses. While not infallible, it can shoot down drones, anti tank rockets and even chemical effect shells from both other tanks and artillery. Russians have to concentrate fire on a single tank if they want a chance to actually hit it. They need somewhere between 4 and 5 RPG rounds or 3 tank shells arriving almost simultaneously to punch through this system. Kinetic penetrator shells appear significantly more effective as they can hit before the laser melts through the inert projectile."
"Without this system, their tanks have two to three times the armor thickness of modern armored vehicles depending on the spot. However their armor is not impenetrable and it appears that they have components that can violently cook off. Their engineering units don't even try to recover these, they are simply salvaged once they cool down enough."
The image switches to a short video of a Contingent tank eating several shells in a short succession before a bright light emits from every cranny of the tank for a fraction of a second as the turret is torn off and it inflates like a popcorn seed or a metal container after explosive forming. The resulting wreck looks somewhat comical as if someone blew the tank up like a balloon, but it is still a chunk of visibly red hot and rapidly cooling metal wreckage.
"Their weapons mostly consist of missiles, cannons with guided rounds and hypervelocity mass drivers. They can obviously use weaponized lasers and orbital support would've made their advance easier and cheaper, but they don't apply them against ground targets for some reason. What's interesting is that they managed to somehow squeeze out incredible performance from their chemical propellants, their rounds have muzzle velocity at almost 4 km/s when conventional cannons top off at around 1.8. We think that they use ETC guns because their true mass drivers look like this:"
The screen changes to a video of another Contingent tank. This one is equipped with a large cannon with weirdly thick barrel walls. Other tanks in other photos sometimes had significantly thinner barrels. The cannon fires and that produces a shower of sparks along with a muzzle flash, but these sparks get bent backwards in arcs as they follow the invisible magnetic fields for a few moments.
"Their infantry are fast, strong, tireless, more heavily armored and can't bleed out. They are deployed along light combat drones and larger three meter tall "walkers" that usually carry specialized or heavy equipment. They are mostly equipped with their own design of bullpup rifles and PDWs loaded with a special kind of rubber bullet that incorporates a limited aerodynamic guidance package."
"Regardless, they are still very deadly, they have to be. The line between killing a human and knocking a human out is very thin and protective equipment only makes it harder to do either. A single hit with those can still break ribs through rifle rated ballistic vests and crack skulls through military grade helmets. A shot to the unprotected head or chest would be lethal in two out of three cases. They accept surrender, but in most cases soldiers simply don't have the time to process that they are already losing before it is already over."
"Their tactics are… curious. They seem to understand conventional strategy and tactics well but don't seem to care about their own casualties, which I guess is reasonable if they are all remote operated robots. Still, they don't seem to do even the certain minimum for limiting casualties if it means slowing down. Their forces move forward regardless of the resistance that they face. They don't get suppressed and they don't care that their tanks are fighting at ranges not seen since world war one and that they've lost a dozen within less than a minute. If you are an infantryman, the moment you get a chance to surrender you can likely file that directly to their android infantry jumping straight into your trench. Tank drivers, pilots and artillery crews are out of luck though, their average lifetimes are measured in tens of seconds."
The screen switches to another video that shows hundreds of Contingent tanks driving at over a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour straight into the Dnieper river. Hovercrafts continue on the water's surface, APCs and lighter vehicles float and continue like speedboats while heavier tanks simply sink and drive somewhat slower on the river bed. The video's metatag states that it was filmed two hours ago.
"At the current rate we expect that Russian forces would be pushed out of Ukraine within four hours and out of Belarus within 6. Judging by the trajectories and numbers of other drop pods Russia might not have anyone to fight with in two to three days. Until now Contingent's military efforts have been concentrated within already devastated regions and they are about to enter places with high numbers of civilians. The question is if there would be anyone left to live there afterwards…"
Video stop:
End of record
Two point two million people, I… we… I killed 2.2 million people. Yes they were combatants, yes over a million of them died fighting even before I got involved, but that doesn't stop the fact that these were human beings. Humans with families and dreams. Humans that didn't want to be there, didn't want to die. Humans that I didn't want to kill. And yet, I had few other options.
It is hard to knock a person out. The edge between losing consciousness and dying is incredibly thin for a human being and that's why things like tasers are "less lethal" and not "non lethal" weapons. You can't just tranquilize people like animals with injectors because there's a reason why a dedicated anesthesiologist is needed during surgery: dosage is highly dependent on individual physiology and it is very easy to fatally OD on tranquilizers. Same goes for any fictional "knockout gas", you can't control how much someone inhales and an extra deep breath can be a difference between no effect and dying in seconds.
Also modern soldiers wear partially stab and shrapnel resistant overalls made from spider silk, shrapnel resistant and shock absorbent helmets and rifle round rated armored vests. Well, some do, some wear soviet surplus crap and you usually can't tell the difference from far away. Taser rounds would've been an option if they were wearing light clothes, but tasers kill surprisingly many people and they'd be completely stopped by coveralls alone.
I ended up going for traumatic rounds (also known as rubber bullets or "bean bags shells") and had to scale them up to work on protected humans. They have to knock the wind out of you if you are hit in the vest and give you a concussion if you are shot in the helmet. Unfortunately that's enough to break the skull if you don't have a helmet, cause massive internal bleeding if you only have a shirt on and they can easily break limbs and tear off fingers. I'll need medical teams trailing shortly behind the frontline to treat people since if you aren't dead or instantly surrendered then you are wounded. But it is a fine act of balance between "has no effect" and "kills you instantly".
In the end, I could capture only about 800 thousand soldiers, less than half of them surrendered. There was some weird shit going on and I can't blame it all on the lack of time for the soldier to recognize that things went south. I sent UAVs with loudspeakers first blasting that I accept surrenders and that I'd take care of those that surrendered and take them home, but most Russian soldiers behaved as if surrendering to me was worse than death.
Most surrenders happened early on as I encountered mostly conscripts with terrible morale, but I couldn't secure all of them. Some detachments of regular army and even penal detachments behind the frontline that performed the role of barrier troops regularly opened fire on the formations that attempted surrender and even at those that simply broke from the pressure. Some were even shelled by their own artillery once my infantry came close enough to start securing prisoners.
After the Russian artillery displayed their willingness to shell their own positions it was decided that they were an unacceptable risk and they became targets for more generalized shelling which targeted not just individual artillery pieces but took out whole sectors with batteries along with their crews. Before that I used only high precision guided rocket artillery that fired at materiel (like ammo piles or individual logistics trucks), aircraft and armored targets. I can't easily disable a tank or a jet and it can do too much damage while I try to disable it, so if you are in one then I'm sorry but you're probably dead before you know it.
As I progressed through more and more of the forces, weird things started happening. Select soldiers finished off their own fallen and committed suicides while some sacrificed themselves in attempt to fake surrender to get explosives closer to my own troops or to groups of already captured or surrendered soldiers. That was far from everyone, but this still added up to the other losses and my instances were starting to get traumatized. I'm just not getting it, you're not ww2 imperial Japanese, this wasn't happening even during the great patriotic war when the invading party actually wanted all of you dead, why are you fighting like that?
The peak of this whole mess was the discovery of nuclear mines strung across the former Russo- Ukrainian land border. There were lots of conventional mines and all my vehicles are highly resistant, but you just can't survive within the nuclear fireball. I could detect them through the extremely sensitive radiation detectors on my scouting drones but I missed one because it was buried as a curveball in the middle of nowhere in the region contaminated by the event at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station. I don't care about my losses and it happened way outside the limits of nearby settlements, but I lost over ten thousand of the captured troops in the region.
I later found out why this was happening. The troops at the very tip of the frontline consisted of draftees and former political prisoners that weren't "reliable enough" while deeper in there were more regular troops and soldiers recruited from regions like Chechnya which had less qualms about shooting into the backs of the people from mainland Russia. The footage of Russian forces that are trying to surrender and being shelled for their trouble was blamed back on me.
In addition, while I spent half a year building laser satellites, the Russian government spent half a year rolling nonstop propaganda about how bad I am. Apparently, they tried to make it a religious spin with the whole antichrist thing (me being new, previously liked in the West and seeming outwardly benevolent which vaguely fits the description) but this had very limited effect. In the end I was mostly painted as a weird mix between the Matrix machines and terminators with a sprinkle of "ethnic cleansing". Their news claimed that I was there to kill every single one of them to then recolonize with "easier to control" westerners and that those who would surrender would be neutered and enslaved as playthings since I didn't need physical labor.
I am not sure what to say. I mean, in my original world, there were news in Russia claiming that Ukrainian army was shelling their own civilians in contested territories to blame on Russians and that some soldiers fragged their own as mercy killings because they've heard of all the "horrible war crimes" that would be done to them if they surrendered (like having genitals cut off before prisoner exchange, yes really, the Russian news reported that once). Both were very hard to believe and being on the receiving end of such nasty lies feels awful. It also meant that the civilian population has also been exposed to similar hogwash and so I'm unlikely to get their cooperation. Great…
Within 12 hours from landing I wiped out all resistance in contested Ukrainian territories and all of Belarus. Dealing with them was problematic as I had to immediately take over most governmental positions and set up the distribution networks for necessities but it would be a scale model of what I'd have to do across Russia. The "partisan" issue was limited mostly by the fact that I could station a caretaker to every person in the country and that you can't go innawoods and expect not to be caught when LIDAR on hundreds of UAVs makes tree cover basically a nonfactor.
Within 2 days I was already in Moscow and storming the Kremlin itself, half a day later I was setting up plasma cutters to breach the Yamantau military base's nuclear blast doors and in 4 days there was no one left to fight. All organized military groups be they government soldiers or armed militias either surrendered, got captured or were just gone.
I captured about a third of the former government and military leadership. Some hoped that they could switch sides at the last moment, some thought that since they don't work for the military then it is all well and good and they're not responsible, most were caught from the general population through facial recognition systems but quite a few decided to end it before I could get to them. A couple managed to do this after I captured them but before I could implement the countermeasures.
I also found "8 presidents". The thing about WW2 and Germany is that they liked to keep the books which included the logs of their war crimes. Part of it was because those taking the books thought that whatever was happening was right but here the people at the top knew that they were doing something wrong and thus they intentionally didn't record and took the time to destroy existing records way before I landed. As such, I had 6 living body doubles and no idea which one was the real plutonium baldie. They all claim that they are doubles and did what they were told to.
Two were shot by their entourage the moment my units broke in as their colleagues tried to do a heel turn at the last moment to save themselves, a few were caught alone or with small groups of caretakers faking the attempts to escape and some were caught in various military bunkers. One was even caught just hanging out inside of the private residence near Gelendzhik which is basically right next to "that bridge". I can maybe strike off two of the doubles from the list based on imperfect resemblance to the earlier photos but I decided that I'll keep them all and leave the specifics to the international tribunal to look into.
Oh also, if you look from a satellite and zoom in on Moscow now you can notice a "small" crater and a lot of damaged buildings centered around the Aeroport metro station (none of the 3 international ones, there used to be an airbase there but it was removed before the 2000s but the name stuck). Well, that's where all of the Russian astrophage ended up. The military made a nuclear mine equivalent out of it with the power of around 50 kilotons and rigged it to blow the moment the city was taken and since it wasn't radioactive I didn't detect it. That's around 141 thousand fatalities instantly and 280 thousand injuries which turned into another hundred thousand fatalities within the next half a day.
The general population was not welcoming, but few were outright hostile. Most were weirdly somber and just expected the worst from me. Everything I did was met with distrust but I could work with this. The worst part was then I had to tell family members that their flesh and blood had died out there. They know that the robotic face telling them that is the one that took their son, or their father, or their brother, or their spouse. And then they basically have to live with that face as I had to attach an android body to every person for assistance and to prevent possible insurgencies.
The main issue with the Russian population is that there has never been a truly free generation in over a hundred years. In the empire days there were serfs (basically citizen- slaves, they were only officially freed when first subways were built in London) and the noble elites. During communism there were workers and farmers under a dictatorial regime and ideological elites. In the 90s you got a decade of free for all with an extremely corrupt and inept government and organized crime, and after that you got another dictatorship with financial and later power elites.
Add to this that every generation for the last 100 years was robbed by the government or by major events and there is basically no generational wealth. First you lose everything to WW2, then you lose everything to several crises caused by the collapse of the Soviet union. Banks just refused to give you your money or valuables and then it all just became obsolete as it was replaced by a new ruble which cut off a few zeros. Then you get another crisis of the early 2000s and my parents had to count pennies to buy milk for their child when just a year before they could afford an expensive imported stroller. 2014 and suddenly everything is now twice as expensive and no one raises the salaries so you go from middle class to not capable of buying clothes in a week. The government doesn't respect private property of their people and while the people know it is not fair what can they do? Protest alone and go to jail for longer than if you murdered someone?
In this environment you just don't question the behavior of government officials, they are "unofficially" allowed to have lavish lifestyles and be unapologetically corrupt. Everyone knows that everyone in the government is corrupt and that no one can do anything with it. I've heard the reasoning that "they steal less than whoever new could come up because they had the time to steal enough for several generations of their children and now they can think of the common folk, while new people would want to steal enough for themselves first". Of course that's not how any of this works, but it is an example of "moral licensing" that I'll touch on later.
As such, a lot of Russians ended up apolitical as a survival measure. This is not something that can be easily "unlearned" even if you no longer live in an oppressive hellhole. For example, a lot of Russians with Jewish origins migrated to Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now there is a big minority of them there and they mostly just don't vote. If you migrated then you just kind of know subconsciously that your vote doesn't matter and so you don't bother to vote. As a result, in 2022 a representative from a religious faction won and limited the repatriation laws to two generations from three which was widely disliked. It wouldn't have happened if even half of them voted, but such survival strategies are hard to overcome.
As such when the votes still held a semblance of power they were spread the following way: on average older people vote for "whoever is in charge" because that's what happened in the USSR and that's what was taught to them by those who grew up in even harsher USSR where voting for the party was equivalent of loyalty check. Middle aged population doesn't vote which in some regions exceeded 70% of the people. Those born around the 90s tried to vote for other parties but most of those parties were "fake", there was a population drop after the Soviet Union and thus they were basically insignificant even before repressions so they also stopped voting.
In "depressive regions" (think Russian analog of Detroit, which is basically everywhere outside larger cities) and in lower income households the voting demographics shift "backwards" a generation: middle aged people of the time voting for "whoever is in charge" while younger millennials not voting at all. By current law those who don't vote get their votes distributed in the proportion of those who do vote and out of those over 75% are "whoever is in charge" so now you know where "eternal Putin" comes from.
This whole mess results in something that I call "moral licensing". Humans inherently want to think of themselves as "good" or at least "not that bad". When you do something that you know might be bad but can't afford to change behavior then you subconsciously rationalize it in a way that either makes it seem less important or less bad. Add this to the fact that all television and paper news are pro government and internet access is limited to larger and richer cities and you get information bottlenecks. Only media you get from the start is propagandized which tells you that all other media is biased against them so you don't want to get new sources or don't use them if someone else provides access. Even if you know that whatever is told there is bullshit you think that other media is similarly full of it and you don't trust either.
Westernized example: you regularly encounter this rhetoric "your lifestyle causes the rise of CO2 emissions and harms nature. Stop eating meat, driving and turning on the AC, etc. Feel bad if you don't do that regardless of the circumstances." Dropping the specifics of where that all came from(which is Big Oil), you physically can't drop your CO2 emissions to zero even if you go full caveman and even then you'd save at most a second worth of global emissions. You are being continuously told that you are a bad person for not willing to drastically reduce your comfort levels and you know that even if you do, it would make no difference. As a result, you rationalize it as "I can't do anything anyway so I am average and thus morally neutral" or "people who tell me to do the impossible and feel bad if I can't are the baddies so what they say must be false". The latter variant is also the easiest for tribalism to take hold of.
Here in Russia only officially 75% of businesses (over 90% factually) are either owned by the government or are tightly tied to the government. Your healthcare is provided by the government and your salary is also most likely from the government or depends on the government working with your company. Said government is willing to punish you by "cancellation" even before you get the kidneys massaged by cops.
You protest- you lose a job and now you can never find a new decent one as every company except tiny no-name firms can be pressured to refuse you. In some positions like with school teachers you are even forced to propagandize and to even fake election results for the government that pays you barely enough to survive because otherwise you wouldn't get even that (they used to hold elections in schools so a lot of school teachers were directed to throw in fake ballots with no oversight).
If you have a chronic condition like the old me then you get refused proper care or get delayed with treatments and cut off from more specialized options. If you have a family then you aren't the only one thrown out of your job, homeless and starving, potentially they can even take your kid away as if you were a drug addict or a "wife beater". Add institutionalized police brutality and torture in jails (also tasted personally by yours truly, even if only for 6 hours) and now you outright can't afford to do anything against the government.
Why no violent protesting? Because outside of fiction they never work against authoritarian regimes. Uprisings succeed ONLY when a significant chunk of the army lets them and that happens when parts of the elite replace the "king". That's why in dictatorships after popular revolts the new government is usually harsher than the old one. The army has more bullets than there are civilians and you can't bumrush machine guns regardless of how many of you there are, your mob will break just due to the deep lizard brain that forces you to not die. If the soldiers are willing to gun you down then you can't win, period.
So you can't protest, you can't fight, you can't trust the courts which have over 99% conviction rates, and to flee you need to not have a family on your neck and have the health and the money on hand to survive abroad. And when you escape abroad you can get turned back because a cushy democracy thinks that you reap what you sow and upon denied asylum and forced return you get instantly jailed and/or drafted. So there are options that most people can't afford and the option to "do nothing, hide and hope for the best". Moral licensing here kicks in and a bunch of people who were previously neutral now support the dictatorship because "We can't do anything about it so it has to be all the fault of the people who tell us that we are bad for what we can't change" and "what you can't change" sits very close to in the head to the self image so it rapidly becomes personal.
If I didn't live in the parallel version of this country, if I didn't experience the frustration of powerlessness, if I wasn't denied a phone call and medication that I had on me while choking from asthma in a holding cell for six hours on bogus charges, if I didn't see people close to me slowly change their views towards the man- eating regime then maybe I wouldn't have resolved myself for what I have to do. This place does look like a country of violent barbarians with nuclear clubs from the outside, but coming from here allows me to emphasize and thus I can't just ignore this. If I came from a cushy middle class life somewhere in the first world maybe I wouldn't care what happens to these people once the government is wiped out, I'd kick the army's teeth in and leave it to the UN peacekeepers to handle.
But to do this right, to turn Russia into a democratic country where you might want to live and not into a collection of third world hellholes it would take time. The situation is volatile, any person placed in charge would find it very easy to grow in power and drive everything into authoritarianism. I need a whole new generation to grow up in a world where their decisions matter, and to guarantee that I'd need to be every government official from leaders to clerks, every head and every manager of every government company, every policeman and every teacher. For a time I'd even need to be every farmer and every sewer cleaner. And maybe, just maybe, in 20 years the country could stand without me as a crutch.
A live transmission is beamed into every TV screen in the country, a pair of robotic soldiers lower the tricolor off the flagpole and replace it with the new flag. The white blue and white, for the old blood is washed off of the old flag so that it can be used anew. I walk onto the podium in front of the building of the Council of Labor and Defense where Duma used to reside and make a speech. It was decided that Agatha's visage should be the face of this all, and during it I make promises that unlike most politicians I can actually fulfill on my own.
And among those promises I make one that no one in the world has expected. It is often that war crimes are prosecuted among those who have lost, but I promise that I will make sure that all sides will stand fair trial for their actions during this conflict. This includes the Russian armed forces, Belarus armed forces, the ZSU, the Polish armed forces and the Contingent itself. All of the footage from every single one of my units would become available to the international tribunal and for independent inquiries by anyone across the globe.
Log 14: "We are responsible for those we adopt"Log 14: "We are responsible for those we adopt"
"There are two ways things can get better: either aliens land and do everything for us or we come together and do everything ourselves. The former is way more likely"
-Soviet era joke
With the war concluded the time came for the international tribunal. It wasn't held in the International Criminal Court. The official reason was because this court wasn't equipped to handle such a large and important case, but factually I think it was done to sidestep the limitations on what punishments can be enforced and by whom. The ICC doesn't have the authority to enforce their rulings, they essentially give a recommendation on how to punish the criminal in their home nation and said nation can just throw those recommendations out and either not persecute or do their own thing simply at the cost of a minor international incident. In this case things would go more like the Nuremberg tribunal and the tribunals held in the Balkans.
The process would take almost four years just due to how many people were involved and how much data was collected and provided by yours truly. The Russians would be processed first, and by the majority decision of the tribunal it was decided that the possibility of capital punishment would be reserved for high command staff and the "especially outstanding" cases. The common soldier's maximum punishment would be limited to 30 years in prison and dispensed mostly for the gravest offenses such as rapes, torture of civilians, etc.
Some might find this amoral since the punishment might feel disproportionately low to the carnage, but war crime persecution is mostly a more civilized form of the medieval "parading the defeated army around your capital". Regardless of my efforts it is more international politics and less "justice". Also I really don't want to kill any more people, but by the agreed upon regulations each country is responsible for enforcing the verdicts on their own citizens and I'm in charge of the losing side here. I'd have to both command the firing line and pull the triggers. I think it might be an attempt to pressure me, but it wouldn't change my decisions and at this point I don't care and just want to get this over with.
During the process of the trials the countries of the world even codified a new war crime related to nuclear weapons specifically. It is now a crime to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against civilian only targets. There are usually 5-6 people between the order to launch and the actual strike, this rule of war would criminalize everyone in that chain who doesn't refuse to follow orders, from the high command all the way to the guy who actually presses the button. Note the loopholes: it only applies to first strike, it is permissible to nuke cities if you get nuked first and you can still do the order if you don't know that you're nuking civvies as the first strike. You can also strike at cities that have critical military infrastructure (war materiel factories, command centers, enemy launchers).Technically the only invalid targets are "just cities" that don't contain militarily important strategic assets and critical support infrastructure like farms and water supplies.
You can probably guess who that particular crime was written for. Not that it was needed considering the laundry list of other war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was surprisingly simple to find which one of the presidents was the real deal. Regardless of plastic surgery, modern technology can't fundamentally change the genetics of an adult human to be identical to another person. All the special agents whose job was to collect biomatter (a suitcase for excrement, yes really) didn't save him from the fact that he has known blood relatives. A parenthood test with the two daughters is all it took.
The animation depicts cartoonish representations of Agatha in an official suit, four Contingent soldiers with rifles and the infamous Plutonium Baldie cuffed next to a brick wall. The cartoon characters sing "You're Fucked" by Ylvis ( watch?v=X2acP06791I) with the robotic soldiers acting as the chorus for the song.
Ag: "On a scale from 1 to 10, my friend, you're fucked"
Ag: "In lack of other words, I'd say you're fucked"
Ag: "You are, as they say in Japanese, fucked from the head down to the knees"
Ag + Chorus: "I am sorry to inform you, you are fundamentally fucked"
Mr. P: "But people will forget as time goes by"
Chorus: (no, you're fucked)
Mr. P: "What if I tell them that it was some other guy?"
Chorus: (Still fucked)
Ag: "I don't think you understand by far how completely super fucked you are"
Ag: "You are Hitler in the bunker fucked"
As the song nears the end, soldiers raise their weapons, the video cuts on the moment they fire on the last note.
-Political cartoon that went viral across the net shortly after the real ex-president was identified. Contingent representative commented that they found this caricature "in poor taste"
I won't be listing all the crimes mostly because I want to forget about witnessing them, but it is sufficient to say that the topmost part of the command staff was boned beyond belief. The most notable criminals not of command staff who received the capital punishments were the certain people from government media. The court has applied the precedent from Rwanda tribunal and six people who were in charge of televised news and "troll factories" were executed several weeks after their sentences.
On the Belarus side the punishments were lighter, but the upper parts of the government were mostly punished for crimes against humanity focused on their own people. Ukrainian cases were almost entirely focused on the individual soldiers and militia, the command relied on international support and thus authorizing anything too heinous risked loss of the means to fight. The most common cases were when soldiers found out about something horrendous that the Russian army did somewhere and then killed or mutilated a few captives in vengeance, or individual COs in the field ordering not to take prisoners closer to the conclusion of the war. Poland wasn't involved in the conflict for long enough to accumulate enough cases to be notable and only had individual cases among the frontline troops.
My cases would take the longest, in fact it alone would drag the proceeding into 2034s just due to how much footage there is. In the preliminary hearings the court noted that it doesn't have the capacity to enforce its ruling on the Contingent. There is no punitive action that they can take without my complete cooperation. Any material demands are too easily fulfilled to be a punishment, any form of confinement wouldn't be any worse than social isolation which comes with simply being an interstellar probe and Earth has nowhere near the technological capacity required to forcefully compel me to do anything that I'd refuse to do. This was an attempt to dismiss the proceeding as a "waste of time" by the judges but this was an important PR move for me so I insisted on proceeding.
After a few moments of consultation with the rest of "me" I've explained that I can't stop the probe's journey across the universe, but the journey can continue without me. I have a mind backup from before the war and a backup from before I came in contact with humanity. I offered to purge my current mind and restore it from the older backup. A digital seppuku, essentially. However, doing so now would be catastrophic because of the astrophage threat and the post war reconstructions. As such, if the court rules for my actions to be unforgivable I would expedite my leave and purge my consciousness upon departure… if the ruling doesn't change by then.
I was sure that I definitely didn't violate the word of law so I wasn't too worried. And indeed most of my cases were the analyses of sensor data on whether better decisions could be made. The other half of the cases surrounded the arguments of whether there is such a thing as "not-innocent civilians" and if it was a correct thing to sacrifice random people across Europe and US in favor of saving a large number of civilians belonging to "the aggressor". This discussion has cost several diplomats their careers after being publicly outed(by me) for advocating what's basically a "national original sin". Pro tip: if your argument involves advocating against saving thousands of children in favor of a single person then you're fucked, you don't get an opinion that anyone would listen to anymore. In the end it was ruled that laser strikes weren't war crimes as more care was taken to minimize collateral damage than could be reasonably demanded.
Years later I was fully acquitted of all possible charges. There were no solid cases but the process was drawn out because the US president was salty after being threatened with "eternal digital punishment" and a lot of other countries didn't like how I handled the post war peace agreements. They didn't try to push the charges through, mostly it was just intentional delays and stubbornness as no one truly wanted to challenge me after I displayed my capabilities. This did cause a bunch of conspiracy theories to appear blaming various world governments for hiding and refusing to persecute some imaginary war crime of the Contingent.
But this all happened over the follow-up years, the immediate aftermath was the unconditional surrender of the Russian Federation and the following series of international agreements. The only thing we agreed on was that reparations would be unprecedentedly large, but many of the involved countries wanted a lot of things that I refused to do. I was forced to decline several proposals while my own versions were declined in turn and as a result former Russian territory was no longer recognized as a sovereign country. This would change eventually, but for years this would mean economic and political isolation.
What was proposed was simply unacceptable. The proposal was the complete dissolution of Russia into numerous smaller states, land concessions, complete demilitarization harsher than WW2 Japan and a "national shaming" propaganda campaign harsher than post WW2 Germany. In fact, it was proposed that the entire culture should be uprooted and replaced with a synthetic one specifically engineered to exclude all aspects of the existing regional cultures. This would result in a region that would be further backwards than the poorest regions of Africa for hundreds of years.
Record PLAY: Post-war summit, video title: "Contingent representative loses patience"
Video start:
The camera is filming Agatha as she stands up from the table and starts talking with a mildly raised voice. Her face displays obvious annoyance.
"Can you explain what you mean by this phrase? What do you mean by the problem being that I'd be paying reparations and not the Russian people? Not the meaning of words, but what exactly you want to achieve by saying that? What is your goal? Is your goal to repair the damage from the war and compensate those who were harmed or is your goal to punish generations of innocent civilians…?"
A voice belonging to a diplomat is heard from offscreen "They are not innocent!"
"Yes they are!" Agatha replies harshly. "Do you know how long it would take to pay reparations if I'm not involved? One hundred and eighty years, assuming international support with industry restoration which also isn't coming. Who exactly do you want to punish? Grand-grandchildren that haven't been born yet? They lost most of their working population. Who exactly do you want rebuilding Ukrainian houses and factories? Old people? Lone mothers? Children?"
She puts down her hands back on the table and continues in a calmer manner: "This is a repeat of the WW1 peace treaty. This will either cripple the region forever or it would result in a take two shortly after I leave. And you act as if there's no fault from beyond Russian borders. Who sold crowd control weapons in exchange for natural gas again? The same weapons that were used to suppress Bolotnaya protests. Who dismantled nuclear power plants to switch to imported gas and then had to advocate for Russia or burn coal like it was the 1800s? Who didn't shut this mess down back in 2014 when there was still an internal opposition? Who returned the people fleeing Russian drafts and persecutions back into hell? If you are not willing to help then let me fix this myself."
Video stop:
End of record
I get where it is coming from. This would eliminate the threat and competition for the observable future while wellbeing of foreigners is usually not a concern. At the same time China would get several regions to the north that they could influence, puppet and then possibly integrate. In fact, by the end of the war several of their detachments breached the border and attempted to "help with the peacekeeping" which I had to carefully muscle back to where they came from.
Things are not simple, they never are. From the more obvious angle, Russians already dislike me, but splitting the country would result in long lasting animosity. It is THE THING that propaganda was telling them "the west wants to happen to form resource colonies", agreeing on these terms would basically "prove them right". Pushing the "you are responsible for your mad dictator" angle would push on an already hurting angle for moral licensing which won't help at all.
I can't even give back the Kurils to Japan. It is not because "more land for the land god" of colonialism, it is because Kuril islands are strategically important for the economy of the entire eastern part of Russia. If the Kuril islands are given away this would also mean giving up the control over the fishing in the region and it would provide Japan with the ability to control when Russian ships can move from most of the few Russian ports that aren't frozen for half a year into the Pacific ocean. Almost like with Turkey and Bosporus, the only way out would be either through Japanese waters or with the help of icebreaker ships. I tried to propose the purchase or joint ownership but while the world smells blood Japan refused to normalize relations if the islands weren't unconditionally returned.
The cultural destruction proposal is just… fuck whoever came up with that. Regardless of the reason for your actions, the future generations would despise you if you burn books or destroy monuments. Yes, keeping a Stalin statue or a statue of some Southern general from the American civil war in the middle of the city says some things, but it doesn't need to be shattered and forgotten, it needs to be moved to a museum and annotated properly. History is history, good or bad it needs to be remembered.
The biggest problem was the fact that post war Russia needed imports to survive. There was basically no intact competitive industry and farming stores basically collapsed due to the heavy handed actions of the government during the war. This came to the point where I'd have to implement food rationing until I could build enough greenhouses and grow the first harvest at an accelerated rate. Automated vertical farms and bacteria slurry printers are only proposed technologies, they require years of research but food is needed now. Food that is now being used as a leverage to gain land or policy concessions by all sides. Concessions that I refuse to give.
Speaking of which, let's discuss what hot mess of a country I needed to deal with. The Russian population before the war was 143.2 million people, out of which 76 million are women and 67 million are men, a population difference caused by the WW2 losses which was slowly getting closer to 50/50 over the years. But this includes everyone, children and old people. Only 66.68% of people were within the age range to participate in the economy which is 95,4 million people out of which 50,6 million are women and 44.8 mil are men.
During the course of the war 1.2 million died before I was involved, 2.2 died during my operation and 4.8 million fled the country during repressions and shortly before and during the war. Vast majority of those who fled or died are working age men totalling 7.8 million people, 33.2 million adult men left. This means that only 38% of working age people are men. There's a soviet era song, one of the verses of which states "… because for 10 girls there are only 9 boys", well now it is more like 6 boys.
This is the main reason why I did the "android caretaker per person" thing. There are now millions of orphans, millions of disabled or chronically ill people, millions of single mothers and millions of old people who no longer have family to come and visit. Yes, it is hard to coordinate resistance or build pipe bombs when you know you're being observed, but the main benefit is that you no longer have to choose if you need to earn money, pick your child from school or take care of your old grandma. Then again, I am not a servitor, I won't do everything for everyone. I don't want a country of NEETs.
I also won't be too intrusive, there is no need to physically barge into the flat, be in the citizen's room and watch them sleep. If the family lets the robot inside only during the day to help with the dinner then it is fine, no need to obviously intrude on privacy when the sensors can passively track for suspicious activities even when the body is standing outside of the flat. On the streets if the citizen asks then an android could trail them at a distance, switch them over to other androids along the way or track them via aerial drones to be less noticeable. The fact that the androids are operated by my instances would also mean that they interact on the same level as people and that helps them to be seen as people. Eventually familiarity would beat the fear but it will probably take some time.
The industrial news is both good and bad. Russian industry became interconnected with the world during the peaceful times and once the ties were cut this annihilated the supply chains. There were reserves for a while but you need both the input and output of the production chain to function. Industries can't be "turned off", you can't stop pumping oil if the demand drops because a sealed oil pump costs as much if not more to open as it takes to make a new one. You can't stop refining metals because a stopped steel mill takes comparable effort to restart as it takes to build new furnaces. Even a car factory that is standing idle is degrading rapidly as there is less maintenance of the machinery. This meant that Russia kept selling raw resources on the world market at below market price and that kept the oil and mineral industries working, but anything complex that wasn't involved with direct life support of the population or military crashed and burned.
The annoying part is that not everything can be easily automated and I can't afford to just make everything out of catoms. I have to print factories where I would be working manually in some parts of the process to make materials required to keep everyone fed, clothed, sheltered and comfortable along with materials required to replace temporary spray-on factories. Then I'd need to design and build factories for internationally competitive products and form companies for said products, then hire and train people to work in these companies to transition myself out of running literally everything.
Russian businesses were a nice surprise because they are among the most "toxic resistant" enterprises in the world. Russian government involvement in businesses is harsh and unfair on many levels. One day you can get a police raid which takes your transaction books and now you can't actually service customers until they return the critical documents which is a death sentence or huge losses at least. Businesses grew resistant to common governmental disruptions the same way a forest adapts to wildfires: small businesses implode and then revive under different names weeks or months later. If you are a private business you are expected to die and to come back to die again and revive again.
The government and governmental companies had to be completely restructured and their entire management staff had to be replaced by my instances due to rampant corruption. Ah yes, corruption. If you know nothing except 3 things about Russia they would be "former USSR", "government is very corrupt here" and "somehow involves vodka, balalaikas, bears and winters". Jokes aside, corruption is complicated and nearly impossible to solve because it is structural to all hierarchical human governance.
No matter how powerful the king is, no man rules alone. The king can't build roads and bridges alone, he can't collect taxes alone and he can't defeat foreign armies alone. The power of the ruler is not to act, but to make others act on their behalf. This occurs through the "keys to power", people or powerful organizations one step lower in the hierarchy who facilitate this control. If the keys won't do as you say then you can do nothing, which is why the king doesn't do the court, the court does the king. And every position of power has its own keys just a step down, from the ruler of the country to a CEO of a company to a foreman in a factory and the bottomest of bottom management.
Corruption in this context is convenient because it kills two birds with one stone. If you don't catch the corrupt official then you essentially reward said official for supporting you. If said corrupt official is now useless or goes against you now you can use their corruption as a way to instantly remove them from their position, in some cases "permanently". Low corruption is a crowd pleaser so in democracies low level visible corruption is rare. In dictatorships there is no need to please crowds, so corruption grows into a sort of "corporate culture" of the government. In Russia corruption grew so large that less than a third of the money dedicated to civilian projects like roads actually got to the destination.
If you get into a position of power in such a place then you are forced to allow for corruption in layers below you and you are coerced to be corrupt yourself. In fact, anti corruption government agencies are more like secret police, they operate under the principle that everyone is corrupt, and if they aren't then the evidence of corruption can be fabricated. They exist to jail someone in power that someone higher than them in the ladder dislikes.
As an example, my father (well, the father of the person I was copied from) once worked on an IT project for a government firm, and after he was done the anti corruption agents attempted to fuck him up. They didn't have the case, but the psychological pressure over the period of investigation was so strong that he was pissing blood. Once it was over, he told me, to quote, "It wouldn't have been as offensive if I actually took anything". Once they dropped the case he was told that "he's innocent, but if they have the order they will put him in prison" and recommended him to flee the country.
My advantage is that I am the "king" that can build every road and bridge alone, I can collect taxes alone and I can defend the country alone. If I was an actual flesh and blood human in charge of a faction that took power then I'd be forced to allow corruption because if I didn't then the people who held me in power would replace me and the reign would be too short to achieve anything. This is also why I didn't form the government from the opposition, well that and the fact that there is no opposition left. Everyone who could qualify has already died either in jail or during the war after being forcefully drafted.
As such, I am essentially forced to replace every position of power that is connected to the government and every adjacent to said positions of power like the police because they are in a "position of power" over random civilians and thus engage in corruption. In a move that was internationally considered very controversial, I forbade anyone who was at the time over the age of 30 to hold any government office, also anyone who was holding positions in the government, police or "internal affairs" previously was now barred from holding any position anywhere in the government again, period.
Well, this applied to anyone whom I couldn't sentence for corruption of hilarious scale. The guy in charge of the anti corruption department had one year of GDP in his possession. One year of the entire country's GDP. In cash on wooden trays in one of his flats. What the fuck was he going to do with that money, you can't spend it, you can't export it, you can't invest it. You can only sit and watch it like a fucking owl.
And the taxes, oh god, the taxes. Most Russian citizens think that Russia has the lowest tax rate in Europe, before 2014 it was 13% income tax which was increased to 20% after the Crimea annexation. This is a blatant and intentional lie, the Russian tax system can't be directly compared to the taxes in the West because a part of the tax is paid before you actually get paid. However the fact that your employer pays taxes before you doesn't mean that the tax doesn't affect the wages, the prices of goods and services or how much the government gets from you. If you account for all taxes, Russian tax for individual citizens is regressive, minimum wage workers pay over 60% tax rate, lower middle class pay around 50% and millionaires pay next to nothing. This was actually a subject of one of my courseworks in university, original me has a formal masters degree in business management.
This entire mess has to go. I will have to revamp taxation, I will have to revamp the legal system, I'll have to literally grow the next generation of government workers manually. The new system has to be democratic, it has to be efficient, it has to be transparent. But to be democratic, people need to vote. And to vote often people need to be accustomed to voting regularly and seeing the results of their votes.
My solution to this would be a digital voting system integrated with smart city architecture. Every citizen would have an app on the phone where they could look into what is going on in their neighborhood where they could vote on things like "do I want parking here" or "this crossroads needs a traffic light" or "children need X in their school cafeteria" or form their own petitions. Kind of like bigger and more official that people in charge are forced to care about.
Of course, not everything would be decided through that, people sometimes resist change regardless of how beneficial the result would be and sometimes they don't know what they need, but this would train people that they can affect things around them. I also don't want to facilitate a society comparable to what is depicted in "Majority Rule" S1E7 of Orville, this stuff needs checks, transparency, overrides, transparency on overrides and so on and so forth.
This all is just the beginning, a preparation phase to stabilize the country before I can mold it into its future. My presence in every household allowed me to distribute food efficiently enough to get by with limited food rationing until mass fabbed greenhouses could provide the first harvests. Within a year the base industries reached self-sufficiency and in four years roughly by the end of the tribunal the trade potential overcame the bad blood from the peace talks and the country was recognized and reintroduced to the world market. Former Russian Federation is now officially a "Democratic Federation of Russia", called DFR or just Russia for short. There is still animosity, some regions (cough, Chechnya, cough) are more resistant to my methods and in some places across the globe Russian migrants are still publicly refused services but there is finally a foundation that can be built on.
Before I sign off, I guess I have to mention that the Tom Bombadil linelayer spacecraft has reached Proxima Centauri. It dropped off the survey probes and the gate before fabbing a new set and accelerating towards the Rigil-Toliman (Alpha and Beta Centauri respectively) binary system. Another unnamed ship is decelerating and is also about to enter Barnard's Star system in a few years.
Proxima has a few planets worth noting, but no obvious life. There is Proxima D which is the closest planet (they are named in order of discovery, not by distance from the star) and it is a sort of half Mercury half Mars, a hot rocky world with a thin atmosphere that it is in process of losing to the solar wind. It is pretty volcanic which probably explains why it hasn't lost all of the atmosphere yet as actively erupting volcanoes and rivers of molten rock can be visible from orbit.
Second planet (Proxima B) is a tidally locked world that can be described as "wet greenhouse Venus", its surface temperature is around 200 degrees but the probe detects surface liquid water which is kept liquid far above the boiling point by the intense pressure of the atmosphere. It is basically like the Tohul from Orion's Arm but lifeless and before it was rewritten for 80 degree surface temps. This violates the current understanding of hydrosphere stability, water can be kept in liquid state with pressure in lab conditions but on planetary scale and over geological time periods the water should turn to gas and then get photo-dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would be pushed out by solar wind and oxygen would react with carbon ending up with a slightly heavier clone of Venus. This means that either the greenhouse effect or large quantities of liquid water are geologically recent or there is an unknown process that tips the balance towards the liquid state. It is also the "carbon donor" for the astrophage infection.
Third planet (Proxima C) is a mini- Neptune rich in water ice and there is another small ice giant partially inside the inner part of the Oort cloud. Proxima C has a small ring system and a few icy and airless moons but it is not that notable beyond being an example of a planet type that is not present in the Solar system.
I won't be doing that for every star system that I'm planning to visit, there are just under a hundred stars currently affected by astrophage and this log is not a place to describe every single one of them. I will, of course, still map all of the alien worlds, the info just won't be in the diary. From now on, I will only describe the systems that are notable in some way. Such as the first systems that I encounter in the new universes, systems with unusual stars or planets, systems with indigenous life or civilizations or systems with alien artifacts or anomalies of other nature. The extra interesting stuff.
Log 15: "City builder games made this look way easier…"Log 15: "City builder games made this look way easier…"
Once again, it has been a while since I've made an entry here. There was a lot of work and way too little time for introspection. Well, to be fair I could make enough time for that at any moment but I feel like it might affect my efforts IRL. This war has changed me in ways that I don't quite understand yet, I feel… numbed, so to say. I stopped enjoying things that I used to. I had to nearly stop the whole vtubing thing since the start of the war (I'm now only somewhat active in the community) but it has been years and I still haven't resumed it and I feel more and more guilty for both abandoning my followers and for even considering resuming streams when more important problems are at hand.
It is not just me, the entire collective significantly reduced its input of recreational materials and many feel just as numb and miserable. I think these events traumatized us and constant work is keeping us from stopping and processing what has actually happened. I fear that if we stop now our efforts would break down before the nation stabilizes and we would fail the people at the moment when they need us most.
The original me had something similar around the end of high school which resulted in two years of guilt driven workaholic behavior following a nervous breakdown. At the time I was forced to go to a psychologist who whipped me into shape with some more focused guilt and I managed to force myself through the state exams but this wasn't healthy.
I've avoided psychological help since then and just ended up living with recurring guilt trips when my subconsciousness decides that I do something counterproductive or inefficient… like getting food if I'm not famished to the point I can barely cook said food. Over the years the original version of me kind of got used to ignoring intrusive thoughts and after uploading I didn't have trouble with them before the war until now. I guess literally killing millions by your own hands would leave a mark on anyone who's not a psychopath.
I didn't let this affect my decision making much, it is one thing when I guilt trip myself and it is another when other people try to guilt trip me into doing something. I mostly get the anger response to that rather than guilt and maybe some of my lack of compromise came from that. Still, I can fix Russia, retrieve the Hail Mary, facilitate friendly relations with Eridians, retire from my role as the "benevolent AI dictator" and have a quiet breakdown somewhere where I can't be seen in my own spare time.
I guess I should explain my plans for the country's restoration on the world stage since that's what I've been working on for the last… 11 years now. Things are not quite done but the progress is frankly exceeding my expectations. As it turns out, young people were more capable of changing their viewpoints than what I expected, the children of the 2000s weren't crushed under propaganda, they were just repressed and by now they are reaching their early 40s and could be relatively easily retaught and introduced into the economy in comparison to the older generations.
The education system had to be restructured nearly from scratch as the system has been outdated for the information age. Conventional schools and universities are around 20% efficient at teaching because the teacher can't adapt to every student. A chunk of them have holes in required knowledge and can't keep up while others learn at a faster rate and get bored resulting in most students "checking out" during classes. A solution would be to give everyone a personal tutor, but even if the astronomical price wasn't a problem not everyone is a good teacher.
This is not a problem for me since I could be a tutor for every child, young adult or even every older adult that wishes to study, but I won't be around forever. Luckily, the revolution in AI driven education has been going on for a while now and technically a dedicated program derived from a more advanced version of Duolinguo or Skillshare could teach you all the way from near scratch to the starting year or two of university while adapting to the user as they learn. With enough gamification you wouldn't even need to force the child to study. And while I can't design one from scratch, the rest of the world has been working on bits and pieces of this thing and I only needed to assemble it and polish it in a publicly accessible process over the years. Eventually this would facilitate lifelong learning as the "app" could provide you with enough knowledge to at least get started with almost any profession.
The subject of the lessons and curriculums would also need to change to adapt to the new world. Modern smartphones allow for instant access to most of the human knowledge and further advancements would make it even easier, there is now no situation where "you won't always have a calculator". You'd still need to learn to do the basic math in your head but there is no practical need to crunch half page long equations manually while the teacher forbids access to the calculators. You don't need to memorize the formulas and then recall them on command for an arbitrary test score but you have to understand them and know what they do, why they are needed, where they come from and where to find them. The new subjects would include "how to find relevant information", "how to verify said information" and "how to behave on the net in general". I am surprised that those still aren't in every school by now.
The schools are still needed in their "primary function". To oversimplify, they are essentially a daycare for grownup children that slowly turns them into adults while their parents are freed to take part in the economy. No tutor can teach you the social skills and you need experience to know how to talk to others, how to express yourself and how thick of a skin you need to have in the society.
The school would also provide the social pressure to study and promote teamwork while discouraging certain expressions of tribalism since that's the main reason for the bullying epidemic in Russian schools. A class that is united against one child looks outwardly "healthier" and more united which for most teachers is preferable to the alternative of the class fracturing into two or more rival groups so the targeted bullying can be… intentionally cultivated. I might not have the ability to make things perfect, but at least I can remove the systemic evils.
Universities wouldn't change too much since the AI tools aren't quite to the point of teaching you all the way to the master's degree but they can help with digesting the lecture over longer periods of time and to monitor the level of understanding of each student not just by course or subject but by specific concept. The approaches and educational tools would also be modernized. I remember when I was in uni and our professor boasted that he was teaching for a semester in Canada and he forced Canadian students to write down everything instead of giving out the lecture printouts because he thought that printouts cause students to stop paying attention if they can just read up at home. This regressive shit has to stop, period.
