Long time no comment. Loving it still. Seeing as you plan the next story, how much is left of this one?
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Nice to have you comment again.
In terms of narrative there are five sequences left:
Remainder of the time on Brigantia and the Orbital Ring.
Next the battle for Brigantia's side of the Gateway.
Then the battle for The Infinite Wheel's side of the Gateway.
Then Tryykad leading the Kyaese uprising.
The last sequence is a series of epilogues that set up Mandate Of Heaven, the Olinbariad and the final post is the prologue of Stars Of Wonder, in which Rivi B'Uniti as a student discusses ancient Xenayan history to the present day.
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Just double-checked this in-game. Can confirm this information is accurate, and that our Life 2.0 heroes are probably in for a world of hurt.
Rivkah and Scipio are still great. Someone should make sure that they aren't distracting each other too much during the battle, though...
If Life2.0 opts to just fight in blindly, yeah.
But, you aren't looking at the full picture - there's a reason Rivkah is pretty much taking the threat of facing these Praetorians as just an excuse to play a thinly veiled sex game with her husband.
Look at the situation:
MSI-Life2.0 are going to bypass the defences they are relying on to stop incoming ships thanks to Tunkuni Amothetet. Once they are through and the casaba howlitzers obliterate the few close range weapons on the asteroid artillery leaving the rest to be disabled at lesiure, they've then got no resupply unless Septima breaks the resulting blockade; MSI-Life2.0 the option to just wait out the siege and let them starve.
Plus, a direct assault doesn't actually have MSI-Life2.0's people fighting. Instead, an assault has the Holocron's Neumanns effectively playing Battlefield 2189 from the Holocron's titan thanks to the combat hulls that substitute for them actually going in in-person, with a fresh batch of combat hulls being delivered every time a freighter makes the trip back to Unity to collect. To the Holocron, 10,000 remotely operated combat hulls destroyed to 1 Praetorian killed is quite acceptable, and they should do better than that anyway.
Plus, they are facing Naomi, who genuinely believes Olinbari can be forgiven and amends made and has spent her entire time in power acting on that basis - if they offer to surrender, she would absolutely advocate for them as her fight is with Septima, and the Praetorians amount to a roadblock. And she'll be broadcasting this anyway.
Those Praetorians effectively can choose between starvation, inevitable loss in a war of attrition in the hope Septima attempts to save them, or simply surrendering for what may well be a full pardon. Which would you pick?
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Well, Rivkah's plan is to do all the distracting before the battle so that they don't get distracted during the battle.
A sound plan, but young men in love are dangerously close to insatiable. Hopefully Scipio has a strong sense of discipline that could compliment Rivkah's efforts. He can make sure Rivkah doesn't do all of the work... so to speak.
Scipio might - he is aware of the stakes involved.
But Rivkah's expectations of him are shaped by the hedonism that her mother talks about young Olinbari doing, and therefore, she assumes that he has no self-control.
"Gateway Assault, Part 2"
"Gateway Assault, Part 2"
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
The Holocron
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
The Holocron
My corporeal representation walks across the bridge. Dozens of Neumanns are standing by. Tens of thousands more across the ship. Hundreds of thousands across the fleet.
It's been a long way since I experienced the world as a display module and a portable disc drive.
Long way to go still.
I look at them all. "Signal the fleet."
A Neumann nods to say I am live.
"My friends, this is the Holocron." Amothetet opens her portal. "On the other side of that swirling purple thing, ladies and gentlemen, is freedom. Before we get there however, we have to get through Praetorian hell and Septima's xenocide. Make no mistake; we do not fight for glory, or lust, or riches or fame, but for liberty. In the cause of liberty, blood has always been shed, for only bloody uprising is the bane of tyrants. Today's tyrant has a name; Septima Severus. A woman for whom trillions of Kyaese lived to twenty so that she can live to two hundred, their blood buying her life extension. Think of them for a moment. We fight for them. And we will rage for them. Our fire burns for a greater world than the one we entered. Our fire burns for a world where there is no more slavery, no more use of sapient beings as livestock. Let your rage burn bright, for now is the hour; now for wrath, now for the shattering of empire! All limbs, battlestations."
I look straight at the helmsman.
I could do this myself.
But the saying has more impact.
I draw Tzarah, my sword. "All ahead, full."
Looks like this one-person Virtuality Ascension didn't wipe out family's attitude towards drama.
Also,
Also,
Daily reminder that while Holocron might be good, he's definitely not nice.
When the Holocron is let off the leash, the bodycount is best measured in septuple digits.
Well... All the family have moments of being a bit extra.
And good needs fangs sometimes, otherwise evil acts with impunity.
Hmm...
To the Holocron, this is pest control.
Getting let off the leash is what we'll see in Stars Of Wonder.
Gateway Assault, Part 3
"Gateway Assault, Part 3"
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
I feel sick.
Oh God do I feel sick.