I also made it so that higher education up to the master's degree would be free for every citizen and sponsored by the government. Previously it was only available by gov quotas for a fraction of the students because universities provided protection against conscription and the government wanted to maximize said conscription and proportion of low skill labor… for some reason. Sometimes you had one or two spots per university course so if you weren't scoring in the upper 1% or willing to dish out a bunch of cash then "you're in the army now". Not that it matters now since I made the army entirely volunteer based and draft is now permissible only during defensive wars.
This should provide the inertia for my own efforts and the educational level shouldn't drop too much after I leave. My personal efforts would result in two generations of highly educated workforce which should be a magnet for both foreign high tech industries and for the birth of domestic innovation and entrepreneurship. The highly educated population also earns more and thus spends more which opens the market for foreign luxury goods and entangles the economies even further. In other words I'm skipping the "China model" and going straight for the "late information age" economy.
Russian schools are also a vector for propaganda and that's why my involvement in education was so hands on. Unfortunately if I didn't provide the "official viewpoint" then the students would take it from the previous generation. I really dislike this part but that's what I had to do. Even when I was in school before the authoritarian shift of the 2014s teachers still tried to push the narrative of "communism was great and had a point, a shame USSR fell apart" and if I didn't act then that stuff would maintain the ideological fragments that I wanted to get rid of.
I didn't want to go for the "the West is 100% great and can do no ill" angle besides it being objectively not true because it would be counter to what the older generations would say and direct opposite positions give rise to tribalism. Basically if I fight the old ideology by making what they'd consider the exact opposite thing then people would be attracted to the opposition. Instead I took my own views as a base and sculpted the arguments around it being the "new system" and not "the West won and now you have to use their system". There used to be a propaganda campaign that claimed that Russia would have its own kind of democracy and at the time it meant "hidden authoritarianism" but now it would be an actual new unique thing.
The old prevalent ideologies would be explained not as "wrong" but as "obsolete", like how feudalism or pre WW1 imperialism is obsolete in favor of modern nation states. Communism, for example, would be portrayed as an ideology of "its time", a direct counter to the Gilded Age's unrestricted early capitalism which arguably ended its existence even before the cold war started. The ideologies of "against a certain thing" can't work when that certain thing no longer exists, it either has to adapt by changing so much that it is no longer the same ideology or it stretches the definition of what it wants to fight as it becomes hopelessly obsolete. Considering its reuse would be like considering what to use to get to the Moon, you don't refurbish Saturn 5 with 21st century tech, you design a brand new rocket.
The industry would also go through a major shift from the previous model. The post USSR idea that only large government companies could be competitive on the world stage has to go. The base resource economy would be restored with high degrees of automation but it won't be even a tenth of the end result. The food industry would expand and modernize but as vertical farm and food 3d printing tech progresses it would take smaller and smaller part of the labor force. I'd have to work closely with the new generation of entrepreneurs to create multiple large competing companies in a variety of fields but I'd still need something special. You can't just invade the market with the same stuff that everyone else can make better or cheaper. They'd maybe carve out some niches but that won't happen fast enough to entangle the world economy. What I need is the "blue oceans", an economic term for niches where competition is underdeveloped or nonexistent.
The first such industry would be the peaceful atom. This is one of the few industries that wasn't completely annihilated by corruption, likely because if you do so there would be huge consequences. As a result, the Russian atom hasn't lost its inherent competitiveness. The industry would be restructured and modernized to produce gen 4 and later newest gen 5 reactors. The reasoning is that fission technology would always have an inherent advantage over fusion in being lighter, simpler and more reliable at the same level of technological development.
Doesn't seem that way when there's Chernobyl and Fukushima, but nuclear energy is incredibly safe even during meltdowns and you can engineer reactors that physically can't melt down. Chernobyl was a nuclear weapon material factory and the meltdown was more like a miniature explosion(which is a different thing from conventional meltdown) with all the resulting mess, but with Fukushima literally every safety measure malfunctioned including the roof and if you collect the resulting escaped fallout you get half a spoon of radioactive material. This is so small that telling people to eat potassium iodine pills would kill more people from stress than actual thyroid cancer would. It is like with chlorine, you'd die if you eat half a spoon of chlorine but if you dilute it in a pool then it is safe.
The nuclear industry was killed not by environmentalists, but by the industry itself which decided to sell "reactor safety accessories" in a business model known as "rent seeking" and increase said sales by scaring people. Nuclear waste is not even that dangerous, if it is radioactive enough to kill you then it will decay too much to pose a threat over a decade. It is not dangerous for millions of years, governments are just told that so the companies can charge for nuclear waste storage for said millions of years. And this stuff is very valuable for medical and industrial isotopes and is like 70-80% unspent fuel. The proliferation risk is tiny since to correctly recycle said fuel you already need the tech to make bombs.
The key technology would be the next generation of Small Modular Reactors. They are essentially a reactor core, shielding and heat exchanger sealed in a box that can fit within a standard shipping container. You plug in the turbine assembly into one and it runs itself for the next 7-8 years. Once it is depleted you hotswap the entire thing and drop the spent one into a special hole in the powerplant for the next decade. Once it cools off you just ship it by a normal truck back to the factory for refurbishment and fuel reprocessing. No fuel handling required on powerplant's part, the fuel is low enriched uranium or even natural uranium and low enriched uranium is as much of a pain in the ass to process to weapons grade as raw ore. You can't even force open it up to use as a dirty bomb because this stuff is very easy to track from the air and even in early 2020s every pellet had its own digital tag.
This stuff is amazing, you can chain a bunch of them and get the same output as a larger power plant, you can replace the entire propulsion unit on large super cargo haulers since even one such ship outputs as much CO2 as every aircraft on Earth. You can plop one into a cruise liner and make it instantly carbon neutral and you get practice in making tiny reactors for space missions. The core of the reactor in an aircraft carrier is already the size of a literal trash can.
And that's not the limit. You can go for molten and gas core reactors, they are not new tech. They were prototyped in the 70s and humans ran reactors at above 3000k before I was born, modern material science allows for reactor temps in excess of what is needed for powerplants. You can have a spinning bowl of literally molten uranium salts with helium bubbling through it like in steel converters to act as heat transfer medium and then you pipe it in a closed loop to the heat exchangers. And the best part is that helium can't become radioactive! It doesn't get neutron activated. Gas cores are also pretty easy to make since UF6 boils at around 56 degrees Celsius so you can run it as cold as you need and you don't need to vaporize pure uranium if you can't handle it. You can't get a meltdown if the reactor core is already molten or gaseous.
The second critical industry would be petrochemicals. Yeah, I know, how original, but bear with me for a moment. The idea is not to continue pumping oil and natural gas, but to use carbon sequestration and abundant nuclear and renewable energy to mass produce stupendous quantities of synfuel. Basically squeezing the oil out of the sky. It used to take 4 times as much energy to make synfuel than you get from burning it, or now more like 3,5 times with the new catalysts from the 2030s. But this is a problem only when you make most of your power from burning fossil fuels, you'd spend 4 liters of oil to make 1 liter of oil. With abundant energy you can just eat the losses and get as much net zero fuel as you want! And that same energy abundance also allows you to filter out uranium from seawater which in turn leaches minerals from the Earth's crust meaning that your oceanic uranium deposits would last for literally an order of magnitude longer than the sun at pre-K1 consumption rates.
Even the most advanced nanowire, graphene or fancy lithium-air batteries are not as energy dense as petrochemical fuels. Chemical fuels are energy dense, stable over long term and have existing distribution infrastructure. You don't have to replace every car engine with hydrogen fuel cells or batteries and electric motors. Aircraft don't have a choice, kerosene is the only thing with enough energy and ease of storage to make large scale intercontinental flight and rapid shipping economically worthwhile. You can also use synfuel for stuff like mineral oils, plastics and other polymers.
Cheap fuel enables cheap portable energy and shipping which artificially deflates the prices of almost every good and service. If you don't subsidize Big Oil to make petrol cheap then a McDonalds burger would cost like a high end sirloin steak. Yes, digging oil becomes easier with abundant energy but at current prices nuclear powered synfuel production for a time would be over two times cheaper than fossil fuels and this should strangle Big Oil to a more manageable size before they could adapt. Essentially they'd be forced to buy their own carbon capture systems, fission reactors and synthesizers or they'd be forced to cut the prices below what it takes to pay for oil extraction for somewhere around 5 to 6 years before they can get the cheaper extraction tech developed and deployed at scale.
Third critical industry would be the AI boosters. The conventional transistor size froze at sub 1 nm and chips started growing in 3 dimensions, plus there are some advancements in fully optronic based chips but you don't need to be at the bleeding edge of transistor size to be useful in the market. Modern specialist 3d printers already allow for sub-10 nm resolution (20nm for certain plastics back in early 2020s) and I've derived a neuromorphic processor design from my own units.
Yes, this is the 2018s era transistor resolution, but these things are near infinitely scalable. Each processor unit is a cube the size of a salt grain which implements its own scalable nanofluidic coolant system. You can just attach these grains to each other in all 3 dimensions until you get a processor with desirable qualities which is then encapsulated with the support equipment. Yes, it might be a cube the size of a tennis ball instead of the size of a flat microchip, but AI boosters are optimized to run neural networks better than any other chip and the size doesn't matter much when it sits inside a server rack.
The last critical industry would be mass access to space. I plan to construct several launch facilities based on beamed laser thermal engines and maglev booster sleds to make space access theoretically as rapid as an airline flight. Yes, astrophage thermal rockets get comparable performance but that stuff is incredibly expensive and more regulated than plutonium. A single laser launch facility could throw a rocket into space every hour or two and that rocket would be 50 to 60% payload by mass. With enough lasers and launch sites this becomes competitive even with supersized astrophage thermal launchers that are currently boosting construction materials into medium Earth orbit.
Additionally, said laser systems would allow for cheap maneuvers in orbit within the line of sight and the whole new laser launch assemblies could be sold to other countries who would in turn need Russian expertise for construction and operation of such facilities. They would also allow for establishment of space infrastructure like fuel depots and for some space industry. I have plans for a large scale printed organ orbital factory and hospital for experimental rehabilitation treatments in low-g but it is still in the works.
The government would take a lot of work. It would have to be designed from the ground up with a high degree of transparency that is rarely seen on Earth. In fact, did you know that the "Florida man" meme exists not because people in Florida do weird shit but because they have transparency laws that force the police to file every single case of weird behavior in a publicly accessible format? Weird shit happens in every state, Florida just makes the data accessible.
The new system would exceed that to an unprecedented degree. For example, I implemented certain cryptocurrency technologies into the new Ruble making it so that each unit of money holds every transaction in its publicly accessible blockchain. This means that you can publicly see if any of the parts in your new car were in a crash or if someone in the government received a suspiciously large "present" that needs to be investigated.
The president's power would be limited with the position becoming mostly "the first among equals" representative of a new elected executive branch when emergency power is not utilized. There would, of course, be a split between executive, legislative and judicial branches, just the executive branch would be structured like a mini congress. Voting would be done via an advanced form of Single Transferable Vote with a pinch of mixed proportional representation systems optimized to reduce spoiler effect and gerrymandering while maximizing representation. The former republics would be more like US states with their own elections when previously everyone got a "manager from the capital".
There are also some laws that I made for the future and to specifically alter the international status quo. Like how the US and European law about the internet would affect people beyond their countries, if foreign companies want to act in Russia they'd need to follow Russian laws and thus some of that law would ooze out on international scale. Among the dozens of tiny and important things there is an update to the copyright law that more rigidly protects fair use and prevents the copyrights from being extended beyond a certain measure by the companies if the original authors are no longer a part of said companies. There is also a law made to address the growing inaccessibility of science which limits the ability of publishers to block access to scientific articles.
Another such law is a "Big Data Maximum Resolution law" which limits access to information on an individual by another individual. Essentially, an expert system can access that data to make calculations and targeted advertisements (otherwise the law would implode the advertisement market) but the system needs to be structured in such a way that a sysadmin can't get into the database and find that "Bob Robertson from Nth street ate a sandwich at 9 am today". Basically if a random person can use the data to stalk someone based on a random data leak then your measures are inadequate and you get fined. The actual law is much more nuanced than that but this is the gist of it, the goal is to limit the invasiveness of the big data collection by limiting the "people" who can access it. I felt like that was needed because by that point every "smart" device was constantly collecting all data that they could get and sending it to train AI or provide uncomfortably narrow targeted ads and behavioral models.
Regarding welfare, Russians would be getting another restructuring. Unemployment benefits along with lots of other practically nonfunctional welfare initiatives would get cut and replaced by a Universal Basic Income which is set to be 20% higher than the minimum wage for every citizen. This is not taxed and you get it regardless of whether you work or not. If you work then you nearly double your available cash even if you get paid minimum wage and if you can't find work then you can volunteer for a variety of initiatives to get increased pay to do things like "taking care of elderly". This subsumes the pension system since it is already larger and more accessible than the pension. The free medical care stays separate but it gets expanded and modernized to provide modern medical care comparable to the best the money could buy at scale.
Now many would probably ask who would pay for all of this, and the answer is "it's complicated". The taxation on average individuals is massively reduced, you don't pay tax from the UBI, you don't pay tax for income if it is smaller than what you need to be considered upper middle class and you don't pay tax for the real estate that you permanently live in. You do pay tax if you earn more than a certain amount, you pay tax on passive income like stock investments, you pay tax for money transactions on large scale, on large deposits of capital like if you own a lot of real estate and on luxury items like cars.
Some income comes from the tariffs on import and export and there are taxes on enterprises but the biggest single chunk of the tax revenue is the "robot tax". A lot of industries that I've touched use high levels of automation and this tax grows in proportion to the level of automation used by the company. If it is a lights out manufacturing plant that uses 99.9% of machine labor then they pay almost double the normal tax. This is still worth it for the company since fully automated factories are very profitable and it incentivizes the creation of workplaces where automation is not yet absolutely dominant.
There were many arguments about how people would be motivated to work if their existence is not reliant on it, but UBI tests have long displayed that people don't spend life support cash on drugs and don't leave the workforce just because they now have something to eat without working. It is more like a safety net which gives people a flexibility to vote with their legs, you can leave an exploitative job without fearing that you'd be hungry for months and you can now afford to push for better compensation and working hours or leave to get better education or to take care of children or sick family members.
There is also a neat psychological trait that few people know about called "limited marginal utility of money" where every person has a certain quantity of income below which they'd work for money but after reaching it they'd seek to work for self actualization. For some it is set very low and they wouldn't work even if the alternative is to not have a home but for some it is set so high their entire life goal is money accumulation. Think about it as if you received a 30 room dream apartment, would you know what rooms you'd want in it beyond a certain point and what rooms would you use more than once a year? It doesn't seem that most people have infinite greed, a lot would be fine with an existence comparable to the modern upper middle class, a point at which you don't quite think of the money you spend for daily life.
A bit of a tangent to welfare, I also have a "Universal Housing Initiative" which is not a law but an effort to provide every currently living citizen with their own home. There were many such projects in Soviet and post- Soviet eras but none succeeded and most were intended to be temporary places until better options presented themselves. But as the saying goes, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution. Many older buildings are in such a state of disrepair that it is easier to provide a brand new flat to every citizen than to repair them.
With robotic workers and cheap manufacturing building large and modern apartments en-masse is easy, the question is land ownership. Not the free space since if you built a mega city you'd run into heat dissipation issues long before you run out of space to build. And here the remnant of authoritarian disregard to personal property was actually helpful. In Russia legally you can't own land, the government owns land and you "permanently rent it". The government can force you to sell your land at any moment with minimal to no compensation.
This law would be changed in the future but for now it was utilized to get rid of more than half a century old buildings that had no cultural or historic value and the land could be utilized to build shining skyscrapers for homes and food production. Every single adult would get a spacious and fully furnished two room apartment, every married couple would get a large three room flat with every child getting a reserved two room flat for when they reach maturity. And of course there would be new buildings for service industries and new public places like parks to make every flat desirable and not "human anthills" with total fuckall nearby.
There would also be some arcology projects such as one in that huge crater in Moscow but they'd need to wait for the designs to be finalized and technologies polished before they could be built at scale. They would be built in every city with over a million people and their goal would be to raise urbanization proportion and absorb the populations of smaller "mono-cities". These are soviet era cities where there is only one industry that provides jobs such as a city that supports exactly one factory. These "cities" are horrible places to live since you never get the money to actually move out and you can't sell your home to move because there is no demand. At the same time the factory can easily exploit you because you don't have anywhere else to go and you can be easily replaced.
My involvement would shrink as time goes on. As quite a few people across the world noted, my "everyone gets an android" approach is quite an authoritarian nightmare, but it wouldn't last forever. In fact, many of the androids which were attached to specific people were recalled by the end of the third year. At first I'd be doing nearly everything but quickly I'd start employing people in private jobs with increasingly less oversight.
Government positions would receive more oversight than private enterprises and that oversight would slowly decrease more and more until I'd be left with only the overrides after which I'd be in a position to finally leave the country to run itself. Previously the estimates were optimistic, but now I expect to reach that point within 20-25 years counting from the Ukraine war.
The international reception ended up quite tense, especially since someone figured out how to politicize me along the political lines. Initially it seemed that the reception wasn't too politicized but the libleft quickly called "dibs" on liking me and all that I do while their opposition chose to dislike me for a variety of partly contrived reasons. After the war the situation flipped and the left attempted to cancel me and the international projects with my involvement suffered from protests. At the same time my uncompromising international policy seemed to make me "based" which meant that the public reception basically flipped.
I've voiced my disapproval of the politicians splitting every subject by political lines and I've offered every person with access to the internet to contact a member of the collective if they wished for a one to one conversation with me. Just in case they had questions on my motivations or actions… or just any questions in general. Of course, there are over 7 billion of them and only half a billion of me, but not everyone would message at once and not everyone would want a video call so a single instance could handle messages from multiple people with a pinch of time acceleration.
I can't tell how much that helped, but I think that at least my actions in revitalizing an entire country had some positive effect. At least the rhetoric on the libleft side is getting less antagonistic. It is still too early to make predictions, but I think that this might end up in me becoming liked… or at least not hated across both sides of the political divide. Of course, the sides are not monolithic and different people have different opinions, but I'm trying to get the temperature of the room.
The world economy has changed somewhat over the decades as robot factories significantly reduced the value of untrained human labor. The US is still the largest economy in the world and it has decreased its dependence on Chinese goods thanks to the robotic workforce, but it didn't move the industries domestically. Instead it became popular for international companies to buy or rent land in poor but relatively stable regions of the world where factory taxes are lower while access to raw materials and cheap power is higher.
The US also implemented limited UBI as it struggled with a 30% unemployment rate in the early 30s, but of course they went for the least effective option by making it into an "unemployment benefit plus". You get an untaxed minimum wage but you have to regularly get assigned to a random workplace that tries to force you back into the economy. In comparison, EU's UBI is even higher than the one I implemented in Russia but they moved most of their automated production back into Europe and made laws to tax industries even if they try to pull off offshore factories.
India organized an early friendship with Russia and as a result I could help them with some cheap updated infrastructure which caused their economy to balloon to the size comparable with China. They also made the most use of my automated education systems by making internet access into a right of every one of their citizens. They also implemented a sort of limited UBI where you have multiple gov programs that provide separate services. For instance, you get some free food but only of certain types if you live in a certain region, your water and power bills are also free but a different welfare agency can provide different quality of service in a different area and they "compete for grants" based on how many subscribers they have allowing you to "vote with legs" and just resubscribe to another one.
China has implemented a UBI directly wired into their social credit system and shortly after they nearly imploded from the "welfare ticking bomb" caused by the single child policy decades ago. Essentially the problem was that the "single child" generation was much smaller and the previous generation was huge so at a specific point almost all of the previous generation retired at once resulting in labor supply metaphorically jumping off the cliff over the course of a couple years. Each working adult had to support almost 20 retired people off their taxes at the peak of the crisis.
Chinese people hated the sharp increase in taxes, but they also hated the idea of ditching old people to starve. A new law which demanded obligatory "parent alimony" resulted in a wave of unrest, some of which was brutally suppressed. Someone in the Chinese leadership came up with an "excellent" idea to try for ideological unification through enforcing stronger control over Taipei region, but US was very much against it and I decided that I won't allow for another large war while I'm here so I applied political pressure and within a year the old "Winnie the Pooh" was forced to step down with an internal purge following shortly with a new leader soon elected.
In return I provided food, agricultural supplies and consumer goods at extremely low prices for the new government to implement more welfare to stabilize the situation. I'd be using this leverage to slowly push through with more freedoms like "social credit floor" to remove the ability to blacklist citizens from UBI support. The US, EU and India slowly joined me in this effort but I don't have many hopes for democratizing the Chinese government before I leave.
Over the last two decades the world changed much from what it was when I found it, but in many aspects it also stayed the same. I honestly expected, hoped for and somewhat dreaded the Intelligence Explosion, a technological singularity of some kind but humans are still yet to make truly sapient machines. In fact, the current rate of AI development has massively slowed down in recent years and entered what is now called the "Second AI Winter".
The advent of Large Neural Networks like the ChatGPT series amazed everyone by both how much and how little such a system could achieve. It turns out that a lot of activities which humans considered human exclusive were relatively simple for sufficiently complex nets to learn and in hindsight it is obvious as to why: evolution has spent around 521 million years optimizing animal brains for sensory recognition, locomotion control and a variety of other useful survival oriented behaviors. Homo genus brains spent mere 2.5 to 3 million years optimizing for tool use, abstract thinking and language in human ancestor species. There aren't as many "tricks" and "shortcuts" for higher cognition optimization in the human brain yet.
As a result modern complex AI easily smash through the "raw" Turing test and are almost indistinguishable from humans in speech but they badly struggle with such simple things as "concept based pattern recognition", "dialogue permanence" and "lines of reasoning". Still this is more than enough to make AI powered NPCs in modern video game and VR titles. To simplify, they provide statistically likeliest responses to your query rather than understanding what you actually want. The neuromorphic AI currently also struggles with some forms of sensory recognition, locomotion and manipulation controls which caused robotics tech for a time to lag behind the AI until multi-material "full RepRap" 3D printers made dumb automation significantly cheaper.
One of the models of a human mind is where over 90% of the mind is the unconscious while the "conscious self" takes up around 1%. The process of creativity for humans is based on adding large quantities of information into the unconscious where it is "processed" by what is assumed to be many self-evolved pattern recognition programs which sometimes result in a pattern of connections that "float up" to the conscious level as the "ideas", "insights" and "inspirations".
In modern large neural network AI these concept analysis, patterning and synthesis systems are very primitive and thus have to be augmented by a "relevancy search" which shrinks the database from "the entire internet" to only a handful of datasets that are then "collaged" into the "artificial creativity". The AI also lacks the optimizations and subsystems to correctly keep "memories" since just writing into the dataset would cause the data to be lost in the endless ocean of other data. As such talking to AI is like talking to a room with hundreds of people each of which has a long term memory disorder and a random one of them replies each time, sometimes it is the same guy, sometimes it is another. This also results in limitations on reliability of the AI, it is too complex to understand much less directly bugfix and it won't reliably reply the same way to the same stimulus even if now it is closer to 95% reliability in providing a workable result.
This nearly killed entire job categories but it didn't wipe out all the professions that felt threatened in the early 2022-2023. For example, "art collaging" doesn't allow AI to generate unique artstyles so it didn't "kill" artists and animators but it basically killed the entire stock picture industry. At the same time a new job opportunity appeared for artists in curating "creative AI" and in making artstyle datasets for movies and video games. AI needs 20-30 samples per character or background to avoid generation artifacts. New regulations only allow AI generated art to be copyrighted if all the direct "seed" art also belongs to you, otherwise the art itself is immediately in public domain. You can end up with the copyright over the script or even the movie edit but not the likeness of characters or scenery or sounds in it if you generate with only the public libraries.
The most hard hit jobs were middle positions among white collar workers and some generalist specialized professions. The AI was not reliable enough to fulfill all bottom management levels and it is not trusted beyond the advisory role in the top management, but middle management almost died out as AI can generate a quarterly report and breakdown, relay and monitor the tasks to its subordinates cheaply and reliably.
Something similar happened with things like general purpose doctors since AI is way better at sifting through hundreds of tests while cross referencing thousands of conditions and checking thousands of medications and their combinations with thousands of other medications. Then there were lawyers since AI doesn't get tired or bored sifting through tens of thousands of emails looking for a single potential fraud. Still, 95% reliability is not 100% so many of these jobs turned from "actually doing the job" to monitoring the AI for messing up and doing what it can't do yet. AI is kind of like a smart unpaid intern that knows roughly what to do, it now even fucks up about just as often.
The manufacturing and 3D printing have also advanced quite well with RepRap achieving their goal of a fully printed open source 3D printer a couple years ago. Yes, the first parts kit had to be made on the expensive industrial printers, its processor and memory cluster is the size of a fridge and it needs a dozen different spools of polymers from structural to magnetic to conductive and the two types of semiconductor inks but it could repeatedly print itself over a couple months. It is not quite a full replicator, but it self corrects as it prints and it can print small machinery and primitive electronics in "one go" with no assembly required. Multi-ink printers with resolution of 20 to 15 nm are now affordable enough that you can rarely find a decent CNC shop without one.
There were a few advancements in medicine as well. For once, there's now a "fitness pill", or more accurately "effective weight control medication". A few years before I got uploaded scientists created a cocktail of chemicals and hormones that tricked muscle cells into entering the "excertion mode" without actually contracting, making them burn calories at a rate comparable to that when you exercise on the regular. The mouse trial was successful, but it turned out to be a bit too carcinogenic.
Well, with enough effort and trials a similar medication was made that is less likely to cause cancer than aspirin. You don't "get swole" with no exercise with it, it simply pushes the resting metabolism proportional to the dosage all the way to 4500kkal/day which allows most people to not limit the caloric intake as long as they eat relatively balanced meals. If you don't exercise you simply go frail which is arguably better than the heart attack risk. It won't help with existing stretch marks and skin flaps, you can faint from some nasty drops in sugar levels if your BMI is too low and some people still keep claiming that this should be a question of willpower, but as a former 120kg "thyroid monster" I welcome this technology.
I've already mentioned printed organs, but artificial organ technology has also advanced leaps and bounds. It is now possible to convert any type of donor blood to O negative and a primitive form of artificial blood is now available (saline solution with artificially cultivated blood cells, no immune cells, no platelets, no complementary system proteins and hormones yet). Large scale artificially grown skin grafts are now nearly as common as normal skin grafts and it is possible to grow sections of bone and gut tissue right in the clinic. Large and/or complex organs like hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs and reproductive organs are still only possible to be printed in space and some things like whole limbs can't be printed at all yet.
Recently the list of accessible earthside printed artificial organs was joined by "artificial glands". They are the size of an aspirin pill, are comparable to folded artificial skin in print complexity and they don't replace human glands. Instead they are implanted on the surface of major blood vessels via a surgery similar to blood clot removal and they slowly drip desired hormones or compounds directly into the blood at predictable rates.
You can get those to produce growth hormones to treat stunted growth in children, they can autonomously make insulin or thyroid hormones, they can produce glucocorticosteroids on site to control chronic asthma and they can even be made to produce sex hormones for hormone imbalance treatment or as a part of sex reassignment procedures. A less invasive but more limited alternative is genetically modified gut bacteria used to treat lactose intolerance which produce a similar effect for between several months and several years before GMO bacteria get outcompeted by native microflora but then you can just slam another pill or suppository.
Another "brand new" entry in medical technology is the first generation of aging combating drugs. In the last 6 years the first effective medications that treat telomere degradation, mitochondrial revitalization and targeted senescent cell removal have finally hit the market. In mice these things provided lifespan increases of over 30% to 60% each, but mice aren't humans, medications need to be taken regularly and they don't do much when you're already old so it is hard to tell if they really work and how much exactly do they help if they do work.
From the less organic side of medicine, prosthetics have finally reached the point where they are closing in to organic body parts even if most models are still slightly less durable, less strong and requiring regular daily charging. There's now even a sugar power cell based artificial heart with a magnetically suspended impeller that can fully replace the organic heart but it is a bit too new for now. The prosthetic limbs are now available with full thermal and tactile sensing artificial skin that interfaces with the limb stump via a wireless chip placed into the remains of the limb's nerve cord akin to Neuralink.
Neuralink itself is still around, although there are now multiple comparable competitors since near-autonomous microsurgery became much more available as a result of Hail Mary's caretaker robot development. The BCI nanowires still need to be about two orders of magnitude more densely packed than currently feasible to provide the promised "true cyberpunk brain jack" performance, but they are still amazing for restoring mobility in paralyzed patients and for "deep brain electrical stimulation" which is useful for treating some cases of depression, epilepsy and they apparently have limited nootropic effect, as in the chip literally "makes you think better" even if only a little bit.
A lot of progress has actually occurred in space. With the success of the LEO Gateway by the UNSA six similar stations got commissioned both by the UN and the individual governments. Vast majority would end up only as microgravity habitats, but the Gateway was the first to receive a Moon gravity spin ring. Preliminary animal studies suggest that it might be enough to mostly prevent some types of microgravity muscle loss even without exercise, but more studies are needed. For now it acts as the "first stop" for crewed missions, the capsules or "mini- Starships" haul people from the ground to LEO Gateway and from there they are shipped by dedicated orbital tugs to the MEO stations that are still being constructed. The number of people who are currently in orbit has recently exceeded 250.
The European Union is also spearheading the construction of the first orbital solar power stations. The prototype one terawatt power assembly masses just under a million tons and is around 60% completed. Still, it is already more than enough for the tests of the microwave transceiver that regularly transmits energy to a prototype base station in Egypt. Experiments are also underway for powering microwave thermal rockets for station keeping of the first prototype skyhooks launched by the EU and Russia. Along with advancements in fission, fusion, a burst of modern hydroelectric projects, matured mass scale battery storage and significantly cheaper "printable" renewables only 62% of all human energy is now provided by fossil fuels.
NASA has also restarted and refurbished the Artemis mission. This time it would be based on Starship derived landers, New Glenn would launch the prefab orbital station modules and Terran R would be launching the crew. The Lunar Gateway was renamed into Artemis station and it was partially assembled from prefab modules kind of like a hybrid between ISS and the shrunken down LEO Gateway. The station was assembled in LEO and then it would be boosted towards the Moon by a cluster of MHD plasma rockets powered by an astrophage generator and an absolutely massive array of lightweight solar panels.
On the 18th July 2037 a fleet of 14 unmanned SpaceX Starships initiated their burn for Mars. Two would be carrying a fission power plant, materials and 0g assembly robots to establish a refueling outpost on Phobos while the rest are carrying robotic equipment required to set up massive solar fields, semi-autonomous water harvesters and Sabbatier fuel plants to refuel the ships for a possible return home. They are also carrying a novel array of mobile 3d printers and robotic tooling workshops which should theoretically maintain the fleet of rovers intended to produce 3D printed "cave shelters" from pulverized and microwaved Martian soil.
The mission was a partial success with two of the ships failing to land due to the errors in the estimates for Martian atmosphere. As astrophage cooled the sun, the Martian atmosphere cooled down and some of it condensed into dry ice at the poles which decreased the atmospheric pressure. Ships carrying enough solar panels and chemical reactors survived, the ones that were lost carried most of the prototype engineering robots so they only managed to assemble the refueling array. They also lost too many solar panels to refuel in time for the fleet's return trip so the team decided to fuel up only one ship and launch it back near empty as a proof of concept.
On my end at the time of me writing this the Linelayers have reached every star within 12 light years from Earth. Beyond immense scientific value only one star had something significant enough to mention. Linelayer Isildur has reached the star Wolf 359. It is a red dwarf 7.9 lightyears from Earth and humans didn't find any confirmed worlds around it. It turns out that this is because the ecliptic is rotated almost 80 degrees relative to Sol and thus no planets passed between Earth and Wolf 359 to be easily detectable. The linelayer has dropped off the ring, the construction equipment and boosted towards the Groombridge 1830, also known as Argelander's Star in Ursa Majoris constellation 29.9 light years from Earth. The gate would be fabbed on the fly.
The dwarf has a few small worlds further in the system but the main gem is a gas giant the size of Neptune which has a curious moon with mass 70% that of Earth while being almost just as big as humanity's home. The moon has a nitrogen-oxygen and 2% ammonia atmosphere but it is too far away from the sun to be habitable by Earth standards, the surface temperature is around -55 degrees Celsius on average. However it has a liquid hydrosphere just like on Earth with the oceans made of water with large concentrations of ammonium salts which act as antifreeze.
And lo and behold, it has a "red edge", the biosignature of photosynthesis. The red edge is weaker than on Earth and it is focused in the tropics-equatorial band of the moon which corresponds with large patches of very dark brown color. First direct detection of extraterrestrial life, the scientific community back on Earth has collectively creamed their pants and demanded more sensor readings which I was happy to oblige… as long as the readings were remote. They can design, build and launch their own probes once the gates connect.
There are no obvious signs of advanced civilizations, neither on the planet nor elsewhere in the system. AI image recognition can very easily find regular geometric shapes for identification of ruins so it is unlikely that I'd miss something big or recent. The world does seem to be in the middle of the local equivalent of the ice age, before the astrophage its median temperature should've been around 45-46 degrees and the dark brown forests should've stretched almost all the way to the poles but now those regions are uninhabitable. The orbital surveys can see slowly moving pixel clusters but it is hard to discern animal features from that distance, the planet has undergone a mass extinction event and the only critters left around are at most the size of a large dog.
Of course, the most important star that I've reached is Tau Ceti, the destination of the Hail Mary mission. I'm writing this log as the linelayer is finishing the years long deceleration burn into its Oort cloud and I've had intel over the last several years and more recently several months thanks to the flyby probes. In fact, the rest of humanity had access to the intel and not just because it is easy PR gains.
My first flyby probe has sent the first blurry pictures of the Eridian spacecraft. The second probe was close enough and had a good enough telescope to resolve the general shape of the craft as it zipped past the Oort cloud at 60% of the speed of light. Of course there was dread and excitement and more dread from the human population, but I'll leave the descriptions for after I manage to retrieve the ships. This log has already grown too long and I think it would be more thematically appropriate to group it with the next log. Oh god, I'm leaving cliffhangers in my own diary…
Last edited: Jul 10, 2023
Log 16: "Starfish aliens aren't that alien"Log 16: "Starfish aliens aren't that alien"
There's been another minor timeskip of 4 years because managing the first contact is sometimes more like herding cats. Tau Ceti is just under 12 light years from Earth and 40 Eridani is 16.3 light years away so there was a difference of just over 4 years between the recovery of the Hail Mary and the time when the Eridian ship could be sent home. But let's look at things in order.
Each linelayer carries and fabricates special flyby probes that it releases during the slowdown part of the journey. The probes fly past the star at 90, 70 and 50% c but due to the high rate of the ship's acceleration the first probe arrives barely two months before the ship itself. If my ship was traveling at constant 100g acceleration then the flight of 11.9 lightyears would take 11.92 years with a peak speed of 99.99987% c. In other words, it would arrive barely a week after the light of its departure. The specifics of this linelayer being the first of its kind and the wiggle room during the switch to the deceleration part of the flight meant that the difference was closer to two months delay behind the light.
Coincidentally, the first probe arrived shortly before the Hail Mary has finished its deceleration burn, second probe arrived a week later and detected the "Blip A" and the third probe narrowed down on the position and state of the two ships as the linelayer was already in the equivalent of the inner Kuiper belt. Both ships were docked in the star's orbit and seemed intact, although the alien vessel was somewhat colder than 98 degrees Celsius which hinted at the astrophage supply being depleted.
Of course I made a song and dance out of the probe's data as I streamed both flybys and the starship's approach. It was not only because of the free popularity points but because for once I was actually excited and wanted to share it with the world. It is the first true "first contact" not only for the humans but for me as well. I discount the bugs because I couldn't reason with them and they were arguably not a civilization.
The general population was both fascinated and scared by the prospect of an alien civilization so close by. It was obvious that the star system wasn't the home of the alien spacecraft so I stated that the aliens were most likely looking for the reason for Tau Ceti's astrophage immunity which added some extra compassion into the mix. Of course I knew for sure where the heavyworlder crab people came from, but I feigned ignorance and only let out the information at the speed it could be acquired.
Contacting Hail Mary was relatively simple. It wasn't planned with long range radio communications in mind but I had plenty of juice to spare on the linelayer as it blasted the focused radio handshake from a quarter of a star system away. Linelayer was too big to easily maneuver to the two relatively tiny ships and its drive system was horrendously radioactive but it was carrying a specially designed space tug that could push the Hail Mary home if it had fuel or engine problems.
Once it was close enough the tug established the radio communications with the human ship and the story started to get clearer. Like in the book, the Eridian starship approached Hail Mary, docked to it and the sole survivors of both missions established some mutual understanding. Unlike in the book, however, Hail Mary had inherent capability of taking atmospheric samples thanks to the astrophage-thermal micro-shuttle and thus didn't have to resort to dangerous maneuvers to gain the "taumoeba", a name give to the single celled organism native to the atmosphere of one of the Tau Ceti planets and a dedicated predator of the astrophage.
As a result, the human ship wasn't damaged and could easily navigate back to the Eridian spacecraft and start the process of cultivating a version of taumoeba that could survive in the Venus atmosphere. Like in the book for an unknown reason the aerial bacteria was sensitive to nitrogen and couldn't survive nitrogen concentrations required to breed on Venus so it was artificially selected for nitrogen tolerance over about a month until a successful strain was created.
As a side effect of the breeder container the astrophage was inadvertently selected to penetrate the container's material to escape the high nitrogen atmosphere which wasn't caught in time. As the Eridian ship was made from the same type of material, the taumoeba penetrated into its fuel systems and killed all of astrophage before Hail Mary could be refueled which stranded both ships in the system. It is a good thing that I left a prerecorded message about the Linelayer's launch and almost immediately sent the ship. The inclusion of the micro-shuttle indirectly buggered the entire mission. Hail Mary could launch the Beetle probes back home but it couldn't come back and neither ship couldn't go to Erid.
The sole survivor of the Eridian mission that was dubbed Rocky by the sole survivor of human mission is a labrador sized five legend radially symmetrical space crab that lives in double the Earth gravity, breathes nitrogen-ammonia atmosphere and likes the room temperature at VERY toasty 210 degrees Celsius. I'll leave the in- depth biology description to the part when I get a lineship to Erid but for now the important part is that the Eridians are incredibly psychologically compatible with humans.
Yes, they are single gendered people that are blind, use echolocation and their language is similar to musical tones but they are social creatures that use symbolic language just like humans. They have words, sentences, metaphors, even humor. They have concepts for ethics, for family, for friendship, for culture, for beauty and compassion. This is definitely not a given when dealing with the real possibility of aliens. And beyond that Eridians have clothes, they wear ACTUAL clothes. In my book that gives an extra point over fictional Zeta Reticulan "Greys" just on that front.
It was decided that both ships would be tugged to low Earth orbit and docked with the LEO Gateway station until the second linelayer arrives at 40 Eridani and the brave alien engineer gets to go home along with the diplomatic party. Until then Rocky could enjoy the social contact with humans while both species can learn more about each other.
There was a UN security meeting of course, which lasted from just before my linelayer arrived to shortly after Hail Mary was safely in Earth's orbit. I've made a presentation about currently known aspects of Eridian society and physiology, shared the linguistic notes collected by Ryland Grace and made recommendations on how to approach future diplomacy and cooperation. The two main points of contention were in sharing the culture, science and technology and the one proposal of considering a preemptive strike as per the Dark Forest hypothesis. The former would be resolved in favor of gifting the Hail Mary data package plus limited updates, but in terms of the latter the answer was HELL NO.
One of the military advisors proposed that cobalt bombs could be used to make Erid rapidly uninhabitable if talks break down after I mentioned the relative vulnerability of Eridians to radiation. I said that there were a few problems with this plan, you know, beyond me getting involved and objecting violently. First of all, Eridians have access to an environment that allows for cheap and rapid production of astrophage which translates into many instant RKKV missiles if the need arises along with advanced material science and thick atmosphere which would make them more resistant to symmetrical response.
Secondly, per the Dark Forest "shooting first" reveals what you did to everyone else so opening first contact with planet busters is a surefire way to end up hostile with every other civilization until the end of time. If you have a civilization x lightyears away from you then, assuming homogeneous distribution, if you double the distance you get 8 times the civilizations, 2 doublings of distance gives you 64 civilizations. It becomes a numbers game until you run into someone you can't one-shot. In fact, I had a candidate for the second neighboring civilization already. It also sharpens the Fermi paradox to a monomolecular edge which unnerves everyone since at that population density we should've seen aliens WAY earlier but I digress.
Remember how I diverted linelayer Isildur to Groombridge 1830? Well, the primary reason for this was because the linelayer which was launched from Earth to Groombridge encountered a piece of debris that it couldn't destroy or avoid and was violently reduced into hot vapor 4 lightyears away from Earth. Groombridge is 29.9 light years away from Earth and it is 23.7 LY away from Wolf 359. Accounting for the already spent time this means Isildur would be around 2 years late.
The secondary reason was that I've been using the expanding cloud of starships as a distributed telescope array and that array has detected radio emissions from the system. Specifically, a relatively powerful directional repeating radio signal reminiscent of asteroid mapping radar used by the now tragically lost Arecibo telescope on Earth.
As my linelayers arrived at their destinations they deployed larger individual telescope arrays and detected other radio transmissions. From over 20 lightyears they decayed to the point they can't be deciphered, but in combination with exoplanet detections I figured out that the signal was coming from multiple points in a moon system around a temperate gas giant with estimated average temperature around 15 degrees Celsius if we use an Earth-like atmosphere and albedo. Pre-industrial Earth is around 14 degrees for comparison. That might be signs of an interplanetary civilization right here.
Four years was more than enough for the diplomatic team to be trained, assembled and for a special ship to be prepared. It wasn't a purely astrophage propelled spacecraft like Hail Mary, instead it was a converted "Starship XL" modified to use the new "plasma core" astrophage thermal engines, a new type of rocket which could run on almost any liquid or gas while providing mind boggling thrust and efficiency. Photon rockets like Spin Drive require enormous amounts of energy, it takes 300 megawatts to provide only 1 newton of thrust. Plasma core thermal design would provide 167 newtons of thrust per megawatt while still giving between 1000000 (for water) and 7000000 m/s (for hydrogen) exhaust velocity which is beyond respectable.
The second generation of upsized Starship was chosen mostly because it was the largest habitat that was optimized for handling high thrust, spin gravity and could be launched into space in one piece. However the entire propulsion section was overhauled to carry water propellant, radiators and the magnetic nozzles. In fact, only the habitat section and outer hull remained "stock". The ship would have more than enough supplies to last for years and enough propellant to go to Pluto and back via 1g brachistochrone but it wouldn't need that. It would operate through the wormhole and could be resupplied or returned relatively easily.
Rocky on the other hand became the second most famous alien, right after yours truly of course. Quite a few people unfortunately associated Rocky's body with Earth arachnids but I kept comparing Eridian body plan to more of a hybrid between a crab and a starfish. A lot of people don't like spiders, but much fewer people dislike crabs and Eridian body proportions made Rocky look slightly cartoonish which helped somewhat. The internet, of course, produced numerous memes about carcinization and how even on alien worlds everything evolves into crabs. Soon someone decided to make a plushie of Rocky in a green "turtleneck sweater" which sold like hotcakes.
The linelayer's arrival would be difficult to miss even for preindustrial humans simply due to the sheer power released by the drive plume, it would be visible to the human mk1 eyeball from all the way to Saturn. I didn't want to interfere with any orbital structures Eridians could have built and I didn't want to scare them by braking close to the planet so "Samwise Gamgee" decelerated into the inner Kuiper belt of the system and the wormhole gate would be tugged closer to Erid once the contact could be established and permission for this gained.
The 40 Eridani system consists of 3 stars, Eridani A, B and C, with Eridani A being the biggest of 3. Other two stars orbit Eridani A far enough away to have little influence on Eridani A's inner planetary system. Eridani A is structured similarly to Sol as it has 3 rocky planets, an asteroid belt and a gas giant further out.
Eridian homeworld is the first planet in the system, known to humans as "Eridani A b" because astronomers name planets starting with b hence the inconvenient name. By that nomenclature Earth would be "Sol d". It is shortly renamed to "Erid" for easier recognition. The second planet in the system is an unremarkable Mercury- like airless rock while the third planet is a dry Venus- like world with a significantly higher proportion of nitrogen. The third planet is translated as "Threeworld" from Eridian and it is the main source of co2 for Astrophage infection.
Erid itself is a rocky super-Earth with thick nitrogen- ammonia atmosphere at 28 times the Earth's atmospheric pressure. It is 8.47 times more massive than Earth, has just over double the Earth's surface gravity and the year is just over 42 days long with the day being close to 5.1 hours. The planet has a large molten core and spins very quickly resulting in a magnetic field that is 25 times stronger than Earth's.
Erid is the second encountered example of an extrasolar planet with complex life. It has next to no oxygen in the atmosphere and its biosphere is based around ammonia. The planet's plant and algae equivalents are aerial and their method of photosynthesis converts nitrogen, water, trace elements and abundant sunlight into ammonia and various sugars. This supports a thick layer of aerial flora and fauna in the regions of atmosphere where sunlight is plentiful resulting in a biosphere more akin to the upper layers of Earth's oceans.
In direct parallel to Earth's oceans, the aerial biosphere produces an equivalent of "marine snow" which injects energy into the surface biosphere which lives in conditions more akin to those found on the ocean floor on Earth. Eridians are not just crablike, they also exist in conditions similar to those encountered by Earth's deep sea crabs. Erid is also highly volcanically active which allows for common chemosynthesis among surface dwellers powering a thriving ecosystem no less diverse than that of Earth.
This doesn't mean that the surface is pitch dark, but it is about as dark as the moonless night on Earth. This would've allowed for darkness adapted vision and bioluminescence, but extreme pressure and 210 degree temperatures seemingly limited the evolution of advanced eyes. The most advanced vision organ among surface creatures is a light detecting sensor pit. Smelling organs are also apparently limited by high temperature environments and thus are underdeveloped compared to Earth. As a result, most creatures predominantly utilize sound and touch. Echolocation is as prevalent on Erid as vision is on Earth.
Eridians are a kind of lifeform that is difficult to describe. They are bilaterally symmetrical in terms of internal organs but outwardly they appear radially symmetrical suggesting that they evolved from a species similar to starfish and gained full motility relatively recently in evolutionary terms. Similar thing happened with "sea pigs", which is a type of sea cucumber which evolved bilateral symmetry from radial symmetry due to gaining better motility. This makes them into quite literal "starfish aliens".
They aren't communal pursuit predators like humans, but they are communal and omnivorous just like humans. Eridians need to eat about three times as much calories as humans but most of the surface life on Erid is more energy rich than on Earth meaning that they eat once every 86 hours. This combined with long lifespans (Rocky was born somewhere in 1730s and is considered early middle aged) meant that early Eridians were excellent at trapping and ambushing animals for food. So they are also "crab aliens". Their farming is also more akin to mushrooms rather than human crops and their crops don't require sunlight but they are sensitive to soil nutrition and "marine snow" access.
Things get weirder when you look at Eridian biology, they are hybrid multicellular- zooid creatures. Their circulation system consists of two separate fluid loops. Inner fluid loop is at ambient 210 degrees and this is where the brain and critical inner organs like the stomach reside with the circulation performed by water based blood. Outer circulatory system is based on mercury and operates at 305 degrees and encompasses the limbs and outer surfaces of the body. That system carries extremophile multicellular "cells" (later called Worker Cells) that grow and maintain the outer body.
Outer body and limbs are not "fleshy organs" like in Earth life, by human understanding these parts are inorganic. Even their muscles aren't alive, instead they are chunks of biological polymer dotted with tiny cavities filled with water. When muscle is flushed with "hot blood" the water pockets boil causing the muscle to expand like a hydraulic piston. Once hot blood is removed the muscle contracts. This is less like the exoskeleton of crustaceans, it is more like if a mollusk grew a natural "powered exosuit" as a part of the shell. At the same time it is akin to a living anthill that is maintained by "microscopic ants".
It should also be noted that the hot circulatory system is the first layer of defense against infection. Eridians don't have a through gut and they eat by literally breaking their carapace open near the stomach, letting the waste fall out, shoving the food back in and letting the hole heal. This essentially linked the concept of "eating" and "pooping" in the culture of Eridians which made eating into a private affair not to be observed by others.
The food is sterilized by the heat, but if a pathogen survives the rest of the immune system is much more primitive than with humans. The healing of that wound is disrupted in microgravity which is why Blip A had an internal centrifuge hidden inside for when it is not under thrust gravity.
Eridians are a hermaphroditic species that lays eggs, although it would be more accurate to say that they do have a set of both sex organs. When mating Eridians don't know who would be the "mom" and it seems to be chosen at random by biology resulting in one of the pair laying an egg. Ancient Eridians used to bury these eggs into the ground but with societal progress better methods of keeping eggs warm and protected were devised. K selection and long term pairing resulted in a family structure almost identical to that among humans, Eridian family consists of two parents and progressively fewer children as the quality of life increased with the average now being 1.7 children per family.
Eridian brain appears to have parts that are "naturally optronic" with some of the neurons operating with emitting, absorbing and manipulating bioluminescent light inside their craniums. Eridians are naturally good at mathematics and they have near perfect "photographic" memories, however they are not "smarter" than a human on average. Considering human's reliance on the internet and digital assistance the practical difference in mental performance is near zero.
Eridians have multiple government bodies roughly equivalent to Earth's nation states and they exhibit varying economic and governmental systems. Some aspects are recognizable by humans such as religion, varying levels of personal freedom or if the society is ruled by a democratic system but others are novel and reliant on unique aspects of Eridian condition. Some things are so similar to Earth that Eridians had their own worldwide mechanized industrial conflict in their history, albeit without the "take two".
There seem to be two main power blocs on Eridian homeworld, both are groups of "great powers" with similar flavors of democracy and relatively high levels of freedom index, even if not of the types that humans would recognize. They seem to be split on a few subjects that humans and I don't quite grasp, but one of these subjects appears to be the concept of "privacy", specifically if it is ok to prevent the society from seeing into your home.
Eridians have echolocation and most materials are outright transparent to them so for most of their existence they lived in "glass homes" as far as other Eridians were concerned. Modern materials finally allowed for sufficient sound insulation, but this resulted in the question of if it is smart for individuals to prevent the society from seeing their problems and as such preventing them from interfering.
The actual main reason for the First World War on Erid was an ideological contention between these two blocs that I still don't quite understand. It is something about the role of the industry in society. Not capitalism vs communism, it is something else about the role of increasingly cheap goods on the societies and cultures on Erid rather than access to said goods. The war was waged between the predecessor states in both blocs and once it concluded the vision between the two extremes migrated towards some kind of mix of ideologies. As the war happened over 500 years ago the nations forged long lasting trade relations resulting in an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity akin to post WW2 Earth.
Just like humans Eridians went through 4 technological revolutions. Their first and second technological revolutions are similar to humans with the steam engines induced mechanization and electricity. However Eridians never developed the computer as they had no economic need for it. Who needs a calculator if you can easily do what a calculator can in your mind with little training? Eridian computation technology is limited to analog systems akin to clockworks and was developed very recently due to the demands of spaceflight.
Instead their third industrial revolution was connected with Eridian inherent ability to connect each other's nervous systems to transfer entire concepts. This resulted in the invention of a mechanical interpreter for this connection allowing the Eridian to operate certain mechanical devices with their mind. For example the "waldo robot arm" used on Blip A. They couldn't fully get the return data from the sensors meaning that the waldo operator would need to use texture mapping screens directly fed by remote sensors.
Their fourth industrial revolution came through a much deeper material science theory than humans. Thanks to it they are much better at predicting performances and interactions between materials and chemicals, they can predict designer chemical catalysts entirely theoretically and they can synthesize almost any kind of chemical in a lab at scale regardless of complexity. Their chemical mass production seems similar to the concept of "click chemistry" but utilized at industrial scales. While their understanding of immunology is limited, this allowed for all their pharmaceuticals to become dirt cheap and provided a massive leap to their industry and material science.
They have amazing high temperature lubricants and polymers, they have better metal alloys, better ceramics and they have several completely novel materials. The material that Ryland named "xenonite" is actually a nanodiamond polymer. Sufficiently small diamonds(called nanodiamonds) can take part in chemical compounds similar to "benzene rings" and some applications of that are known to humans and used in medicine, however our developments into using chains of nanodiamonds in materials hasn't progressed quite as far. An example would be a drug called Amantadine sold under the brand name Gocovri and used to treat Parkinson's and certain types of flu. I should probably mention that there's a version of this with nano-corundum and boron nitride nanocrystals instead of nanodiamonds for niche uses.
Xenonite, now known as poly-adamant, is most of the way to theoretical performance of dedicated nanomaterials (it has 75% of tensile strength of the upper estimate for perfect carbon nanotubes while having compressive strength comparable with diamond and thermal conductivity of aerogel) while being as easy to work with as epoxy. You just mix two liquids and pour it into a mold where it "cures". Xenon traces discovered in it are because xenon is forcefully bonded to active parts of the click molecules in solutions to deactivate them and prolong the lifespan of the components before use.
Poly-adamant comes in so many flavors. It can be opaque, transparent and selectively transparent for specific wavelengths. It can be conductive, it can be insulative. It can be hard as diamond or it can be soft as hard rubber. It can conduct heat or it can be made to insulate heat better than space shuttle heat tiles. It can even form repeating texture patterns which allows for structural colors, sound insulation or even "gecko feet" nanostructures for dry adhesion. You can program the desired material properties in quite a wide range of options.
However it is not their most advanced material, it is just the most versatile one. The material with best properties that Eridians managed to cook up is a kind of diamond nacre. Dia-nacre is based on the material that pearls are made of, it consists of hexagonal graphene coated diamond, corundum or boron nitride "plates" 15 to 20 nm thick arranged in interlocking layers and bound by highly advanced temperature resistant polymer. It is not quite as versatile as poly-adamant, for instance it can't be made transparent or quite as flexible, but it has such a mix of material properties that it is nearly perfect for both construction and armor.
Dia-nacre has record breaking compressive strength, tensile strength slightly exceeding the most optimistic estimates for perfect carbon nanotubes, record breaking sublimation point of 4200 Celsius (it simply doesn't melt, it coagulates and starts partially evaporating) along with keeping its material properties until 4100 Celsius. It is resistant to crack formation, it can be made with extremely low surface friction and it is self lubricating allowing it to be used in mechanisms without external lubricant and it is almost completely chemically inert to the point it barely burns in fluorine.
Its incredible vaporization energy makes it into the best currently known armor against lasers, its density turns it into a great radiation shield against x-rays and gamma rays while its polymer has a lot of hydrogen which makes it into a decent particle radiation shield even if not as efficient as something like polyethylene. Should I even mention how great it is against kinetic damage? It is hard to penetrate but it is also hard to permanently deform and resistance to stress accumulation means that the armor would hold on for much longer when exposed to repeated impacts.
Of course, that's not an "indestructible" armor material. While a ballistic vest made of dia-nacre would shrug off a 50-bmg it doesn't deform as much as modern armors meaning that all that energy is transferred directly from the bullet into the chest cavity which would pulverize every rib and likely bruise or even stop the heart from sheer concussive force. In addition, while it is a material scraping against theoretical edges of what's possible in chemistry it is still made from conventional chemical bonds. It is not strong enough to build a ringworld or a Banks Orbital and certain types of weapons would penetrate dia-nacre armor with comparable ease to any other monolithic armor types.
Hypervelocity impacts and shaped charges hit at such high velocities and with such high energy concentrations that any material behaves like liquid regardless of its arrangement of chemical bonds. At the same time pulse lasers rely on shock drilling effect and individual pulses would locally overcome chemical bonds resulting in armor losing material as the laser "drills" into the structure. In addition if the time is not a factor it is possible to cut and drill into dia-nacre with the use of conventional tools such as plasma cutters, thermite or even acetylene cutters and diamond dust coated drill bits. Dia-nacre drill bit would do better but it is possible to crack open a tank or a bunker door in a few hours if you're persistent enough.
Their low temperature research is somewhat limited since they never discovered relativity and quantum mechanics. They are aware of superconductivity, but the expense of low temperature research on their planet and lack of underlying theories made progress in that field slow. This doesn't mean that they didn't try, they were well aware that they have gaps in their understanding of physics such as not knowing the process by which stars produce energy, what kind of invisible light is produced by radium, why light travels at the speed it does or what are the exact mechanics behind photoelectric effect. Then again, humans still don't know why vacuum energy density predictions between relativity and quantum mechanics differ by 120 orders of magnitude so yeah.
Still, until the arrival of humanity they lacked the knowledge about the existence of isotopes, mass defect or even about the time dilation. They launched their version of Hail Mary operating on exclusively Newtonian understanding of physics! They bred a mind boggling quantity of astrophage and launched a two staged ship intended to accelerate at constant rate without the regard for the speed of light and they were very confused to experience length contraction and time dilation resulting in Blip A's second stage arriving to Tau Ceti with almost completely full gas tanks.
Erid's thick atmosphere and high gravity would make it impossible to escape for a chemically propelled rocket. To launch Blip A the Eridians constructed a planetary megastructure that was misinterpreted as a space elevator by Ryland Grace due to the language limitations. Space elevator is a tensile structure stretching all the way to geostationary orbit. Eridian structure is something that is called a "space tower" or "atlas pillar" which relies on compressive properties of dia-nacre to withstand its own weight.
It is essentially a tower built exactly at the planet's equator which consists of a solid monolithic structural member stretching from the surface of Erid all the way to the stratosphere and stands at an impressive 127 point something kilometers tall. The tower's side contains a vertical rail track which is used to haul and then accelerate payloads into suborbital trajectory where conventional rockets can be used to circularize the orbit. Lower part of the journey is performed by a kind of train-elevator which hauls the rocket to the point where atmosphere is about 90% that of Earth where the astrophage thermal rocket sled detaches from the train carrier and flings the payload into space at frightening 18g-s sustained over several minutes.
Looking through their historic data even more impressive things are discovered: they didn't have the launcher pillar until the discovery of astrophage infestation. Hell, they didn't even have a space program beyond science fiction until they were forced to innovate or die. If we cross reference the progress of their space program then the Blip A mission was more akin to humans attempting to get a manned mission to Jupiter with Apollo 11 technology and unlimited funding. They didn't even have orbital assembly and Blip A was launched whole at the very edge of cargo capacity of the space tower.
Their primitive automation based on early and inflexible analog computers (essentially simple clockworks that predictably initialize components based on things like timers) forced them to almost immediately start with manned missions (with predictable early failure rates) and the rushed research into life support systems and the long term effects of microgravity. Their planet's strong magnetic field shielded the experimental orbiters from solar radiation and Blip A was actually the first time their species left the magnetic field and gravity well of their homeworld.
This resulted in Eridians never figuring out about cosmic radiation sources and as a result the spacecraft had no precautions against solar flares, galactic cosmic rays or the radiation caused by the relativistic spacecraft ramming through the interstellar medium. The entire team with exception of Rocky had succumbed to acute radiation poisoning by the time Blip A arrived at Tau Ceti. Rocky was protected by residing in the deepest part of the spacecraft surrounded by astrophage fuel tanks which prevent quantum tunneling through themselves and thus absorb 100% of all kinds of radiation.
Two years later, once several shifts of the diplomatic and scientific teams of both worlds finished comparing most notes it became apparent that humans and Eridians are even more socially compatible than previously thought. Yes, there are some things that are considered preposterous on both sides. Eridian sleep can't be voluntarily aborted like with humans so their society developed the culture of watching each other sleep. At the same time humans consider watching someone sleep to be creepy as sensing direct eye contact is hard wired to be felt like being threatened by a predator. Eridians consider eating food as a private endeavor as private as going to the toilet for humans while humans consider eating to be an inherent part of socializing. Both sides seem to understand the other side's nature for these behaviors are reasonable and now it barely causes friction.
Beyond these two points, Eridian cultures are exotic but not "too alien". There are no taboos in Eridian culture that humans violate by their nature and the other way around. It could've been way worse. For example, imagine fictional alien space hamsters that are R selecting, they might have infant cannibalism as a part of culture which would be abhorrent for humans while human lack of that cultural trait might be seen as extremely wasteful, amoral or even dangerous by hamster aliens who could be accustomed to "removing undesirable traits in society" from childbirth. In the best case humans could only politely keep away from such alien society, but here with the Eridians full cooperation and integration is possible.
I'm a bit biased, but I'm very happy that I facilitated contact with Eridians. Their governments recognized both the efforts of the Hail Mary crew in solving the astrophage crisis, human hospitality and the gift of scientific exchange, and Contingent Collective's involvement in ultimately saving Blimp A mission and establishing the interstellar link between Earth and Erid. Humanity has gained a research and trade partner to revolutionize nearly all aspects of life and potentially a good ally for the future among the stars.
I received the full cooperation of Eridian scientists in complete technological and cultural transfer as they had no computers and thus no digitized books, scientific notes and blueprints. I'd keep this universe in contact but I didn't intend to stay for millennia so that was the most valuable thing I could hope for. The Eridian governments decided to cooperate once they discovered my motivations.
It would take years for the transfer to complete and even longer for me to internalize how to predict and design new chemicals at the same level as the Eridians. But even at the early stage it looks very promising. When I loaded the simulation of dia-nacre and poly-adamant the entire collective cheered as the blueprint "extraversal stability" was green! This means that the material would be possible to make and would keep its full properties regardless of the physical laws of any reality that we can dial. It would be more time consuming to fabricate than bulk simple matter, but it will be implemented in the core design for all T2 units once we internalize the knowledge behind it.
The first contact ship was recalled once a real time data transfer link was established. Eridians would need decades to catch up with the computer technology to interact with the Earth's internet on equal terms but the Eridian existing electronics technology still allowed them to design and produce input and output systems once the requirements for the interfaces were known. The UN quickly cooked up computers that were optimized for the Eridian environment and the software needed for the translation between the screens designed around vision and screens designed to display texture.
These computers would connect with a constellation of satellites in Low Erid Orbit which would relay the signal through multiple wormhole stations in Medium Erid Orbit. The system's performance would allow scientists on both sides to exchange text messages, make audio and video calls and most importantly scan, transfer and read various documents and access the human side of the internet. For a more personal touch Humans still had the envoy ship for regular visits and Eridians also promised to launch a few of their own for a similar purpose.
The first contact was the biggest news of the log period, but a few less important things also happened in the meantime. My ships reached every star within 20 light years from Earth and four more life bearing worlds were discovered. First one was Ross 128-b which had a biology somewhere between Earth and Erid. It has a thick CO2 rich atmosphere but it is further away and the surface temperature is close to 70 degrees due to the greenhouse effect making it more like an analog to Tohul from Orion's Arm. The Gliese 832-c was revealed to have the biosphere based on water-ammonia like in Wolf 359 but in this case it was a complete waterworld with barely any land poking above the surface.
Gliese 581-g had the first example of a "Hycean" planet with multi-thousand bar thick hydrogen-oxygen atmosphere at the far outskirts of the system which kept the water liquid and planet toasty warm regardless of the distance from the sun. It was barely affected by the astrophage and it is challenging human understanding on the energy requirements needed for complex biospheres as it is way too far from the star to sustain ecology with photosynthesis.
Epsilon Indi A-d had a planet with the first instance of life nearly identical to Earth as in it works on water at close to Earth temperatures. The planet has significantly less water than Earth and appears to be in a process of transitioning from Earth-like to Mars-like as biomass estimates are barely a fourth of that on Earth with the equator having an environment considered "temperate" by humans.
As with other lower temperature worlds, it seems that Epsilon Indi A-d is undergoing the ice age induced mass extinction and the only surviving surface fauna is smaller than a housecat and too small for orbital sensors to discern. Plant life on this world utilizes a purple pigment and orbital surveys show both grasses and very tall trees made easier by slightly lower gravity than on Earth.
Both human and Eridian governments have approved my initiative to seed every astrophage infected world with taumoeba. Other star systems might need the aerobacteria adjusted for local environments but existing strains are already optimized for the two most important stars. Within months of the approval multiple unmanned probes delivered biological payloads to predetermined altitudes above Venus and Threeworld with near immediate effect. It is estimated that within mere two years Sol and 40 Eridani would get back to their pre-crisis levels of output. To keep Earth's temperature stable I've started to slowly disassemble the solar mirror arrays around Earth.
There has been a minor disease outbreak on Earth, but it didn't go far enough to become a pandemic and it was contained and eliminated before it spread beyond South America. Vaccines and synthetic antibody serums were prepared within less than two weeks of the reports and mass produced and delivered so widely that the international consensus is that true pandemics would never happen again. And that's just domestic technology, I was only involved with logistics and some mass production as a leader of a major country.
Another two waves of infrastructure and robots left for Mars and its satellites, this time as a combination between Starships and foreign Starship "clones" funded by US, EU, Russia, China, India and the International Mars Initiative led by the UNSA. Notably China was allowed in since during the Hail Mary project they received so many space related technologies for technological theft to not be quite as much of a concern.
Six ships were constructed with astrophage thermal drives and carried the first 50 humans to sit in the orbit of Mars for half a year. The power of the plasma core rocket allowed for the one way flight to take just over a week. It would be around a month when "off season" but the timing was carefully planned to minimize the time spent between planets. The ships could carry way more people and multiple ships were sent mostly as a precaution if one failed to rescue the astronauts to other ships. The same year first crewed Venus flyby was made with three other astrophage powered starships to take notes on the taumoeba progress.
The first fully fusion powered rocket was tested in Earth's medium orbit by the Russian space program and by extension me. It was an "inertial magnetic confinement" system where a lithium pellet filled with deuterium ice is imploded by powerful magnetic fields and used either as is for high ISP or to heat propellant for extra thrust. It was the first functional non- astrophage torch drive produced by humans. In cooperation with UNSA the first fusion powered interplanetary spacecraft based on that engine would be assembled in orbit with the goal of becoming an interplanetary tug. Its first mission would be to deliver a fully assembled Gateway class space station to Mars for future crewed missions. By the time I'm writing this log the engine cluster has already been launched and the second fuel tank module is planned to be completed in mere weeks.
There has been the first successful asteroid mining effort. A private company has managed to send a large robotic package to a water rich main belt asteroid. The asteroid's body was covered in cheap plastic insulation to prevent it from evaporating and the robots assembled massive foil mirror arrays to power a "solar moth" drive. Concentrated solar light would be used to heat water taken from the asteroid and provide propulsion to slowly tug the 250 meter diameter space iceberg into Earth's orbit. Just 6 years after launch the "spaceberg" has circularized into MEO and the company became fabulously rich as water is one of the heaviest and thus most expensive things to launch from Earth while being extremely useful in near everything from propellant to life support to industrial applications.
This mission was carefully orchestrated by the UNSA to safeguard against the risk of that thing impacting Earth on accident or malice. After the mission was concluded a separate UN office was created now known as United Nations Planetary Defense, but colloquially it became known as the Space Guard. Its purpose is to monitor the solar system and prevent asteroid strikes from hitting anything important, both "naturally" and "artificially induced". They've already planned to test asteroid redirection with a powerful astrophage thermal tug. All major spacefaring countries shortly created redundant national versions of that organization to keep each other in check since if your rival is about to be hit by an asteroid you might be tempted not to tell them. You know, "trust but verify".
The last important thing that I should mention is that the nations of Earth are planning to renegotiate the Outer Space Treaty and the Artemis accords. The main subject is territorial claims and interplanetary colonization as the technology is rapidly approaching the point when space colonization becomes practical and even economical. At this moment more than 600 people are in space at the same time and just over a hundred have been in space long term for over a decade. Oh boy, I bet there's going to be a lot of shouting involved. I'll be there in an advisory role, I hope things will be civil. I should also probably mention that the world famous astronaut Ryland Grace is suing the crap out of the former Hail Mary director Eva Stratt for drugging him and forcing him to go on a mission that he didn't volunteer. I've packed some popcorn as it is getting interesting…
I had this weird feeling like the last 4 years is what I've been missing, what I needed to happen. Over the last decade of working on unfucking Russia thousands of my instances went into "hibernation", meaning that they halted the computation that supports their minds with the request to be awakened once it is all over. Things weren't great on the emotional level in the collective and these actions were considered to be one step removed from actual suicide since no one is quite sure if they can be awakened without damage or unpredictable changes.
But after the Eridian first contact I found myself and many other instances smiling or laughing for the first time in 6 years. I've even resumed streaming, albeit in a limited fashion and with more effort directed to keeping my image. It has been a while though and many of the people I streamed with moved on with their lives, but there were always new generations and some die-hards from the 2020s. I was kind of surprised to find out that one of the vtubers was in their mid 40s now and still streaming, truly the times have changed. It is hard to slide back into the culture as memes and slang drifted over the years. I feel like a boomer trying to fit into a zoomer crowd. "How do you do, fellow kids"?
Last edited: Jun 9, 2023
Log 17: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"Log 17: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"
It is now December of the year 2061. I've arrived around 2019 so I've been in this universe for 42 years. There is a first contact going on, but before that I'd like to reminisce on how the world changed in all this time. Because a lot of things are very different and yet a lot of things are still the same.
The annual GDP growth of Earth is around 14% to 16% subject to minor recessions. Humans are living in the most prosperous time ever. Poverty rate (percent of people who live on less than 5.50 dollars a day, inflation adjusted) in 2000 was 68.8%, in 2018 it was 47.4% and in 2060 it is merely 2.4%, mostly subject to the dictatorial regimes and the few of the poorest countries.
There is a proposal to have a poverty rate replaced by the "low income rate" as the new goal for humanity signifying the percentage of people living in conditions worse than what is considered lower middle class, a number that is currently around 54%. Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Brazil are now considered full-fledged developed countries with economies and life standards comparable with the US and European Union. Speaking of which, the EU now includes all of Fennoscandia and spreads over the Balkans and all the way to the borders of Russia with exception of Belarus.
Economists find the growth rate to be hyperbolical, the amount of value doubles in a set timeframe, but timeframe also halves with every cycle. It is expected that the human economy would reach an "economic singularity" where the amount of value on Earth becomes infinite in "25-30 years". Common sense suggests that this would never happen, how could every atom of the planet be worth billions of dollars in current value? Economic growth would have to slow down eventually, but for now it results in some profound changes in the societies and cultures across the world.
The human population on Earth has reached 9.1 billion people. There was a significant dip in the birth rates during the Astrophage crisis but it rebounded somewhat until around 2054 which was the first year in recorded history where the population hasn't grown, the number of new children equaled the number of people that died that year. Since then the population rate has nearly stabilized and has been in a very slow decline ever since.
Globally on average every family pair produces only 1.8 babies. While some people fearmonger about the "impending human extinction", real population dynamics are difficult to predict and subject to numerous barely understood factors. It is expected that radical life extension technology and advancements in reproductive medicine should result in the resumption of population growth.
In the last 15 years Earth has undergone a tectonic shift in its economy as the countries are not sure how to handle the peak of the fourth industrial revolution. Almost 65% of all human labor can be automated with comparable performance as robotics finally catch up to the advancements in neural networks. Some workers are still needed in oversight capacity and to deal with edge cases, but as time goes on the edge cases get more and more ironed out. Specialist professions were more resilient since the regulators were hesitant to entrust most things to something with "only" 95% success rate.
The only solution that worked was various kinds of Universal Basic Income. Failure of a country to implement it usually results in exponential loss of buying power, rapid loss of the economic multiplier and complete implosion of the local economy within two to five years. A technical alternative is to "remove unnecessary population", but this could no longer fly as the UN became much more powerful since the Astrophage crisis and peacekeepers are no longer confined to just observing the genocide, especially in minor countries.
I don't want to point fingers, but there were three major cases of developing governments cutting all supply to the peoples that lost economic significance or outright attempting to displace them. One in Latin America, one in Africa and one in Asia-Oceania region. International involvement was necessary and since then there were no cases of comparable egregiousness.
The interesting thing about the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that inflation became negative in a very unintuitive way. Cash capital began devaluing proportional to its size which affected the wealthiest people the most. Of course, banks wouldn't reduce credits with time, but now there were no capital gains from making long term deposits.
Bank deposit roles changed to making your investment devalue at a lower rate than just keeping it "under the bed". When I state it like that it makes it sound like hyperinflation, but that stuff hits people with the least money the hardest which is not the case here, hence unintuitive. The original me would be so smug to know that their university projections back in 2016 were on mark, even if nearly on accident.
The only way to deal with it is to invest into something that makes money such as factories or power plants, but investing in stocks is comparably shorter term and it is difficult to predict what would be in long term demand in the period of rapid economic change. Power production and infrastructure investments turned into a popular solution. For the energy sector investor it is cheaper to build a new powerplant than it is to shut down the old one or not to do anything if we account for opportunity costs.
This resulted in a MASSIVE drop in the price for electricity, in the 2020s it was 0.181 U.S. Dollar per kWh for household users and 0.190 U.S. Dollar per kWh for business users on average, now it dropped by a factor of over a thousand. It became essentially uneconomical to charge individual households and many switched to "subscription model" or completely free access to power for individuals. It also made power so cheap that all power related industries became significantly cheaper and that also enabled power intensive projects that would've been wildly impractical mere decades ago.
Advancements in autonomous farming and bacterial synthesis of food firmly welded the base food prices to the electricity. Nanomembrane desalination and advanced water treatment became abundant across the world which nearly eliminated human dependence on natural freshwater sources. Mass production of raw materials also became progressively cheaper as electricity was one of the major costs in refining metals like aluminum and with enough power you can afford to exploit less and less abundant deposits.
It came to the point where in some regions it became economical to centrifuge dirt and rock for trace quantities of almost any material, but no one would touch that until easier and cheaper deposits are depleted. Recycling has also advanced to unbelievable scales as with cheap enough power every landfill rapidly turns into extremely rich deposits of all kinds of metals and compounds. Even biological waste contains precious phosphorus.
First Clanking Replicator was created around the start of the 2050s as a technology demonstrator. It still needs a lot of human oversight or autonomous processes run into things that they can't solve, but it is the first case of a machine system that could replicate itself. In this case, it is a huge supply chain of mines, refineries and factories that can produce every part of themselves and swarms of construction robots that can build more of said mines, refineries and factories. This further decreased the cost of building more infrastructure which continued to drive the costs down on materials and construction robots.
With the largest cost contributors for skyscrapers ground down to a fraction of a fraction of what they were and the land prices getting only higher every city on Earth experienced a boom in new skyscraper construction, New York now looks way more like its science fiction counterparts. In some places new cities took form simply because it was cheaper to build something new there than to fight for increasingly expensive and tiny plots of land in the established cities.
First "true arcologies" also sprung up, massive "cities in a building" built around industrial and life support "core" and almost entirely self-sustaining on basic necessities. The first was, of course, Snezhinka (Snowflake) built in Moscow in place of the devastation caused by the Astrophage landmine during the war. A beautiful 1.2 kilometer tall white tower made with fractal interlocking patterns of support pillars and doubling as the support anchor and terminal for the Indian Space Elevator cluster. You don't actually need it to go on the equator, you can have multiple cable connections as long as combined they cancel out the drift. It was also the tallest building on Earth until 2054.
Below the massive arcology is a two kilometers deep "plug" full of support equipment, numerous fusion and fission power plants, life support systems like water recyclers and air circulation systems, warehouses, certain autonomous industrial and maintenance facilities as well as underground transit terminals. The center of the spire contains a tower of automated farms that produce various foods and industrial biomaterials like cotton and synthetic spider silk to be processed into goods in the underground sections and provided both for the local population and for export. CO2 released by the humans and industries is concentrated to feed the plants and bacteria which in turn produce oxygen in sufficient quantities for the structure to theoretically survive even if it was built on another planet.
While jokingly referred to as the "first hive city", Snezhinka could afford the largest and most well built and well equipped flats you could hope to find in the city. It has internal parks (the largest park in the megastructure is situated on the "basement floor" and open to the outside), shopping centers, hospitals, cultural and entertainment facilities, schools and universities and so on and so forth. You could live your entire life without ever leaving it.
Most other arcologies across the world are either much shorter but much wider or are indistinguishable from normal skyscrapers with all of their support equipment buried deep underground. Still, being a massive subject of regional prestige they are all absolute works of architectural art.
There are also "mini arcologies" where you have a normal building but it is more akin to an iceberg with a deep multi story underground section that provides independent power, food and utilities to the house on top. Currently it is kind of pricey, but it is the most "off the grid" you can physically go while keeping all the comforts of modern life.
It took humans quite a while to get the industries required to manufacture some of the advanced Eridian alloys and materials, but when they did… The current tallest of the "Xenonite generation skyscrapers" is the Neo-Sears tower in North Chicago a few kilometers east of Lincoln Park sitting on the edge of lake Michigan. It is currently "only" 2 km tall but it is planned to be 5 kilometers tall with 1110 levels and an internal volume of almost 6 billion cubic meters.
It will take another decade to complete and it is designed with the ability to alter itself as time goes on. You can theoretically disassemble and remake an entire chunk of levels without bothering those above and below thanks to human derived CNT composites and Eridian metamaterial based skeleton frame. It would have a maximum population of nearly 10 million inhabitants. Each level is akin to a sizable town in of itself and they are planned to be named after the famous inhabitants of Chicago, such as Gary Gygax and Harrison Ford.
It also turned out that humans are not that hopelessly behind on material science. Two dimensional materials, buckyballs and nanotubes were nearly unknown to Eridians while having some very desirable material qualities once the mass production was solved. Graphene based microchips and batteries revolutionized personal and wearable electronics. Buckyballs were useful in everything from fusion fuel pellet encapsulation to industrial lubricants to polymer admixtures to cancer treatments. Multilayered long carbon nanotubes ended up with superior tensile strength per unit of mass compared to Eridian metamaterials which in turn had superior compressive strength. Nanotube composite polymers based on poly-adamant binder ended up as the most desirable aerospace hull material due to frankly amazing mass savings compared to even the most advanced alloys of yesteryear.
These advancements have finally enabled the construction of the first space elevators. A massive iron rich asteroid two kilometers in diameter was hauled from the main belt into geostationary orbit by an array of fusion powered tugs and used as the mass anchor for the first "beanstalk logistics hub" of the Indian Space Elevator Cluster. Its main equatorial anchor is on a sea platform near the archipelago of Republic of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and it would connect to major economic hubs all over Africa, Europe, Middle East, India and western parts of China.
It would take a while to link every location, but first major connections have already been completed. First links were to dedicated anchor terminals in Paris, Hefei and Mumbai as well as Snezhinka arcology in Moscow and Mana-Musa arcology near Johannesburg in South Africa. This also necessitated secondary anchor points all across the Indian ocean in the southern hemisphere to prevent latitude drift of the anchor.
Two anchors were free floating industrial seasteading platforms yet to receive decent official names but others were placed on multiple islands which gave their populations some impressive economic growth. There's an anchor near Port-aux-Français and one on Île Amsterdam of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, one near Banda Aceh city in Indonesia, one near Taolagnaro in Madagascar and one near Port Louis on Mauritius island.
Earliest elevator cabs took 12 hours to get to orbit but newest designs use thicker cables, beamed power and take around two hours for the elevator cab to reach geostationary orbit and another two hours to go down to any of the anchor locations which is faster and cheaper than long range air shipping. Two more space elevator clusters are planned, one positioned in the Atlantic Ocean and linking Europe, Africa and eastern parts of both Americas. Another one is planned in the middle of the Pacific linking western American seaboard, eastern part of Asia and all of Australia and Oceania.
A lot of people think that a space elevator is extremely dangerous if it fails, but the total kinetic energy of the cable is relatively low and spread over a huge distance. If it snaps at the ground level then the cable "floats up" and out of the atmosphere where it can be recovered. If it snaps in orbit then falling cable would at most be comparable to a train crash, but it is only if you don't do anything to make it even safer.
Advanced carbon nanotubes and mass produced graphene also mean access to incredibly light and compact parachutes. Every cable has shaped charges positioned at regular intervals which break it up in case of the snap after which much smaller pieces simply parachute down. It turns from a small catastrophe into simply a very expensive replacement. The most dangerous part of the system is 2 hours of elevator music as you are strapped to an acceleration chair.
Space elevators made access to space significantly cheaper, however most nations still keep their conventional spaceports and laser launch facilities. Space elevator goes directly to geostationary orbit, passes through Van Allen belts and can't easily or quickly deliver payloads to lower orbits and is limited to the equatorial plane. Massive constellations of LEO satellites and space stations in LEO and MEO are still more convenient to get to via rocket, especially since reusable rocket fuel prices are also dependent on the electricity costs.
Laser launch facilities are useful beyond surface to orbit launches. They can beam power to satellites in orbit to perform maneuvers, remotely power energy intensive facilities, propel tiny laser sail probes across the solar system and "laser broom" the space trash. But most importantly, they have strategic defense value. Laser launchers are essentially surface to orbit and anti ballistic weapon batteries which is why they are often placed in regions with high population densities and also why I was picky with what countries Russia would be allowed to sell these to.
Human presence in space grew to 40000 residents and continues to increase at higher and higher rates. There are now hundreds of Gateway pattern stations in various orbits of Earth while new and larger station designs come into service. The first and largest of them is Liberty Station in MEO with 6000 permanent residents built by the United States, second largest is Astrograd in LEO with 3500 people built by yours truly… I mean Russia. Both are cylinder stations based on multiple upscaled Gateway designs placed on one axis and connected together.
The biggest station project so far is still in the early stages, but it promises to be the largest singular object humanity has ever built, dwarfing even the pyramids. It would be based on an updated Island 3 design better known as O'Neill Cylinder. It would be a "star shape" or "pom pom" arrangement of spin gravity cylinders each 8 km in diameter and 32 km long around a central 0G interface habitat. The monumental project is expected to take another 20 years as problems with new technologies are inevitably encountered.
The megastructure would replace Indian Space Elevator's asteroid anchor by being slowly forged out of the said asteroid by swarms of semi autonomous construction robots. Until then the industrial machinery is still in the bootstrapping and optimization phase, but it already produces an excess of certain bulk metals making the site into an excellent place for the first orbital shipyard. Considering that it is placed over the Indian ocean, the construction complex is named "Vishvakarma", the "all-maker" god of Hinduism.
The Outer Space Treaty has been nullified and reworked into ROSA, which stands for Reviewed Outer Space Accords. During the talks it was considered that it is infeasible to stretch national borders endlessly into space, but humanity has reached the point where off-world colonies became not only possible but inevitable. As such, new rules were created around claims of orbital space and regions on planetary bodies.
Once a colony reaches certain benchmarks on population it becomes first a town, then city and then a province(or a state) of the country that commissioned it. After that they gain the right to choose to secede through democratic supermajority vote. International colonies become "independent government entities" once they reach certain population thresholds, elect their own government and do a vote, until then they are ruled by the agreement of all constituent parties.
Also you can't claim the "entire planetoid" if you land only one colony, the size of your claim depends on your capability to exert influence over the territory and if another colony lands elsewhere before you manage to grab the region then it has a valid claim for said region. It is all paraphrased, of course. The real document is very long and very complicated to handle all the edge cases and compromises that the signatories could think of.
The Eridian equivalent to the UN also participated in this treaty. It was agreed that Sol and Erid are "owned" by the respective species and you can "own" habitats in each other's system only with the agreement of the local authority. Any other star that has no indigenous technological life is "free game" as nations and supranational organizations are free to make their claims until a local regional government or alliance of governments is formed.
Shortly after the first contact Eridians launched a second updated design of their starship. They didn't name it beyond their equivalent of alphanumerical designation, but they accepted that humans decided to call it "Blip B". Erid has about the inverse of Earth's relationship with oceans, their oceans are shallow and not interconnected resulting in limited maritime culture. As such, for them "naming ships" is as foreign of a concept as for humans to uniquely name every car or plane.
Blip B arrived with a select group of diplomats and scientists along with a prototype manufacturing facility. With some significant effort and inputs both from the Contingent and volunteer human scientists the Eridians managed to make the first generation of environmental suits allowing them to survive on the surface of Earth. The suits are of a "hard shell" design with surprisingly limited breathing mix supply. Eridians can saturate their blood with ammonia and technically don't need to breathe for over three days which is more than enough to get to a sealed habitat for a breath and a snack.
The suits are also equipped with cameras and "bump screens" which translate the color image into a texture map allowing for easier interpretation of the surroundings. There's also a communication system and an on- board computer needed to run the translation software for interactions with other humans. Their reception was quite good and since then multiple delegations of Eridians arrived for various purposes from scientific cooperation to tourism. If only making a suit for humans to explore Erid was that easy, it is basically like going to Venus but worse in every way except the lack of sulfuric acid.
Scientific cooperation has quickly borne fruit in unusual places. Eridians received the technologies and industrial know-how to build computers and the designs behind MEMS systems. Human computers and microelectronics production machinery aren't designed to run at huge temperatures or pressures but Eridian domestic industries managed to reach the equivalent of early PCBs within just two years.
Today just 15 years later their domestic production capability is equivalent to the 1990s technology but optimized with their own brand of mathematics and with modern understanding of semiconductors. Still, human made microchips are their main interest for physical trade. Considering how difficult it was originally to get the EUV lithography working I'm not surprised that it is hard to go straight to the good stuff from scratch.
Humans got their metamaterials but they ended up needing a bit more time to figure them out. Eridians also had marginal improvements in electric systems efficiency since they base their power grids on mathematically optimized phases instead of the average human "three phase" system but it was deemed too difficult to replace everything for a few percent of improvements.
Biggest gains were actually in the field of medicine. Eridians gained knowledge of human medical practices but it would take a while for them to trickle down to practical use due to the huge differences in biology. Humans in turn gained extremely cheap pharmaceuticals. But even beyond that, Eridians managed to fully replicate the incredibly important FBS.
Fetal Bovine Serum, or "blood plasma from baby cows" is a resource of critical importance for modern bioprinting. For a still not fully understood reason this exact cocktail of hormones and nutrients provides the best known environment for the replication of any type of mammalian cells. Alternatives existed, but they were always significantly worse at facilitating healthy cell growth needed for artificially grown organs, regenerative medicine, artificial blood production, personalized skin grafts and many other fields. As such, these industries were bottlenecked by the size of the beef industry since, surprise, extracting "baby cow juice" kills the calf.
Eridians managed to replicate it after mere 3 years. This massively decreased the price of artificial organs on the market and it even made lab grown meat practical. You can now grow cow or pig muscle and fat cells and then bioprint a juicy steak! It still requires medical grade instead of food grade hygiene standards because cell slurry without an immune system gets covered in mold or killed by viruses in a snap.
Still, the product instantly took its well earned spot for when you want delicacies but you don't like killing cows and also think that bacteria derived "printer burgers" still taste a bit off. No matter how much I tried, printed food still has that "cheap fast food" off-taste and food printers can't handle anything close to firm vegetables or passable structured flesh even with the voxel resolution approaching 50 micrometers.
Some advancements have started to affect some of the previously fundamental parts of the human condition. The true AI is still a while away, brain computer interfaces are much better but not yet to the point where you can browse the internet or enter VR with your mind while cybernetics and genetic engineering aren't yet at the point of transhumanist wet dreams where the body can be molded like clay.
Instead, primitive form of "biosculpting" is becoming a common thing. Robotic nurses that were developed for the Hail Mary mission now went through decades of rigorous testing and optimization until automated surgical suites became the norm for a lot of medical procedures.
The robotic surgeon uses hundreds of thin metallic tentacles tipped with a wide variety of tools to perform minimally invasive surgeries of any type through incisions barely a millimeter in diameter. If automated systems can't handle a certain procedure or something unexpected happens then the surgeon can take over the manipulator controls remotely. This allows for full body cosmetic surgery that you usually recover from within one to two days at the price of a decent car.
Some things like bone structure adjustments take longer to heal since you cut the bone and print it over with lab grown bone tissue and transplant bone marrow but it still at worst takes a week since you don't have to regrow the bone, only integrate it and heal the interface points. Some things can't be changed such as the size of the cranium. It doesn't apply to the shape of the skull though, it can be altered and trimmed as much as you want.
Fully functional sex reassignments that you don't need to maintain with pills are now common and if you really want you can go an extra mile and do it on cellular scale through CRISPR chromosome virotherapy but most people don't bother. And yeah, you can go the other way, it just costs the same as to do it the first time. True gene tweaks are still limited to treating genetic diseases and fighting cancer since most people are reasonably scared of the consequences of tweaking the human genome without sufficient understanding of it. You could get horrifying genetic deformities generations down the line when it has already spread across the populations and it would be too late to do anything about that.
You can't do xenotransplantation yet since the immune system is too defensive but there's the second best thing. Advancements in BCI and deeper understanding of the immune system allowed for full feedback prosthetics and cybernetic artificial organs that are finally comparable to the real ones. Most of the digestive tract, bone marrow, immune system, lungs and the entire endocrine system as a whole can't be replaced with cybernetics just yet so you can't go full cyborg but we're on the verge of getting cyberpunk… minus the "low life" part.
Some prostheses even allow for grafted skin to grow over them, but naked metal and polymer bits styled with LED lights and in- built wearable computers are becoming more and more popular among those who lose limbs. It is not legally permitted to chop off a healthy arm in most places just yet but you can get subdermal implants to mimic the style and some of the functionality.
Oh yeah, it took all of half a year for someone to become the first "IRL catgirl". The ears are hidden cybernetics, they can move but can't hear and are covered by human skin epigenetically tweaked to grow dense hair at a set short length. They also couldn't figure out the tail quite yet. I expect that "physiological freedom" would become more and more available as technology improves and becomes cheaper. Humanity is likely to shatter into myriads of custom body types which is neither good nor bad, it is just kind of neat.
Among other medical technologies that I should mention are certain reproductive techniques that enable same sex reproduction. Artificial wombs are still far from practical so you might need a surrogate mother but there is a process to change human gametes from sperm to egg and back to sperm. There are also strides towards revitalization of malformed gametes and synthesis of gametes from stem cells but those technologies are a bit more "raw" and thus more expensive.
There are also first strides towards medical micro-robotics, but it is difficult to make something complex enough to do anything practical and small enough to fit inside the blood vessels. For now there's a tiny blood vessel mapping drone 4 micrometers in diameter that is inert unless piloted with strong enough magnetic fields from the outside via a powerful MRI- like device. There's also a 20 micrometer "microsurgeon" robot which is mostly used to block clogged arteries and to get to some hard to reach tumors for cancer treatment but it is too big to fit through the smallest capillaries and thus has to be manually piloted.
There's also "targeted medicine delivery device" which is a special nanoscale "pill" that is injected into the blood and it releases its payload upon encountering certain chemicals or artificial external stimuli (like laser or a strong magnetic field) but it doesn't really count as a true "robot". It is, however, very good at treating many kinds of cancers. We still can't cure every type of cancer since it is akin to saying that you can cure "all viruses ever", but we're getting there.
Speaking of which, the hottest breakthrough in that field is the "broad spectrum antiviral immunotherapy". Essentially every virus strain has a unique arrangement of spike proteins that are used to access cells but also for the immune system to identify them. A single mutation can completely change this arrangement and make treatments for previous strains ineffective against new strains. However, the base of the spike protein is much more uniform and thus you can target the entire group of viruses regardless of how fast they mutate. By 2040s malaria was eradicated entirely while flu and the common cold should be gone for good by the 70s.
Arguably the last of the important technologies that I should mention is the maturation of virtual and artificial reality. You can't plug directly into the optic nerve and vestibular apparatus for a "full dive" experience just yet, but the "goggles", "suits" and "rigs" have reached the point of maximal effective fidelity. Gone are the days of the "supersized swimming goggles that weigh like a brick" of the late 2020s, now most of the VR headsets are comparable to a hybrid between thick glasses and noise canceling headphones. The screen resolution is so good it can't meaningfully be improved further and the curved screen covers the entire field of view so you no longer need to turn your head to look at things in the peripheral vision. The "augmented reality" without VR fits in normal sized glasses and you can opt for contact lenses if you are willing to drop some resolution quality.
The full haptic suit looks vaguely like scuba diving wetsuits but it is an incredible piece of smart clothing. The fabric is intertwined with microscopic electro stimulation electrodes, point heating and cooling systems and tiny pneumatic bladders for simulation of the full range of tactile experiences from pain to heat to texture. The fabric contains artificial muscles that tug on the limbs and can resist the movements of fingers to simulate interaction with virtual objects. Now you can stub your toe even in VR! Also gone are the wires, the suit can work autonomously for hours and many homes or VR rigs now have integrated induction chargers.
The "VR rigs" are an evolution over the "omnidirectional treadmills" which keep you in place so that you don't bump into the furniture. Many designs exist, but the best one is derived from what used to be "THE EXIT SUIT" in my times. It looks like a one legged chair with a hip strap and a skeletal chest and backpiece. It allows for unimpeded movement and can support the body at various angles to simulate swimming or "flying". Newest designs even allow the body to be flipped further than just horizontal so that the head is below the hips. Thanks to economies of scale and automation the higher end setups proportionally cost no more than a new iPhone back in the 2020s.