We're through Amothetet's passage, and straight into enemy fire; they are focusing on the Holocron's Titan, as it went through minutes before us.
They didn't even reply to Naomi's offer. She'll try again once the asteroids are out of action.
The asteroids...
I look at the battle on my display. Focus the view on a platform.
The primary weapons are immense. Armoured superconducting railguns a hundred kilometres long. A hundred! Near-enough lightspeed cannons... They stick out, making the structures forboding spikes of doom on menacing orbs. Thankfully, Amothetet put us out of their cone of fire. But they are spinning around to face us...
And there's nothing we can do about them - they were designed to face Prikki Attack Moons - only evade and get the asteroids captured in boarding actions. That's where we come in, the Holocron's forces are on capturing Gateway control as that's where the Praetorians are; we'll be facing Sirzuzians, Auxilia XII.
The secondaries are firing though; gamma ray lasers. They can tear through ships.
The Holocron is firing casabas at them. A Titan's Perdition Beam takes hours to charge it's capacitors. Those megaton lances fire that every few seconds...
Naomi's voice comes through. "Thirty seconds ladies. This is your last abort chance - anyone who doesn't want to do this, please say so now."
I wait. Heart is pounding.
I think of the pistol on my inner thigh. It reminds me why I'm doing this.
Ok, Sirzuzians aren't what I had in mind... They're the only race other than Olinbari trusted with military roles thanks to them being Servile and Zealous Defenders. Naomi would love to fix the first, but she hasn't managed yet with the ones on Unity. They'll be riled up into a frenzy when we land.
But they are a a symptom of the problem that MSI has made. There's nothing we can do for these Sirzuzians, but we can help other Sirzuzians in the future.
"Fifteen seconds ladies. Check your systems, breathe, and then follow me in."
I switch off the display.
Feel the cold metal encasing me.
Feel the whine as the capacitors charge. Rocket motor runs pre-ignition sequence.
Heart pounding. Done this a dozen times in the sim and it still goes crazy every time...
"Five seconds ladies. No matter what happens, I love you all."
Three.
Two.
One.
Her voice again. "Let fall the rain."
I black out.
And the assault begins...
I love how dramatic the Holocron still is. Isn't most of his audience part of him? Did he just give a dramatic speech that was mainly to himself? If so, that's hilarious.
I love how dramatic the Holocron still is. Isn't most of his audience part of him? Did he just give a dramatic speech that was mainly to himself? If so, that's hilarious.
Gateway Assault, Part 4
"Gateway Assault, Part 4"
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Scipio Of Unity
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Scipio Of Unity
I take my wife's hand as we watch her Mum and Dad streak out first, a blazing stream lighting them and the Scarlets up against the void of the Gateway.
She checks her parents' rockets first.
She's tense.
I squeeze her hand. "Your Mum and Dad are the toughest people I know. They'll be ok."
She licks me. "When I was very little, learning to walk, Mum taught me, like any Human mother would."
I nod. "I'm guessing it's harder for Human children than Xenayan children."
"Yes, but that's not the point. No, a normal Human mother will pick up their child when they fall. Mum didn't."
Oh. "Why?"
She sighs. "Because I wouldn't always have her to pick me up. That I needed that inner strength of will to keep going, to rise each time I fall." She stands. Worry creases her face. "She's always been in favour of a individually-focused management methodology as a means of safeguarding against her assassination. And it influenced how she raised me and Ruki."
"The whole 'growing up afraid of MSI' thing?"
She nods. Then opens her mouth. "I had these sharpened for a while, as part of processing it all."
I look at the blips on the display. "Why did your parents deploy first?"
"Old Yehoshua HaMaadimi was a reader of Heinlein. And one of the things that stuck with him most was that in a drop, officers go first."
I think about the Holocron. "Is that why the Holocron sent his ship first?"
"And why he will be first in against the Praetorians."
"it's risky."
"War always is."
"No, I mean, you could lose your command staff in one sweep."
She shrugs. "Mum believes that anyone can do what she does, and she defined Life2.0's professional military. It was always designed to produce autonomous officers who could be deployed without backup onto hostile territory and establish a new rebellion movement from the local Indentured Assets."
I pause. "You'd have to put a huge amount of training into each soldier, if all of them are in effect officers."
"Yep. And?"
I think about MSI's navy. "We'd have the command decisions made by a well-fortified central group within a Flagship."
She turns towards me. "You have the same issue then, what happens if it gets hit in your scenario?"
"Passes to the reserves in other sections of the Flagship, and if they are all compromised, then to a cloaked emergency retreat vessel that exists to attempt to organise whatever rout happened if we lost so many command groups. But we'd always maintain a central command structure. But you guys... You could end up with an Ensign taking an Admiral's post and giving orders to Captains."