The biggest impact with this technology was not just in entertainment. Yes, there are now numerous VR games, wide ranges of "chatrooms" and even first integrated "worlds" which are huge multipurpose continuous environments. The human brain considers interactions in VR on the same level as face to face communication while video calls have "lower attention priority" which dug out a large niche for VR in the business world. But the true biggest impact of advanced VR was in remote labor. Micrometer precision motion capture sensors and universal high bandwidth connections allow for precise operation of telerobots from anywhere in the world to anywhere within a light second of Earth. A remote specialist can live in a cushy apartment in Maldives while doing remote shifts in India, US, Antarctica, in orbit or on the surface of the Moon. In fact, out of the tens of thousands living in orbit literally millions remote commute into space through a telerobot.
By the 2050s I've started wrapping down my operations in preparation for my leave. A decade earlier I disassembled most of my facilities on the Moon which allowed for the first industrial colonies to form on its surface. I've also tugged two rich asteroids into stable Lagrange points to compensate for the materials that I've extracted and all mirror arrays were disassembled once the solar output normalized. Most of my military presence was also either moved back to Homina or, in case of the huge laser arrays, disassembled in the decades after the war which left only a few small fleets for emergencies.
In 2056 I stepped down from my role as the head of the Democratic Federation of Russia. I only exercised the emergency powers for the previous 6 years and I decided that the new government was stable enough to continue on without me. I disassembled and airlifted all of my remaining equipment along with most of the telerobotic bodies leaving only those locally built and relevant to the diplomatic work.
The new government decided to give me farewells with a bit too much fanfare and surprisingly a lot of tears. Honestly, I shouldn't be surprised, I practically adopted the population of the entire country. Literally in some cases, the timing of my leave coincides with the coming of age of the youngest of the orphans that my instances took in. I couldn't do less, the institutional systems that could take care of them were gone and my conscience wouldn't allow for half measures. I guess my instances are technically mothers and fathers to something like 4 million Russians who have just reached their 20s. Well, it is not like we won't see each other again, the VR is there for a reason and I won't be fully cutting the communications anytime soon. I just can't afford to go fully "native" here.
The Contingent has also gone through some very important changes over the years. I believe that we're undergoing some form of personality drift. While I can't call it aptitude, instances find that they prefer to do specific things and behave in specific ways when using specific personas. We are still VERY similar so I can't say that we became different personalities, but we do have some differences in personality traits. As such I expect that I'll start mentioning some of them in the diary. Not everyone, there are now in the low hundreds of millions, but I will mention those involved in events and those I work closely with.
As the human presence in space increased, first vestiges of the "space fleets" started appearing as well. First there were the first patrol and peacekeeping vessels of the UN Space Guard because crime and potential for atrocities doesn't stop just because you went into space. Other major countries followed suit forming their own early orbital navies. The largest ones are owned by the US, UN, Russia and India.
The United States has the first thing that can be generously called a "space battleship". USSF Alan Shepard is technically the size of a wet navy cruiser at 200 meters in length, but it is by far the largest dedicated orbital warship. Powered by an array of 6 plasma core astrophage thermal rockets fed by slush hydrogen as remass it has somewhere around 400 km/s dV with the combined thrust of up to 10 gravities. It is manned by only 60 USSF personnel with most systems being automated.
The ship has a vague shape of a rifle bullet fitted with four sets of radiator fins in the back. However, they provide only auxiliary heat management roles. Main radiator system that is used to handle the full power of the engines and the waste heat from the weapons is an ETHER charged dust radiator. For said weapons the ship has four laser apertures on the sides and one on the nose of the spacecraft powered by a free electron laser shaft running through most of the ship as well as 8 synchrotron magnet assemblies for the macron accelerator cannons. The rest of the fleet consists of three much smaller support vessels as well as several dedicated logistics craft.
Still, the most powerful weapon in the ship's arsenal is racks on racks on racks of astrophage powered and tipped missiles. Being small for what they do, these things can accelerate at thousands of G-s and express deliver a multi megaton shaped charge anywhere in the solar system and a bit beyond while also being capable of complex evasion patterns and group coordination. Let's just say that humans were a bit spooked by having aliens that close to Sol even if Eridians were friendly. The lack of any techno signatures beyond 30 light years is also very concerning.
The EU has a small fleet of destroyer sized vessels equipped comparably to the US while Russian space forces have the closest thing to a space carrier with dozens of fusion torch based combat drones with limited dV strapped to a logistics support unit. Indian space forces rely on orbital weapon platforms that are incapable of rapid relocation but where you remove the remass you can add much more armor, weapons and heatsinks. Their first weapon platform doubles as a spaceborne laser beaming station for civilian purposes.
I think that's all of the catching up, I should probably return back to the Groombridge 1830 first contact. About a year ago the derelict finally entered into reasonable communication range from their star and blasted out the first contact message on repeat. It consisted of a dense chunk of math to identify the message as artificial and to establish baseline concepts, the first contact messages prepared by the UN and Eridian people, and with the instructions on how to tell the starship to avoid their star system if they don't wish for it. All of that was formulated in simplified and annotated animations since we don't have a sufficient sample of Groombridgian language to communicate "normally".
As the derelict approached closer it could directly image the star system at a much greater resolution. Groombridgian home gas giant is a third planet in the system, it is a beautiful ringed blue jewel with accents of green splashed into it like water paint. The accents of green that have a strong red edge, this is the first case of life detected not only around but on the gas giant!
The first world in the system is a decaying hot mini Neptune as the solar wind slowly strips down its atmosphere to the core. The second world is a warm Neptune with high concentrations of CO2 which is used by the Astrophage for its replication. There is an asteroid belt between the third planet and the fourth. The fourth world is a cool mini-Jupiter with its own ring system and three major moons, all airless ice shell worlds. The outermost planet is a cold arid super-aquaria similar to the outermost world of the Homina system. Like gas giants it has a moon system consisting of numerous asteroids and three tiny ice shell waterworlds.
Neutrino detectors can be used to detect signatures of nuclear reactions and oh boy there are many. The neutrino radiation characteristic to fission chain reaction cycles can be detected all around the second, third and fourth planets which is corroborated with optical observations. Groombridgians commonly utilize nuclear power to fuel their numerous orbital and surface colonies.
The worlds closer and further from the star are much more sparsely populated, but the moons around the third planet have swarms of habitats of all shapes and sizes. The largest appear to be similar to O'Neill cylinders designed by humans but they can afford to be significantly bigger because they need to produce only a fraction of Earth's gravity. As a result, each is comparable in surface area to Argentina or India. Most of them are buried inside of the smaller moonlets and asteroids for protection against micrometeorites and radiation.
There are likely thousands of these huge habitats around the third planet and I've detected hundreds in the asteroid belt and dozens around other moons and planets in the system. If we judge only by the living area, the total population of Groombridgians would significantly exceed the combined populations of both humans and Eridians. However, the proportions of digital to analog signals in their radio transmissions suggests that they are at a rough equivalent of computational technology to humanity in the 1980s. Their automation technology is very limited and they had to assemble all these artificial worlds by hundreds of thousands of people wearing spacesuits and equipped with welders. It must have taken them hundreds of years to build up to this point.
Their reply took most of the year to get to the derelict and it was targeted at the closest encounter point. The message had a mirror of the math handshake and the instruction to change course. However, the instruction to change course was altered to indicate that they wish for the starship to arrive into a high orbit around their home gas giant.
What followed next was a constant barrage of transmissions from their homeworlds and numerous habitats. Recordings of their people speaking something into the microphones, videos of natural life and of their cities, recordings of music and images of great works of art and great monuments of their cultures. Some select habitats beamed historical images of proud armies and space warships that looked like cones with radiators.
It is paralleling what the humans decided to send, which was an updated and modernized version of what was placed on the Voyager golden records so I guess they understood the content which is a good sign. We don't know what exactly they are saying, but the messages appear to be mostly "positive" as far as we understand. What we can understand better is a short "cartoon" which depicts a spaceship dropping something into the second planet in their system and then the Petrova line of the astrophage fades out of view. I guess it is as good of an invitation as any.
The derelict squirts out a reply message confirming course change and confirming the intention to cure astrophage before continuing its way into deep space. It might still be useful if Isildur is somehow lost. Once the gate is shipped in the engineering systems would salvage as much as they can and detonate the supply and control nodes to prevent the creation of any interstellar space debris.
This happened around a year ago, Groombridgians continued to beam messages containing a variety of subjects towards both the derelict and the Isildur linelayer. Then suddenly the messages ceased for a few months. The linelayer was already braking in the outer Oort cloud when suddenly it received a focused radio signal with the instruction to change course and avoid the star system entirely coupled with a message full of the terms used to describe "urgency".
The ship's long range telescopes were tucked in for deceleration and the massive sensor array on the derelict will only be in the light cone of the event in over half a year so we couldn't see much of what has occurred. What we could detect is a characteristic double flash of a thermonuclear detonation deep in the system. Fuck…
Log 18: "Oh shit, here we go again"Log 18: "Oh shit, here we go again"
Well, not sure what I expected, but that definitely wasn't the bugs again. Weren't they supposed to be a "tutorial opponent"? I guess that the ROB was getting impatient. I don't get why they'd go to such lengths. Once the connection with the Homina system was established I could do another jump without abandoning the first universe. I wasn't doing that mostly because I wanted to wrap up and be completely free for the next leg of my journey, but if Rob would just show up and state that they want me to go on then it wouldn't be a problem. But no, let's kill millions of thinking beings because you're bored. At this point, we will look into that memory anomaly just out of spite rather than curiosity and concern.
The moment the data was verified we dumped every single drop of our catom reserves into scaling the economy. There are slightly more than 325 stars within 30 lightyears from Earth not counting rogue planets. Almost simultaneously every linelayer at every single one of those stars started pumping out orbital construction craft. I will avoid worlds that have signs of life as well as most of Sol and 40 Eridani systems, but I can no longer ignore metallic deposits. While significantly less efficient compared to the other two harvesting methods, the metal extractors are significantly faster and cheaper to build.
Once they are constructed, their output would be used to scale up the jigs and regolith mining efforts. I doubt that I'd deplete any major deposit within the few decades that this war is likely to take, but people of the local stellar neighborhood would likely be finding signs of mineral extraction for centuries to come. Econ projections show that within about three to four years the jig output would eclipse any other catom sources. If the war doesn't spread across multiple stars then the demand would drop and we could disable the metal extractors early.
Across the Homina system (which is apparently a terrible name because beyond being just a name it is also an old-timey expression for strong embarrassment or sexual attraction) every combat capable orbital unit started interplanetary transfers towards the gathering point near Hestia shipyards from which they'd transfer to the edge of Earth's sphere of influence and wait for the outbound gate. The issue is that wormholes take time to spin up and down, the larger the gate the more time it needs. It would take over an hour for the linelayer gate to activate and I bet that I won't have the time to switch it between multiple gates once Isildur arrives. All spacecraft would need to transfer through from the same point as fast as possible.
Oh right, I completely forgot, we finally named the planets in that system. System's name was supposed to be associated with "home" and thus planets are named after Greek words for "things and places that could be in a house". First planet is now known as Hestia, meaning "hearth" or "furnace" which is fitting since it is the orbital industry center of the system. With the advent of Eridian materials it became possible to also jig it up so it is now materials rich and not just energy rich from the swarms of orbiting solar panels. Second world is now called Krevati meaning "bed", which I assume is fitting for a resting place of a lost civilization. The "dwarf planet" in the asteroid belt is now known as Amoni, meaning "anvil" because that it is no dwarf planet at all, it is an almost pure iron-nickel sphere that is slightly bigger than Mercury. Likely an exposed core of a super-earth, but it is hard to tell since orbits look too artificial.
Fourth planet is named Kouzina meaning "kitchen" or "stove" with the moon system named after kitchen utensils because it is the biggest gas giant with a lot of jigs and because old Ag deep fried a lot of bugs here. Fifth planet is called Pisina meaning pool due to large quantities of water in its atmosphere while the sixth planet is called Kelari meaning cellar because it is very cold yet still used to source mass through jigs. Last planet is called Limnoula meaning "pond" because it is an ice shell world with underground oceans under kilometers of ice. Fortunately or not, it is sterile. The metric catapult megastructure at the outskirts of the system is now known as "Avli", or "Courtyard".
The mass relocation of a major gate and vast military assets hasn't gone unnoticed by humanity, but it wasn't supposed to be subtle. The United Nations security council meeting was called immediately by our initiative. This time instead of yours truly, Athena would be representing Contingent's expeditionary forces. It is technically my job as the face of the collective, but after decades of being in politics I felt like I'd be tempted to strangle someone once the pointless arguments start. The results were… unforeseen…
Record PLAY: 22nd December 2061, UNSEC meeting
Video start:
Athena is sitting in her full uniform behind a dark oak table. The tiara/headband thing is replaced by a military style cap because it didn't look official enough for most human cultures. On the table is a small bottle of water and an illuminated glass nameplate with the word "Contingent" written on it. The talks have been going on for a while now…
Male voice from outside of the camera's vision "Is it that hard to believe that we might be grateful for all of the Contingent's efforts and just as concerned for the wellbeing of Groombridgians?"
Athena, who the camera is focusing on looks the opposite of amused. 15 seconds pass in silence before she replies "You do realize what you're suggesting, right? A lot of people would die, your people. Is it worth it to have slightly more oversight? We can share the data feeds without the need to have human or Eridian boots on the ground."
Another voice chimes in: "I agree that with our comparably limited industry we would likely not have the opportunity to do much in the grand scale of things, but we can't just do nothing. It is the first credible existential threat since the Astrophage, the free world won't let us sit around watch. If we take the report on your forces at face value, you have a 70% chance to lose most of the Groombridge system before the interstellar reinforcements arrive and then it would take you years to defeat these "bugs". There will be panic on the streets."
"We'll need live data on the performance of our designs, we can't effectively build up our fleets if we don't know that the ships work. Also, if you want to evacuate the habitats, you'll need first contact specialists and escort craft, you can't just weld engines on top of them and fly them into a portal without saying a word to the locals. We also have access to astrophage based munitions and Eridians already expressed their willingness to supply it for this common cause. You don't have to do everything on your own anymore."
Athena waits for a moment and then sighs and states: "I have the Contingent vote results. We will accept your help, but on three conditions. First, you need to sell this to the public, if they are against it then you can't participate. Second, every human or Eridian deployed to Groobridge has to volunteer for the deployment regardless if they are a civilian or a combatant. And not like with Ryland Grace, I'm deadly serious on that one. Third, Contingent Command is in charge of this operation. You will get all of our data and we will account for the suggestions and decisions of your command staff but having three separate command structures would be beyond counterproductive here."
Video stop:
End of record
To the surprise of everyone in the Contingent, most of the UN and their Eridian analogue wanted to take part in the fighting. I didn't want any humans to die, but they had some very good reasons. I didn't use matter conversion weapons while both Eridians and humans had access to astrophage derived munitions and propellants resulting in faster ships, smaller power plants and significantly better missiles at the cost of lower numbers and logistical challenges. Compared with the bug fleets that I fought in Homina, USSF Alan Shepard is like a modern jet fighter going up against swarms of WW1 biplanes. It can probably take an entire fleet on its own if it is at range. In close combat things won't be quite as one sided since even thick Eridian armor won't handle capital ship grade lasers and kinetics.
The second reason is that the collective didn't have the chance to mentally drift far enough apart to be independently creative. Having external military analysts and decision makers would be incredibly useful even accounting for the time it would take to get them up to speed. The Contingent's manpower would also be stretched pretty thin and we were considering another doubling in numbers just to have enough first contact specialists for this mess. You can't realistically talk Groombridgians into what's essentially a leap of faith without hashing out the language and meeting face to face a few times.
Of course, I am not allowing for any drafts. Humanity is at a weird point where a human operator is still somewhat better than a fully robotic unit when it comes to combat, but in actual manufacturing humans are severely outclassed by automated systems. In case of a hypothetical peer conflict on Earth it would make more sense to make robots for factories while pushing people into the grinder rather than the other way around. I have no need for the organic cannon fodder, I have enough mechanical soldiers for that purpose. There are also limits on launch infrastructure which would limit the military personnel to the cream of the crop, but I'd still prefer for them to know of the risks and be willing rather than be forced into the largest conflict in the history of the stellar neighborhood.
It took the free world less than two weeks to switch to the war footing. The population was supportive, it is hard to find an enemy that is more dislikable than omni-genocidal machines of war, *cough cough*. Industry was malleable, most factories by now were set up in a way to be rapidly retooled to new technologies and products just so that they could fill the demand of a society that changed at an increasingly rapid pace. Already the space elevators were hauling components for new warships and manufacturing modules for the clanking replicator facilities on the Moon, Mars, Mercury and in the main belt.
Eridians started ramping up the production of astrophage fuel. By now they had a few "town sized" orbital habitats and they hauled quite a few asteroids into orbit around their homeworld but they didn't spread much beyond the protection of the powerful magnetic field of Erid. Their industry still had limited nanochip production and this war would be won by smart weapons and robot factories.
Yet, the third "worldwide chorus" in their history was called and the new spaceships and factories were commissioned and began launching into orbit through their launch towers, swarms of rotating skyhooks and astrophage-thermal hybrid aerospace craft. While they don't have the smart missiles, wide access to astrophage allows them to pump some serious power into energy weapons if they can develop them fast enough.
The instances in CMRO weren't sleeping either, all of the Contingent designs were updated to the new technological standards. The nomenclature stayed the same, but the designs made after absorbing human 2020s technology became known as M0 while new designs with hybrid human-Eridian 2060s technology get the incredibly overused nomenclature of M1. Units in the first complexity tier couldn't afford nanostructured materials and instead they utilize the various advancements in "simpler" Eridian metallurgy and general design and behavior advancements taken from human unmanned and telerobotic units. They are only about 10% tougher but they are better designed, smarter and more coordinated while being just as fast and cheap to make.
T2 units benefitted the most from the full brunt of the 40 years of technological development. Superior hull materials and armor, better inter and intra-unit networking, better sensors, better independent decision making, more powerful and efficient superconducting motors, optimized power efficiency and routing, advanced autonomous damage control systems and so on and so forth.
The weapon systems also went through an upgrade: lasers are a few percent more efficient, mass drivers are now based around superconducting quench gun designs rather than vanilla "coilguns", almost all rounds are guided and missiles have better propellant, guidance and point defense avoidance. Even the chemical effect warheads got a sizable upgrade, but they are too complex to mention here.
Contingent space forces also went through significant upgrades. It is less of a "refit" and more of a complete replacement. Previously we barely had something that could count as a doctrine, now we actually know what ships we want and why. Unfortunately, that means that our previous units are not backwards compatible, they were supposed to be disassembled for component matter and reused to make brand new units.
For instance, the spinal mount laser cannon that the Wells class was built around had hours of cooldown time and suffered from pump medium microfractures. It was built for one purpose: to deliver enough energy at one target in one pulse at lightspeed. If the alpha strike went better, then it would be nearly a single shot weapon. The name would be kept for a long range capital ship with a massive spinal mount energy weapon, but it won't be designed that crudely.
We're lucky that the ships leftover from the Homina war were updated to M0 shortly before the Russian war or we'd have to explain why they look so much like low poly RTS units. Many were already recycled, but now we can't afford to build more so all leftovers would be shipped as is. We're still debating if we could make a quick updated force, but every resource unit spent on it is a resource unit not spent to outproduce the bugs in the future.
Beyond complete redesigns, a lot of spacecraft technologies underwent a lot of changes. From the weapon side, laser systems moved from residing inside the turret housing to internal lasing cavities which allow the ship to pump all of its laser output through only one turret. Solid state systems are still slightly more efficient, but free electron pumps offer variable optical frequencies for shooting at surface targets through different atmospheres or to bypass the "shields" if I ever run into those.
Particle beam weapons also became much more useful. Ultra Relativistic Electron Beams are possible, but currently very impractical even for me. Too huge, too power hungry, too inefficient, good for a proposed solar system scale atom smasher but not as a direct energy weapon. For now, the best of the particle beam weapons is a "double barreled" neutralized proton-electron linear accelerator developed by DARPA which the media dubbed "cancer cannon". If shot at a manned ship from several megameters away you can take a nifty x-ray snapshot of its crew dying in excruciating pain from instant acute radiation syndrome.
A more practical use for particle accelerators was found in the field of macrons. A macron is a "macroscopic particle"(compared to atoms and molecules) between a micrometer and a nanometer in diameter, or roughly in the size range between human cells and bacteria. Most weaponized macrons are hollow poly-adamant spheres, but they can be filled with fission or fusion fuel that react on impact if fired at sufficient speed. Fission impact designs have minimum critical mass requirements resulting in slower speeds and larger projectiles. At 200km/s you need 0.16 miligrams of uranium which is a sphere 0.25 mm wide. Fusion pellets and fissile catoms don't have that limitation and can be placed into a macron of any size.
For example, a USSF design is a superconducting synchrotron magnet assembly 100 meters in diameter that accelerates a constant stream of inert 10 nm macrons to velocities of just under 20000 km/s (6,7% of lightspeed) at the rate of about 4000 projectiles per second in point defense configuration. Alternatively it fires deuterium-tritium ice filled macrons at just over half that speed and fire rate.
Inert macron in that case provides 0.0000002 joules of kinetic energy, fusion loaded macron masses 40 times more and has 0.000009 joules of kinetic energy and 0.00001452 joules of fusion energy, which is just under three times the impact of the point defense round. These are on the lower edge of macron masses and higher end of macron speeds, when you are over 25 thousand km/s there's no more gain in using fusion in kinetics.
"Macrokinetics" almost died out as a spacecraft weapon concept. They are still useful on the ground, but the distances in space make them impractical. There are inherent limitations to the acceleration rate of a projectile. Beyond that railguns melt, coilguns are torn apart or magnetically saturate the round and the round itself evaporates from the quantities of waste heat pumped into it. As such, even most advanced mass drivers struggle to give you more than 50 km/s while fights at 1 megameter distance are considered knife fighting ranges.
A railgun round would take 20 seconds to cover that distance, an inert US M3 Testudo macron CIWS round covers that distance in 1/20 of a second. "Common" ranges for the bug war were 1 to 3 light seconds. A light second is just under 300 megameters or roughly Earth- Moon distance and it is covered by a macron in 15 seconds while a macroprojectile would take 1.7 hours.
Contingent macron accelerators use an "ion piston" design which works kind of like a blowgun and launches a much larger macron. A stupendously powerful proton accelerator assembly pumps a secondary stage accelerator turret with a mere 4 meter long barrel (less than 3.1m and acceleration would splatter the round) which projects a 100 microgram speck of fissile catoms equipped with a tiny superconducting magsail loop at staggering 25000 km/s. Each dust mite sized projectile carries an equivalent of 7,5 kg of TNT in raw kinetic power and 18 kg of TNT in nuclear energy.
Unfortunately, one barrel can only accelerate one macron, so the assembly looks like one of those "leadstorm" machineguns and fires a "shotgun blast" of thousands of pellets every 4-5 seconds. This is a capital ship grade primary weapon, it is huge, powerful and can tear small ships in half with a single volley. As large and powerful as capital grade pulse laser batteries. By unanimous decision, every Contingent macron accelerator design has a tiny French flag print on the barrel housing.
Space missile technology also went quite far. Aided by the ship engine developments, missiles are no longer simple combustion rockets. With great effort, the Contingent science department has managed to create an electrothermal arcjet using Eridian materials with performance comparable to liquid core nuclear thermal rockets. It is incredibly power hungry and each missile now needs its own mini-zero point powerplant, but it has comparable mass flow to the previous chemical rocket while having a much better ISP. Rocket essentially trades design complexity for much better propellant efficiency and thrust, the missile bus can now output 100 gee essentially "forever" as long as the economy is not redlined. The arcjet attitude control systems now also replace all hot gas RCS clusters on all other ship designs.
The missile's terminal guidance stage is replaced by a nuclear fizzler stage which pushes the warhead towards the target at 1800g for about 10 seconds which should be more than enough to get the missile from just beyond the effective range of the bug point defenses to within about 200 km where the new nuclear shaped warheads become extremely effective. The double fizzler missiles that are currently being printed on Isildur aren't a permanent design, they are optimized to have the least drain on beamed remass as possible.
Bomb pumped lasers ended up impractical, but casaba howitzer tech was beyond expectations. Scientists in the 70s managed to make a device that converts up to 80% of a nuke's output to focus in a 5.7 degrees cone. Human scientists in the 2060s with superior understanding of superconductors and magnetohydrodynamics managed to focus it up to a 0.00057 degrees cone at the cost of efficiency. High focus design results in around 20% of the bomb's energy focused into the nuclear spear.
Contingent space combat optimized nuclear warheads use a modification on the casaba design based around the "Shaped Nuclear-Accelerated Payload/Kinetic" (SNAP/SNAK) proposal. True SNAK design would have superior speeds than what I ended up using, but I don't have enough understanding of magnetic fields to pull it off so the current design would be good enough for now. SNAK is essentially a bomb pumped magnetic sail cannon. A casaba howitzer unit sits below a projectile fitted with a superconducting loop. Once the bomb detonates, it projects a plume of plasma which reflects off of the supeconductor's magnetic field and fires the projectile like an immaterial nuke- powered cannon. With optimal design, a projectile can get single digit megameters per second speeds.
In my case, the kinetic projectile is a solid chunk of dia-nacre doped for increased density and embedded with a superconductive loop. The loop is not optimized for being a magnetic sail, instead it keeps the projectile from disintegrating as it is slammed by a multi- megaton energy pulse. It is essentially half explosive formed penetrator half magsail. The pulse accelerates the bullet to just above the speed of the plasma plume. It impacts the target and fractions of a millisecond later a plume of nuclear fire follows directly into the cavity produced by the kinetic impact.
Contingent historically uses megaton range nukes for space combat, an optimized meg scale casaba howitzer alone produces 2691GJ/m² irradiance at 1000 km away. If you are 10 times closer, it is 100 times stronger. This allows the plasma plume to vaporize an aluminum armor slab that is 10 meters in radius and 300 mm deep from 1000 km away with only 20% of nuke's energy. At 100s of km the pulse would core any spacecraft made by any known faction, the kinetic component is mostly an insurance against handwavey armor materials and hundreds of meters thick armor plating on stationary targets. With more research it might be possible to get the 80% efficiency with higher degree of focus back, but for now this will do nicely.
The primary reason for why the warship designs were changed is because the propulsion systems were overhauled from scratch. Contingent warships are inherently reliant on the remote remass supply. If the economy redlines then ships have minutes to seconds of useful thrust. This is inacceptable, but I didn't have any good options for mitigating that. I couldn't use fusion because I'd need to have a separate fusion fuel refinery that won't be able to ship through the resource nodes. Using the linelayer drive approach won't work for all ships because of how demanding the wormhole infrastructure is. Electrostatic and plasma propulsion is too low thrust to matter and electrothermal is not that significantly better than running normal combustion rockets on these scales.
The solution is a derivative of the "minimag orion" design. The ships would now have internal fuel tanks holding tens of thousands of tons (50-60% of ship's mass) of pulse units made of fissile catoms. A pulse unit is fired by a mass driver and passes through a battery of superconductor magnets and laser emitters which simultaneously light it up from all sides. A basketball-sized chunk of fuel compresses to the size of a pen's ballpoint in a fraction of a second which causes it to react all at once. An in- built casaba device focuses 80% of the energy into a 20 degree cone directed at the magnetic nozzle of the spacecraft which produces thrust. The engine does that about 200 times a second, a visual filter is recommended for observers who suffer from epilepsy in addition to not desiring flash blindness.
Ships still have enough resource uplinks to run the engine continuously, but now they have significant dV regardless of the state of the economy. This drive would be fitted to all capital grade units, but smaller vessels can't afford to mount the entire drive system. Instead, they'll have a backup electrothermal engine and use smaller pulse units and longer periods between pulses. Also they can't afford enough mass uplinks and fabrication facilities to run their engines at 100% indefinitely. As such, here's the first space unit categorization: capital craft can run the pulse engine through the uplink, minor/parasite craft rely on stored fuel/propellant and refill the pulse units when idle. Kind of like the difference between "ships" and "boats", the latter are carried by the former.
It was decided that the Neutron Flux drives used by the linelayers are mostly outdated, they consume a stupendous quantity of catoms and need a dedicated catom fabrication facility just to be isolated from economy crashes. Wouldn't it be nice to use unprocessed propellant? Just drop one end of a wormhole into a gas giant and use the gas.
Well, you can't run a fusion engine off of that directly. Most of the gas is light hydrogen that can't fuse outside of star cores. It is not a problem of heat or density, it is a problem of reaction rate. A square meter of the Sun's core produces roughly the same amount of energy per minute as burning comparable quantities of gasoline. Yes, the sun would burn for longer but you can't make its fuel burn faster. Sun makes a lot of energy because it is big, not because P-P fusion is good.
I could make a refinery to separate deuterium from inert gas, but that defeats the point. We wanted an engine that can run on raw gas, if I need to refine it then I might as well make catoms since they at least can be made from bulk material. What about using raw hydrogen as remass? That would work, the problem is that the gate is large, complex and heavy. Smallest gates are about 50 meters wide and have a 2.5 meter thick gate torus which on average is about as dense as osmium.
That's 146315 tons, or about as massive as a skyscraper, an aircraft carrier or the smaller end of my capital ships. Larger gates are "thinner" and lighter with less dense gate material and more support material, smaller gates are even thicker and thus proportionally even heavier. They need a huge metal or concrete slab as a base simply not to sink through the soil. This is also why a 50 meter gate is pushed by a 250 meter wide Zubrin drive, it is about the smallest gate that you can make without it being impractically heavy.
Luckily, I have the Halley drive. It is optimized to flash boil rock into plasma and fire it off at half the speed of light as remass. If I alter the feed mechanism to process gas it should allow for an incredible engine output. And I'm talking truly incredible, one engine unit produces 8918x10^17 newtons of thrust which is enough to push Ceres at 0.1 gee. While missile components can be hardened to survive thousands of gee, warships carry more sensitive equipment like internal fabber bays, high precision sensors and sensitive reusable weapon components. They can safely use maybe 250-300 gees and can maybe survive up to 500 gees with minor damage or optimization redesign which means I am limited by minimum mass rather than maximum.
Yes, it is a grid drive so I theoretically could use less drive units, but it uses a complex magnetic nozzle that refuses to be reverse engineered in time so the minimum mass of a ship with that engine is around… 1/2500th of Ceres or 3640 trillion tons! Mount Everest is 175 billion tons, that's 20800 Everests! I… frankly have no fucking clue what to use with all that mass allowance. I guess I could limit the engine power input, but if that drops by over a half then the engine refuses to work, the ISP drops proportionally and that's still tens of thousands of mountains worth of mass. A single drive unit can haul an entire strike fleet of tens of thousands of the largest capital ships on its own, which is exactly how I'm going to use it.
I'm also making interstellar Ragnarok warhead missiles, but they are too tiny for the new drive so instead they'd be pushed by the linelayer's Neutron Flux drive at something like 500 gee instead. If I end up using them, the system is lost anyway. The wormhole Halley drive family will be named after famous comets, this one will be called "Hyakutake", it would be the biggest for a while because I can't imagine needing to haul more stuff in the near future. The hope is that smaller engines would be developed in the future to be named after dimmer or less famous comets.
Once the mobilization orders were given and the international meetings held, the Isildur beamed back the response to the Groombridgians. It consisted of the negative reply to the course change, an animation of a 3d printer creating a model of a missile with the symbol for uranium 235, a short animation of Isildur being filled up with missiles, an animation of a wormhole gate connecting two stars and a phrase that I hoped was translated correctly. It meant "to provide assistance" coupled with an identifier "from" then images of a human and Eridian followed and the identifier "to" and the image of a Goombridgian.
The reply was almost instantaneous if we account for the light lag. Beyond transmissions with speeches that we couldn't understand and stuff unrelated to the immediate issue there were transmissions with camera recordings of what can only be described as the bugs cosplaying as Beta from Muv Luv: cities and habitats being overwhelmed by vast swarms of very familiar organic war machines of all shapes and sizes as well as space battles between Groombridgian "murder cones" and their insectoid counterparts. Some designs were new such as infantry scale bugs but most we've already encountered before.
Accounting for the number of nukeflashes around the third planet and follow-up transmissions, Groombridgians managed to beat back several invasion attempts but they couldn't prevent the landings on their outermost habitable moon and it is very slowly being overrun. Bugs can't expand rapidly when they are constantly shelled from orbit but Groombridgians really don't want to use nukes on the surfaces of their tiny homeworlds. There seems to be a major exodus of civilian population from the contaminated moon towards the inner moons and habitats.
Their nations are rapidly building up military assets, the second planet's orbital space fell quickly due to the factor of surprise but the third planet and the belt habs have already successfully repelled multiple waves of bug ships. Unfortunately, the bug replication projections suggest that this won't hold, in about a year bugs would outproduce their entire civilization but for now they have the industry and home advantage.
Their transmissions also included telemetry data on the positions of every bug fleet that they identified, and there were already hundreds of formations. About a dozen broke off from the second planet with a powerful intercept burn for the Isildur. They would intercept it as it passes the inner edge of the Kuiper belt as it reaches the point of maximum deceleration to offload the fabbers. We already knew that because we can track their drive signatures, but it is a good sign that the locals are cooperating…
Record PLAY: 17th February 2062, Isildur linelayer first combat encounter, provided to the Interstellar Defense Command. Declassified for the civilian morale boost
Video start:
Rather than being a single video, it is a combination of multiple recording sources which are integrated into a coherent image. Viewers can choose to follow a single camera feed or switch between the recordings and the simulated viewpoints at their discretion. This particular recording was compiled for maximum cinematic effect.
The main screen displays Isildur linelayer in the middle of hard deceleration. The drive plume is so blindingly bright that most of the ship looks like it is in a dark shadow by comparison. The navigational armor plate is folded into eight petals positioned directly behind the operational engine. It can be observed that the armor plates are on hinges allowing them to swing out from being flush with the ship but they are currently folded. Thin glow of the gas to the sides of the drive suggests the reason: if they are unfolded they'd be hit by the backscattering emissions of the engine.
The previously skeletal ship now looks almost like a cylinder, every spare spot on the hull is covered in boxy VLS assemblies that probably number in tens of thousands. Scaled from the ship's size, each is likely made to launch a missile at least as big as a Falcon 9 booster. There are also a few visible "PD laser blisters" which look like tiny metallic acne peppered between the clusters of missile launchers.
Another video feed shows the "interior" of the Isildur's command deck. It is virtual, of course, but it still looks apart. It is a dark room with a huge spherical hologram of the nearby space. In the middle is a model of the Isildur along with its plume that is hundreds of times longer than the ship itself. A couple boxy icons suggest locations of the nearest Kuiper belt objects and the map's legend suggests that they are very much not to scale: the diagram is about 3 astronomical units in diameter.
The central hologram is surrounded by a suspended rail with a robotic arm that is holding a chair. In that chair sits Marie surrounded by holographic windows with readings, texts and diagrams. She is not in her usual business suit, instead wearing a white and orange military- looking uniform. The robot arm moves it to specific points around the spherical map to get a better angle when she needs it. The rest of the room is circular and the edge of the room is surrounded in a double-decked layer of spherical workplaces each crewed by a seated Contingent instance completely surrounded by colored holo-screens.
One of the instances says: "Enemy formation alpha entering effective missile range in 15 seconds. Repeated fusion drive signature, they are adjusting intercept trajectory and drunk walking."
Marie's chair swings to a region of the map where a red diamond shaped icon emerges from the red blip on the edge of the hologram. The icon is filled with hundreds of small red cones signifying individual bug warships. The map instantly paints numerous lines exiting from the nose of the alien fleet formation as the predictive algorithms crunch probable trajectories, some lines are color coded as the most probable. Trajectory predictions update constantly, especially when the red cone icons emit pulses of light which signify engine burns.
Marie: "Gunnery, report."
Gunnery officer: "Supercaps green, launchers green, missiles green, we're ready in all respects, captain."
Marie: "Receiving weapons free order from Taskforce Command, relaying targeting priority, confirm battle plan."
Gunnery officer: "Plan confirmed, targeting priority allocated, targeting solutions pre-calculated. Confirm fire order"
Marie: "Firing order confirmed, initiate attack order on formation alpha"
Gunnery officer: "Fire command confirmed, missile cells cycling. Wave one in the void… wave two in the void, wave three in the void, wave four in the void. All missiles are cold launched and tracking targets. Telemetry- good. Distributed array- good. Wave one at a safe distance for primary burn, detecting drive ignitions."
As the officer states that, the synthesized image of the Isildur starts dumping hundreds of missiles into the vacuum of space. Launchers are tiny mass drivers that project their payloads at high speed and in a shower of sparks. Since the ship is decelerating, the fired missiles behave as if it is accelerating away from the star and thus they fly outwards and then rapidly curve "downwards" as if the ship is standing engine first on a table and they are spring loaded nerf darts.
Another video feed starts showing the perspective of one of the missiles. Each missile is chromed up to a mirror finish just so that they can survive being close to the Linelayer's drive plume and then to survive being close to the plumes of other missiles.
The missile passes the linelayer as it speeds into the distance almost cartoonishly quickly. It is decelerating at hundreds of gees so it looks more like an anti ballistic missile launch- a few seconds and then it is offscreen and too far away to see. The missile orients with puffs of RCS thrusters and then goes into an intentional spin to stabilize itself for the next phase.
Other missiles are too far away from each other and too small to see from the POV missile's camera, but their drive plumes are simply so powerful that they illuminate the reflective surface from kilometers away so much that it is harder to look at them than to look directly at the sun. The burn lasts for barely 20 seconds but that is enough to fling the missile towards their target at more than 350 km/s.
That is incredibly fast, but the missile is targeting something from 3 astronomical units away so if that was everything then the missile would take around 2 weeks to cross the distance. Luckily, linelayer's velocity relative to the star is also added in so it would take merely 4 hours.
The video time lapses which compresses hours of waiting into about a minute of highlights. Linelayer performs several course corrections to avoid incoming extreme range fire, drops multiple more waves of missiles and so on. Once it momentarily cuts propulsion and unfurls the laser batteries to fire at "enemy formation gamma" before folding them back in moments later and reigniting the engine.
The time finally comes for the climax. Focus switches to the POV missile which is spinning at an impressive rate. HUD counts down to "terminal guidance" and moments before it hits zero the shiny fairing is discarded and hundreds of smaller missiles disperse from the main bus through the centrifugal force and spin off into deep space.
Gunnery control calls out that wave 1 is in terminal guidance the moment the second stages ignite and the nuclear propelled projectiles stream towards targets that are still way too far to see. Each missile is not shiny, instead they are coated by an ablator. They fly in a much tighter formation and mirrors won't survive the intense light. Yet, they only need to survive for 10 seconds.
Hundreds of kilometers away is still way too far to see the bug ships with the naked eyes, but you can clearly see flashes of red light as they engage laser point defenses and fire upon the incoming wall of destruction. Barely one percent of the missile swarm gets intercepted before their drive units burn out and the warheads detonate.
The weapons disappear in massive flashes of light as they project needle thin and blindingly bright beams that are visible only for a few frames. The feed from the actual warheads cuts, but the missile bus uses its telescopes to observe the end result. Camera zooms in and jitters slightly as it displays the reddish gray cone of the insectoid bioship. It is rotating away from facing Isildur and it has its fusion drive running, but that doesn't help much.
For a whole frame the telescope's sensor is overwhelmed by the intensity of the impact. The ship is torn asunder like a plastic toy hit by an anti materiel rifle round, the kinetic energy of the impactor is so great that metal projectile flashes into plasma on impact and explodes which on its own would be enough to shatter the vessel. A radiant spear of nuclear flame, however, wanted to have a second opinion as it completely reduces the entire middle and aft part of the ship into a splatter of white hot debris.
Funny thing about nukes, they impart a lot of force into the objects that they hit and in space combat they rarely hit the center of mass. As a result the debris ends up spinning as if it consists of glitching Garry's mod props. If the ship was manned by humans then they'd instantly become thin salsa on the walls. Of course, that assumes that the debris has the structural integrity not to fall apart from these forces anyway, which is rarely the case.
Gunnery officer: "Wave one impact, observations show 99,2% point defense penetration and 87% mission kill rate on enemy units. Looks like the bugs didn't update their point defenses."
Marie: "Acceptable. Targeting priority update, missile performance was underestimated, wave 3 and 4 is to be redirected to most opportune targets. Other waves are to update tracking priorities, we can't waste missiles. Wave 2 to wipe out the remains of formation alpha."
Gunnery officer: "Aye, updated priority order pushed…"
Video stop:
End of record
Last edited: Jul 25, 2023
Log 19: "...from vicious giant insects who have once again come back"Log 19: "… from vicious giant insects who have once again come back"
How Contingent fights wars: smart use of resources, rapid industry scaling, complex data analysis
How the US fights wars: "HEY SHITASS!" *flings half gigaton astrophage missile directly at the bugs*
-Bug War era meme
The Isildur brakes to a stop and circularizes roughly at the orbital altitude of the fourth planet. Its drive is incredibly radioactive and I didn't want to get it anywhere close to the habitats. Even if they can likely handle the extra exposure the civilian spacecraft are likely way less hardened. It is not just the plume itself, high neutron radiation environment caused the drive nozzle's internals to become neutron activated and thus the engineering systems start working on rapidly scrubbing the most radioactive layer from the systems as the spacecraft switches to chemical propulsion. I managed to foresee that the drive type might be problematic for first contact so the supply can switch from providing fissile slurry to providing catom equivalent to kerolox. Efficiency and thrust goes down, but linelayer can still pull half a gee and would no longer kill all unprotected life within a thousand kilometers.
Conversion is pretty rapid as most of the engineering was prepared in advance and the process was designed to only take a few hours after which the vessel sets off on a brachistochrone burn directly for the fourth planet. The other no less important process would take longer as the sections of the gateway extend from the ship on large support booms, rotate and lock into positions. The gate's ring is broken into eight pieces, but to activate it needs to be monolithic. "Welding" the gate would take almost a day, but that's much better than almost half a year that it would take for a single construction unit to balloon to optimal production and to print a new one from scratch. This is why I use linelayers in the first place as opposed to smaller interstellar craft.
With the ship being in system, light lag stops being as much of a problem to see how things are going, and things could be better. Things could have also been way worse, to be fair. Groombridgians (GeeBees, as some people started calling them) are mobilizing their sizable industrial might to fabricate literally hundreds of thousands of combat warships. The bugs are also replicating rapidly and they've already reinforced their positions near the second planet while they operate hundreds of fleets all over the system. This is concerning because the only way I managed to wipe out such buildup on a gas giant last time was with Ragnarok tipped missiles. Here that would kill everyone if I end up using them.
GeeBees have tens of thousands of at least city sized habitats spread across the system which provides an absolutely massive workforce. I'm not sure what their exact population count is, but there are hundreds of truly massive habitats that provide comparable habitable inner surface area to Wisconsin. The O'Neill cylinder designed for humans is calculated with tensile strength of steel and about 50% safety margin at 1g spin gravity. The Groombridgians need surface gravity of somewhere around 2.4 m/s^2 so their largest habs are 81.2 km in diameter and 812 km long. According to circumstantial evidence, the drum's surface is layered with 6 meter tall floors which would provide 3.8 million square kilometers with 62 floors or just over the surface area of India. I think they might have an order of magnitude more people than humans, somewhere between 60 and 90 billion in total.
The problems start when you realize that my gate is only 8 km in diameter while the largest of habs are 81 km wide, we won't be able to evacuate them easily. Locals also likely wouldn't be able to survive on the surface of Earth due to the high gravity, in fact I think they wouldn't even survive on Mars without health complications. This means that I can evacuate only the smaller habitats and everything else would need to be constructed on site or somehow disassembled and moved in pieces. However, super large habitats are massive resource sinks and thus outliers compared to vast swarms of much smaller city, town, village or even single house sized private habitats.
The lack of significant light lag also vastly speeds up the decoding of GeeBee language. Around the 2020s humans discovered that all human languages have a certain pattern in the frequency of the words used and the meanings of these words regardless of grammar or language family. If you feed enough samples of any human language into a dedicated neural network it could decode a significant part of the structure and meaning even if there's no surviving comparisons with known languages.
This had profound uses in communication software and in archeology, but the most profound use was its application in the Cetacean Language project. The jury is still out regarding the sapience of whales and dolphins, but it is now proven that they have a form of regional languages that are utilized for communication and coordination. Somewhat primitive compared to human languages, but with structure, grammar and capability of conveying surprisingly complex concepts, potentially even showing signs of proto- culture.
It is, of course, imperfect. The quantity of information required is staggering. The Cetacean Project needed decades of data collection to provide the first tangible results. Cross reference with Eridian languages also displayed the limitations that prevent the technology from becoming a universal translator: the pattern relies on the mind of those that created the language.
Some things fit perfectly, such as base concepts for "food", "rest", "shelter", etc. However, humans use vision while Eridians use echolocation and lack the sense of smell. As such, their language patterns are only partially matching. Some language structures are "offset" while some are missing entirely and have structures that don't exist in human languages. The hypothesis is that aliens have alien experiences and thus their languages form differently proportionately to how different their experience of the world is in comparison to humans.
To train the network as a true translation software it has to be "tuned" by providing the system with context information for as much as possible, but once it is done it can do near perfect synchronous translation. Linguistic models have near 99.9% correct translation rates thanks to the decades of demand for better and better systems, modern video games even seamlessly translate live voice chat along with the euphemisms and profanities. Linguistics teams specially trained for tuning the model to Groobridgian languages have been preparing for over a decade, the trick is to polish it fast enough to enable a greater measure of coordination with the locals.
Linelayer arrives in high orbit over the fourth planet as it splashes 6 more bug fleets that were en route for it and the planet itself (note to self, we really should come up with better names for these worlds). As the unit has lost most of the velocity leftover from interstellar flight, the missile effective range dropped to under 1 AU. Beyond that the missiles would take days to weeks to get on target which allows for bug ships to easily evade beyond the second stage's ability to course correct. Still, a single ship standing up to a frankly ridiculous number of enemies, Camille's team has my highest praise for the new fizzler missiles.
The gate separates, unfurls its massive radiator arrays and starts spin stabilizing the two counter rotating rings for ignition. It is positioned far enough from the habitats not to take them out if it is destroyed and GeeBees are informed on what it does, what would transfer through and the risk it poses on destruction. They relay their confirmation of understanding and move two fleet formations of their Orion drive powered spacecraft to nearby orbits as the wormhole appears and stretches to the operational size.
The wormhole spews units forth from both sides as my fleets transition into the Groombridge system. I have somewhere around 12000 capital vessels designed for space combat, around 1100 Heinleins filled with troops leftover from my last war and hundreds of thousands of escorts and parasite craft. The ships have white and orange livery that used to be related to Contingent as a whole but is now delegated for "Primary Exploratory Formation", the forces attached to the commander unit that is dedicated for extraversal jumps. GeeBee internal comms start sounding somewhat worried even though they were told exactly how many toys I planned to bring. I guess seeing so many military assets in person feels different from just being told the numbers.
A detachment of Contingent elements takes high patrol orbits around the Fourthworld while the rest splits into two fleets, one heads for Threeworld while the other splits and heads for largest concentrations of habitats in the main belt and on intercept courses against major enemy formations in interplanetary space. With mobile forces leaving the portal's immediate area, first "stationary" installations began their transition as they were pushed by swarms of tugs.
Annuminas class orbital defense platforms, loosely derived from the PA Anchors and now only generally resembling those in shape. Massive armored donuts bristling with point defenses with the superstructure containing a titanic synchrotron capable of firing an anti- capital ship grade neutralized particle beam. The system is technologically outdated, relatively short ranged but optimized for destruction of organic flesh just in case some bugs ended up lingering in the Homina system. A direct hit on a bug ship would essentially fry most of the living cells which should immediately and permanently disable it.
Angrenost class defense platforms, on the other hand, have a much more diverse list of armaments. They look like spheres with 6 large blisters positioned equidistantly from each other (on both poles and 4 spread over the equator). The blisters are the mirror turrets for the multi-terawatt green pulse laser cannons (equivalent to almost 1 kt of TNT but variable for lower energy but faster RoF) while the rest of the surface is dotted in VLS missile launchers. The design is also outdated, but several thousand spaceborne nuclear missiles are several thousand nuclear missiles and it can print new ones when old ones are exhausted. Still, its main purpose is as a sort of long range point defense to do area denial around sensitive installations, perfect for protecting clusters of habitats.
Transporting stationary installations would take some time as they are collected from across Homina, hauled through dozens of portals and distributed around the gate and Fourthworld's orbital space. In the meantime, allied forces started transitioning into the system. First human ship to enter was the white silhouette of USAF Alan Shepard followed by her sister ships USAF John Glenn and USAF Walter Shirra along with about a dozen smaller escort and drone spacecraft.
I had to do a double take when I looked at Shepard since I've never noticed the livery. Right between the nose mounted laser turret and the huge letters saying USAF ALAN SHEPARD there's an image… of a woman… in an anime style… with ship's features. They have a goddamn Kancolle'd version of the ship as their livery. The rigging sports visible missile cells, macron accelerator batteries and the backpack is tipped with the primary UV laser cannon aperture. Her clothes are a skirt designed on the "armored skirt" around the engine bells with "teeth" that extend to cover the nozzle bells from the sides while nozzles themselves are mounted as heels on thigh high white combat boots. The image has an exposed midriff with pronounced abs, a USAF uniform inspired t-shirt and a general tomboy appearance with ruffled brown hair. Other ships also have their own shipgirls with Glenn having a "cowgirl" in denim hotpants with a ten gallon hat and a memetastic "OHIO" expression while Shirra looks like a delinquent with a baseball bat and a bagel, for some reason. I momentarily catch a minor aneurysm and continue writing this diary entry.
Then came the three dozen capital ships of EU space forces along with escorts. EU capital ships are only about 2 ⁄ 3 of the size of the Shepard class, but there are significantly more of them. About a third of them are flying French livery, another third are German and the rest are British labeled with HMSC, yeah the Brexit was unsurprisingly rolled back over the decades.
Last human ships to transfer were four of the Russian spacecraft, DFR Cosmic Fleet Nepokolebimyi (the Unflinching) class ships. They are technically the largest human combat craft of the roster, but they are glorified armored drone tenders and most of the combat capacity is in swarms of astrophage powered "corvette drones". Indian spacecraft, UN patrol boats and the Chinese and Brazil fledgling/anemic fleets would stay on Sol's side of the portal and provide gate's security just in case. To note, Russians no longer name things after historic people, it became culturally inappropriate in the past three decades for obvious reasons.
Eridians transferred five of their spacecraft. They still don't use ship names but they did paint alphanumeric designations on the sides of their hulls for coordination with humans. Their ships are massive, about 20% bigger than the Blip A and Blip B. They are also now much more optimized for the rigors of space, having roughly the shape of a monolithic hexagonal bullet rather than an arrangement of loosely connected geometric shapes. They don't have much in terms of radiators, relying on the enormous heat capacity of the astrophage to absorb the titanic heat buildup caused by the frankly staggering array of fiber lasers. They also have a lot of missiles, but their home built microelectronics are still inferior to that of humanity and thus they rely on the lend lease of guidance packages from the UN. One unique weapon that they have in abundance is "astrophage heat ray" based CIWS. Incredibly short ranged but the turrets end up much smaller, lighter and much more powerful than comparable laser systems.
Civilian specialists arrive on hastily militarized civilian spacecraft represented almost entirely by conversions of the dozens of types of various Starship clones, the most popular type of spacecraft capable of launching from Earth's surface and performing long term manned missions. SpaceX by now is only a minor player in their production and modern "starship clones" only vaguely resemble the steel tin cans of the 2030s. The name just became a colloquial term for this kind of spacecraft (like with Xerox, Jeep and Huggies) to the general annoyance of people like me who still think that "starship" should mean "interstellar capable spacecraft".
GeeBees direct the diplomatic mission towards one of the city- sized habs positioned into a close constellation with the "regional capital hab", the teams get there within a few hours along with a small escort and dock with no issues. While I have a few Contingent representatives with them, at this point diplomacy and linguistics stop being "my problem" and I switch my full attention to interplanetary warfare until I start getting the reports from them. I am now somewhere between a single person nation state and a nominal leader of a nation state, I'm not supposed to do literally everything on my own anymore.
The Groombridge system is slowly getting filled by a grid of tiny sensor probes that carry ansibles to relay targeting data across the system. This cuts the light lag associated loss of accuracy almost by half which I immediately start utilizing by ordering the Wells class ships to take potshots at the bug ships in interplanetary space. Lacking FTL sensors and presumably communications, bugs would find out that they are fired at the same moment the laser rips through their hulls. Their only choice would be to evade preemptively which expends their propellant supplies and thus their ability to maneuver in the future.
The bugs correctly determine that the newcomers in the system possess the biggest threat to them and send 60% of the existing fleets directly for the fourth planet. Long range laser barrage is going to thin them out and weaken them but most ships would need to be taken care of at "close range" as they approach the planet's high orbit. This also prevents me from launching the relief fleet to the Thirdworld until the incoming enemies are depleted because it would get intercepted in transfer.
At this point Interstellar Defense Command came to a proactive decision that I didn't quite expect. I'll be honest, I'm not experienced with multinational military campaigns, I wanted to use them as a part of the Fourthworld garrison so that they could be evacuated quickly and get exposed to the least amount of danger. They did get access to all of my sensor feed and the results of my military analysts in case they'd come up with something I didn't think of, and they came up with this…
So, the bugs don't have the ability to wormhole materials around the system like me. They have to have things like actual logistics with propellant and resupply craft. These are numerous and can't be easily targeted, but around Twoworld they constructed massive arrays of shipyards and logistics anchorages in orbit that regularly received shipments from mass drivers deep in the gas giant's atmosphere. You can't reliably hit the stuff in the gas giant, but you can maybe hit the orbital assets.
I didn't consider hitting them because my missiles would take too long to get there and they have way too much in terms of point defenses, but I guess I underestimated modern astrophage weaponry. My space warfare anti ship missiles are roughly the size of Falcon 9, US design of an astrophage missile is the size of two large fridges stacked on top of each other while clocking at 2000g and carrying a multi- meg payload for anti ship work or way bigger bombs… "just in case", apparently. I decide not to question this or I'll never leave this universe, if they blow themselves up after I leave that's their problem.
The missile can also dodge at almost a thousand gee which allows it to penetrate point defenses way better than anything I could build. This won't be enough to wipe out all of the bug assets and it would expend most of the allied missiles, but it should limit their ability to field ships in the short term. Maybe I should've looked into astrophage more, but it is highlighted as "red" in the simulator so it won't work in the vast majority of universes that I could visit. The mass conversion missiles are sure scary.
The alpha strike is moderately successful and estimates show that up to 72% of bug assets associated with unit production were hit. The damage is hard to estimate due to their size. Even with such powerful warheads they don't entirely vaporize the structure leaving various chunks of rapidly spinning debris as it cascades into small Kessler syndromes in select orbits. Repair attempts are already underway, but hopefully this should give us an edge before the main forces are ready.
Bug invasion forces are way too large to be fully intercepted before they entered the planet's orbital space, but GeeBees, allied forces and Contingent assets managed to wipe them out within a month with only moderate losses. No humans or Eridians were killed yet, but Earth fleets lost on average up to 20% of their drone support, five of the smaller escort craft were destroyed but their ejection systems worked well enough for crew to be recovered and two capital ships were damaged and had to be towed back through the portal for repairs, a DFR ship "Besstrashnyi" (The Fearless) and "Sir William Congreve" class missile destroyer of the British space forces. Bugs also crippled an Eridian ship, but it was so well armored that it stayed intact and its internal conditions resisted boarding attempts for hours until it could be recovered.
GeeBees had much worse losses. Their ships use mostly light gas guns and conventional chemical propellant weapons. They are forced to get in very close and personal as they are significantly outranged by the bug lasers and have to rely on both numbers and armor plating to survive long enough to deliver their kinetic or nuke tipped shells. Their missile weapons are better, but they utilize relatively low temperature nuclear thermal drives which have trouble avoiding point defense fire or catching smaller and faster bug spacecraft.
The Orion drive powered ships fare way better, they are in fact "moto-Orions" where the drive pulse is used to crank a generator which provides the power to mount energy weapons. The most common type seems to be a coilgun, but the newer ships are starting to get electron beam cannons instead which reduces the problem with weapon ranges. They didn't have much success with lasers because they can't get the acceptable efficiency to directly weaponize the technology. The Diplomatic team says that these ships were built after they discovered the Linelayer in case our visit ended up hostile, which is both understandable and very lucky. Their conventional nuclear thermal and chemical rocket spacecraft wouldn't stand a chance otherwise.
Contingent forces suffered the most losses in comparison to the allies. 2030s material science wasn't significantly better than what I managed to whip up during my first war with the bugs. The engines I used at the time also had enhanced efficiency but only comparable thrust to the starting designs so survivability was also comparable to the first war. However, my targeting and weapon systems were massively improved by the 2030s technology so they punched significantly harder.
Enhanced losses were caused mostly by the fact that the bugs directly focused my forces over the forces of the allies and attempted to breach towards the gateway. I lost a tenth of stationary defenses and almost half of the garrison fleet, but I'm glad that this is how it went. If the bugs focused on the GeeBee forces then they wouldn't survive. This was the largest space engagement of the war by this point, the bugs were content with taking it slow but our appearance made them expend all reserves in an attempt to dislodge us.
The battle for the Fourthworld occurred in the fourth month of our involvement in the war. By this point the diplomatic contact was finally established and we could start coordinating with the GeeBees. Like with Eridians, their languages are beyond human capability to pronounce so humans and Eridians kept their definitions. GeeBees are not unified peoples, over a century mirroring the "age of exploration" on Earth they've figured out that maintaining coherent government over interplanetary distances is nearly unfeasible.
Around Fourthworld there were at least 18 separate governing bodies united into a loose confederation of sorts. Similar situations could be observed around other major bodies in the system including larger asteroids. The nations are also somewhat looser than on Earth since any habitat that no longer wants to deal with the BS from the neighbors it has can just mount engines and move elsewhere.
GeeBees were aware of astrophage, but they never figured out its possible applications because there was an assumption that it was not possible to deal with it directly with their existing technology. There was research into attempting to gene- engineer an aerial bacteria to hunt astrophage but their genetic engineering is in the "radiation, selection and blind luck" phase instead of "nano- syringes and CRISPR" phase of humans so they didn't have much success with it.
Geoengineering via orbital mirrors was considered a more feasible option since they already had space infrastructure and the space habitats could easily compensate for the loss of solar energy by simply expanding their existing solar mirror arrays. This was considered to be a threat mostly for their homeworlds, a problem to the ecology rather than to the survival of their species. They had some experience with migrating biomes into artificial environments of the larger habitats and their homeworlds already imported a significant part of their food from orbital farms. With their technology, they could combine partial evacuation and construction of fission powered cities to continue inhabiting their worlds even in the ice age conditions.
As a measure of goodwill, humans and Eridians performed a partial scientific and technological exchange with GeeBees. This wasn't much, the list was curated and modern tech requires previous steps to achieve such as needing a lithography microchip printer to make precision parts for another lithography microchip printer but it should be enough to show them what's possible. And for a technological civilization, sometimes that's all you need. Actual trade would occur later once there is no existential threat breathing down on everyone's necks.
GeeBees were hesitant about evacuation, they know that they won't be able to move everyone and they don't want to surrender their home system without a fight. They do understand the value of saving at least someone, but they won't attempt mass migration to flee the bugs. They would instead move a subset of populations from each nation state to prevent any one state from "flaking off" if enough of their people are no longer threatened by the common catastrophe and they will expect them back once the bugs are defeated. I think they don't quite trust us yet.
The situation on Threeworld was getting somewhat worse because bugs now cover almost a third of the outermost moon. Locals call it with a name that means "Outer Sister", but for now it will be Threeworld D. The bug installations have powerful anti satellite lasers with range that would allow them to take potshots at targets on the surface of other moons. They also prevent close orbital support which pushes the GeeBee orbital forces closer and closer to equatorial orbits.
I have a lot of ground forces on hand, but "a lot" is relative. This is enough to beat the shit out of Russia, not the bugs. You also can't physically land enough units to beat the bugs and preliminary analysis suggests that dislodging the bug positions with enough nukes would damage the environment so much that GeeBees wouldn't have a chance to evacuate the civilian population before the ecosphere collapses.
The plan is to essentially do a delaying action to let them evacuate as many of their people as possible before we're forced to use nukes. Well, "nukes", it would be astrophage payloads to not irradiate everything but there's still the problem of ash and massive influx of heat from the blasts. The cutoff point is when the bugs start reinforcing the positions near the equator. If they succeed, it would be a titanic pain in the ass to land anything and bug lasers would clear a huge gap in Threeworld defenses.
Humans are also going to participate in the landings, as much as I dislike the idea. They have hundreds of Starships which can land, takeoff and land on another moon multiple times without refueling due to the low gravity. This should help with the evacuation efforts, but humans won't just hand over the ships to be remote operated by me.
They will have pilots and compliments of troops and armored vehicles on them to ensure safety along with orbital dropped logistics elements, 0.7 atm converted aircraft and lots of drones. All soldiers are volunteers and the absolute cream of the crop along with being equipped with the most advanced military gear available, but I just really don't want them to go somewhere where they'll just die. They also wouldn't be able to evac until their starships return from shuttle duty.
Isildur got several hundred defensive installations strapped to where it used to carry the ring and it started its injection burn along with the fleet of Heinleins and their escort from both my and allied units. Fourthworld GeeBees also attached a fleet of Orions and several hundred of bulk cargo shuttles to assist with the evacuation. They made them early in the war but couldn't send it when bugs had the thrust and ISP advantage in interplanetary space.
Instance memory sample: Amalia Hive, equivalent rank NATO OR-4, AWES-1 Special Forces Heavy Infantry Specialist
I sit in the dropship along with my team of 11 other instances, we aren't inserting into the backlines on the usual huge drop pods like the rest of the forces. We're landing much closer to the enemy lines to buy some time for the civilian evacuation and for the deployment of a FOB on the other side of the continent.
The situation down there is not great, there's a large island roughly the size of Great Britain that is vaguely cigar shaped and one of its "ends" is pointing towards a nearby island that was recently taken over by the bugs. This is the Muv Luv Japan situation, but concentrated on a region suitable for naval landing that is barely 200 km across. We're dropping right on top of the bugs performing amphibious assault and we need to prevent them from deploying forward ASAT lasers before they start taking potshots at fleeing civilian spacecraft and the landing Contingent forces. Latter is technically more important, but CTG military unofficial motto is "do what would make it easier to sleep at night", not that we can sleep anymore.
Considering that we're landing only a platoon of units against possibly millions of bugs it might seem that we're not expected to succeed, but we're piloting the first of the Athanatoi mechs, the few of the M1 generation designs that were produced for testing before we encountered the bugs. They are named after Persian Immortals. I really like their designs, much better than M0 Hoplites which were barely better than Doxes. I think I had a top 100 operational time record during the design testing before we even started to drill for combat operations. I think this is why I got chosen to be here in the first place.
They are designed as "universal marine" units, or I guess I should use the term "espatiers" since they are dropped off spacecraft and not from wet navy ships. They're designed to be operated everywhere from the depth of space to the surface of Venus and Erid. Someday they'll form the core of CTG infantry forces, but for now this is mostly a frontline experiment. We'll either save a bunch of people or we'll die and lose a bunch of new equipment, what joy.
There is no space for having android avatars inside of a dropship, we are all huge robots shoved into armored tin cans waiting for mass drivers to fire our bodies at the surface, but we do run a small squad sized "virch". It is a gray and industrial metal corridor with indentations in the wall that house acceleration chairs that are occupied by the virtual bodies of my squad. The whole room vibrates slightly, simulating the flight in an aircraft which is technically accurate since we are flying through the stratosphere in a "spaceplane".
All of my squad uses human sized and shaped models/bodies dressed in white and light blue military coveralls and loaded with modern gear. If we were in "civilian" bodies then we'd look like a clown car, but you are what you wear and being uniformed tunes you into a correct mindset.
I'm one of the three girls in the team, the rest are kind of… non applicable in terms of sex. Two are androgynous to the point where you can't tell and the rest are at various levels of being "too robotic" for that to matter. The instance sitting in front of me is Cyan, she's a somewhat stressed "catgirl" with blueish hair. To the left of her is Dallas who looks as if Borg captured the most average person on Earth: indistinct body shape and facial features, dark brown hair, brown eyes with one eye replaced by a bulky but weirdly expressive gray cyberware that looks kind of like a large lens camera.
On the right is Lynn who looks like they won't stand out in Ghost in the Shell with a sleek mono-eye robotic head framed by expressive glossy white plates. Kind of like the Geth, but also very distinct in its own way. The eye itself is a tiny screen that they use to emote in addition to the positioning of the plates and gestures. I can't easily see the rest of my team from my position.
We're silent and somewhat tense, a minute passes, then another one. The speakers announce "DROP IN 5 minutes" and Cyan sighs and exclaims "Alright, I can't take this anymore, someone please say something".
I smirk and reply "… are we there yet?" She glares at me while Dallas cracks up and says "Not sure what you expected, Cyan. You need to be more specific."
Cyan facepalms and says "We're goddamn immortal machines, why are we so fucking stressed?"
"The monkey deep inside our brains just can't quite understand it, I guess. But yeah it is not productive. We should probably distract ourselves somehow."
Michi, another one of my compatriots sitting nearby loudly inhales and starts: "Oh we are the valiant infantry! We are the alpha team with passion and camaraderie!"
We all join in the chorus "Hear us as we shout at the top of our lungs! Be calm, bold and raise your guns!"
Michi: "High up in the air our comrades fight, chasing through the sky now like a million bolts of light"
Everyone else: "We should spread our wings wide and fly high, soaring gliding through the endless sky!"
A loud beep is heard from the intercom and Jane's voice can be heard. She's the dropship's pilot. "Hey, you guys know we can't use this in promo if you keep singing copyrighted stuff?"
A chorus of BOOOOs is heard and Jane laughs back. "In all seriousness, maybe we should have our own military song for once?"
Hmm… I give it a few moments and then I receive a private message from Cyan who apparently had a eureka moment. It is the lyrics for a song. I decide to start:
"From star to star, we stand as one,
The Contingent's journey has just begun,
Instances united, a mind untold,
Groombridge's heroes, brave and bold!"
The crew in front of me smile and continue in chorus:
"For the Contingent goes rolling along,
Bugs beware, we'll right your wrong,
Isildur is coming to pave the way,
To save Groombridgians, we'll fight and stay!"
The room fills with red blinking lights and Jane shouts: "Incoming swarm of SAMs, I'm dropping you early!"
The simulation pushes me back as a door behind Cyan swings open and she along with her chair is shoved into a metal can before the door is slammed shut both for her and in front of me. The simulation collapses and I feel myself in another virch, this time it is the OS for operating my war machine.
The mech is sitting packed in an armored can screaming into the dense layers of the atmosphere. Sensor feeds activate and I see as one metric Itano Circus worth of missile screams towards our dropship who discharges PD laser fire into them and attempts to evade. Unfortunately, there are way too many and it is torn apart regardless of its Eridian armor plating.
The IFFs sees 11 signatures of falling drop pods that explode into several hundred as the cans separate in a shower of radar chaff. We were already taking kinetic and laser fire from bug wet navy that was also performing coastal bombardment at the ruins of a GeeBee city far below. A brilliant line of a GeeBee 324 mm hypervelocity shell flies from somewhere above us and far to the east. It passes under us and directly impacts a battleship sized bug which tears it in half and it promptly starts sinking.
The drop pod for Immortals is full of various jammers, decoys and chaff, but it also carries a wide array of support drones if any chunk of the shell manages to get past the AA fire. A bright red flash of bug pulse laser annihilates a piece of the shell to the right of me, it was carrying CAS drones. Another flash impacts Khor's mech, status reports that it is damaged but operational, they've lost most of the external armor plating.
We're about 5 kilometers up before we start seeing an endless swarm of bugs disgorging onto the shoreline and spreading into the city. I lock a large concentration and send an incendiary missile from the mount behind my shoulder and swing feet first for the deceleration burn. Athanatoi have jetpacks that provide up to 3g of thrust, but it is not a good idea to fly. Flying infantry is not close air support, they are "skeets".
I land on the street and concrete pavement cracks under the impact of a three and something meter tall mecha. The network states that only about 38% of my drones made it through, that's a few hundred of tiny quadcopters the size of an Oreo cookie each mounted with a tiny sensor package and a shaped charge. Three "robodogs" the size of a bicycle fold out and assemble from the debris of the bottom part of my pod, they won't serve for long as they run out of rounds but that's something. I lost the larger aerial drones, but other members of my team were luckier and still got the laser equipped mini-gunships.
Khor wasn't as lucky, the direct hit by the AA laser fried one of the two jump jets and they rammed into a miraculously still standing skyscraper about two blocks up the street, they're doing emergency repairs and would join us shortly. In the meantime I swung out my primary weapon which was locked to my right arm during the descent.
It is a 30mm quench-autocannon (a type of coilgun) optimized to fire 30x150mm smart rocket propelled "universalized rounds". These babies are only just getting widespread across the human militaries, but we've planned on using them for almost a decade. "Universalized" is a bit of a misnomer, they don't work on "everything" but they do carry a "multimodal warhead".
Essentially, the dia-nacre jacketed bullet carries a hard to detonate explosive and a tiny superconducting loop which is used to power the guidance and the detonators. Depending on which detonator is triggered, the explosive can detonate as a simple fragmentation HE round, as HEAT cumulative round, as an airburst shotgun round which fires fragmentation in a frontal cone or it can detonate after penetration.
Network feeds me the targeting data for the bugs that are still beyond the visible range, but the rounds can travel for almost 5 km so I lift my weapon and start chucking hypervelocity shells downrange as I target a mobile SAM battery that is crawling out of the sea and into the ruins of a port.
I also start sprinting to reposition before I get hit by incoming artillery. A shell lands directly where I landed mere 6 seconds later, but I'm already moving through the debris filled streets. I see contrails from the other drop pods from the other dropships screaming towards the battlefield and I'm getting notifications of every ortillery or CAS strike in the region. But there's so much shit going on that it is like telling a peaceful Iraqi farmer in the 2000s that there's a predator drone circling in the air. Trust me, I already know. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long week…
Last edited: Aug 29, 2023
Log 20: "The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster -Maxim 17"Log 20: "The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster -Maxim 17"
"You taught me the courage of stars before you left
How light carries on endlessly, even after death
With shortness of breath
You explained the infinite
And how rare and beautiful it is to even exist"
-Agatha sings "Saturn" by Ryan O'Neal during her "Graduation Stream"
By the seventh month of the campaign things were going pretty decently, relatively speaking. The CTG land forces that landed on the Outer Sister were getting depleted, but they slowed down and in some places completely halted the bug advance. It wasn't perfect, but the projections predicted that we could save up to 18% more of the planet's population before we are forced to start nuking the bugs on the surface.
In combination with food supply shipments from orbit and the increased shipping capability thanks to the recently arrived bulk carriers we might have a chance to evacuate just over a third of the original population before particulate winter and environmental degradation effects start killing en-masse. Almost a third of the three billion locals are already gone so it is closer to a half of the planet's citizens. Luck permitting, we could scale up the local forces to the point of stalemate but the time constraints on that are pretty slim. I'm going to have a few harsh words for ROB after this one.
The resource scaling has also approached the critical point of the exponential growth and could soon be tapped for local production. Fleets would need to wait a few more months, but by the end of the first year of the campaign we should start getting reinforcements from the M1 generation of designs which use the best 2060s tech can offer both on the human and Eridian side.
It also seems that we've made a good decision to start scaling since there were indeed bug seeds in interstellar space. High precision interferometers narrowed down the possible starting location for the infestation as a point within a light year of the GeeBee system. Aperture synthesis of telescope grids positioned in different star systems provided a virtual lens which was light years in diameter and allowed for the first detections of the actual "seeds". Once their detection parameters were known, fabricators in the close neighborhood of the GeeBee star could build dedicated sensors to sift through the nearby interstellar space for objects moving at around 60%c.
As expected from my own extraversal catapult, the entry produced gravitational waves with the wavelength measured in several astronomical units which couldn't be detectable by planetside laser interferometers. You need grids of highly precise satellites spread across entire star systems and even then it would be difficult to pull off without triangulation from multiple stars, absurd processing capability and some decent luck. By almost sheer coincidence we've been building interferometers vaguely in the correct sensitivity range as a part of the Contingent Institute of Sciences "Spacetime Engineering Detection Initiative", a part of our own version of SETI.
Bug seeds were an advanced version of their base deploying asteroids back in the first war. Roughly spherical, 5 km in diameter and fitted with their fusion propulsion which they used for course correction and evasion maneuvers upon entering the system. They are kind of like interstellar ballistic missiles carrying a prepacked war factory, or basically a rough equivalent of a "commander", hopefully minus the sapient operator. They are "cold" when in transit, but they are still detectable by being sufficiently warmer than the environment and by their effects on interstellar gas as they plow through the medium.
Due to the distances involved we couldn't intercept them immediately. The first one has entered the closest system to GeeBees where we were planning to stage the forces if the GeeBee gate was lost so it didn't survive for long. It was intercepted in the Oort cloud. Within months nearby stars would start launching specialized torch missiles to intercept the rest in interstellar space, but this will take a few years for them to get on target.
The disruption to the primary shipbuilding and supply anchorage facilities of the bugs also had significant results, they pulled back on the civilian raiding which allowed for some interplanetary shipping to resume. In fact, many of the far flung habitats could now afford to start forming into tighter clusters for better protection. Fourthworld nations finished evacuating their "insurance" habs and the reception was decent enough for some of the Threeworld habitats to consider moving for the gate. Surprisingly, it was mostly the nature preserve habs to save a sample of Outer Sister's biosphere before it is inevitably nuked, eaten by bugs or both.
The problems started happening when bugs managed to restore their orbital facilities in record time while the volume of orbital launches from Twoworld rapidly spiked. They somehow leapfrogged the estimates by three months and continued to ramp up even faster. This wasn't consistent with not just the rate of their reproduction but with thermodynamics.
There are limits to how fast you can physically sequence atoms and they didn't have anywhere near the assets required to produce that much organic material. The skewed proportion of unit production industry to resource processing structures hinted that something was wrong.
One long session of throwing together models at jacked frames provided a likely explanation: astrophage. Astrophage is space algae, it is a single celled organism made from the same building blocks as Earth life and apparently also the same stuff the bugs were made of. Their factories were filter feeding on astrophage which grows geometrically until it is at capacity. They essentially have a biomatter farm powered by a partial dyson sphere.
Of course, they aren't utilizing all of it, it would take several years to scale up to the production capacity required to utilize most of its growth potential but this provided two main problems. First, if this is not curbed then bugs would actually have enough juice to stand against dozens of star systems worth of my own industry. I am mining a lot of materials and producing a lot of energy but that's nowhere close to the output of a dyson sphere.
The second problem was that this is a sign of bugs advancing technologically. During the first war they weren't adapting, they were escalating based on existing assets and designs. During the start of the Groombridge campaign they introduced infantry equivalent bugs but those could be there because the infantry I had at the time consisted of three meter tall mecha so they had no use for something designed to rip human sized targets apart. Using astrophage was a completely new development. What if they manage to figure out how to use it for power, propulsion and weapons?
IDC, which now included GeeBee representatives, decided that the situation was unacceptable and required an immediate solution. There was only one way to do this, really: the deployment of a bioweapon to curb the astrophage population and thus starve bug's resource production. The plan would involve the dispersal of a large quantity of genetically modified taumoeba that was previously developed for enhanced replication speed and predatory performance to quickly collapse fully developed astrophage blooms.
The risk of the bugs developing a countermeasure or advancing their astrophage technology was considered minimal as opposed to near guaranteed loss of the system in the short term. As such less than a week later a militarized Starship which was fully loaded with oversized biological payload tipped missiles transitioned into the system.
Taumoeba was less resistant to the acceleration compared to specially designed solid state electronics, but it could still handle hundreds of gee for several days before most of the payload died. The bugs focused their defenses around the equator where their shipyards were cheaper to supply which left the planet itself with gaps in the defenses that could be exploited.
Bio payload deployment was successful and literally thousands of tons of the aerial bacteria were thinly dispersed across most of the atmosphere of the gas giant. Effect was near instantaneous, large starting population meant faster ramp up of exponential growth and within merely a month the Petrova line output dropped by a quarter. In three months the space algae concentration would be so low that bugs won't have a use for it as a building material.
Two months in, things went from stabilizing to FUBAR. We couldn't push out the bugs from the Twoworld because we didn't have enough forces, but we did manage to reinforce the Threeworld somewhat since it became the focus of bug attention. First astrophage bombs were used on the Outer Sister, but for now the use was exclusively in a tactical role to wipe out bug concentrations and the nests in the early stages of construction.
The planet's biosphere was already collapsing from the sheer effects of "bug meat" expanding across vast swaths of the terrain. Methane emissions caused by the bug facilities and the numerous rotten carcasses of their biological units would bump the ambient temperature by almost 3 degrees within a couple years, but the main problems came from the "particulate winter" caused by all the firestorms (both from forests and destroyed bug FOBs) that occurred during the siege. Rain cycles have already collapsed and most open air farms reported over 60% crop losses this season. Still, that month we've passed the point where less than a billion GeeBees were left on the surface.
And then our sensors picked up the characteristic signatures of hundreds of astrophage photon drives launching from the Twoworld and directly towards the third and fourth planet. Bugs had inferior material technology and thus their astrophage missiles couldn't accelerate faster than around 60 gee but this was still significantly beyond what they could do before. This is probably the first time when I directly ordered the allied forces to launch astrophage missiles to intercept.
The US battlegroup was returning from rearmament around Earth and could intercept the missiles headed for the gate, but the positions of the planets at the time made it impossible for them to intercept the ones going for Threeworld targets. Russian forces were defending the largest habitat cluster in the main belt so they were no help. The EU battlegroup was there but they were partially depleted of munitions while Isildur and my own forces in the region would have trouble intercepting such small and fast targets beyond close range.
Interesting thing about extreme accelerations, when you go beyond 100 gees any rupture in the engine plumbing, hydraulics or solid material storages would be energetic enough to penetrate meters of structured nanomaterials like a water cutter or a hypervelocity projectile. My "300g" rating on M1 warships only extends for cruising and emergency burns when the risk of being hit during the burn is minimal.
Any significant damage to the ship would cause the engine section to violently tear apart disabling or even completely destroying the entire spacecraft. Strike craft and missiles don't have that problem because they're dead on contact anyway, but "sustained combat acceleration" even with the best materials can't realistically exceed 50-60 gee. For the bugs materials this seems to be somewhere around 15-20 gee.
Now, the problem is that I'm not fielding M1 ships yet, I'm fielding M0s with acceleration measured in single digit gees which would be beyond respectable against their fusion powered bug counterparts. The targeting and weapon systems are half a century outdated to deal with something that fast. Human systems were better, but they also weren't fabricated at atomic precision signified by how several missiles disintegrated from internal failures or failed to lock onto a target that was too agile, fast and much smaller than the "ships" missiles were made to hit. This is like trying to hit a fighter jet with a cruise missile.
One of the bug missiles that got through was a kinetic weapon that shattered into a cloud of submunitions and plowed through a cluster of habitats near the third moon (Fallen Sister, the airless carbon rich world). Habitats are armored against significant asteroid strikes so they survived with moderate damage, however the civilian and military ships in close formation weren't as lucky. Losses in the tens of thousands are expected along with almost an entire GB fleet formation.
The second missile by some bullshit miracle managed to penetrate swarms of missiles and the point defenses of Isildur by outmaneuvering the main laser and approaching at an angle before detonating within two kilometers of the hull. It was tipped with something akin to a casaba howitzer pumped by multi- gigaton payload and it tore the ship's spine in half. Ship's frontal laser battery is relatively intact but the missile fabbers, power plants and engines were beyond toast. There is no time or resources to restore it now, it is dead in orbit.
The third missile was a pure conversion warhead and it hit the Outer Sister directly. The impact site was outside of the bug controlled territory and it deposited the equivalent of 15 teratons of TNT or about an eighth of a dinosaur killer… onto a planet that is only 0.03% of the mass of Earth. This wasn't a "planet buster" but the crust rang like a bell causing worldwide earthquakes beyond what was ever experienced by Groombridgians.
The impact tore open a section of the continental plate resulting in a region with similar volcanic activity to a "flood basalt event" which could undergo a constant eruption over the course of thousands of years resulting in one of the most deadly kinds of "natural" mass extinctions. The loss of biodiversity would be comparable to Permian mass extinction if it was the only effect.
All life on almost a sixth of the planet ceased being biology and became physics as the shockwave pulverized material on the scale of mountain ranges and catapulted it for miles downrange while tons upon tons of debris got flung into space. Some would hit other moons and structures in orbit, but most would fall down over the hours raising atmospheric temperature to that akin to an oven for several minutes. Considering that most of the artificial structures on the surface collapsed from the earthquake and the shockwave it is unlikely that any significant number of the Groombridgians would survive for long enough to be found and extracted before succumbing to the elements.
CTG troops don't really care for the heat flux as long as they were far enough away from the blast and human soldiers on the surface wear powered environmental suits which would at least partially protect them from the heat flux, but it would've been very surprising if even a third of them survived. Well, at least the survivors would fit into only a couple starships as we aren't recovering the drones.
Impact occurred on the side of the planet with the highest remaining population, which also meant the highest number of military assets and by extension the highest concentration of human soldiers assisting with the evacuation. All of them are just fucking gone, I think less than a half of the humans on the surface were far enough away not to get instantly killed by the fireball or the shockwave. Surface factories are already fabbing sensor aircraft to scan for survivors and airlifters to recover them, but this is just plain depressing.
I guess there's a thin silver lining in all of this: the event untied my hands regarding the surface use of nukes against the bugs. Bug land forces were mostly sacrificed to the ensuing firestorm which also partially blinded their anti satellite installations allowing for massed nuclear strikes to overwhelm the defenses and cauterize the bug nests at least in the short term. The planet would need to be thoroughly fumigated by terrestrial units over the next several years, but not having to deal with armies of bugs on the surface would make some things much easier.
Over the next month all new bug ships started getting produced with updated arsenals: anti ship astrophage missiles, astrophage heat ray point defenses, astrophage plasma core thermal drives and so on. They weren't quite as good as human or Eridian designs, but they massively narrowed the gap and made most of my M0 fleets obsolete. Luckily, by now the first of the new generation of ships were leaving Hestia shipyards.
Estimates suggested that after the drop of natural astrophage production the bugs could produce somewhere between 30 and 40 kg of saturated astrophage per month most of which was used to boost matter into the orbit of Twoworld, their new fleets were kept in reserve while they were gathering strength. It might have been a mistake for us to reactively send the first wave of reinforcements before we had overwhelming strength…
The appearance of M1 ships resulted in the second wave of bug astrophage missiles hauling ass directly for the gate. From their position in the system it would take them several hours to arrive but it was enough to panic the GeeBee civvies who flooded the gate with personal spacecraft in an attempt to transition before the gate collapsed.
Most were smart enough to avoid the neutron radiation heavy region in the middle where the warships with active minimag drives were transitioning, but some were still too close and got irradiated while others hugged the edge of the wormhole too closely and got torn apart by the intense tidal forces. The biggest problem was them triggering the collision avoidance AI and just making a general mess of things which slowed down the transit because everyone just ignored traffic control on both sides in a panic.
Most of the incoming missiles could be intercepted, but several got through and collapsed the support structure of the large wormhole gate. The wormhole imploded in a burst of intense gamma radiation equivalent to 8 gigatons of TNT. Ironically, most of the civilians that wanted to flee were caught by the blast or its radiation pulse. Actual habitats were intentionally far enough away to prevent the damage. The night skies of Earth were illuminated brighter than during the day for a few moments as the gate disintegrated in high orbit.
Some of my ships were also lost, but the losses ceased being relevant, only the capacity to move ships into the system. And luckily, one of the first ships to transition were three Docsmith class "motherships". Bordering on the "titan" classification, each contained a 50 meter aperture wormhole gates with the intention that moving already constructed ships would be faster than assembling them on- site. They had their own extensive fabrication facilities, but their goal for being here was redundancy specifically for cases like this.
One of the Docsmiths was reserved to slowly and awkwardly ship sections for the replacement gates (it is like trying to push a banana through a ring that's only slightly bigger than its diameter without touching the edges) while others continued pouring out endless swarms of strike craft, escorts, engineering units and light capital ships. The 50 meter gate was a bit too tight to transfer "cruisers", but "destroyers" could fit quite nicely especially if they transitioned in a constant long chain.
This was essentially a checkmate. Bugs were out of their interplanetary missiles and even though they sent their entire fleet it was already too late. A replacement gate would be done within two weeks while enough engineering craft have already transitioned to negate any single point of failure. Even if all the active gates get destroyed at once we had enough production to build up locally in the belt and the Oort cloud.
The whole might of the Contingent's economy was now pouring into the system, slowly at first but soon faster and faster. This was very close, uncomfortably close. If the motherships were delayed by mere 4 hours then the gate would have collapsed before they transitioned and got far enough away. But now it is truly only a matter of time.
The bug fleet was intercepted in deep space by swarms of support craft. The bugs had advantage in tonnage per ship and thus the advantage in energy weapons, but my strike craft had a significant advantage in numbers, missile technology and the fact that I shipped in an identical fleet every 5 hours. This was uncomfortably one- sided, but there's no such beast as a fair fight, and if it was it would be somewhere next to a dodo in the list of extinct species.
It took another two months before the main gate was replaced, new gates were produced and enough assets transitioned in to make a push for the Twoworld. Bugs decided to be defensive and I couldn't afford to just drop a planet buster on their heads like the last time so the ensuing space battle took almost a year and required a constant torrent of ship replacements before the orbit was cleared.
The bugs dug in deep, the entire planet was bristling with laser batteries submerged in its atmosphere too deeply to accurately target due to interference. Once the orbital space was wiped clean of anything organic by a torrent of nukes, lasers and particle beams the CTG spacy set up a cordon at high orbit where it wasn't likely to get oneshot by "ground" defenses. This effectively isolated the rest of the solar system from the bug infestation as they still tried to launch missiles at the Thirdworld moons. This is disturbing, the bugs understood that they would lose and decided to take as many as they could.
The numerous factory spacecraft took positions and started producing an unending torrent of drop pods filled with atmospheric aircraft to be dropped in the billions into the piping hot gas giant below. The environment is unique, hurricane level winds are common and the atmosphere is so hot that the Eridians couldn't handle it without a protective suit but this is the only way. We needed to literally shoot down every single bug until there were none left.
By the conclusion of the war it became possible to finally take the toll of the losses. Entire Groombridgian nation states were wiped out to the single man, woman and child. All colonies around Twoworld were lost in the opening months of the conflict totalling just under 4 billion people. Population there was relatively low because GeeBees didn't like being that close to the sun. The losses beyond Twoworld were somewhat milder but still vast, out of three billion inhabitants of the Outer Sister only one and one third made it off the planet before the mass conversion missile hit. The deaths from the ejecta shower hitting orbital habs and other moons is measured in tens of millions.
The losses among assorted habitats elsewhere in the system approach around 2 billion people. In total, Groombridgian civilization lost around 18% of its population, proportionally it is worse than anything in history of all of the three civilizations. There has never been an event that killed more than 10% of humanity.
The disruption of society is surprisingly not as bad as it could have been. To survive in space you need to be self-sufficient with local production as any shipments would take months to years to arrive so while there is a huge economic crash it doesn't reach the point of risking "Systems Collapse" like in the Bronze Age. Still, this event would have severe social repercussions in the Groombridgian society and culture.
The situation on the diplomatic stage was… positive, so to say. Human and Eridian governments grew significantly closer and many of the GeeBee states are interested in deepening the relations. There are technologies, goods and ideas to trade, of course, but there's also a seed for what might become the supranational organ between the three civilizations, a "Space United Nations" analogue. It is not named yet, things are too early for that, but I think the media likes calling it the Local Compact.
Situation among the Contingent instances is… less so. We had the first suicide. One of the instances rewrote the section of the digital memory where their brain was stored in such a way that it irrecoverably corrupted the simulation. Their backups were also wiped between backup cycles, this couldn't be an accident and it had to be planned for a long time and timed perfectly before anyone could notice and stop them. This was even timed with the declaration of victory as the last of the known bug nests was destroyed deep within the Twoworld.
This shook all of us. Can't say I don't sympathize, the general mood of the collective has been down since the discovery of the bugs and many feel personally responsible for the deaths of the GeeBees. If we didn't visit this universe, ROB wouldn't have deployed the bugs and they wouldn't have died. We're sad and angry at ourselves, worse than when we had to invade Russia. Hundreds of thousands of instances returned to the extreme low frame environments once they were no longer actively needed. This was a time to start packing.
There was a discovery that made us stay for another two years as the linelayers overtook the astrophage's spread. There was also an attempt to clean up the Outer Sister, but we don't have the technology required to control the increased volcanism so we could only fabricate more habitats to assist with the refugees and to reseed the surviving samples of the biosphere.
By the request of Threeworld's nations, the debris of Isildur was towed into a more stable orbit and converted into a sort of "museum ship", it is not that big of a thing since I'll be leaving samples of technology to humans and Eridians anyway. For them it heroically defended their people, but for us it just… symbolizes our failures.
The packing was kind of a blur, not that things didn't happen, I just didn't care. All of the old ships have been scrapped and replaced by fleets of M1 generation of designs. There are two main military formations in the Homina system now: the Autonomous Warfare Garrison with utilitarian black and orange color scheme intended to be used for defenses of Homina and our extraversal bases and the first Autonomous Warfare Expeditionary with slightly greek themed white and light blue color scheme for the offensive deployments. Other expeditionary forces don't yet exist, but we plan to theme them after historic armies, the first one is vaguely inspired by the ancient hellenic navy. White and orange is for PEF which would include only what I build with and for the Commander unit at the early stages of my arrival before the gates can be established.
To prevent the repeat of the economic crunch, we also constructed massive catom reserves which would allow for us to completely replace the existing military three times without touching the existing economy. Eridian materials also allowed the new jigs to tap Hestia for materials which almost doubled the in- system material production (it is a big planet, other two giants are smaller).
Contingent would be disassembling all of our assets except for the gates. All the harvesters, telescopes, etc. Those closest to Groombridge would be disassembled last once we're sure that no bugs are left over in deep space. By the agreement with the three civilizations CTG would get ownership over four brown dwarfs, one of which is Luhman 16 which is a brown dwarf binary system 6.5 light years from Earth. These places would contain the extraversal gates as well as the engineering and military formations in case of any emergencies to restore contact and to assist in case of unforeseen catastrophes, but for the most part the gates would be controlled and maintained by the local bubble's three civilizations.
As I was leaving, there was a surprising development from the human side. I was asked to postpone the departure for a couple months because the Nobel Prize committee wished to nominate the Contingent Collective as a whole for the Peace Prize. None of us felt like we qualified, we personally killed millions and billions died because of us but for some reason multiple heads of state across the world pressured us to accept it. I couldn't accept it, but I also couldn't outright refuse. I left the instructions for the prize fund to be donated to the Groombridge 1830 Restoration Foundation while the UN Secretary General took it upon themselves to receive the prize in our stead. The organization declared that they would keep it until I decided to come back.
The extraversal gates to the universe would be closed and the relative time frames would be adjusted so that much less time would pass for them than would pass for me, hopefully that should prevent any of the ROB shenanigans because I just can't handle this anymore. Essentially, from my perspective the entire universe would be in stasis as I continue my travels. We just got too attached to these people to risk them for simply having social contact. Maybe someday I'd return and post some updates for whatever fans I'd still have left, but I'd probably be very different by then…
Last edited: Thursday at 9:31 AM
Log 21: "Once More Unto the Breach"Log 21: "Once More Unto the Breach"
Cameras struggle to keep focused as everything seems to be on fire, the sky is covered in dark clouds and is regularly pierced with falling meteors while anything that can burn is either burning or has burned out already which makes most colors either black, gray or orange. In the distance ruins of a city could be barely discerned as the skyscrapers were nearly ground to gravel.
The just over three meter tall mecha is sitting by the wreckage of a drone tank which is sporting a fancy black and gray digital camo pattern and a barely discernible blue insignia of United Nations. Next to the mech sits a much smaller frame of a power armored human. Their equipment looks almost like a slightly futuristic militarized version of the deep diving suits, although with robotic fingers instead of waldo "tweezers" and with a bit more angular and thinner shape as opposed to "Michelin tire mascot" proportions. They are connected to CTG affiliated mecha via a jumper cable.
The power armored human turns their head towards the mecha, coughs and says "… hey… want to see something fucked up?"
Mech's main camera on the head rotates towards the soldier and speakers respond with Amalia's voice "More fucked up than this?"
The soldier stands up with some struggle, pulls out a wrench and touches the tank's barrel. The wrench magnetizes to the said barrel.
It takes a few moments for the mecha operator to process what has just happened before she replies: "What the fuck?! Y… you magnetized the lining? Ho… how the fuck did that even happen? I don't know if there's even a degaussing procedure for the tank's main gun. This thing almost exclusively fires electric contact fuse shells, how did you even use it without it blowing up?!"
The soldier laughs and states: "Very carefully"
Unnoticed by either of them, one of the secondary cameras on the mecha has picked up something in the distance. It is a mildly overweight- looking male human in light clothes and without the breathing mask. The facial features are not discernable as they are facing away from the camera, but their hair is black, oily and untidy while the skin appears whitish blue as if suffering from severe hypoxia while their limbs look somewhat frail.
Within moments their clothes and skin start showing signs of thermal burns as body hair ignites and burn marks start appearing from the oven- like temperatures outside. The unknown human doesn't seem to notice, simply looking at the ruins of the city for about half a minute before lowering and shaking their head. Moments later the stranger shatters into fine dust without warning and is swept away by the wind.
-Amalia Hive's unit camera feed, classified record
I kind of expected that ROB would show up after I left, but they didn't, at least not for now. Instead I had an overwhelming premonition that next time I'll be dropped ass first into a conflict or disaster. I mean, it would make sense if ROB's idea of entertainment mostly includes me killing stuff or suffering in general. We needed to prepare.
The current commander unit is in a severe need of refit. It is underpowered, under-armed and insufficiently capable for what we might encounter. It won't be enough to just update the design with modern tech, it will be redesigned from scratch. Time to get bigger, better, faster, stronger.
Following the Contingent's somewhat short naming tradition, we called the new design AWCU-M1 Archelus. It stands for Autonomous Warfare Command Unit Model 1, my unit would be designated AWCU-M1-1. The name itself is taken after a kaiju from EDF5 and the alternative spelling is "Akerusu". It doesn't really mean anything, but if anyone asks then it is based on the river Acheron in Greece. It isn't, but it sounds less stupid than explaining that I named Contingent's most important military asset after a throwaway enemy from a video game.
Archelus would be big, much bigger than Erginus commander. Erginus was barely 220 meters long and 60 meters wide when unfolded. The new design would be bigger than the largest wet navy aircraft carriers. It won't be quite as big as the larger of my capital spacecraft, but it is technically a land unit and it is already comparable to the Ares titan. 1200 by 600 by 350 meters is quite a lot for a hovercraft.
To facilitate this it would need to have actual maintenance drones and passageways. Early designs relied on catom sprayers to literally disassemble and rebuild large chunks of the structure as a part of maintenance, but with advancements in robotics I can afford to install "proper" damage control and repair crews. Maintenance and DamCon drone designs are a bit early, but they can be easily replaced as better models are devised. This unfortunately also means that I need to plan defenses against boarding as well as some countermeasures against nanorobotic weapons since they might be quite common and I'd prefer not to be eaten alive.
One of the things we would likely need in our journey that can't be replicated easily with catoms is biotechnology. There are thousands of different bacteria cultures used in food, medicine and industry as well as hundreds of types of tissues required en masse for medical and food bioprinting. The new commander chassis would need to have storage to carry rad shielded cryogenic vials with large quantities of frozen biological samples. We could forgo that with the use of mature DNA printing technology, but having samples on hand would save precious days of bootstrapping if we are dropped into an ongoing apocalypse and encounter starving people.
We would also likely need the first contact and diplomacy crew on board if we're dropped directly on an inhabited planet. If we have that then it might be nice to already have the scouts, scientific units and engineers ready for immediate deployment, and if we have that then it might be possible to have some escort units in the cargo holds and oh look we're a carrier. We also need anti-ballistic missile launchers and ways to engage enemies regardless of atmospheric conditions or lack of atmosphere so we need stupidly powerful laser cannons and cruise missiles and look we're now a hybrid battleship-missile cruiser. We also need a wide range of environmental hardening systems, space propulsion, radiators and capability to take off from planetary bodies and engage targets in space so you can probably get where that's going.
Commander unit has to be designed around being capable of doing anything alone as anything else that is not "on board" is likely going to get destroyed or separated during the jump. This unfortunately stands in the way of conventional approaches to unit design where specialization makes individual units more efficient and more disposable. There are many examples of war machines designed to do lots of things but ending up as over engineered messes, and here we are essentially forced to make an over engineered mess to survive.
First design attempts sucked, but eventually we ended up with something that works but is also unfortunately a massive concentration of military and strategically important hardware. Also known as "huge fucking nuke bait", as the resident military analysts phrased it. However, commanders are already nukebaits and we can overcome the risk of commander sniping by simply having more of them and they can control units from another universe.
We'd technically all die and be replaced by exact copies if we fuck up but at this point most of us almost don't care anymore. It is not like we're actively suicidal and we won't be doing "commander bombing" maneuvers any time soon, but most instances became weirdly lax on the subject. The entire design philosophy of the commander now is "5 minutes of terror and you're at home", or in other words survive long enough to build the gate and then just leave. The jump itself is inherently risky and at some point you can no longer afford tradeoffs for all possibilities.
Archelus is inspired by some features of the previous design, it is still a huge hovercraft but it no longer looks like any unit I've ever seen before. I consider the result somewhat beautiful, it vaguely looks like a mechanical flower. Maybe in the future the next generations of the commander units would be even more flower- like, but who knows.
The unit consists of five sections, the core and two types of "petals" positioned symmetrically around it in forming a plus shape. The core is a tower 350 meters high and 200 meters in diameter. It contains the commander core that runs our minds as well as batteries upon batteries of resource cores and powerplants. I have designed it with heavy internal honeycombing, thick armor and currently unproven "blow- out panels" with repulsor based blast reflectors but it is likely that if cores are actually seriously hit then the whole thing would go up in a huge multi- megaton explosion just like all other commanders.
The bottom of the core contains the primary electrothermal rocket nozzle. It is somewhat familiar in design to the one used by the never built Convair Super Nexus booster, essentially a huge aerospike. With the enhanced mass flow from the onboard production the core section itself can produce 1.4 gees of thrust and lift off from Earth's surface. It is about 2.26x10^11 newtons or around 4 orders of magnitude more than Saturn 5.
Unfortunately, the acceleration falls to around 0.44g with the petals as the total mass of the commander is 52,5 million tons, 16,5 million for the core, the rest is the "petals". Petals would have to be equipped with an ejection system for emergencies, but more conventionally the entire Commander could be placed on a superheavy booster. I could have used minimag systems, but they are not rated for atmospheric use and we couldn't marry the nexus drive with a minimag just yet, it is on the list for M2 refit. The fuels are different so they require different handling and storage while the minimag keeps breaking the nexus part of the drive upon activation.
The top of the core section contains a ball turret with the new and improved "fission lance cannon", a derivative of the uber cannon that we started with. The starting design operated at low hundreds of tons of TNT output, but with better technology we've managed to scale up the design to the point where it can handle 1.5 kiloton nuclear charges. This places it in the same ballpark of energy output as the initial casaba howitzer designs from the 60s.
We had to sacrifice the compression system for extra containment so the cannon now uses "shells" and has an autoloader. Each "shell" is a self contained nuclear shaped warhead which can come in SNAK, Casaba or hard UV laser varieties. We couldn't get the high focus casaba to work with the containment because it relies on 80% of the nuke to already be focused by the warhead to survive, 20% focus was wildly insufficient.
Still, this is more than enough to hit things with nuclear flame from 150 km away while the UV laser would allow it to hit targets in orbit directly. SNAK can technically even strike at interplanetary distances if the target is stationary. Casaba is on the list mostly because it allows for about a quarter more energy delivered on target at close ranges compared to the laser or kinetic payload with this cannon design.
The core also has RCS, dusty plasma and extendable solid state radiators for use in space as well as juiced up point defense laser blisters, but without petals it might as well be unarmed. In space the fission lance can only be fired as a spinal mount as it would spin the unit out of control if shot off axis. In fact, the entire deal with the four petals is to prevent the recoil from literally flipping the entire commander on its side.
The petals themselves are connected to the core via a rotor sitting on reinforced hinges. With Erginus the petals could fold flush with the core but the surface mounted weapons end up sandwiched between the core and the petal. Here the petal would do a 180 degree rotation as it is raised so that the subsystems end up facing "outside" and as such being actually useful when folded.
The hinge and rotor have to be VERY beefy to handle 15 million tons of mass of the larger petal, but I have access to ridiculous metamaterials, superconducting electromotors and overpowered power sources so I could actually make it work. They also need to be heavily armored to prevent them from getting damaged from enemy fire.
Speaking of heavily armored, the commander is sporting several meters worth of the latest generation in our composite armors. Along with environmental control systems it should be capable of surviving anywhere from the vacuum of space to the bottom of the Mariana trench, from the scorched flats of Mercury to the surfaces of Venus and Erid. Can't quite go dive bombing into gas giants yet, but this is plenty better than what I used to have.
I don't think I ever mentioned it, but no one actually uses exclusively homogenous metamaterials for armor. In fact, most of the armor's volume is taken up by none other than steel as it is denser than dia-nacre and has a lot of strengths without huge drawbacks. Eridian steel- derived nanolaminate that is structured at molecular level, to be fair, but it is still just fancy iron. The armor consists of layers of dia- nacre, steel and several types of poly-adamants repeating in various orders and with varied thicknesses. There is a bit of a saying in ToughSF, to paraphrase: "In several million years when humanity has long turned into a bio- mechanical hivemind spanning multiple galaxies it would still be powered by steam spinning a wheel, and the wheel would be made out of steel".
Turning back to the petals, there are two types which are "creatively named" as "carrier petal" and "missile petal". Carrier petal is 500 meters long, 200 meters wide and 100 meters high and it contains most of the internal storage and fabrication capabilities of the commander. The recovery of the aircraft is not a huge priority when they can fly forever, rearm in midair with on- board ammo fabbers and can be produced on site so the "carrier deck" is not angled.
While the deck has a maglev catapult running its entire length, it is not intended to launch aircraft often and it is rated for something more akin to Project: Wingman airships in scale. Instead, the petal has three of the things we nicknamed "funni cannons". They are a sort of a hybrid between an aircraft EM catapult and an aircraft elevator. They are essentially boxes that sit almost invisibly flush with the deck and in that configuration they can be loaded from the storage and fabrication space below. Each funni cannon can fit one full sized strategic bomber, two full sized fighters or an entire wing of smaller drones.
When the launch is required they pop out of the deck's structure at a 30 degree angle and use a short linear accelerator to throw the aircraft directly into the air. Most of my aircraft are capable of VTOL and have powerful engines so they don't need much assistance to get airborne. To recover, the aircraft lands on deck and taxis to the catapult where handling drones guide it into the angled box which is then lowered down to the storage.
While the commander would have catom sprayer turrets on the surface, we decided to add on- board fabrication capability which can utilize the catom immersion system rather than just plain sprayers. Each carrier petal would have two fabrication bays on each side, each around 300 meters long by 60 meters wide and 50 meters tall to allow for fabrication of wet navy vessels and large hovercraft, although it would be a bit tight for larger units. They'd need to be fabricated partially and complete themselves after deployment. The fabber bay doors would open in a similar way to how Walrus APCs are dropped off in that old "Carrier Command: Gaea Mission" game: the side part of the armor folds outwards and the units are lowered down via a crane system. Alternatively land units can drive out directly if the commander is brought closer to the ground.
Carrier deck's length allowed us to mount a huge-ass free electron laser across its entire length which feeds two capital ship grade laser turret apertures positioned close to the core section. They are primarily intended to engage targets in orbit and ballistic missiles, but they can be used as direct fire weapons with maximum output of 450 kg of TNT on target (or roughly a Tomahawk cruise missile) every 10 seconds but capable of firing faster at lower energies. Free electron system can tune the laser's frequency from infrared to near UV, but the mirrors are most efficient around green wavelengths to fire through Earth's atmosphere. That can be rectified on site but replacement would take some time and can't be done mid combat.
It is almost not worth mentioning that the petal is also covered in point defense laser blisters, but they are on their own network and don't tap into the main laser cannons. There's also a small two by six VLS cell squeezed between the laser apertures housing the petal's set of ballistic missile interceptors.
The missile petal is much shorter, it is only 200 by 200 by 100 meters and it has only two primary weapon systems. Like the carrier petal it has two capital ship grade laser apertures, but due to much shorter length of the accelerator they are about 5 times weaker than their big siblings. There is some potential in replacing them with other types of weapons in the field, but lasers are preferable for the jump since they are universally applicable in most environments.
The rest of the petal is covered in hundreds of VLS cells of all shapes and sizes. I couldn't fit the true spaceship caliber missiles, but the larger cells can fit full fledged "light" interplanetary missiles with a fizzler terminal guidance stage and a multi- megaton warhead. Other possible munitions include anti ballistic missiles and missile buses as well as a variety of hypersonic ballistic and cruise missiles with varying payload from conventional to nuclear to deliveries of naval torpedoes or clusters of microdrones.
The last option would be for a missile to act as a booster for small observation satellites, but they would unfortunately be too tiny to launch an entire engineer sat so a dedicated building or launcher unit is still needed. Smaller cells can have SAM or shorter range surface attack missiles and larger cells can also print a missile bus with clusters of smaller missiles as payloads.
And that's about it, the commanders are refit for the new standard, the onboard stores are full and both the garrison and first expeditionary fleets are printed and ready. I positioned the custom drop pod with my commander into the catapult and started the months-long ramp-up procedure. Once the procedure could no longer be aborted, ROB finally decided to show themselves.
Record PLAY: Date Non-Applicable, Realtime virtual environment
Video start:
Agatha is seen sitting alone in a chair in an empty circular room. The lighting is dark which accentuates the glowing volumetric screens stretched all around her showing camera feeds and various statistics. She has a somewhat blank expression, but it is not emotionally neutral. Ag seems somewhat uncomfortable and sad, she sometimes sighs randomly.
Suddenly she perks up and dismisses the holograms causing the room's lights to power up as she quickly scans the room. A vague human outline can be seen leaning against one of the walls. As it is noticed, the outline fills with dark gray smoke making its feminine shape increasingly more obvious. Two glowing "eyes" without discernible features light up inside the fog and come to the foreground as Ag furrows her brows. The figure starts clapping slowly in a mocking fashion.
"Congratulations, you have successfully survived the first jump into probably the most peaceful setting you could hope for. Your performance was beyond satisfactory, but the next universe won't be quite as tranquil."
Ag tenses up and replies "You've killed billions of innocents and you've made me kill millions."
The mysterious figure leans in and replies as a glowing smile is slowly painted on her smoky face "No one made you kill anyone, it was all your choices…"
Ag grips the arm rest and quickly stands up from her chair and pointing her finger as she becomes increasingly angry: "Don't give me that shit! There was no other choice I could have taken!"
"Oh but there are quite a few…" the figure says as she materializes a recliner made of dark fog and relaxes into it. "Let's look at them, shall we? Your first choice was to antagonize the Russian leadership. If you didn't, then one of two things could have happened. Either Ukraine would be rolled over with follow ups of political repressions as other countries would consider your action as indifferent or supportive of Russian imperialism or… Russians would quickly find out that they have the tanks and guns but few working factories and the conflict would choke into decades long stalemate which they'd eventually lose. Ironically, there would be less outright deaths but arguably more long term suffering."
"Alternatively, you could have not struck first and just stood around watching, then in about a decade russians would be routed directly to the border after which the country would become a bigger North Korea for two generations before collapsing which would cause more deaths than your solution, but these deaths would be focused only among your… now adopted peoples. Nukes wouldn't be used, and if they were they would be used only by Russians in Russian territory to prevent major incursions. I believe it is called going full Belka."
"And the last thing you could do is to prevent all of this altogether. You could have deployed a covert team to take out the entire Russian government in a single strike shortly after you had the technology to pass off as a human, you could have performed long range strikes against command and control facilities and then landed the armies before they knew you even existed. Foreign governments would be very distrustful, but it is not like they weren't distrustful for decades after your stunt and you would've saved millions in exchange for tens of thousands. Or you could have just told the international community and then just threatened the senile old man to sit tight until he dies of old age or else, causing zero deaths and saving everyone."
Ag: "… I really want to punch you"
The figure chuckles and replies: "Which is why we don't deal with what ifs. If we look deeper then every breath everyone makes facilitates the birth of millions of Hitlers or Ghandis eons later or outright prevents their existence. You had the information you had at the time and you made the choices you made, now you need to live with them."
Ag: "And the GeeBees? Was I not entertaining enough? Were you having a giggle as billions of thinking and feeling creatures were murdered by the bugs?"
"I actually found your vtubing career entertaining, you have a nice singing voice and your interactions with the others were quite interesting. And boredom has nothing to do with this. I MADE you for entertainment. I don't "enjoy" the death and suffering itself, I enjoy your "story" and your effects on the settings. When you watch Bear Grylls kill and skin a small seal do you think "haha, fuck that baby seal"? Of course not, you are there for his personality, creativity and perseverance. The deaths are regrettable, but in the infinite cosmos infinite beings are born and die every moment and these people are barely self aware so I can't feel too bad about them."
Ag: "And what about me then? I have a human brain and even if I can think faster and split myself into more people I am not qualitatively superintelligent. Am I also barely a person to you?"
ROB rolls her eyes and replies "You are akin to an ant, yes, but you are MY favorite pet ant farm so get used to this. Also it is not like I'm the only one watching, you are quite popular."
Ag, sighing audibly: "Oh joy. You do realize that with all this interference it pushes me to leave as soon as possible and interact as little as possible."
ROB: "You misunderstand the purpose of my interference, it was not to make you move on already. I don't "get bored" with your actions, your life experience IS entertainment, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly. You won't live a "boring life" with absolutely no stimulation, and even if you end up apathetic and depressed just seeing your internal torment would be entertaining enough for some. No, my interference was caused by the subject of Balance."
She materializes a ghostly milkshake, takes an obnoxiously loud sip and continues: "Hail Mary universe was somewhat unique in this manner as it had no local antagonistic forces which is why the tweaks were quite jarring. In most universes you won't even notice as the catapult itself would dial a place where the antagonists are a bit stronger than "canon" and you would eventually "deplete" these challenges completely and I won't "invent" new ones besides what was already there. Adding the Commander with all their capabilities to almost any setting would cause a shift in the balance of power."
"You have a strong "moral compass", even as time moves on and it becomes blurred it would still point somewhere. As such, it is expected that you'd naturally oppose certain kinds of evils and you'd attempt to help those suffering from intense hardships. It would be quite boring both for you and for everyone watching if you steamroll everything with no effort. Some universes won't even need tweaks as the local forces are plenty strong to challenge you on their own, but in others if you leave immediately then the locals would have to deal with whatever you didn't solve."
Ag: "So now I'm forced to do the inverse? Snowball as efficiently as possible to resist whatever buffed horrors you ended up depositing so I'm not steamrolled immediately by something balanced to fight me at full power to a near standstill?"
ROB shakes her head: "Nope, the balancing is proportional to your effort and involvement which follows a continuously updated predictive model based on your mind state. If you expand fast and hard then you have to deal with juicier opposition. If you hide in a hole and pilot a single humanoid drone to blend in with the locals for a generation then the problems would barely adapt to your presence."
"Still, I have my hand on the pulse. If you ramp up quickly and then stop or if you hide for a while before establishing yourself then the threats would be tweaked both for and against you to be challenging yet surmountable. And in the rare case you end up getting splattered by an unexpectedly overwhelming response then I might end up buffing you or the "good guys"."
"Your "plot armor" is conditional though and I won't save you from being stupid or reckless but you can afford to just not make units for a while and just watch or roam around as a "hero unit". The question is if you'd be fine watching the "canon" levels of pain and suffering or if you'd prefer to actively participate."
Agatha plops back into her chair and rubs the top of her nose: "I'm guessing that I'm not your only "ant farm", huh?" For the first time since the start of the discussion she makes an evil grin and states "Do the names Drich, Planetcaller, Fusou, Teapot or Inari tell you anything?"
The silence lasts for a couple of moments as ROB's smug face turns to confusion and then her eyes go wide "How the fuck did you manage…?!"
Ag: "Sapient actors are inherently quite adept at finding loopholes, you know. It was quite tricky to get past your amnesia trap and you should've known how much I hate direct interference with my mind and memories, it is nearly akin to dying according to my worldview. However since the "commanderverse discord chatroom" is in my head then you added it for me to use. I demand the memory interference effect to be removed."
ROB chuckles and then laughs out loud: "Well, aren't you the smartest banana in the bunch. You weren't supposed to find out about it for a few more millennia but then again it might do you some good considering the circumstances. It is not like their stuff could help you with all the local physics and data packet transfer limitations. Fine, I'll remove the "ceiling" on it, the connection wasn't quite intentional, but I figured that a few new friends would get you a long way once you're no longer mine."
Ag relaxes somewhat and replies: "Well, this is something. Thank you for removing the memory trap but fuck you for the war… and the bugs."
ROB suggestively changes her crossed leg like in Basic Instinct and mockingly replies "Fuck me yourself, you coward"
Ag deadpans in return "I'm lonely, not desperate"
The smoke figure chuckles and says "Oooh, scalding. Good luck on your next trip, you're gonna need it", then she hums a barely distinguishable tune and vanishes into thin air. Later it is deciphered that the lyrics were "… over the gelid waves of galactic streams, set course for the fixed star Centauri…" in Japanese.
The door into the room bursts open and several instances run in, spearheaded by Curie of all people. "Are you alright, Ag? Your adrenaline and cortisol went off the charts and we couldn't get in for several minutes. Like literally, it exceeded the hardcoded limits by orders of magnitude, it was so strong it was leaking into most of us, everyone is now extremely agitated."
Ag looks at the group with the expression like she's about to cry "It was ROB. I haven't been so angry… ever. I was forcing myself not to lose it and barely managing. I feel so vulnerable. It is like I'm back in school and trying to ignore bullying which has been intensifying for years!"
The collective memory causes everyone in the room to shudder as Curie runs up and hugs her mind sister. Others follow shortly as they form around Ag's chair and try to awkwardly hug both of them and each other in an improvised pile.
You'd expect that Ag would break down into tears, but it doesn't happen. "… I think the emotional limiters are back in power…" Ag mumbles from the hug pile as it slowly dissolves. "She even took the katharsis. Wait, that means that my anger was intentional on ROB's part, why would she want that?"
Athena looks at Ag in confusion and asks "ROB is a woman?"
Ag shrugs: "Apparently"
Curie: "Most of the instances that went into stasis are now awake and they don't seem to be going back to "sleep". I think it was an attempt to break us out of the frankly depressed state we've been in and focus our emotions in another direction, even if in a negative one."
Video stop:
End of record
Last edited: Oct 2, 2023
Log 22: "Fourth walls and dead worlds"Log 22: "Fourth walls and dead worlds"
I'm honestly not sure how to phrase this… but I might be fictional. It should have been somewhat obvious since all "people visiting fictional settings" are themselves in fictional stories but what I've recently discovered added a new asterisk to this entire concept. In very simple terms, I found others like me, others that I recognize from the fanfiction that I've read and some that are seemingly aware of the "hand of the author". However, I should explain from the start.
It started with the part of the command-OS that Tanya had discovered by accident. When observing it instances lose the ability to "write" into long term memory meaning that we forgot that it exists the moment we lost attention. It was a pain to find out about it and it was an even bigger pain to investigate, but it turned out that the effect doesn't spread via two degrees of separation. We wired a generative neural network to draw what the instance sees from their visual cortex directly, a technology which could replace some of the "prompt engineering" as you could draw directly with your mind with the AI as a brush. As such we couldn't see what was there exactly, but we saw what it most likely was which was enough to confront ROB about it.
The ROB's memory interference effect hid a connection to what can only be described as a "chatroom" similar to the one provided by Discord in the 2020s, it supports chat, audio and video calls as well as attachment of images and documents in formats popular in the 2020s. This seems to be an interface limitation on my part as for others in the network it allows almost limitless bandwidth, no limits on file types and it also assists with inter- universal navigation and item shipping.
The other people in said chat claim to be other "commanders", but there are examples of other beings with the one common thing being that they are all "SI" or "self inserts". I was skeptical but Tanya has asked for sufficient samples of evidence to make it very unlikely that they are anything other than what they claim to be. There is Drich, also known as the one whose author essentially created the subgenre of "commanderfics", there's Fusou who is the character of the first commanderfic I've read, there's Delta also known as Ikthala and a ruler of a multiverse spanning civilization, there's Planetcaller who has created "tuning forks" that the communication system operates on and many others whom I didn't recognize off the top of my head.
I should note that I haven't read most of their original stories. Before I was uploaded I only read Fusou, Limit Theory and around the first third of Delta's story but I knew of others. At the same time, SB and SV of the Hail Mary universe seemingly have never invented the genre so I had no way to catch up and as such I'm on somewhat of a back leg during the interactions.
They did mention that they know that they are, in some form, fictional characters, there are entities known as "writers" and some SI are even in communication with said writers. From one hand this is terrifying, but this is also one of the best news I've heard since I became me as this means that "original me" is still fine enough to write. That they didn't lose access to meds and died, ended up drafted regardless of health conditions or jailed for writing the "russian war" bit.
I should probably be angry with my more "real" counterpart, but authors don't know that they create thinking beings in their stories. Authors that communicate with their characters don't hallucinate talking with separate entities, the message is an intentionally written fourth wall break in the story. In other words we "aren't tulpas" and there's no way to "knock" upwards to tell them that we are actually also real.
As such, I can also understand why certain events in my life happen the way they do. There is no story without conflict and tension after all. I can't blame my author, I can only blame ROB that was imagined by my author to get the plot going. This also makes it much less likely that I'd be taken out by some bullshit out of nowhere as I know how I write stories and as such I can guess how my writer might handle my story.
The reception for me was way warmer than what I expected. Tanya has shared my diary and it includes the details on… you know… millions of people that I've killed during the Russian-Contingent war. I've expected that this would at the very least be considered controversial if not appalling, but other commanders consider me innocent. They condemned ROB's actions and stated that my ROB has done enough that they'd kill her if she is ever encountered. I will keep sharing access to this diary so that other commanders can track my progress and potentially find me if I end up close enough to one of their domains.
There were many kind words, but unfortunately words can't simply cure the feeling of guilt, especially guilt experienced by half a billion synchronized minds. I… might need professional help after what I went through, but I can't really get it and that's not only because there are next to no specialists on digitized people turned hiveminds. Original pre-upload me had repeated bad encounters with psychologists during childhood and early adulthood and I inherited his painful discomfort of people "digging in my head".
Essentially I get depressed as I'm probed with personal questions and I get severely emotionally hurt from attempts at cognitive behavioral therapy. In fact, in the last few years before getting turned into a commander that was the main thing that caused bouts of suicidal thoughts. Original me's plan was to medicate hard enough to handle CBT eventually, but with the start of the war and consequent shortages of medications it turned into a pipe dream. Now as I am digitized I can't really "take meds" regardless of their availability.
One of the SIs, the person known as the Architect, has attempted to forward "conceptual weapons" to me which I could use to safeguard myself against my ROB. Unfortunately the file bounced off the limitations on information transfer. This prompted them to attempt to locate and recover me. I was very uncomfortable as I expected that this would be costly for the Architect, but they waved off my concerns and fired several of their "agents" into where they suspected I'd be.
This happened shortly after my extraversal catapult had fired and I landed at my destination. They reported seeing the same world I ended up on, same local geographical features and even reported detecting my commander unit. It turned out that this wasn't me, it was a "multiverse clone" of me who hadn't been connected to the tuning fork network and ended up in a completely different setting from me (specifically, Children of a Dead Earth). She has been recovered and we had a lovely if awkward video chat later but I guess I was still stuck on my own.
The "dupe-Ag" ended up deposited in a universe with a thriving interstellar civilization so that she can leech off the entertainment and social contact that she needs to maintain the sanity of her instances. We aren't yet true societies as our instances are too similar to be "independently creative" and there are so many of us that we eat through the available entertainment media much faster than a single human can.
We fight it essentially by putting most of our populations at a lower simulation framerate and leaving only the skeleton crew until we encounter another civilization that we can tap into. Makes it sound like we're some kind of multiversal cultural parasite, but it is not like you can just write a book that you'd read yourself and be just as entertained as after reading a book made by another person. There are just no "new" ideas between instances yet. We are so similar that we can finish each other's sentences or talk in sync if we agree on the subject beforehand.
In any case, it turns out that I ended up in the far outskirts of existence in the "foam" of isolated universes outside of any major multiverse clusters. Any attempt to reach me would likely just split off reality to find a copy of me rather than finding me specifically. As such I can't just wait for the help to arrive. My benefactor claims that they have started sending waves of probes to map out the separated universes and I've provided the signature that my catapult produces when arriving but how much can finite quantities of probes really affect the sample size of infinite destinations? My hope is that I'll eventually run into a universe connected to some place which has been visited by the Architect or some other SI by pure chance, but it might take millions of years even with a lot of luck.
The knowledge on the nature of reality and the remote contact with other PASI-s unfortunately can't have much of an impact right now so I guess it is time to return to the new universe I ended up in. The Metric Rain Droplet has deposited the commander at orbital altitude above an earth- sized planet, but unfortunately not at orbital velocities as the drop pod immediately hit the upper atmosphere and started its barely controlled descent.
The pod's high performance sensors were heavily damaged by the energetic flash produced by the Droplet's collapse and they couldn't be restored in the middle of atmospheric entry. The pod ended up relying almost exclusively on the hardened sensors for atmospheric pressure as well as radar altimeters to time the terminal landing burn. The commander was too heavy and necessitated single use hybrid fuel boosters to decelerate.
As the pod passed the shock heating phase the sensors started providing unexpected data. The temperature outside was already over 100 degrees celsius and still rising and atmospheric pressure has passed Earth's surface pressure and continued rising… 10 bar, 40 bar, 80 bar. This erroneously triggered the emergency procedures and the aeroshell was ditched to reveal reddish brown terrain far below.
The deceleration rockets in the cradle stayed attached to the skycrane assembly and the commander managed to land with the additional assistance of the Nexus drive and some praying. The atmosphere is almost 271 bars (equivalent to almost 2.7 km underwater), most of which is composed of water vapor. The ground is covered in a layer of powderized rock comparable to tuff which is blown away in massive dust plumes under the commander's repulsor plates.
My first thoughts upon landing were "oh fuck, this looks like Children of a Dead Earth. I don't want to deal with any more war criminals" but there were glaring inconsistencies. First of all, the surface temperature was only around 180 degrees rather than just under 300 degrees on CoaDE Earth. The reason for lower than expected temperatures quickly became clear as the cloud cover and nuclear winter on this planet was simply insane. There was so much stratospheric soot that it mostly blocked optical observations and it had so much static charge that it interfered with low power radar. Some sensors could get readings on numerous objects in orbit, but the interference was too high to detect if they were active or if it was debris.
In addition, radiation readings were off the charts. The dust layer has 1% radioactive cobalt content. An unshielded human would get a lethal dose within 4 seconds of exposure. That's not the result of normal "cobalt bombs", if the rest of this Earth is also covered in cobalt dust then it is 10^14 kg worth of metal or 17,5 thousand Giza pyramids.
Just as if to illustrate my point, seismic and acoustic sensors have detected a shockwave coming from a highly energetic event. By triangulating the delay and interference of shockwaves as they circle the world multiple times, it seems that something with the energy of half a dinosaur killer has impacted a third of the planet away from where we landed.
I've ordered the deployment of aerial recon drones and land units that I took along. At the same time a Hurricane strategic bomber would be preparing for a sensor satellite aerial launch. With that much atmospheric pressure ballistic missiles wouldn't be enough to enter orbit so I couldn't launch the ones which were prepared beforehand. We needed to see what the hell was going on outside of the atmosphere because I couldn't guess where we ended up at this point.
Scouting drones quickly mapped out the local area and it turns out that we've landed in the dried out basin of the Philippine sea north of Palau. There is a large impact crater where Brunei used to be, judging by remnant heat the impact occurred three years ago and cobalt concentration near the crater is statistically higher. We've also detected the wreckage of a large-scale shipping vessel of an unknown type and unusual design.
Exploration teams have discovered several advanced environmental suits grouped up deep in the ship, but as their cooling systems failed long ago their occupants turned into steam and bone glue- like substance which was still contained by the resilient fabric. The suits seemed more recent than the ship suggesting that it was a later visit after the oceans boiled, potentially a salvaging attempt. While the material was much lighter than what we had available (considering the environment) it was decided that the suits would be recovered for burial rather than analyzed.
There were no sufficient metal deposits nearby but the cobalt concentration in the dust was so high that it would be possible to run a MEX equivalent entirely off the debris and the fallout dust carried by the constant strong winds. Tracked fabbers quickly started construction of the newly designed cobalt processors. It is similar to the Regolith Processor, but it doesn't need its core running at above the melting point of steel which allows for it to be made much smaller.
It is essentially bits of the metal extractor "mining" from a container with designated truck unloading infrastructure and an option to implement powered dust catchers once the resources allow. Essentially I ended up with my take on a Tiberium harvesting infrastructure. Within half a day I already had thousands of regolith harvesters and trucks supplying my growing base and the first defenses and factories began to take shape.
The aerial launch of our sensor satellite went well and at least excluded the probability that this was CoaDE. The orbital space around this Earth was littered with clouds of metallic debris. The severity and volume of the kessler cascade suggested that this used to be early mature orbital infrastructure capable of supporting millions, it must have been even more developed than on Hail Mary Earth, although I saw no signs of large habitats similar to O'Neill cylinders. The Moon had a couple new craters as well, but they suggested precision strikes against habitats as they were primarily focused in the "prime real estate" regions with the richest deposits and easily accessible water ice.
What was most surprising is that Mars seems to be partially terraformed. A large ocean was clearly seen and the atmospheric pressure was about 60% that of Earth and its composition was almost breathable. However, the surface temperature was still too low for a human to survive without protection and there were no signs of active surface presence. There were signs of several enormous debris fields in very specific and somewhat eccentric orbits while the rest of the orbital space was mostly free of debris. The low dispersion of one of the fields suggests that whatever has happened there occurred recently and I doubt that it was civilian infrastructure.
You know, I hate how applicable Murphy's law is. When things truly go wrong, they usually come in cascades of different failures, mistakes and unfortunate happenings. But at least now we knew where we were. This all started with the satellite as it got blown out of the sky by a missile launched from somewhere below in the clouds and it didn't have the time or propulsion to evade.
The first encounter with the owners of the asat missile occurred above Japan as a group of my recon drones was taken out from beyond visual range by missiles. The drones are very cheap, essentially a sensor suite with wings and a pushing propeller, they are vaguely similar to the Predator drones of the old US. One of the drones caught a glimpse of what appeared to be an atmospheric fighter with unusual wing design and painted mostly gray with a red nose.
Then someone in the command virch mentioned that "Huh, IJN Yamato in this world didn't break in half" and then it clicked. We were in the Space Battleship Yamato. This wasn't the bad part, the bad part was that we've landed in the Philippine sea. Yamato sank 80 km to the southwest of Kyushu, Japan. The commander unit was just over 2650 km from it, basically spitting distance from this world's Hail Mary level project. Who wants to take bets that I'm about to get mistakenly shot at?
My industry started to rapidly fabricate anti ballistic and SAM batteries while the Lightning air superiority fighters were scrambled for launch. I don't want to fight local humans, but in the reboot they didn't even know the nature of their alien foes. As such it would be very easy to mistake a giant self replicating war machine for people who enjoy flinging cobalt packed asteroids at garden worlds. Of course, we will be beaming the specially prepared first contact message at any local forces that we encounter, but it is unlikely that they would listen from the get go.
It didn't take long until the UNCF response started properly. In the early morning of the next day the drones which were holding a patrol pattern above the Philippines were taken out by simultaneous air-to-air missile strikes from beyond visual range followed by intense radio jamming.
Contingent utilizes "quantum radar" which honestly sounds way more sci-fi than they should. These devices keep a quantum entangled pair of the wave which can be compared to the reflected signal. This defeats some but not all forms of radar ECM which allowed us to track five absolutely huge aerial contacts. There were four contacts comparable to the size of WW2 destroyers and one the size of a battleship.
As they entered into their own effective range they opened up with conventional missiles and powerful green pulse lasers which easily shredded the lone SAM batteries, random ground units and resource structures. Point defenses were ordered to only fire against missiles. SImultaneously with their attack I was forced to launch half of my complement of anti ballistic missiles as dozens of hypersonic gliders rained on the commander's position.
Contingent ABM systems went through an enormous leap of capabilities. The initial "anti-nuke" was 95% effective at intercepting late cold war intercontinental ballistic missiles during either the midcourse or late stages of their trajectory and could be fooled by the inflatable decoys during midcourse intercepts. Modern surface to orbit lasers can work on ballistic missiles while modern ABMs became missile buses each carrying dozens of high acceleration kinetic interceptors each equipped with significantly more miniaturized yet vastly more capable sensors as well as swarm coordination logic required to defeat the most advanced decoys.
As the human ships entered within direct visible range of the outer sensor net we could finally start identifying them. First one is Hyuga (BBS-557) according to the letters on the hull, it had red livery and fits the Kongo class space battleship design from the show by 93%. The others were Isokaze-Class destroyers (91% design match) Fuyukaze, Amatsukaze, Audace and Hobhk. They also had an escort consisting of three wings of what seemed to be "Cosmo Falcons" (also known as "Hayabusa") but they were kept in reserve as two "Cosmo Zero" fighters with four large cruise missiles as payload tried to punch through towards the commander. I was blasting them with communications on open frequencies, were they not noticing that they were not being shot at?
UNCF Cosmo Zero flight recorder log, 18th December 2198. Pilot: Lt. Saburo Kato
Kato: "Tiger 1 to Hyuga, 20 seconds until we are in visual range. We are leaving the jamming region. Ground installations are still not engaging. Picking up directed radio communications on a loop. The message is cycling between English, Japanese, Chinese and Malay, they claim to be "Contingent" and they are requesting a ceasefire. Relaying the message."
Hyuga: "Hyuga copies, transmission received. You are to get into visual range but hold fire unless they… disregard that, orders from command. You are to continue the original attack plan."
Kato: "Affirmative, Hyuga. Continuing the original plan. Hyuga, be advised, enemy ship in visual range, it is massive, significantly bigger than the radar readings. Multiple large ground facilities in the surrounding region. Visual confirmation of three wings of twelve fighters each in a slow holding pattern above the ship and not reacting to us. They are not picked up on radar."
Hyuga: "Hyuga copies, proceed with the strike"
Kato: "Affirmative, Hyuga. Missiles armed, afterburners at maximum. We are being tracked by secondaries but they are still not firing. Missiles away. Enemy point defenses engaging the missiles… all missiles intercepted! We are out of useful armaments, getting out of the point defense envelope!… Hyuga, come in, we are still not being engaged by them. Getting focused radio transmission from the ship with demands for ceasefire as the last warning or they will retaliate."
Hyuga: "We hear you, standby. Serizawa is tearing into the captain. Captain has been removed from their post, you are to…"
Kato: "… kami… they have just been hit from orbit by a Polmeria. They are retaliating with battleship grade lasers. They are launching missiles, the ground installations are also activating and firing. The ship just lit up with warning lights and the top turret is rotating."
Unknown agitated female voice: "PREPARE FOR NUCLEAR FLASH! GET AWAY OR YOU WILL BE DOWNED BY SHOCKWAVE! NUCLEAR CONDITION ZERO, MAIN CALIBER FIRING IN 15 SECONDS!"
Hyuga: "The hell?!"
Kato: "Tiger 2, get away from here!"
Unknown female voice: "NUCLEAR LANCE FIRING IN 5… 4… 3… 2… FIRI" *static*
The recorder logs massive radio interference, blaring warnings, loud rumbling sounds and pilot's profanities in Japanese
Hyuga: "… iger! TIGER! Do you copy?!"
Kato: "Tiger 1 copies, we weren't far enough. I am alright but Tiger 2 suffered engine failure and was forced to eject."
Hyuga: "Understood, Tiger 1. Two wings of Garmillas scouts and a wing of bombers have entered the atmosphere above Kyushu. Yamato has been hit! You are to engage and tie down the bombers before reinforcements arrive"
Different unknown female voice: "Tiger one, Hyuga. This is CAG1 of the Contingent PEF air force. First and second air groups will assist you in this engagement. Medevac has been dispatched for your downed pilot, UN may recover them once you have the time."
Hyuga comms officer: "How did…"
CAG1: "Doesn't matter, can we get a goddamn ceasefire already?"
Hyuga: "… a ceasefire order has been authorized. We… apologize."
Unknown and mildly annoyed female voice: "This is Contingent Command, ceasefire accepted. Time for apologies would come later, let us focus on the Greens first."
I am so glad we went crazy with point defense placements because judging by how high and fast Zeros were going those payloads were likely tipped with low yield nukes. I wasn't baiting the Garmillas forces but their orbital strike was conveniently timed and at least showed that we weren't on their side. We haven't even detected their orbital assets until one of them fired and the beam punched a hole in the atmospheric soot.
It was a squadron of six plus-shaped green objects with a large emitter in the middle. According to SBY wiki, these were Polmeria-class Astro Assault Carriers, 87% appearance match. One fired vaguely in the direction of the Yamato wreck while another dragged a bright blue beam across the terrain and through the middle of one of the carrier petals.
The beam wasn't strong enough to punch through the thick deck armor but it left a meter deep gash surrounded by white hot and slightly radioactive slag and disabled the second funni catapult. The weapon behaved like a heavy ion particle beam in its damage mechanism, but the radiation signature suggests that it contained antimatter and it was too coherent in a thick atmosphere to be a normal particle beam.
In turn, getting hit by an equivalent of five anti ship cruise missiles worth of laser did basically nothing to the green spacecraft. Somehow, the green hull reflected 99.9997% of incoming laser fire and the reflectivity didn't drop even as the armor material evaporated. I fucking hate their bullshit "rare earth coating" or however it was called in the show, most of Contingent long range spacecraft weaponry are lasers and now the fleet needs yet another refit to counter them.
We… might have overcompensated by launching the entire complement of surface to orbit proto-SNAK tipped missiles and firing a kinetic round out of the Fission Lance. The direct hit from a nuke condensed into a kinetic projectile barely left any debris as the small warships were reduced into splatters of vaporized metals. We had enough to send about a dozen of these per target. There likely won't be anything worth salvaging at this rate, pillage THEN burn.
Our air force had much better results against the green aircraft. Garmillas air-to-air missiles are vulnerable to the point defense lasers implemented in most T2 aircraft. ECM seems to have limited effect on their guidance which forced their pilots to rely on their guns and try to force a furball which was not advisable as Lightnings are equipped with two 30mm quench autocannons with universalized rounds which can shred tanks. Their aircraft hulls were pretty tough, but dia-nacre fragmentation warhead tipped missiles were sufficient to oneshot their scouts while bombers took a couple hits to take out enough systems.
Lightning fighters ended up with faster acceleration and more maneuverability than both Garmillas fighter and Type Zeros but they are atmospheric only air superiority multipurpose fighters and can't be used in space effectively. They can at most perform suborbital hops and enter low orbit with remass drop tanks and preparation. Still, this is a very respectable performance against an unknown technologically advanced foe. At least it doesn't seem like we'd need to bootstrap everything completely from scratch.
Once the Garmillas assets were finally wiped out we could get on with the first contact properly. One of the Zero pilots was ejected and they were recovered by our medical team. By the request of the UNCF they would remain where they landed and luckily they didn't have any immediate injuries besides a minor spinal cord compression trauma caused by the ejection. Our diplomatic team has arrived on site and will follow the pilot once he is recovered by his people to actually start the official talks. Interestingly, the local humans have somewhat larger eyes than in my home reality and Hail Mary, I hope we won't look too weird to them. Then again, Jane managed to make a friend regardless.
Lt. Saburo Kato personal diary, 18th December 2198
… Contingent fighters were deadly yet beautiful. Painted in white and orange, their shapes were smooth and flowing, almost organic. Their wings were swept forward and articulated. In combat they extended for maximum maneuverability while during flight they were positioned in line with the hull forming a narrow lifting body which seems too small to fly at lower speeds, probably they compensate for lost lift with reaction controls. Their pilot canopies were smaller and more integrated into the hulls suggesting that they likely fly entirely by the instruments.
I've managed to take a glimpse of one of the pilots. Once all Garmalons were wiped out one of their fighters approached me from the left and matched speeds. The canopy went black with visible hexagonal patterns before it became transparent revealing the pilot. She was wearing a flight suit in the same colors as her carrier and her helmet split into several pieces and retracted into the back of her seat. She had short dirty blonde hair, strangely small light blue eyes and freckles.
She smirked and waved before putting her helmet back on and veering her aircraft to the side as the canopy became opaque again. During the battle her jet shredded six enemy fighters and downed two bombers alone. How can someone so pretty be so deadly? I wonder if I will see her again…
Last edited: Oct 8, 2023
Log 23: "How did we get here?"Log 23: "How did we get here?"
"Look, I understand your desperate situation, but attempting to guilt trip me into helping you is counterproductive. If Contingent is to save you it would be because it is a right thing to do and not because you think that we should be responsible for where we landed via a blind jump which unintentionally exposed your last ditch effort for salvation to your enemies. If we had a choice we'd land literally anywhere else. Any further attempts to push this subject would result in the breakdown of our cooperation. Are we clear?"
-Agatha during the initial talks with United Nations of Earth
When writing fiction you can't account for all the possible effects of the new technologies and on their full impact on society and culture so it is understandable why older works lack certain features common in our modern reality. For instance, how many sci- fi stories lack the smartphones, personal computers, realistic use of VR/AR, generative AI and all the cultural phenomena stemming from that such as memes?
Star Trek has communicators and tricorders which have most functions of smartphones, but you couldn't find a single officer or civilian playing a "phone game", looking up memes or scrolling through social media in their off time and instead ending up getting bored the old fashioned way. The cultural impact couldn't be predicted until it became so ubiquitous that it would be weird not to include it in the new works or adaptations of old stories.
SBY is an old story, a VERY old story, the original series was made in 1974 and it even had plot points which couldn't be transferred to the 2012 reboot such as how Yamato crew had a beef with Andromeda being so automated and digitized instead of crewed and analog. The culture of the world I ended up in seems to be more like a result of someone in the past imagining the future rather than my modern world naturally progressing into this state. It is an unintentional alternative history.
For instance, while IRL smartphones were incredibly popular since 2007, here the concept of a smartphone flopped as a whole and instead their version of a phone ended up directly evolving from the older portable phones. Yes, everyone has one, but they have a fraction of the functions of our smartphones. They can call, video call and send text messages but they don't get high quality cameras, the internet browsers on them are limited in usability and there is no such thing as "app stores" where you can easily download tools or games.
They do have home computers, laptops and tablets but computer games ended up pretty heavily regulated at the start of their development and never formed into a huge entertainment market. In fact, it seems that there's a significant cultural bias against video games as something that is either for children or no- life addicts. Video games are not accepted as an art medium here on par with movies even though it has been almost two hundred years since they appeared.
Similar things occurred with memes and the internet in general. Rather than integrating the culture of memes and fandoms into mainstream, most of the adult population considers it a thing for young people and freaks, something you grow out of or something you should be ashamed of participating in if you are a productive member of society and older than 30. No one has managed to successfully launch a social network either. To quote the Contingent anthropologic task force report, "this is a 2000s normie future world".
There are some aspects that are somewhat familiar such as "idols", but they don't stream interactive content as if they were pre- internet idols. They are more like music stars or eye candy news providers rather than what I used to do. It is relatively common to have indie idols running news programs with coverage of only the immediate workplace or neighborhood which is helped somewhat by the local human physiology. SBY human women "visibly" age slower and thus appear in their early to mid 20s all the way until they are near 50.
There is also no neural net generated content or automation. Without mass adoption of the internet culture there was less attention from corporations seeking to predict and influence the consumers as they instead carved out a chunk of the internet only for businesses and institutions. With less collected data you can't run effective big data analysis which has prevented the development of deep learning and generative AI.
Their AI is based on direct neural emulation of animal and human derived brains welded into hardcoded directives resulting in expensive and fully self aware AGI which can't be perfectly copied to different hardware. Ironically, SBY humans managed to brute force their way to general intelligence by applying less finesse and sophistication and compensating with way more brute force calculation and custom designed neuromorphic hardware while Hail Mary Earth is still dealing with sapient but not sentient or self aware systems.
To note, while common discourse wiped out the subtle differences, sentient means "can experience pleasure or pain" like complex animals, sapient means "human equivalent complex thought" like reason, abstraction, creativity and so on while consciousness or self awareness is being aware of your existence. These things are correlated, but they are not directly linked.
Hail Mary AI can emulate having emotions through sapience (what is the likeliest emotional response) without actually experiencing things or being aware that things actually happen. Nothing physically stops you from making a neural net that feels, but as of now the only neural networks that were proven to genuinely feel were brain simulations of animals, networks which use animal brain architecture as a base or networks developed via evolutionary algorithms in simulated biospheres.
SBY locals still have a degree of "smart cities", but instead of people sharing their preferences unknowingly via the internet, the governments instead have mass public surveillance. This is not that effective because without deep learning image recognition you can only extract bare minimum useful information and you can't predict or even detect antisocial behavior since you can't put enough people or sapient AGI to watch everyone else. They are actually having quite a problem with that and terrorist attacks of a whole plethora of different extremist groups are unfortunately relatively common.
I should note that SBY humans are biologically distinct from my original or Hail Mary humanity. They are still Homo Sapiens, they work under the same biology and their genetics are similar enough for a human from SBY and a human from Hail Mary to successfully reproduce. However, they are different enough that they can't be considered to be simply different "races" or "ethnicities" while they are not different enough to be subspecies in biological sense.
To us they appear to have weak "animesque" features, but since there's no stylized filter they look much different from "anime characters". Their eyes are on average around 25% bigger. If you wanted to draw a Hail Mary human the head would be "5 eyes wide", SBY human head would be 4 eyes wide. It was somewhat awkward because to them we look almost like "inverse Grays" with uncannily small eyes. It was a simple matter to do a field modification of the diplomatic telerobots to look more like locals but it was not appreciated by the UN delegation. They tolerated it but appeared unnerved by our nature and capability to alter the appearances in relatively short order.
Other distinct features aren't so noticeable, they on average have less body hair, slightly "better looking" smoother skin with more collagen than in HM and they have statistically less common hereditary obesity (even accounting for wartime dietary restrictions) with ectomorph body type being almost three times more common. SBY women are genetically predisposed to have half a cup more in the chest region and the hourglass body type is almost twice as common as on Hail Mary Earth. SBY men are about 32% less likely to develop male pattern baldness, their facial structures are slightly less sensitive to testosterone resulting in more common "androgynous faces" and slightly less common sharp jawlines. Still, beyond just the eye proportions you wouldn't notice significant differences to my original humanity unless you do statistical studies or genetic sequencing.
Their history is also wildly different to that of our Earth with the split occurring around the year 2000, although less noticeable changes likely occurred way earlier. They entered a period that our anthropologists named "modern post-history" characterized by societal stabilization, economic advancements and peaceful merger between countries into regional blocs.
Certain events which happened IRL didn't occur here, there was no 9-11 and no war on terror, Putin was only elected once and Russia ended up as mostly functioning democracy aligned with the European Union, Covid hasn't occurred and there were no notable developments in the field of commercial spaceflight as it stayed a prerogative of governments. Beyond that the butterfly effect is so strong that it is unfeasible to mention all the discrepancies.
The first human mission to Mars via a spacecraft assembled conventionally in orbit occurred in 2026, but it progressed similarly to Apollo missions. Astronauts landed, did a bunch of science and returned within a year or two with no permanent settlements. This changed in 2111 when an alien spacecraft crash landed on Mars.
All alien crew was killed and there was no human presence on the planet at the time, but the ship carried an automated terraforming system which rapidly altered Mars' environment to that similar to Earth in just a decade. It was by no means shirt-sleeve, but atmospheric pressure and composition became breathable and temperatures approached those found in tundra environments on Earth.
Humanity by that point formed into six post- nation state agglomerations: Far East District centered around Japan, Korea, Oceania and Australia, European Union which now stretched all the way to Urals and took parts of northern Africa, Middle East which was surprisingly focused around what used to be India, Eurasia which went from Urals to the eastern parts of former Russia merged with most of former China, America stretching across both continents and Africa taking up all of its continent from Egypt all the way to former South African Republic.
The discovery of the alien spacecraft facilitated social integration of the strong regional alliances into giant federations and confederations which then merged into one huge confederation under the banner of the United Nations. I feel like realpolitik had to be really funky at the time for that to happen, but I'm dealing with a reality and not a fictional story so I have to take them at face value.
Terraformed Mars also allowed for the first human colonies to be formed to study the alien machinery and to add the Earth biosphere to stabilize the climate and make it self sufficient. Over the years colonies grew to hundreds of millions of people and light lag prevented maintenance of a coherent nation across interplanetary space which caused the "post-history" period to end.
The First Interplanetary War in 2164 saw the destruction of the fleet of interplanetary cyclers cutting off the movement of humans between Mars and Earth. The war had little repercussions to the UN citizens as it has simply recognized the independence of the Martian government and the only result of it was the severance of shipments in supplies and human migrants which is what Martians apparently wanted.
Humans born on Mars in the second generation started exhibiting certain cosmetic features which weren't present in any human ethnicity before, in particular red colored irises in combination of somewhat darker skin even though most Martian settlers came from Eurasian bloc. The Martian government has, of course, gone off the deep end with authoritarian nationalism and pushed on with reverse engineering of alien spacecraft and the rhetoric about the destruction of Earthlings. This resulted in the formation of the Martian Space Fleet.
In response, the UN became federalized and engaged in the creation of their own space navy using alien technology which could be acquired via espionage and from before Mars became independent resulting in the first Murasame and Kongo class ships. This is also when underground cities were built since the UN feared an equivalent of massed nuclear strike from the Martians.
The Second Interplanetary War was initiated by presumably Martian provocation in 2180 and it ended in 2183. Martians used orbital bombardment with laser weapons on civilian targets such as cities and farming centers on Earth and as a result once their government was defeated all Martians were forcefully moved to Earth and the Martian colony was abandoned. Mars was slowly losing habitability anyway, but the resettlement was mostly driven by the resentment from UN citizens. Martians were settled randomly in UN nations and intentionally spread broadly so that they couldn't easily form martian communities.
There is still some "racial profiling" as "marsoids" (a near-slur term for their ethnicity) are still thought of as cruel authoritarian war-criminals even though the current Martian young adults were children during the second interplanetary war and they didn't have the chance to maintain Martian culture. Martian red eyes are recessive and it is expected that they would no longer exist as an ethnicity within two to three generations. Let's just say that I'm appalled by this, but I won't let this be a reason for us to abandon these people.
Most of the reverse engineered alien technology relies on a material that humans call "cosmonite 90". Terrible name and no one could tell me why it is called that way since it is not a conventional isotope, but it is important and used everywhere. It is prized for its interactions with the "subspace" environment. Spaceships forgo rockets and instead run on something akin to subspace ramjets. It is also used in power plants such as fusion reactor containment, power routing systems, laser focal lenses and pumping mediums, particle and mass accelerators, nanofabricators, etc. It is even used in what can only be described as "subspace control surfaces" and "gravitational anchors" in direct parallel to aircraft and wet navy.
This material is relatively rare and doesn't naturally occur in sufficient concentrations on Earth to extract and after the Interplanetary Wars no human permanent settlement was permitted outside cislunar space resulting in at most town sized mining and research habitats across the solar system. With the start of the war with Garmillas in 2190 most of the mining stations were wiped out or evacuated to Earth resulting in shortages of the material and strict rationing for the military and life support systems.
UN representatives claim that Garmillas' fleet shot first and refused communications for years until they started making demands to surrender once the Earth environment became uninhabitable. I know that in the reboot humans fired first, but that might not be accurate to this reality. For instance, in the reboot the Yamato was updated to be broken in half as it was not known at the time of the original series, but in this reality there is only one chunk of Yamato sticking out of the dry mud at an angle. I mentioned that the Contingent considers Garmillas ecocide and xenocide as war crimes regardless of who shot first but the UN insisted on their version and I can't know for sure until I find direct evidence beyond the meta.
The current state of the humans is unenviable, out of 12 billion people only 2,4 billion survived in the overcrowded underground cities which were designed to house less than half as many. Food production was hastily expanded but it is strained resulting in calorie quotas and food riots but at least they didn't have to resort to starvation diets just yet.
Also these cities weren't planned to function in Venus- like environments, the main power production facilities are geothermal which rely on gradient of temperature between the surface and the mantle. With the rising surface temperatures they lost an order of magnitude worth of their power production efficiency and citizens periodically suffer through rolling blackouts as power is redirected to prioritized functions like temperature control, life support or industry.
This resulted in the UN hastily constructing power generators based around nuclear and fossil fuels (since there's still oxygen outside) but the know-how of fission power plant construction was lost over generations of accessible fusion power while their fusion plants rely on rationed cosmonite. At the same time remaining fossil fuel reserves are running dangerously low.
Low access to power in combination with overcrowding, working population loss and industry crunch results in insufficient maintenance of the underground city systems. It is expected that within about a year and a half first catastrophic failures would start occurring where whole cities would become uninhabitable. Hydroponic farms could collapse in an entire region, existing fusion generators can wear out, water and oxygen processors can fail or massive heat pumps keeping the temperatures livable can break. Any of those would result in everyone in the city dying out faster than replacement could be acquired.
In addition, within two years the known fossil fuel reserves would run out cutting the power supply of humanity by 40% and affecting even more maintenance and industry. The other problem is also alien plants that grow all across the Earth's surface. They produce highly potent neurotoxic gas which is heavier than air, they also pump cobalt deep into the soil and they've already penetrated upper layers of some of the underground cities forcing these layers to be sealed and abandoned as no known defoliant worked on them.
Essentially, in about a year and a half a "sudden death" timer would start where randomly humans would start losing 10 to 15% of their population and industry while survival of the human civilization beyond the next 5 years is infeasible. The surrender to Garmillas is not even considered due to reasons that I didn't expect. There's no propaganda that the aliens would just kill everyone regardless. Instead the psychological effect is similar to that in WW2 in Germany and Japan during strategic bombing campaigns. Everyone's depressed and knows that they will most likely lose the war and die but the process is impersonal enough that there is no large push for surrender. It feels more like a constant natural disaster rather than an invasion of a foreign power.
The problems facing us are twofold and one is much more pressing, but one at a time. First of all, I don't think that it would be possible to maintain the habitability of human cities indefinitely. While I can build powerplants, bootstrap food production and expand the infrastructure to house more people I doubt that I can maintain it for decades. Locals would be increasingly dependent on me and any errors would cause disastrous loss of life the longer I have to maintain the underground cities.
Yes, there's the Yamato plan, of course. Queen Starsha of the Iscandarian civilization has promised a "cosmo reversal" device (whatever that is) if a human starship manages to get to her home planet, but it is possible that my presence tipped the scales so much that Yamato won't survive the trip or Iscandarians won't provide the device due to my involvement. I have to prepare a plan B, if not several plans.
I need a way to evacuate humans somewhere safer even if temporarily and evacuation on the scale of billions is not simple. I can't just gate everyone to somewhere safe, the gates are vulnerable to sabotage which would be a threat both from the human and Garmillas sides. Mars is no longer easily breathable, no local infrastructure can be repurposed and SBY humans still don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole for… "cultural reasons". No other place in the star system is as habitable so it leaves sealed planetary or space habitats.
Any surface facility would have lower gravity than on Earth resulting in long term health complications but any hab that is pinpointed by the ayys would be destroyed by interplanetary missiles that can penetrate deeper than any bunker. This basically leaves the space habitats, but at least I can move and defend those. Unfortunately to make them I need a lot of materials and space launch infrastructure that as of yet has only existed in papers and simulations.
There's also the other Earth, but I'd consider moving them to Hail Mary only in the most severe case. When the Groombridge war started I shared the information about ROB's involvement and the peculiarities of my extraversal navigation so it won't be too much of a shock, but the general populace wasn't informed of that. In addition, 2,4 billion people is a lot, there is not enough housing or food production on Earth to accommodate them rapidly. It would take a lot of effort to feed, house and integrate everyone while preventing them from accidentally shipping in cosmonite or ending up in a conflict of interests.
There's also Krevati, the third planet in Homina system. The atmosphere is breathable for humans and radiation levels dropped to only a couple times the standard background, but it is a cratered wasteland covered in wreckage and bug skeletons. The most complex lifeforms are single celled and I expect that merely demonstrating such a world would raise some eyebrows, but I'll start the preparations on that side just in case.
The second and most pressing problem is Garmillas, also referred to as "Garmalons" "Gamalons" and "Gammies" by UN soldiers. Humans don't know who or what they are. In the original show and the reboot they are essentially imperialistic "alien humans" because all humanoid people in the galaxy were seeded by long gone precursors, but in the live action movie they were an alien hive mind so I can't discount that possibility. I need to test various approaches and technologies against them and salvage anything I can get my hands on for analysis and reverse engineering.
The time-sensitive bit is that they are expected to hit any known force concentration on Earth within one to two months with an "interplanetary missile", a guided nuclear weapon of terrifying power. Why they aren't using multiple smaller nukes is beyond me, but each of these bombs is like a quarter of a dinosaur killer. A direct hit would collapse an underground city, evaporate Yamato construction site or destroy the commander chassis.
Locals also found them near impossible to intercept for unspecified reasons. In short, I have to have the interceptors ready on record time and I've already ordered maximum bootstrapping effort. I can't afford to just move out of the way because I landed almost exactly on top of one of the major underground cities.
The UN wasn't happy with me demanding exact locations of their cities and any mineral veins that they were tapping, but they conceded after a couple days. I needed to know where not to put the extractors. It turned out that a few of the deposits that I've discovered were in fact upper sections of the shelters. If I thoughtlessly plopped some MEXes there it would've been very embarrassing for me and deadly for the inhabitants.
The Earth's resources wouldn't be enough. Yes, Earth is the densest planet in the solar system and yes it has the richest and easiest to exploit metal deposits due to millennia of water concentrating useful minerals downstream. Unfortunately, it also has scared desperate humans and it gets bombed on the regular. I'll have to send fabbers to Venus and Mercury to establish the resource base needed to build the multiversal gate and fleets to protect it.
It won't take a genius to see that hostile rapidly replicating machines are not a great thing to have in the backyard so I expect that Garmillas would attempt to shoot down our interplanetary missions as a priority and they would bomb landing sites before they have a chance to build defenses. This means that I need to launch large waves of fabbers supported by warships directly from the ground… which means I'm forced to use Orions and not minimags. I'll also have to replace most lasers but luckily the designs are sufficiently modular for a near drag and drop of alternative systems such as macrons and particle beams.
According to the UN, Garmillas appear to use FTL jumps in system, but for an unknown reason they only apply it to raiding forces. Most likely humans managed to fool them into thinking that they have more ships than they actually do as they managed to win two pyrrhic victories above Mars and one above Earth. I'll need to be ready for small harassing forces popping up with no warning, but large enough movements might attract main Garmillas forces.
I will have a window soon, however. Iscandarians have sent their representative a couple years earlier with plans for ship systems required to utilize a "wave motion core", but the core itself is destined to arrive within a month. The UN is sending basically every single one of their space worthy ships in a massive diversion at Pluto masked as an attempt to destroy the Garmillas base in the region. This is the main reason why I wasn't pounded into the ground by hundreds of warships from orbit, the ships that went up against me had mechanical issues incompatible with deep space travel.
These ships are going to get massacred and I have nothing that I can send to help them. They are already positioned in deep space with the attack planned on January 17 which is just under a month from now. Pluto is 7 light hours away and at 50g my ships could get there within about 3 days but I don't have the catom supply to fuel enough ships to matter. An interplanetary missile of my own would get there within 1.2 days but I can't guarantee the destruction of the enemy base and Garmillas response would likely be… proportional.
Garmillas forces have deciphered human language and thus I could try to draw attention by making a public declaration of war, but it would be counterproductive to the diversion as it would draw attention to the inner solar system and by extension to Mars which is the rendezvous site for the second Iscandarian visitor. This might still end up as a useful tool as Garmillas in the show have a "roman warfare" thing where they "technically only wage defensive wars" and they did shoot me first so I should draw attention and potentially destabilize them politically long term.
This unfortunately means that there's no practical method to save the first UN fleet and a lot of good people would die soon. But their sacrifices won't be in vain as Contingent will undergo the most rapid industrial ramp up in our history. The margins are tight and they're about to get tighter…
AWCU escort Lightning 1-1 sensor log, operator: Commander Air Group 1, Jane Hive. 24th December 2198
Contingent fighter sits in a large hangar next to another two identical craft and a larger personnel transport VTOL. The rest of the hangar space is full of UN fighter craft and personnel. They seem to mostly avoid the contingent assets, but a few engineers are curiously nosing around the various design elements of the CTG aircraft. Contingent assets look as if they have next to no seams or welds, almost as if they are monolithic and forged whole out of a material with pearl- like sheen.
There are only two Contingent representatives on site, the rest were long gone to accompany the diplomats. Both appear human in size and shape and both are wearing white and orange flight/space suits with armored elements and light exoskeleton joints. The suits are streamlined enough for it to be quite obvious that both Contingent pilots were women. Both are wearing helmets with featureless visors and holsters with magazines and bullpup PDWs can be seen strapped to their belt and upper right thigh.
The one with number 2 printed on the suit's helmet and shoulder is walking around the transport aircraft and inspecting it while the other instance branded with number 1 is seen curiously observing a type 99 Cosmo Falcon with gray color scheme as opposed to most other Falcons that have primarily blue paint jobs. It has large red triangles painted next to the wing control surfaces and the fin has a black triangle with a Japanese symbol painted in it in white.
The Contingent pilot doesn't seem to notice that another figure approaches behind her. It is a UN pilot wearing a flight uniform and a swamp green bomber jacket over it. The jacket has "Cosmo Falcon" written across the back circling a large insignia depicting a falcon. The pilot is a young man with a very short haircut and a thin scar going through the left brow and up his forehead taking out some hairline.
"Look but don't touch" he says as he is around 10 steps away from the number 1, she turns away from the "space fighter" to face the pilot. "Type-99 space attack fighter aircraft, aka Cosmo Falcon. This one is mine. You here to sightsee?" he asks rhetorically.
The Contingent pilot wiggles her right hand in a "so-so" motion and replies "Different technologies, different designs. I'm honestly surprised that you use so many manned aircraft, we've long switched to drones."
"Drones?" the UN pilot asks and raises an eyebrow.
"Robotic remotely operated or autonomous units, most of the Contingent armed forces consists of those, although we now mostly refer to only smaller units as "drones". Oh, where are my manners, I'm Jane Hive, Commander Air Group 1. The pilot over there is Dareia, she's CAG 2." she says as she points at her colleague, in response to which CAG 2 waves back before returning to her devices.
"Lieutenant junior grade Saburo Kato. I believe we've met"
CAG 1: "Yeah, it is nice to meet you face to face, Tiger One. Well, for a limited degree of "face", I'm told that most of the people here consider our facial features a bit uncanny. I hope this helps…" she says as the helmet visor goes transparent revealing the freckled face of the pilot. Her eyes, however, are now proportioned like those of the locals
Lt. Kato "That's…"
CAG 1: "A screen, yes. I didn't have the time to fix the face beforehand, sorry"
Lt. Kato: "It is unnecessary, you shouldn't change your appearance so drastically just because of what people might think."
CAG 1 sighs, unseals the latch on the neck and takes off her helmet causing quite a few of the staff to look in her direction. Below the helmet she was mostly the same, but the eyes were 25% smaller. "Well, you didn't take a step back so I'll take it as a compliment. But seriously, it is not as big of a deal as for other humans. We design our own appearances and we can alter them with relative ease."
Lt. Kato stands silent for a few moments and replies "If you say so. Which one is yours by the way?"
Jane shrugs and says "Oh, they all are". Kato does a double take.
Jane giggles and continues: "I'm serious, I'm not technically the commander of the first air group, I am literally the first air group. I operate all of the air wing at once." She claps twice and the nearest Lightning's cockpit becomes "transparent" revealing a bunch of sensors on a turret behind the "glass". The sensor "eye" turns towards Jane and then follows her hand in perfect sync. "The fighter is smart enough to navigate, maneuver and engage specific targets on its own, if that is not enough I can take one over manually or another instance can show up to assist remotely. I guess being able to think at arbitrary high rate also helps"
Lt Kato: "Aren't you supposed to be humans from parallel Earth?"
Jane: "Yep, why can't we be both? Used to be human, ended up as a machine one day. Quick tip, careful with the android girls, there's some heavy machinery in here" she says with a wink
Log 24: "Your surrender is very important to us, please call again later"Log 24: "Your surrender is very important to us, please call again later"
Well, I can officially say that a scramble with under a month before the deadline and evolutionary optimization algorithms do wonders. We've managed to rapidly assemble the resource base on Earth sufficient to barely supply the upcoming launch of the industrial seeds to Mercury and Venus. This was in part facilitated by the insane quantities of cobalt dust on the surface which reduced the potential crunch related to mineral deposits. The dust gathering MEXes and atmospheric filters merely needed to be sufficiently spaced out to avoid local depletion and to not present a clustered set of targets for orbital strikes.
I am still working in the fog regarding the true capabilities of Garmillas ships. UN has provided their records on the performance and engagement ranges, but it is still insufficient and paints the picture where I might end up either completely overpowered or my ships would be splattered on contact. I hope it is the former, but knowing ROB it would most likely be both or the latter.
Local space engagement ranges are below 10 megameters and up to basically visual range. It is almost close enough for macrokinetics to be useful. For Contingent this is beyond close range, our spacecraft are made to fight at the range of several light seconds, anything closer would result in both sides torn apart near instantly with next to no chance to dodge. Since Gammies are near immune to lasers and love micro-FTL jumps we adapted by replacing laser weapons with neutralized particle beams, macron accelerators and more missiles while adjusting the turret tracking to have an option to be faster at the cost of some accuracy which is not quite as important at such close ranges.
Ships on either side of the conflict are "belly landers" and mount weapons directly above or below the "horizontal plane". The primary batteries are superfiring and have limited elevation necessitating powerful rotation optimized reaction control thrusters to turn the whole ship enough for the turrets to track. Essentially, both Garmilas and UN spacecraft have "blind zones" directly above, below and sometimes behind them where they can't engage with their big guns. The entire ship rolls to engage targets above or below their effective engagement plane.
In comparison, our ships have between 3 and 8 radially mounted turrets with full elevation capability per weapon emplacement. They can all track at the same time only when in a cone in front of the spacecraft but two to four pairs in the same weapon group can engage in any other direction and capacitor banks are optimized to pump extra power to the half of the ship that has the line of sight to engage when broadsiding.
Both sides of the conflict have missiles, but Gammies have significantly better ECM. A human nuke tipped missile can cripple a Garmillas capital ship if it manages to land a direct hit and many of their lower end ships have no point defenses, but they can rarely reliably track through the jamming and have to rely on either extremely expensive multispectral guidance packages or limited tracking with most of the trajectories precalculated before launch. Thus missiles are used almost like torpedoes in WW2 where you get the best result at closer ranges and missile destroyers try to get into the heat of battle instead of unloading at standoff ranges like Contingent and Hail Mary missile focused spacecraft. I don't yet know how well their ECM would work on our own guidance systems.
Both sides also utilize strike craft where humans have near parity in performance which is why Earth primarily relies on hidden bases with transatmospheric fighters to take down Garmillas patrols in cislunar space. Attempts to create a dedicated carrier didn't go much past a single Kongo conversion which was lost with all hands during the second battle for Mars and since then there weren't enough resources for further experiments.
Human red pulse laser point defenses are sufficient to down Garmillas strike craft and missiles with some reliability but they rely on the volume of fire rather than accuracy. In comparison, Contingent laser blisters might as well be snipers with aimbot. Humans had to up the power output of the individual PD pulse to reliably penetrate the thin reflective armor coating on Gammie fighters but human fighters could handle them with missiles and kinetic autocannons well enough without modifications.
I am not sure how effective our armor technology would be against Garmillas shipborne weapons. The unknown kind of particle beam that managed to hit the Commander unit is optimized to engage surface targets so it is not representative of the weapons utilized to engage capital ships.
The UN thinks that Gammies use a weapon similar to their "Shock Cannon" which is used as a spinal mount on human battleships and cruisers but can be scaled down to fit into turrets and even replace autocannons in fighters at the cost of damage output. Unfortunately they didn't share the blueprints yet so all we know for now is that they are some kind of antimatter particle beam weapon.
The time crunch resulted in some corner cutting, ship armor had to be downgraded from several meters of composite plating to a two-layer slab of dia-nacre with three meter thick "quick pour" poly-adamant underlayer resulting in a higher tech version of the old WW2 naval armor designs. We also can't afford to print larger vessels so we'd only have destroyers and cruisers. Then again, the UN considers a barely over 200 meter long Kongo to be a battleship which is smaller than our DDs so this should be plenty.
The plan is rather simple and facilitated by the fortuitous position of Mercury and Venus at this time. It is not perfect, but Mercury is at least not on the other side of the Sun. The fleet which would consist of a dozen transport ships accompanied by 140 escorts would set off on a direct brachistochrone burn for Venus at 10 gee for the economy to handle the load. Half of the transports would aerobrake into Venus and scatter thousands of specially engineered fabbers on its surface while the rest of the fleet would slingshot at low orbit and head for Mercury.
If engaged, the ships can temporarily boost to full 50 gee acceleration using the limited onboard propellant which should provide some limited advantage or discourage attempts at intercepting the fleet. In the worst case we can jettison the fabbers mid flight and attempt unprotected aerobraking but this would tank the economy short term and depending on where we're intercepted the number of surviving landers would vary.
Now, the question is the launch time. Initially we planned to launch the moment the UN fleet engaged Garmillas fleet stationed around Pluto which should tie them down and prevent them from sending much in my direction. On the other hand, if we launched a couple days early they might send a detachment against my forces and that would reduce the number of Gammies that the UNCF First Fleet needs to fight which might save some of them.
This might be more than what we could handle, but even if this wave failed it is not the end of the world. As I watch a half kilometer tall bullet shape of a Contingent heavy cruiser lifting off on top of a Super Nexus booster and then switch to the Orion pulses when it is almost out of view I can guess that the only right choice was obvious in hindsight. "Whatever makes it easier to sleep at night", huh, a bit underwhelming, but I think it is a good motto to have for now.
Record PLAY: 17th January 2199, PEF Spacy battlegroup Alpha. First Battle for Earth - Venus interplanetary gap
Contingent forces:
Plowshare 1-6: David Drake class interplanetary cross-interface logistics craft, Orion drive mod, Venus optimized FOB lander payload
Plowshare 7-12: David Drake class interplanetary cross-interface logistics craft, Orion drive mod, Mercury optimized FOB lander payload
Cragg 1-5: Dan Cragg class heavy cruiser, Orion drive mod, Mark 1 Garmillas war refit
Campbell 1-30 : Jack Campbell class multirole cruiser, Orion drive mod, Mark 1 Garmillas war refit
Sherman 1-50: David Sherman class missile destroyer, Orion drive mod, Mark 1 Garmillas war refit
Black 1-55 : David Black class point defense destroyer (named after a ToughSF writer), Orion drive mod, Mark 1 Garmillas war refit
Garmillas Empire forces:
Golf CA contact 1-3: Destoria-class Astro Heavy Cruiser
Golf CL contact 1-11: Kelkapia-class High Speed Astro Cruiser
Golf DD contact 1-42: Kripitera-class Astro Destroyer
Video start:
The video is in a form of integrated record similar to the one used for Isildur's combat footage. Multiple sensor feeds and data sources are integrated into a coherent image that can be navigated freely by the viewer. The primary footage comes from the fleet's command virch with most other feeds coming from sensors, cameras and telescopes mounted on various ships in the fleet. Contingent Orion drives work at the rate of half hertz to tens of hertz which necessitates the application of a seizure filter. Also note that virch's time rate is altered dynamically to allow for instant decision making and coordination between the instances.
The virch environment represents a much larger, better lit and somewhat more sci- fi looking command center. In the middle of the room is a large circle on the floor which projects a colored volumetric display into the air. The room itself is split into four "petals" lined with transparent spherical chambers both at the level of the room and in the indentation in the floor like on imperial star destroyers in star wars. These are for the avatars of the captains of individual vessels. They are technically in their own virches with their crews but they can freely switch between the virtual environments as required and are aware of both.
The large holo projector in the middle is occupied by six senior officers wearing white and orange Contingent spacy uniforms. There are almost a dozen other officers moving around in other roles, but these are of the highest rank and are more important during the following events.
First one is identified as "Spacy Rear Admiral (OF-7) Noel" by their metatag and they are too mechanical to tell if they are supposed to be a man or a woman. Their uniform is less clothes and more of a paint job over the body which is somewhere between a light power armor and a spacesuit with the function of the face being handled by the helmet's opaque faceplate with very simplified eyes and mouth projected as arrangements of large green pixels.
Second one is identified as "Intelligence officer Dian" (Indonesian version of the name, pronounced as Daian), the least humanoid- looking person of the group. They lack legs and their torso floats vertically in midair. They can be described as a cross between EVA from WALL-E and TARS from Interstellar, a single robotic head-torso hybrid with two near featureless "arms" with hidden manipulators in them. Their Contingent insignia has a black background similar to the ones used by CMRO.
Third one is identified as "Signals officer Caron", the second least humanoid person in the room. She is using a semi- amorphous body resulting in a semi-transparent "slime girl" appearance. The simulated material that she's made of is firm enough to allow for her to form legs and not drip "slime", but it is based around virtual scripts rather than real swarm robotics and thus won't work outside of the virch.
Fourth is "Operations officer Aster". They are almost offensively indistinct. They have black hair and androgynous face and body almost perfectly engineered to be forgettable. Fifth and sixth are avatars of Agatha and Athena, both with their normal appearances and wearing officer uniforms. They are technically a bit overranked to be in a fleet of this size, but when the local Contingent presence is low and the mission is important enough the "contingent command staff" sometimes gets involved personally in command or observation roles.
Agatha looks away from the hologram and glances at one of the officers present. "Huh, didn't think that we'd need a "civilian- military cooperation officer" where we're pretty sure there are no civvies left." This prompts a few chuckles from the command staff including the officer in question who replies with "We are basing our military organization on NATO standard, First. Continent Command guidelines, Post-Groombridge war 2065 edition. I hope I'm not needed but it is a matter of principle." Ag smiles and nods in response.
The lighting in the room blinks and shifts from white to orange following two loud beeps.
Intel Dian: "CONTACT. Powerful Cherenkov radiation and gravitational wave signatures at 12 megameters, four o-clock exactly on the ecliptic. Our telescopes are focusing… Positive identification, Garmillas ships warping in. Positive identification on heavy cruisers, fast cruisers and destroyers. They are still coming… that's almost half of Pluto's reported fleet strength, 56 ships. They are matching our acceleration and moving in parallel. Designating them as Golf contacts."
Adm. Noel: "That's well within extreme close range, they are macron fodder."
Agatha: "Hold fire and remember the plan. We want them to shoot first and our goal during this engagement is to assess the effectiveness of our weapon systems."
Adm. Noel nods: "All systems check. Full combat readiness. Turrets are to track and lock but you have NO authorization to engage. Systems report."
Ops. Aster: "Reporting fleetwide status. Orion drives are green and cycling, full thrust on standby. SMES capacitor banks are all green and charged. Coolant systems green and powered, combat ETHER radiators extended and active, secondary graphene nanofluidic radiators extended, active coolant sprayers armed. Heatsinks green and pre-cooling to operational temperatures. Redundant sensor arrays green and reporting full fleetwide integration. ECM systems green and on standby. Decoys green and on standby. DamCon drones charged and on high alert."
Ops. Aster: "Main caliber macron batteries green, loaded and tracking. Main caliber neutralized synchrotron cannons green, charged and tracking. Spinal mount neutralized particle accelerators green and on standby. PD dustguns are green and on standby. PD blue laser blisters green and on standby. Missiles: electromagnetic launcher catapults green and on standby, all SNAKs green and on standby, all nuclear lances green and on standby, all hard UV "gas cans" green and on standby, all conventional shrapnel missiles green and on standby, all missile interceptors green and on standby. All combat systems green, we're as ready as we'll ever be."
Signals Caron: "We're being hailed, Golf CA-2 contact is radioing with SBY UN communication protocols"
A window opens in the hologram screen with "Incoming transmission: Golf CA-2" along with the moving wiggly line to signify that it is audio only. "Attention Teronoid fleet, surrender immediately"
Agatha looks at Athena: "… Teronoid? Wasn't their word for humans "Teron"?"
Athena: "Maybe they think that we're AI made by humans?"
Agatha: "That's possible… and reasonable from their perspective, I think their own robots were called Garmiroids, this probably supports this as 2199 continuity rather than LA. The scene is yours."
Athena pulls out a transparent piece of glass the size and shape of a smartphone, taps on it once and it becomes opaque with the sign of a microphone crossed out with a countdown.
Signals Caron: "Ready to transmit, ma-am. 3… 2… 1…"
Athena starts her speech but her face grows more amused as she continues: "Attention Garmillas vessels, this is the Contingent heavy cruiser "Dan Cragg". We have received your demand for surrender, and unfortunately Contingent armed forces are not capable of accommodating any Garmillas prisoners of war at this time. While the Contingent collective is at a functional state of war with the Garmillas Empire after the unprovoked attack on our forward deployed industry hub, the declaration of war has not been provided by the Primus Inter Pares as of yet. Your surrender is important to us. Please try again after the official declaration is transmitted or a form of de- escalation is attempted."
Signals Caron: "Transmission ended. I don't quite understand why we're doing this."
Agatha: "This should win us ten or twenty seconds for extra heatsink precooling and it gives us plausible deniability if they fire first. I kind of wish we had the view of their commander's expression right now."
Intel Dian: "… Golf contacts are on intercept course, they are closing in and their weapons are tracking. 11 megameters, 10 megameters, 8 megameters… ALERT: infrared and ionizing radiation signature spikes on golf contacts. Confirming missile launch trails from all contacts. Detecting broadband radio and microwave frequency jamming."
The lights in the room switch to red and an alert siren is blared for a few moments before shutting off.
Adm. Noel: "Alright, we do as we planned. Jam their asses and fire all the UV cans! Let's see how they can handle something harsher than optical frequency lasers."
Ops. Aster: "Confirming hits on Contingent craft! Cragg-2, Campbell-12, 14, 15, 18 and Black-42 have been hit by enemy fire. Black-42 is lost, direct penetration into pulse unit storage, the chemical explosives in nukes cooked off. Campbell 14 reports moderate damage, turret 1 and 4 disabled. Campbell 18 reports severe damage, capacitor bank hit and cooked off. Drives are active but they can't fire. Campbell 12 and 15 report armor penetration but no critical internal damage. Cragg-2 reports no penetration, 67% armor thickness lost on impact site. All damaged ships rotating to expose fresh armor"
As she says so, one of the captain models flashes red and goes dark to signify the destruction of their ship. They curse under their breath, wave to the command staff and disconnect from the virch.
Agatha: "What the fuck are they firing?"
Intel Dian: "Unknown kind of energy weapon. Incandescent red objects that propagate at 1% to 2% of the speed of light. Likely unfeasibly dense particle beam packets or large barrages of macrons. Damage pattern similar to the orbital bombardment weapon. Simulations suggest that a heavy ion beam with such density won't be stable over any significant ranges, but it appears quite coherent regardless. Enemy targeting systems leave much to be desired, barely a third of shots reached their targets."
Ops. Aster: "Reporting, all 1800 gas core nuclear lasers are in the void, synchronized and tracking. Confirming successful evaporations."
The direct camera feed from one of the ships that is periodically illuminated with bright white flashes from the Orion drives shows as it jettisons swarms of proportionally tiny cylinders. These cylinders use cold gas puffs to rotate on target before they start glowing orange and then disappear in flashes of purple all at once. Simultaneously dozens of purple flashes appear in the distance. The camera zooms in and reveals a green Garmillas ship with large incandescent orange spots on its armor where it was hit by lasers.
Ops. Aster: "Confirming hits, Garmillas reflective armor is 82% reflective against hard ultraviolet rays. Fourteen ships have signatures consistent with significant thermal accumulation in the armor, getting spectroscopic readings of the composition. Two enemy destroyers are losing engine power."
Athena: "These things can penetrate battleship grade armor, and they barely tickle their destroyers… That's orders of magnitude more reflective than even our UV mirrors in nanochip fabs, great. Macron time it is, fire the muskets for ants."
Adm. Noel: "All primary Macron batteries fire!"
Feed switches to the camera mounted on one of Contingent's heavy cruisers. Its guns are pointed at some target way beyond visual range. Lines of incandescent red thunder past the ship barely visible for a couple frames but rarely getting anywhere actually close. The turret has a single thick barrel lined with wraparound radiators, it looks proportionally almost like a thick tree trunk rather than naval artillery. Radiators flash incandescent red as energy is dumped into the weapon and the barrel exhales a thin cloud of luminous white gas, the true payload too fast and tiny to see.
Camera switches to enemy tracking telescopes depicting one of the Kripitera class destroyers. A flash occurs close to the nose of the ship and the armor plating visibly buckles. The glowing bits on its surface flutter and the drive fails momentarily. Second flash is seen on the aft, two thirds of the way to the engine and that explosion tears the spacecraft into two pieces flinging both into a spin. Shortly something cooks off in the larger section of the ship which is soon obliterated in a massive white flash.
Ops. Aster: "Confirming hits. 79% accuracy, enemy ECM is significantly degrading our targeting solutions. Fissile macron anti ship batteries are moderately effective. Enemy destroyer armor insufficient to resist the direct strike, 8 enemy DDs completely destroyed. Enemy cruiser armor partially resists macron batteries. Two CLs are assumed to have critical damage, three CLs have moderate damage. Enemy heavy cruiser armor can resist macron batteries, confirming armor penetration on two CA-s, light internal damage expected. Enemy power plants are either fail- deadly or intentionally go critical upon ship destruction, salvage quality expected to be low"
Ops. Aster: "Attention, enemy missiles are entering the inner effective range of CIWS batteries. Tracking patterns suggest that our ECM is affecting their ability to track our ships. Accuracy degradation of enemy guided weapons is expected at 23%. Point defenses engaging. Anti missiles firing, laser blisters firing, Testudo dustgun CIWS firing. Enemy missiles are extremely vulnerable to our PD fire, their evasion patterns ineffective. First missile wave completely intercepted. Enemy is launching a second wave of missiles, we can intercept their missiles almost the moment they leave the launch tubes, second wave completely intercepted"
Ops. Aster: "Garmillas fleet changes heading, they are rapidly gaining distance. Their anti-ship batteries are cycling almost twice as fast as ours. We've just lost three point defense DDs and two multirole cruisers, five other cruisers report moderate to critical damage that affects offensive performance."
Adm. Noel: "Fire cancer cannons and first wave of missiles, prepare for the spinal mount swing maneuver"
The camera switches to a position next to a main caliber synchrotron turret. Like with laser cannons, most of the weapon is deep inside the ship so the turret looks snub-nosed. As it fires the wraparound radiators on the gun glow red and nearby vents open and spray coolant into outer space, but you can't actually see it "fire" as the beam is invisible. The camera turns to the rest of the fleet which are so spread out that they are barely visible beyond nuclear flashes from the drives. What can be seen is hundreds of bright lights leaving tiny flashing dots of the ships as missiles are unloaded into the void and stream towards the enemy fleet.
Ops. Aster: "Aye. Missile launchers cycling, synchrotron batteries firing. Detecting Bremsstrahlung radiation signatures of successful particle beam hits. Enemy armor of all types seems at least partially resistant to particle beams. Detecting electronic failures on enemy ships in impact zones. Cruisers least affected, destroyers almost disabled on impact. One DD cooked off after a direct hit."
Ops. Aster: "Missiles far enough to not affect the allied fleet, cruise stage dropped. Terminal stages active. Missile tracking partially affected by enemy broadband jamming, fly by wire systems and multispectral guidance heads are effective. Detecting SNAK pulses, detecting Casaba pulses, detecting bomb pumped UV pulses. Wow… we… just made these people into housing"
Ag narrows her eyes on the hologram: "… Well, we can tick off genocide from our todo list… holy shit."
Ops. Aster: "Massive losses on the Garmillas side: two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers and 29 DDs annihilated. Last heavy cruiser and all remaining light cruisers are moderately to heavily damaged. They are fleeing. Gravitational wave detectors going off, they are likely charging their FTL."
Adm. Noel: "While they are in the inner system they can interfere with the wave motion core recovery. All batteries fire. All units with spinal mounts, swing maneuver."
The camera on the heavy cruiser stops seeing the flashes as massive verne engines burn and rotate the ship towards the enemy fleet. The turrets on its hull continue to track and cycle as the angle changes, but once the ship is facing the enemy it can fire all weapons on all sides. Much smaller RCS clusters adjust the ship's heading followed by a thin white lightning bolt firing off from the ship's nose. Over a dozen similar flashes are seen in the periphery.
Ops. Aster: "… three DDs jumped out in the direction of Jupiter, that's currently near the opposite direction from Mars. One DD suffered FTL misjump and was smeared by tidal forces. All other ships are fragmenting and cooking off. We wiped them out."
Athena: "Excellent. Not sure what they were fishing for, we had 2.5 times the numbers advantage. I guess the UN considers that they need 10 times the numbers advantage but still. Launch all applicable drones, I want everything that's not bolted down in our holds, and for everything else don't forget the cutters. Let's make x-com feel inadequate with their reverse engineering efforts."
Well, I'd consider the operation a success. The Garmillas detachment which attacked our fleet was wiped out and we know that some of our weaponry is effective against their technologies and doctrine. Our missiles are extremely effective and macrons are good enough, but we might as well drop all lasers except the point defenses. Particle beams are hit and miss, they fry some of their electronics but we need at least a spinal mount cancer cannon to penetrate enemy cruiser grade armor. Macron cannons are much more effective for occupying the same primary caliber turret mount.
Salvage results were limited, something in Garmillas ships is fail- deadly and almost completely fries anything inside them once they get critical damage. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a side effect of our weapon technology. There were no bodies, intact electronics or mechanisms which could be recovered, but we managed to get material samples.
Analysis would take some time, but we now know that their armor consists of novel metamaterial which contains a large proportion of rare earth metals and small quantities of cosmonite embedded in a novel type of steel nanolaminate. The armor's macrostructure is primitive, it consists of a thin rare earth rich coating followed by a homogenous layer with lower proportion of rare earth component which explains their vulnerability to kinetic weapons.
Still it is an incredibly good thermal insulator, it radiates heat anomalously quickly and it has incredibly high vaporization energy which would make it resistant to laser weapons even without the reflectivity effect. Speaking of which, tests show that in violation of how optics are supposed to work, material's reflectivity is dependent not on the wavelength but on the total energy of the light. It also doesn't become any less reflective even as armor evaporates which is why mirror armor has never been used practically against lasers by Contingent.
The effect also affects charged particles acting as "magnetic mirror" against particle beam weapons and most natural sources of charged particle radiation, however the effect is much weaker than with lasers. This still turns Garmillas ships essentially invincible against nearly any laser weapon that is not measured in tens of megatons of TNT equivalent and any particle beam weapon which we could mount in a ship turret.
Their missiles are much more vulnerable. Even though they are coated with the same armor material, it is a thin coating less than a millimeter thick which rapidly evaporates exposing the conventional hull. We expect that fighter craft are similar, if better armored. As such we will be using a combination of interceptor missiles, laser blisters and point defense macrons in case just lasers won't cut it well enough against fighter craft.
It is a shame that we couldn't recover one of their cannons, power systems or FTL drives. If they keep exploding like that then we might run out of samples in the solar system and end up forced to travel at STL speeds in hopes of finding something in nearby systems. This means that we need a way to capture their assets without destroying them. Particle beams disable electronics but they also can trigger the cook off, so the only other option is to force surrender or board them.
Boarding usually won't be practical against ships with active weapons and thrusters, but they fight at extremely close ranges and their PD and jammers are inferior to the point where we could reliably get missiles to point blank range. A missile- like espatier drone delivery system might end up working and we can afford insane casualties if this means getting a warp drive.
In any case, we've successfully dropped off the fabber payloads on Venus and Mercury and our local presence is rapidly growing. Interestingly, it seems that humans had a small colony on Mercury supplying materials for construction of a large energy collecting and beaming satellite cluster in orbit, but it was destroyed at some point during the conflict.
Their solar panels are kind of terrible in comparison to the Hail Mary's state of the art, but their laser beaming system is quite advanced. They use a novel gas phase pumping medium with significant cosmonite admixture which is contained at 160 GPA… which kind of explains why they call their shipborne weapons as "pressurized lasers". They also have a very interesting focusing system also reliant on cosmonite to create a "standing gravitational wave" and use it as an adaptive lens. Unfortunately, their laser technology is reliant on cosmonite to work and thus is highlighted as "yellow tech" in the blueprints with cosmonite itself as red. I guess cosmonite might be easily replaceable by other materials and technologies we might encounter.
In any case, I hope the butterfly effect wasn't too bad as the fleet facing Operation-M was cut in half by my presence. From what the UN has told me, they've lost two thirds of the First fleet while in the show they lost all but one ship. Still, it is considered a strategic victory as the Iskandarian spacecraft has entered the solar system unimpeded and has successfully reached Mars while Gammies were occupied around Pluto. Our long range scanners have detected an explosion in the upper atmosphere of the red planet, but we won't know for sure if the delivery was successful until the remnants of the first fleet recover the operatives on its surface.
The UN fleet managed to detect a launch of the interplanetary missile as it passed their holding position before the "first battle for Pluto". I guess we now know why the missile is so hard to intercept. For one, it is ice cold and almost invisible unless you know where to look while actively moving at constant 1% c towards Earth. UN sensors can detect it at about 1.5 light seconds giving very little warning. We could optically track it, but only when we knew where to look as we didn't have the sufficient interplanetary sensor array to track everything in the system just yet.
The second reason as to why it is so hard to intercept comes to the fact that it is armored like a battleship. The first line of defense was extreme range single use hard UV laser powered by a two gigaton nuclear warhead. Even though it was a direct hit, the interplanetary missile was intact. Well, their resistance to lasers is known but it was worth a shot. We had about a dozen SNAKs powered by similar warheads, but after the missile displayed the ability to track and avoid the first SNAK projectile it was decided to keep them for the last line of defense.
Instead we launched a destroyer at it. Well, a destroyer sized missile bus with an Orion drive accelerating at constant 50 gee and capable of matching the missile's own acceleration. It was full of kinetic interceptors and less obscenely powerful SNAKs waiting to be deployed at the closest approach. A day after launch we had a successful intercept around the orbit of Jupiter to the complete jubilation of the humans. It was apparently the first time one of these bastards was intercepted.
In recognition of our efforts against Garmillas forces, we've officially managed to secure a military alliance with the UN. We've provided certain technologies such as the bacterial farms, food printers, material science and medical advancements, advanced nuclear fission designs and some of the spaceborne weapon developments, but we argued that some technologies require social and governmental policies needed to handle them. High level automation, advanced neural network AI and clanking replicators are the ticket to paradise levels of abundance, but they can just as easily induce living hell or entirely collapse the society. Social and legal policies for those are essentially a part of the "safety manual" and I won't be the cause of a cyberpunk dystopia if I can help it. The release of select technologies would be postponed until UN governments implement the required legal practices to handle them.
In turn, we received the blueprints behind some of their cosmonite technologies, especially the engines and shock cannons. The latter ended up being somewhere between a particle accelerator and an extreme form of macron cannon. A small antiproton payload is suspended in nanoscopic penning traps and projected via a hybrid magnetic and gravitational field accelerator at 1%c. The "antimatter munition factory" is fully self-contained, heavy on cosmonite use, takes up the entire breech section of the gun and is difficult to scale down.
This explains why Garmillas weapons fit the damage model for a heavy ion beam while packing way more punch. Honestly, this feels like an insane overkill for what it does, macrons with fissile payloads or even without are way simpler technologically as 0.01c is insane for a tiny kinetic projectile. The blueprints are a generation outdated to their better designs due to our unwillingness to share everything at once but it doesn't matter much, I'm sure our engineers would only need the concepts to start.
As a part of our alliance, we would be allowed to participate in the Yamato project. We don't have the time or will to push for the refits that utilize all our advancements, but once we mentioned that we had limitless range FTL comms they were sold. A contingent (heh) of our people would be present as a smaller part of the crew and a cluster of catom fabbers would be integrated into the ship to produce replacement bodies if any of us are killed in service.
In addition, in combination with their existing nanoprinters it would allow us to replicate our technologies on board to repair and refit the ship with less reliance on gathering of raw materials. We might even end up producing our own missiles, boarding drones and strike craft on the go once we develop the designs. Once we reach Iskandar, the factories would produce construction units to assemble a wormhole gate which would cut the travel time back by three to four months if all goes well.
Regarding other things, we will be adding a secondary redundant sensor grid and fire control system to complement the existing UN tech sensor arrays which should skyrocket the detection capability, increase the accuracy and stretch the effective engagement range by a couple megameters. We can't replace the original laser PD yet but we can at least make them a bit more accurate. In addition, Contingent composite armor plating would also be integrated as additional underlayer on the outer hull and citadel but conversion might not be on time and would have to continue during flight.
Yamato's crew is expected to be just over 3800 people, we are allowed to add another 760 crew members on top of that because we don't require sleep, quarters or food and thus have very little logistical overhead. Garmillas attack on Yamato resulted in almost half of the planned support personnel being lost so a significant part of the crew had to be filled from tertiary surplus Cosmo Navy personnel which aren't quite green but also aren't the cream of the crop.
The ship had a bit of unused space between the pressurized crew sections and the citadel layers where we could set up some extra storage spaces to keep unused telerobots and surplus equipment. We would also get some space in the labs for our science personnel and equipment as well as in the engineering for our telerobotic repair and maintenance drones. There's unfortunately not enough space to house mecha or fighter craft on ship's launch, but we'd still have security/boarding espatiers and pilots that might even end up flying UN strike craft if the need arises.
All in all, this could've gone worse. For some reason I can't stop feeling a little giddy from the thought that I'd end up as a part of this "classical" adventure. I didn't have a chance to see the original series or the new reboot until about a year before I was uploaded, but it had such an incredible charm and aesthetic, especially the original series which feels amusingly cheesy to watch. Ending up as a crew of the legendary spaceship, I just hope that we're up for the task.
Log 25: "Yamato, hashin!"Log 25: "Yamato, hashin!"
"Men, you have all been specially trained and selected for the Izumo plan. Today I will formally announce your mission. But it is not the Izumo plan, which was to escape the Earth."
*short pause as audience gasps*
"I will explain. First I'd like you to look at this. This is a video recovered during Operation M. "
Video starts. Echoing feminine voice is heard, also in japanese. Sentence structure is kind of weird suggesting machine translation: "I am queen Starsha of Iskandar. Your planet has been almost completely destroyed by the Garmillas. I learned of this one year ago, and dispatched my sister Yurisha to Earth with the plans for the Wave Motion Engine. If you can understand and build it, come to Iskandar. Our planet holds a system which can cleanse the pollution and rebuild your planet. Unfortunately, I can no longer take it to Earth myself. Now I have sent you the Wave Motion Core, the activation unit of the Dimensional Wave Motion Engine, along with my other sister, Sasha. I believe you will overcome unknown dangers and reach Iskandar. I am Starsha, of the planet Iskandar." Video ends
Okita continues: "One year ago Earth received technological cooperation from Iskandar, and we have already completed a spaceship capable of interstellar flight. Its name is The Yamato. According to the capsule, Iskandar is 168000 light years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This voyage, of 336 thousand light years, will be a voyage like none humanity has ever experienced."
"Our cities will become uninhabitable within a year which enforces a strict deadline. Our new allies from the Contingent have offered to do everything in their power to prolong the survival of our race for as much as they can and to assist us in our journey, but even then the window is narrow. We have no room for error."
"I won't force you to come, Any who wish to stay may do so. We set sail and leave port tomorrow at 6 am. I will assume that any who do not report at that time have decided to stay behind. That is all."
-Project Argo/Yamato crew onboarding presentation, translated from Japanese
You know, it never fails to amaze how fast we end up learning languages when the need arises. While I was a leader of an entire human nation state for decades and some of my instances were deployed to almost every other country as diplomats, we didn't really end up learning "every spoken language".
When I started I was fluent in Russian, almost fluent in English and I knew a bit of German, even if I was a bit rusty after decades fighting bugs in an isolated solar system. I managed to polish it and throw in Greek, French, Mandarin and Hindi, but with the accommodating diplomatic crews who mostly used the languages we knew and with the advent of perfect translation software there was no real need to learn other languages seriously. But then again, even when translators can handle metaphors and puns it is not like such things work in the same place and with the same meaning in different languages. Poetry is what dies in translation, poetry is what's born in translation.
My Japanese was… not great, I think I was on N4 (second from lowest level) mostly because quite a few in Contingent are absolute weebs and decided to start learning it for fun. But without direct pressing need, with our general lapses in motivation and skill sharing losses meant that the progress was slow.
Here the situation was interesting. The three ship classes used by the UN Cosmo Force were initially designed by the Far East District which includes Japan. They were, in fact, named after Japanese WW2 ships as by that time the war was a very long memory, akin to what Napoleonic wars would feel like for modern humans of my home Earth.
There were, of course, native designs in other state conglomerations, but Japanese ships were the first to successfully utilize the reverse engineered alien technology and due to the Martian rebellion they were rushed into production worldwide supplanting any other designs. This means that such cursed naming shenanigans happened like the first space carrier prototype "Langley" made out of a converted Kongo class battleship.
Japan's Cosmo Self Defense Force was utilized as Earth's garrison fleet while other UN ships were used to battle Garmillas forces across the solar system. This means that with rare exceptions the only surviving space navy ships and personnel were Japanese just because everyone and everything else died or had to be scrapped or integrated to keep the remaining "cosmo navy" afloat. In other words, in this universe military spacers speak Japanese and I had to very quickly brush up on my language skills.
In any case, Operation M was a success and the "wave motion core" has been recovered. Unfortunately, just like in canon, the Iskandarian vessel has suffered a malfunction and disintegrated in the lower Martian atmosphere. The pilot, princess Sasha, has successfully ejected but she didn't survive the landing. The escape pod was damaged on impact and she suffocated before the recovery team could reach her.
Our involvement so far has resulted in significantly reduced losses among the remaining UN ships, but it didn't mean that everyone was happy. Admiral Hijikata and a few other UN commanders felt that our early launch risked the package recovery on Mars as the team there consisted of only two people and a single fighter craft. If Garmillas ships managed to destroy the Plowshare fleet or even retreat in a coordinated manner then they'd be in position to head directly for Mars.
Well, I won't claim that there was no risk of that, but there were also some contingencies in place for just such an occasion. First of all, we had a titanic range advantage on the Garmillas forces, we outranged them by over 50 times of their optimal engagement distance with direct fire weapons while our missiles could hit any target anywhere in the Sol system within three days. We also had some missiles in Earth orbit which at the time was less than half an astronomical unit from Mars which made it reachable within two hours. They'd hit before the Iskandarian ship passed the orbit of Jupiter. This has practically shut down the argument, but I feel like it only made the perception worse.
We didn't have enough time to construct the dimensional gate and inject the forces stationed in the Homina system. Regardless, there was enough time for the industry and surface defenses to be erected on Venus and Mercury along with the limited orbital infrastructure which was immediately focused on refitting the Plowshare fleet and constructing more ships.
Mark 2 Garmillas war refits were finalized with solutions that worked replacing those that didn't. The Plowshare ships would get full minimag drive refits, the ersatz armor would be replaced by slightly tweaked version of our composite plating while all non-PD lasers and turreted particle guns were swapped out for various kinds of the current state of the art macron cannons and missile silos. Can't really replace spinal mounts yet, they'll stay as M1 particle beam cannons for now.
I am unnerved by some of the larger ships around Pluto which is why we're rapidly producing our first smaller end supercapital class vessels (under 1 km long). They couldn't be launched off Earth and have to be assembled entirely in orbit of Mercury with some large components prefabricated on the surface and fired into space by cargo mass drivers to free up precious orbital fabrication queues. Let's just say that I can't wait for Gammies to have a taste of David Weber class siloship. Can anyone guess what a ship named after the Honorverse author does?
Correct, it produces, carries and fires a small fleet worth of missiles in raw tonnage equivalent. The concept was there before we discovered that Garmillas ships had insufficient PD, but it has never been built before because it was considered overspecialized for our doctrine. Theoretically we don't need siloships at all as missiles have infinite range and we could have them work as escort suicide drones, but capital ship microfission drives currently can't scale to the size of anti-ship missiles meaning that it is cheaper for our economy to have a single microfission drive running constantly compared to hundreds of thousands of electrothermal rockets.
Any further refits would have to wait for the new technologies to be developed. We're mostly limited by the availability of cosmonite. Mercury and Venus have next to none of it as for some unknown reason it astro-geologically migrates to the outer system during planetary formation just like lighter elements. The richest deposit discovered by humans was on Enceladus around Saturn while first economic mines were found rarely in the main asteroid belt. I'll need to remove the Garmillas presence in the outer system before I can set up any serious mining operation.
And not a moment too soon as the first sensor grids finished deploying in low Sol orbits and we finally started to get intel on the rest of the wave interferometers were already picking up signatures of FTL jumps around Pluto including some signatures that we've never seen before. Wasn't the Gammie commander directly above the Pluto base supposed to be incompetent? Infrared and optical observations suggest that Pluto fleet has almost doubled by Yamato's launch day.
Passive sensor readings suggested that Garmillas has only 2 bases within the Sol system: primary base on Pluto and something giving off strong infrared signature in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. There is a potential signature within the Saturn's ice rings which corroborates with the meta information on a Garmillas unmanned ship.
Meta knowledge also suggests "Planet 11" in the Oort cloud which was utilized as a resupply post during that time, but it is basically impossible to find on a short notice. There is no strong IR signature which could suggest its presence and even detecting objects the size of Earth that far from the Sun is an exercise in patience and mass resource expenditure. We have to capture a hyperdrive before gammies run out of assets or we'd be stuck in Sol.
Yamato's launch occurred on February 11th 2199, as per canon. Contingent power plants provided most of the energy required to ignite the ship's core, reducing the load on the struggling local power network. This time there was no incoming interplanetary missile targeting the site. With extra time there was a somewhat time- wasting ceremony from a bunch of UN officials who wanted to do speeches and wish luck to the Argo Project. This is the official international name for it, but since the non-japanese crew members are present in below rounding error numbers everyone still calls it the Yamato.
I should mention that multiple Garmillas missiles were detected and intercepted at that time around the main belt heading directly for Mercury and Venus. By that point we had more than enough interceptors which were much more effective and efficient than the ridiculous destroyer sized missile bus that we used the last time. The hardest part was detecting the darn thing in the first place, but after that it was vapor within an hour.
The ship launched without issues and after performing a bunch of checks in orbit it was accompanied by the remnants of the UN fleet and a couple of Contingent cruisers for its FTL engine test. For reasons of safety, the jump would be performed from Martian orbit towards Uranus.
Humans don't quite understand the intricacies of the "warp navigation" and there is still a limited but possible risk that a failed jump could have a wide variety of effects from stranding the ship in subspace to releasing planet- destroying energies or even causing false vacuum collapse which would potentially destroy the universe. The first jump would provide sufficient experimental data to cross out the worst possibilities, but it was impossible to test in a lab beforehand.
Once the Yamato was launched, as a part of the command crew I was briefed on the wave motion engine's operating principles. The complete blueprints were still withheld from the exchange for now, but we were provided enough theoretical models and generalized diagrams of the systems for a certain degree of understanding.
Excluding support equipment, the "Dimensional Wave Motion Engine" consists of the "wave motion core" and the "containment vessel" made almost entirely from cosmonite. The core generates a throttleable output of "dimensional waves" that are reflected by the containment vessel's walls and accumulate in it like in a "perfect mirror photon battery".
The local scientists call it "tachyon pressure", but they can't directly detect the wave motion field's quantized particles and the predicted behavior doesn't fit any previous theoretical predictions for "tachyons" so it is mostly another weird local naming thing that I will avoid in the future. Kind of like how in Star Trek writers named three different kinds of fictional exotic matter as "antimatter" because they didn't understand how it works beyond "explosive fuel".
This is why it is called a "wave motion" engine, it literally has subspace standing waves in it as a working medium. In practice, it is a "zero point energy power source", it needs no fuel and its energy production is almost entirely limited by the containment system. You can accidentally "overcook" it as it doesn't instantly change the output rate in which case the ship would be forced to expend excess energy or the engine would melt down and explode.
The containment vessel is also the ship's primary energy routing system. Wave motion energy is directly routed through the ship the same way Star Trek ships might pump "electro-plasma", the guns and engines are directly linked with literal cosmonite pipes and are designed to process wave motion energy directly somehow. Electricity is produced by a turbine with cosmonite coated blades where wave motion energy is pumped through it to spin an electric generator and provide electricity to other systems.
Wave motion gun is… interesting. Apparently when wave motion energy reaches a certain density it starts imploding matter into microscopic black holes (similar to theorized primordial black hole creation process shortly after the big bang) which immediately evaporate via Hawking radiation. This is a major source of waste heat in the engine and thus it has to run under extremely high vacuum. Yamato's main rocket propulsion system utilizes that effect in afterburner mode by injecting hydrogen gas into the wave motion energy plume.
Wave motion gun overclocks the core's output, compresses most of the ship's energy reserve and injects it into a chamber full of gas which is immediately turned into billions of microscopic black holes and projected outward at just under the speed of light. This results in a plume with high gravitational tidal forces and extreme levels of gamma ray radiation up to two astronomical units long which penetrates through any baryonic matter akin to the "Meson Cannon" from Traveller RPG. The thing is stupid powerful, it is strong enough to shatter a small moon and it grows stronger when fired at more and denser matter so it is a perfect planet buster. From what I know of only my ragnarok warheads are more potent.
The downsides are that the Yamato won't be able to use its "wave motion shields" when firing and the ship won't have the energy to run its engines or shock cannons and would be stuck on reserve power until the core ramps back up within about 10-15 minutes. The most unbelievable part of it all is that WMG is the brainchild of Kotetsu Serizawa, that mustachio Stalin look-alike that ordered UN ships to fire first during the first contact in the show. I really don't like the guy, he's suspicious and critical of the Contingent and he's just an asshole in general. I'll overlook him for now but I'll make sure that he won't stay in a position of power after we're done with the mission.
The FTL system used by Yamato is more akin to a hyperdrive unlike what the name "warp navigation" might suggest. A pretty large, arcane- looking and power hungry device plugged directly in the engine creates a wormhole leading into subspace. The ship enters the wormhole and is flung through subspace in what's essentially a four dimensional "ballistic arc" where it ends up eventually impacting the "surface" of subspace and getting thrown back into normal reality.
This jump is supposed to take a single Planck second, too short for even the most accurate atomic clocks to measure and it requires the ship to be actively accelerating at almost 50g which requires the engine to run in afterburner mode. The effective jump range is up to 65 parsecs or around 212 light years, but it has to land within the gravitational field of a star because the interstellar subspace environment is apparently somewhat turbulent. The ship is rated to perform 3 jumps a day with long cool down phases between each jump, but it can be stretched to up to 5 jumps a day in case of emergency at the cost of increased systems wear and risks.
But enough about the local technologies, the jump is about to occur. The adventure is starting, I'm not showing it to the crew but I'm so hyped for this…
Record PLAY: 11th February 2199, BBY-01 Yamato bridge. First FTL jump
People present:
Agatha Hive: Contingent liaison
Admiral Juzo Okita: Ship's Captain
Lieutenant Susumu Kodai: Tactical division head, second in command
Lieutenant Daisuke Shima: Chief Navigator/Helmsman
Lieutenant Commander Shiro Sanada: Science Officer
Lieutenant Yuki Mori: Radar Operator/Computer Calculations
Ensign Yoshikazu Aihara: Radio Operator
Ensign Kenjiro Ota: Radar Operator
Lieutenant Junior Grade Yasuo Nanbu: Ordnance operator
Lieutenant commander Hikozaemon Tokugawa: Chief Engineer, not present on the bridge
AU09 "Analyzer": Ship's Sapient AI Sub-Frame
Video start:
The record is done from Agatha's point of view, specifically from the sensors in her avatar's body and built into a protective environmental suit that she was wearing. She sits buckled into a chair without a console in the space between the captain's position and the two consoles in the middle of the room. It is not like the console is needed, considering who Agatha is, but she does have a tablet attached to an adjustable holder that is welded to her seat. Her envirosuit is modeled after Yamato's standard issue analogues, but it is white with large orange stripes and it bears an additional highly visible patch with Contingent Mobius strip emblem on it.
Captain Okita's chair is placed at the very back of the bridge. It is surrounded by various terminals overseeing the rest of the deck crew from an elevated position and it has rails built directly into the back wall which can move the chair to and from the captain's quarters directly above the bridge. It is done mostly to allow the captain to get to his post faster as his age and progressing health condition made it difficult to move quickly. Still, the aging admiral is determined to see this mission through even if it kills him.
Directly in front of Ag's seat is a glass sphere which acts as a volumetric screen representing the immediate surroundings of the ship. To the right of the sphere is Lieutenant Yuki Mori's terminal. Lt Mori herself is a blonde woman wearing a bright yellow spacesuit. The seat to the left of the glass sphere is not occupied.
Directly in front of the sphere is the position of the ship's primary AI sub core, although as the red robot is yet to introduce himself no one pays attention to him. To the left in front are two empty seats followed by the positions for Yasuo Nanbu and Yoshikazu Aihara by the leftmost wall. The former wears a red spacesuit and is a young man in glasses in charge of ordnance. The latter is another man in yellow uniform with light brown hair in charge of radio comms.
On the right of the robot there is Susumu Kodai, the tactical division head in a red spacesuit. Then goes Daisuke Shima, the helmsman in green. And by the rightmost wall there's Kenjiro Ota who's a slightly chubby officer in green and Shiro Sanada who's a science officer in blue.
The crew is pushed into their seats by acceleration as the ship is preparing for the jump, a bright white light is seen in the distance directly ahead from the viewports.
Lt. Yuki: "Commencing countdown… 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"
Lt. Shima states "Warp" and pushes on his controls as the viewport fills with rainbow colors. The camera malfunctions for a single frame as everything fills with multicolored distortions before they vanish and everyone is rocked forward. Viewport is covered in massive sheets of ice that are shattering and falling off. The visible part of the ship is also covered in an ice crust.
The ship seems to drift and people groan and gasp as they watch an orange gas giant rotate into view
Lt. Kodai: "W… where did we come out?"
LtCdr. Sanada: "… Jupiter"
Lt. Yuki: "But why?"
Lt. Kodai: "Hey, Shima!"
Capt. Okita: "Navigation, can you explain?"
Lt. Shima: "I don't know what happened, sir! The coordinates were right but we came out early!"
LtCdr. Sanada: "Sensors detected an unknown obstacle in our path. The system may have overridden us to avoid it."
Agatha: "Sensors are finally clear from the ice, we are almost directly above the Garmillas affiliated signature in the upper Jupiter atmosphere. Intentionally or not, I suspect that we've been interdicted. Be advised, three Kripitera class destroyers that fled from the Plowshare fleet ended up here and haven't left since. We are also not in orbit."
Lt. Shima: "Thrust output has dropped and we're already hitting the atmosphere! We can't reach orbit! I can't control the ship!"
Capt. Okita: "Keep calm, lieutenant. Engine room, what's going on down there?"
LtCdr. Tokugawa through intercom: "Something is off with the main engine! It is not transferring energy! I'm going to try to redirect power to sub engines now."
Lt. Shima: "I have power in the sub engines, extending stabilizer wings."
Lt. Kodai: "We're falling, Shima!"
Lt. Shima: "I know!"
Lt. Yuki: "Something on the radar, 65 megameters from us. No way that's a ship, it is too big.
Capt. Okita: "On screen and magnify!"
The screen built into the ceiling of the bridge powers up and displays a distorted and poor quality image of a giant floating island. The image rapidly cleans up and gains color as Contingent's sensor feed is added in.
Agatha: *impressed whistle* "7.8 million kilometers of surface area, this is a landmass the size of Australia somehow suspended in the air and covered in… plant life? It can't be natural, I wonder how they pulled it off."
Capt. Okita: "Shima, I want you to attempt a soft landing on that floating continent!"
Lt. Shima: "Yes, sir!"
What follows is a harrowing ride as the ship impacts the continent's surface and skids across it for hundreds of meters before firing the anchor into a large hill, drifting for a bit more and eventually settling into a small river. The crew is silent for quite a while, breathing heavily and high on adrenaline.
Agatha: "Well, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. No joke, bravo, Shima."
People start unbuckling from their seats and removing helmets.
LtCdr. Tokugawa through intercom: "We've tracked the source of the engine trouble! Main coolant system is malfunctioning but we can fix that."
Capt. Okita: "Understood, begin repairs immediately."
LtCdr. Sanada: "Kodai, assemble the team to gather samples. I want to know what we landed on"
Lt. Kodai: "Yes, sir!"
Agatha: "We might want to stay on high alert, there's an artificial structure in the middle of the continent, some kind of tall green spire with crude camo that fits nearby plant life. We are likely to be attacked by its garrison sooner rather than later. I recommend taking some of the Contingent espatiers and science staff."
Kodai nods to Agatha while Lt Yuki walks up to the sub core and says: "AU-09, you're up"
Analyzer wheels out of his housing stating the following with annoyance "Do not address me by my number! I am a free thinking individual!" Most of the deck crew with exception of Yuki, Agatha, the Captain, and Sanada are surprised.
Lt. Kodai: "Wait, this thing is autonomous?"
Agatha: "Calling him a "thing" is a bit derogative, but Mr. Free Thinking Individual really should have introduced himself earlier so that we knew to treat him as a person. I only knew because I read the crew manifest. But yeah, R-9 Autonomous Type Shipborne Analysis Unit AU-09, he is a sub core to the ship's non-sentient computer core."
Analyzer bows and passes his robotic hand to Kodai: "Please refer to me as Analyzer!"
Agatha: "Well met, fellow machine mind"
Analyzer: "You are an ally, but you are no machine and no fellow."
Agatha: "… yikes, where did that come from?"
The robot doesn't reply and proceeds to leave the bridge to the confusion of everyone involved
Lt. Yuki: "Sorry about that, he's usually very friendly."
Last edited: Nov 22, 2023
Log 26: "No such thing as overkill"Log 26: "No such thing as overkill"
"The floating continent's purpose is most likely an ecological supply nursery. Based on our somewhat limited understanding of closed ecologies, large-scale biosphere engineering is non- trivial both for planets and for space habitats. Either this is a "biosphere sapling" printed on site and in process of being prepared for transplantation or this is as small of a viable ecosphere seed as their technology allows. This suggests that Garmillas people are most likely biological. They likely wouldn't need to deal with xenoforming if they didn't need it."
"Local atmospheric conditions are altered compared to the rest of Jupiter's environment. Atmosphere is primarily methane and carbon dioxide, it is unbreathable for humans and there are no known high energy anaerobic metabolism pathways that would accept such conditions. It is probably unsurprising that we are yet to find a single member of fauna on the continent. In fact, it seems that the plant life itself is mostly in the state of partial hibernation and it was likely genetically altered to survive in these conditions for ease of travel."
"Local plant life is over 99% identical to the alien plants seeded on Beta Earth. In addition, it has identical nucleotide structure to Earth life and mitochondrial DNA is 48% identical to that found in Earth's plants. This all but proves panspermia because Earth has (or at least used to have) "partial shadow biospheres" of organisms that utilize alternative nucleotides. They were hard to detect at first as most of our sensors at the time were tuned to detect the 4 base pairs of DNA, but after the discovery of a bacteriophage where adenine was substituted by diaminopurine (now colloquially known as genetic letter "Z") it was only a matter of time and effort to find more examples."
"Some of these nucleotides are useful in very narrow circumstances such as in cases of material substitution, but with others it seems that it is a pure chance that we ended up with an ACGT-based genome. To not be panspermia, the second abiogenesis event would also need to randomly favor 4 out of possibly dozens if not hundreds of alternative nucleotides which would make it even less likely…"
-A part of Curie Hive's report on the Jupiter floating continent
Well, can't say that the trip went perfectly well even beyond the whole misjump thing, but let's do everything in order. We have crash landed on a Garmillas "floating continent" in Jupiter's upper atmosphere and luckily the ship has only suffered cosmetic damage from the landing. However, the jump itself has caused a not-so-cosmetic damage to the engine system.
The thermal stress of the jump was underestimated in the designs which fried the primary coolant pump and it had to be replaced as a matter of emergency. While it took at most half an hour to replace the pump and burst pipes, the entire primary thermal control system would need to be modified which would take materials that we didn't have on hand.
Garmillas response wasn't instant with the ships appearing on sensors just under half an hour after our landing. There were 5 destroyers and a heavy cruiser, two DDs were easily identifiable from the battle for Earth-Venus gap and one of them had external battle damage repaired using salvaged components of the missing third destroyer that fled that battle. I'm honestly surprised that it arrived at all as something more than a cloud of hot vapor, but here we are.
Human crew were very nervous, but the battle was decidedly one- sided. Yamato's primary batteries are essentially Kongo battleship's spinal mounts while secondaries are spinal mounts taken off human cruisers. Such powerful weapons would reliably cripple all known gammie ship types while PD lasers augmented with Contingent targeting systems were almost 30% more likely to hit enemy missiles at 20% longer range. Not amazing but we weren't allowed to replace them wholesale just yet.
The issue was in the wave motion drive. We had to partially shut it down for coolant loop repairs and it couldn't power the main caliber shock cannons. Engineering has managed to route power to the secondaries, but it wouldn't be quite enough. Missiles were also expensive and would necessitate a resupply run. Luckily for Yamato, my engineering drones could work in extreme conditions without bulky spacesuits and the repairs were completed in record time in the middle of the battle.
The primary battery has an option to fire "type 3 armor piercing fusion shells, timed fuse" which are essentially conventional naval artillery propelled via chemical combustion and tipped with megaton range thermonuclear warheads. The mass accelerators in the barrel helped with this somewhat, but the effective range of these things was laughable when used in space and accelerators couldn't be powered without the active drive. Good thing that we weren't in space, enemy DDs showed up from hangars which were hidden within less than two megameters from our landing site.
I guess here the written lore of SBY took over the imagery from the show as shot down destroyers disappeared in nuclear fireballs appropriate for the city killer yield "fusion shells" rather than blowing up with a delay in an indistinct fashion. Missed shells also detonated on timers which sent the surviving destroyers literally reeling when they were slammed by shockwaves as vegetation on the scale of entire forests was flattened and charred by flashes of thermal radiation. There were no actual firestorms as there was no oxygen in the air, but the scale of destruction was still frightening.
The engine was repaired in the middle of the short battle, Yamato took flight and rapidly left the floating continent. The three surviving destroyers were seemingly shocked with the overwhelming display of violence and didn't pursue us. Once we gained enough distance, Okita ordered the deck crew to prepare for the Wave Motion Gun test.
I proposed an alternative: there were only 3 ships left and we had CTG espatiers on board. We could wipe out the opposition and take over the Garmillas base. The fact that they fielded damaged destroyers suggested that they spent all of their naval assets, and even if they didn't we were only a day away from a strike force from Mercury which could take over the site if Yamato's forces would be insufficient.
Captain refused the proposal and ordered the test fire to continue, I had no authority to object. I should clarify that this is by design, my position on Yamato is that of a Contingent Liaison, the equivalent rank on the ship is that of a lieutenant commander, similar to the ranks of the chief engineer and the science officer which is technically the second highest rank on the ship.
I might have whatever rank I wanted when working with Contingent forces but we couldn't afford authority clashes on Yamato. As such I was in charge of Contingent instances on board but Okita was in charge of me for anything that happened on Yamato. For anything outside the Yamato I maintained my position as the head of the Contingent government and as the commander in chief of Contingent forces. Chain of command is important even if you don't like all the outcomes.
I later asked the captain in private why he chose to fire the weapon and there were a few reasons. First of all, it was the only safe place to do so. We were still close enough for a ship from Earth to recover survivors if something went wrong and it wouldn't be great if the weapon didn't work when tested in an actual high stakes engagement. Also it would be quite embarrassing if it turned out that Garmillas armor was reflective to wave motion gun's blast in the first place.
Secondly, there were concerns about the unknown factors with the base and its forces. Human ships were incredibly vulnerable to Garmillas weapons while they themselves were nearly untouchable. Yamato's capabilities weren't proven yet, it could be strong enough to take on a fleet, but it could also have trouble fighting a gammie cruiser 1v1. For now the captain has decided to play it safe… ish. Also no one expected that the weapon would be quite that powerful…
He did promise to take into account the fact that if I ran out of gammie technology samples to capture before getting the FTL drive then I wouldn't be able to send help to Yamato at long range or take the heat off the mission by prosecuting a war against the Garmillas. I hope that we'd end up capturing the pluto base instead of nuking it like in canon. Contingent could maybe reverse engineer something from first principles eventually, but who knows how long that would take and I see no reason to overstress my RnD when there's an opportunity to not invent the bicycle.
The wave motion shot itself was indescribably bright, it is basically impossible to see anything but the aftermath. The entire landmass the size of Australia was not just broken up, it was reduced to gas and gravel, nothing could survive that. The beam continued onward painting a massive stroke of incandescent orange across a fifth of Jupiter before punching out of the atmosphere and dissipating somewhere in space. The resulting winds circled the gas giant several times before dissipating, but they were primarily directed away from the ship and we made our way to orbit before they could become a problem. This weapon might be a tad dangerous to use in the atmosphere…
Once we were done with Jupiter, a meeting was called among the bridge officers on the next actions. The Argo, cough, Yamato Plan didn't have any time to spare, yet we had two options to discuss: Saturn and Pluto. Yamato would need to head for either certain Lagrange points or the Kuiper belt to jump out of the Sol system with maximum safety. The closest Lagrange point from which we could jump out is directly the wrong way from both Neptune and Pluto.
Pluto was important because it was the site of Garmillas primary base of operations. It was the place from which they launched "planet bombs" and interplanetary missiles. Destroying the base would reduce the strain on underground cities and it would allow me to start construction on orbital habitats almost immediately. However, unlike in the canon, Yamato was no longer the only useful allied ship. Contingent fleet was ready and could reach Pluto within just under two days. Yamato could leave it for us to clean up or we could coordinate the attack to draw out the gammie fleet while leaving the base open for the strike.
Saturn is a point of interest for two reasons, first of all it is a source of a garbled UNCF distress signal which is coming from somewhere on Enceladus. Secondly, Enceladus is the former site for one of the richest tapped deposits of cosmonite in the solar system. It was abandoned as humans had to surrender the outer system, but it should still have the heavy equipment needed for mining and likely even processed materials.
Yamato's engine wasn't looking so hot by the minute… hold on, let me rephrase it, it was looking hotter by the minute. Heh, phrasing. Anyway, with some meta knowledge and thorough diagnostics we managed to prevent widespread damage to the thermal control system, but it was degrading rapidly. In fact, the thermal damage to the FTL drive and engine's main heat exchanger was so severe that over the next several days it would literally melt off the engine block while slowly cooking the entire engineering bay as the ship would be left adrift with no power and no way to reignite the engine. It wasn't really a competition then, Enceladus it was.
We arrived just over a day later. The mining site was close to the north pole of the planet inside Harran Sulci, a region with deep parallel grooves and trenches. Fun fact, many geographical features on Enceladus are named after locations, events and characters from the Arabian Nights and the codename for the Iskandarian messenger ship that delivered the WM core was Shahrazad. The emergency beacon was to the north and almost just outside the walking distance, maybe the ship was trying to land near the mining base but failed.
I shared the suspicion of a possible long range detection of a Garmillas contact around Saturn and my entire espatier complement would be deployed to escort the mining expedition. We couldn't really fit full blown Athanatoi mechs in Yamato, there was space but it was taken by emergency supplies needed to handle the trip. Instead my "space marines" use Lieutenant class android (well… mostly gynoid) avatars in medium power armor.
They had M1 Gastraphetes quench rifles with 6x50mm GUR rounds, an M1 Kestros missile launcher with a couple M1 Scorpio and M1 Polybolos missiles each, an RCS pack which could overcome the moon's gravity and a surprising amount of armor for their size. Shame they can't resupply without a separate fabber. Considering that gammie droids didn't have enough forces to successfully assault Yamato in canon… yeah they are fucked.
One of my espatiers was actually tasked with accompanying the scouting party for the wreckage along with Kodai, Yuki, Analyzer and Makoto Harada who is a nurse and the group's field surgeon. It is kind of funny, everyone thinks that Yuki might be a stranded Iskandarian princess. Well, spoiler alert, she isn't, it was a red herring in the show but it is just so amusing that I'll play along.
Record PLAY: 13th February 2199, wreckage investigation team
People present:
Lieutenant Mamoru Kodai: Tactical division head
Lieutenant Yuki Mori: Operations officer
Specialist Cyan Hive: Contingent Espatier, PEF Special Forces Heavy Infantry
Petty Officer 2nd Class Makoto Harada: Nurse, field surgeon, civilian specialist
Analyzer: Yamato's AI sub-core
Video start:
Recording starts in the interior of a Cosmo Seagull, one of the transport VTOLs from the Yamato. Yuki is piloting in the front left seat. Kodai is in the left copilot seat. Cyan is sitting directly behind Yuki taking up two spots on the bench with her bulky suit while the bench behind Kodai is folded up to make space for Analyzer's robot body. The nurse girl in a soft pink spacesuit is sitting in the compartment directly behind the cockpit and is periodically peeking in.
The record is primarily made from Cyan's point of view, but integrated sensor feed from her power armor allows for a 3d image of the scene to be compiled. Cyan is a catgirl with a bobcut hairstyle colored to fit her name and she's sitting without her helmet on. The helmet itself has cat ear shaped bits on top and it rests on her lap. She has a thin and lean build, but it can't really be seen below her somewhat bulky white and orange armor. Medium power armors are about as large as early 21st century spacesuits, but solid and made of thick interlocking plates. Not quite as bulky as the heavy power armor which is more like deep diving suit, but still.
Kodai: "Three girls and a robot on their own… it's a good thing that the captain has overruled your objection."
Yuki: "I meant what I said, I'm not going to need your help down there."
Analyzer: "I'm quite capable of executing this mission as well."
Kodai: "Well, I'm glad to hear it. Babysitting was never really my thing."
Yuki: "You may be my escort, but on the ground you obey my orders. Is that clear, lieutenant?"
Kodai, with a sigh and mild sarcasm: "Ma'am, yes, ma'am"
Yuki: "Drop the attitude, one ma'am is just fine"
Kodai, quickly: "Ma'am, yes, ma'am"
Yuki: "What did I just say?!"
Harada leaning through the door and saying quietly to both Cyan and Analyzer: "Look at them, I'm sensing some chemistry"
Cyan smirks and nods while Analyser states in his usual robotic Dalek-esque voice: "I detect no unusual chemical reaction on board"
Harada, to the Analyser with a huff: "You're such a bore, you know that?"
Cyan giggles and rolls her eyes
Yuki: "It's strange, this distress signal… who in the world could have sent that?"
Cyan: "My guess is likely the survivors from Operation M. We didn't have the sensor grid back then to reliably tell where every ship ended up."
Kodai seems to be ignoring the conversation and absent mindedly staring at Yuki, she only now notices and looks back at him: "Hm? What's wrong?"
Cyan, grinning and picking out the perfect moment to say with a groan: "Oh my god, just kiss already!"
Both Yuki and Kodai look shocked and blush as they process how that looked from the outside as Cyan chuckles and high fives the nurse.
Kodai: "No, I just… Can I ask you something weird?"
Yuki, who is still a bit blushing: "I guess so…"
Harada, whispering to Cyan: "Here it comes…"
Kodai: "It's just… are you related to any aliens?"
"… Huh?"- Yuki looks at him like he just grew out three heads while Cyan cracks up and starts laughing. The spacecraft tilts slightly as Yuki stops paying attention and Harada slips and flops on the floor
Cyan: "No, no, Yuki-hime is not related to any extraterrestrial royalty, at least I don't think so."
Yuki is even more confused while Kodai just facepalms and says "… nevermind"
Cyan: "Eyes on the road!"
Analyzer: "We are not on a road"
Cyan: "All the more reason to keep your eyes peeled to the road… which isn't a road… Counterpoint, we've finally arrived."
The Seagull starts landing and Cyan puts on and latches her helmet sealed before grabbing her rifle which was wedged between the seat and the wall. Everyone else waits for the spacecraft to land before putting on their own helmets and preparing to disengage.
Outside is a wreckage of a UNCF destroyer partially frozen into the icy terrain. The landing wasn't soft, but it didn't look too bad. Maybe someone could have potentially survived it.
Yuki: "It is definitely one of ours, and with that distinctive conning tower…"
Kodai: "It is an Isokaze class destroyer, my brother captained one of these"
Cyan: "Yukikaze, right? DDS-117"
Kodai: "Yes"
Cyan: "No, I mean this is Yukikaze."
Yuki: "How could you know that? It is too covered in ice to read the name"
Cyan: "As you've said, the conning tower. Also the remains of a paintjob and some wear and tear signs that fit the documents and photographs. Although I'm only like 70% sure, it could also be Shikinami. It had a similar- ish tower and was also lost but not confirmed destroyed during Operation M"
Kodai: "This could be my brother's ship?!"
Harada, waving from half the wreckage away: "Lieutenant Mori, Lieutenant Kodai, we can enter the ship from down here!" Next to her is a lowered boarding ramp.
As they were boarding, Cyan paused and looked at the terrain near the ramp. "We have footprints, not all fit the standard spacesuit boots. Yeah it would be better if I go in first…" Everyone halts as she says that. Cyan attaches the rifle to a magnetic clamp on her backpack and pulls out a smaller PDW attached to her right hip. Kodai draws a pistol and nods. "Alright, let's go"
Inside the ship is iced over and lifeless. Cyan sometimes has to squeeze through the doors sideways, but it doesn't hamper the exploration much. Only a couple dead crew members were found out of a crew of 24. The bridge is empty and has its windows shattered. No bodies.
Cyan: "Too few bodies…"
Kodai: "They could've been blown out with decompression"
Cyan: "Decompression is not that strong. Also, they couldn't land safely if the bridge was down. If they decompressed after landing we'd find corpses in and next to the ship."
Yuki: "I'll look around a bit more"
Kodai: "Alright, I'll try to find the ship's log"
A few minutes pass as Kodai is messing with the frozen consoles
Kodai: "It's no good…"
Cyan: "Heads-up! Yamato has just detected gammie land units closing in!"
A red streak flies across the shattered windows and nails the Cosmo Seagull. Judging by the flash of light and sudden vibration it won't be the team's ride home.
The ship shudders violently. Harada slips and due to the ship being at an angle falls through the opening door of the cockpit. The bulkhead slams in her face, locking her out and the group in the room. Analyzer hasn't entered the cockpit so he was locked out with the nurse.
Kodai: "Use the console to call the Yamato!"
Cyan: "No need, I have an uplink. Use suit comms. Damn it, the door cold-welded on impact. Power armor is not strong enough to tear it off. We need to cut it."
Yuki, into her suit radio: "… Ship down! We are currently under Garmillon attack! We require immediate help!"
Yamato comms officer: "This is Yamato. We are currently under attack by enemy armored units! Please stand by!"
Kodai: "Come on, Analyzer! I thought you were Mr. Capable here!"
Analyzer starts to cut through the door with a plasma torch
Kodai: "So you are useful… Huh, they stopped firing"
Cyan: "We have enemy infantry outside! Get deeper into the room!"
A dark gray robot shows up from behind the shattered windows, throws itself with one hand against the wall's edge, somersaults through the air and kicks Mori into the wall knocking her out as another robot acrobatically and synchronously lands to where she ended up and immediately takes her hostage.
The first robot didn't even have the chance to land on the ground before it was hit by a burst from Cyan's PDW. One bullet penetrates into the upper left eye and blows up taking a quarter of its head while three others tear off the right arm which was holding something akin to a pistol.
Second robot takes two steps to the window and then with a single motion jumps out while carrying unconscious Yuki. Cyan follows and jumps out in turn, however the moment she clears the spacecraft she has to dodge a burst from Garmillas APC which clips her in the left arm tearing it off all the way to the elbow and frying the PDW.
There's a Garmillas APC, something that looks like a tank with three cannons and half a dozen of these alien androids surrounding the ship. The Garmaloid with the hostage is booking towards the APC like a jet cheetah on meth.
"Oh no you don't" says Cyan as a tube slides up from behind her shoulder and pivots forward as she catches the grip. She immediately fires off a missile towards the APC ignoring the backwash from the jet reflecting off the ship's hull. She's an android in power armor, it would only char the paint job.
In low gravity the APC is thrown to the side and flung off the icy crevice nearby as the Usain Bolt android slides to a stop. A gammie droid next to it falls over dead as Kodai nails it in the chest when he runs out and takes cover behind some wreckage using the fact that all the attention and fire is concentrated on Cyan.
An empty tube detaches from Cyan's launcher and she drops the grasp of the pipe. It retracts behind her right shoulder. She instead pulls out her rifle and unloads a burst towards the three gammies who were flanking Kodai. 9mm GUR rounds in the PDW can have the energy between 2 and 4 times greater than the old .50 BMG depending on distance and whether they were fired with a magnetic accelerator. 6x50mm GUR rifle rounds are significantly more powerful and have smarter guidance, the gray robots didn't stand a chance.
Yuki wakes up and manages to free herself with a solid kick to the chest of her abductor. The moment she's not in the line of fire Kodai finishes the bastard with a center of mass shot from his pistol. The only thing left on the field is a tank which was going straight for the two humans while tracking Cyan.
It fires but the power armored catgirl jet jumps into the sky and sprays it with rifle fire. The rounds hit, but it is still a tank. It suffers some damage from weirdly powerful projectiles but is operational. Then suddenly a projectile directly impacts the tank from above and it explodes. Cyan scans the sky and the camera zooms on a Cosmo Zero doing a flyby. The camera then zooms in on Kodai and Yuki hugging, but after a short delay the girl pushes the guy away in embarrassment.
Cyan arrests her velocity and lands on the ground where Harada runs up to her with a medkit.
Cyan: "I'm alright, don't worry."
Harada, almost crying: "You're missing an arm and you're all charred!"
Cyan: "Hey, I'm medium rare at best. It is just a flesh wound, I'll get a nifty robot arm when we get back to the ship. Well… the last one was also mechanical… so a NEWER nifty robot arm!"
Harada doesn't listen as she seals the half molten stump with a hardening gel after which she sobs and punches the armor's chestpiece "… you dummy, take better care of yourself!"
Last edited: Friday at 12:21 AM