"Yeah, we could. Possibly other Admirals even, if the Ensign was on Valerius' staff; he's the closest to a central commander we use. Mum's Human. They have a very long history of warfare, not mere tribal scuffles like the conflicts among Xenaya, but proper full-on wars involving the whole Earth several times over. And on Earth, they've actually had that kind of situation, which means it is something Mum briefs on." She pauses to check on the others again.
I look over her shoulder.
Pips are getting close to the nearest asteroid.
I lick her. "It'll be ok."
She doesn't answer.
The Holocron is Imperator-Actual for this operation - his Titan has basically been gutted and rebuilt into an absolutely massive communications relay that enables his Neumanns back on Unity to play their rounds of Battlefield 2189 (which remember is not just for the Gateway, but also for when they launch a Rain on a Ringworld to support the Kyaese revolutionaries) - so this was to the whole fleet.
Including Appia's staff.
And yes, he did enjoy it.
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Gateway Assault, Part 5
"Gateway Assault, Part 5"
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
I bang my head on my suit when the adrenaline kicks in.
I feel horrible.
But, I've made it...
My rocket opens to let me out. Part one is done, move to part two. A ping on my HUD tells me where Naomi is.
My ears stop ringing long enough to hear her. "Ladies, landing site is compromised, Sirzuzian mixed infantry, no Olinbari sighted yet." Five pings appear, different sized. "Pick your nearest ping and get to it."
I hit up a hypo to sort out some of my issues, then load out.
I've landed with two other girls, and I'm first up... I take point.
We've smashed through hole punched by a casaba, we're a good thirty metres in. It's all going to be open space until we breach a door.
Naomi demonstrated what happens when you do; the other two ladies magnetise to a wall while I place remote detonators on a door leading to the nearest ping. Or at least, I think it does... Head is wozy. Another hypo.
Get clear. Boom - door goes bang, and with it the atmosphere on the other side undergoes explosive decompression, blowing out the contents. As soon as the debris comes through, we sprint. I try not to see the bodies among that debris.
I follow Naomi's advice and ground myself. The magnets are strongest on the ankles, so that you run by pushing hard on your toes and kind of lifting off - artificial gravity is off here.
The next room has some very confused Sirzuzians. Me and the girls - my HUD is saying Sarah and Yvonne - lay down supressing fire. Our rifles are in a burst fire mode, four bullets a trigger pull. HUD gives you an estimate direction.
So... At least those slaves don't get drawn out deaths.
I'm not sure what feels more horrible right now, my body or my heart...
Must keep moving. Self-reflection is a luxury on a battlefield.
Gravity comes back, and the doors start working. On one side that's good, but the other is the Sirzuzians can fight much more comfortably, But they aren't really equipped for facing against the Praetorian-spec gear we're using, and especially not my suit with it's extra tricks.
It does get easier when they are fighting back, it just becomes you or them, and well...
You can't let it be you, and we outgun and out-armour them.
Tears are flowing down my face... These poor Sirzuzians, they didn't deserve this. How many of them have loved ones they were hoping to go home to?
Just like me...
They woke up today, and their world shattered because their masters are basically just in our way, and they are too cowardly to face us themselves.
One gets within three metres of me as I turn a corridor. I watch his eyes go blank as his blood seeps from four holes in his chest.
Eventually, we get to the nearest ping - it's Naomi and Buri. You can tell it's them, one stands ten feet tall in armour, and the other is blood-red with a wolf's helm. Naomi looks at me, and taps her head. I stand. I don't know what she means, so she looks at Sarah, who holds me.
I realise the issue - I've lost suit internal audio, and I change to the reserve feed.
Naomi waits for me to stand again. "Elizabeth, can you hear me now?"
"Yes, I've lost primary audio feed in here."
"I see. Ok, you follow me. Scarlet One to all - we have our beachheads, and we are now going to complete our tasks. Team one you are going with me and Buri into the command bunker. Team two you are going with Clarissa and Tina to reactor cores, team three you are going to momentum ring operations with Lydia. Team four you are going to primary batteries with Nefertiri, and team five you are going to astrometrics with Sophia. Let's move Ladies."
She and Buri take point as we head deeper in. Now that we've breached the hull, we can get sensor data from inside the platform, and as we move I review it.
This asteroid is roughly a hundred km wide. But, very little excavated; the bulk of the surface facilities are equatorial, while the innermost core that contains the control room relies on the bulk mass of asteroid to absorb weapons fire. For us it means it is the bit most likely to contain Praetorians. Which is why we get Naomi and Buri... The next most likely spot is the reactors, which is why that team gets the other long-time Scarlets.
Either way, we've got the longest journey, and that means more Sirzuzians.
They are everywhere.
Literally, being Avians they come from all over the place...
Thankfully for us, they prioritise Buri, as he's the biggest threat. Which is logical, but such a mistake - he rips them to pieces. Literally... One poor Sirzuzian gets bitten in half after he jumps at Naomi.
Hours pass of descending through an access tube, room by room, mopping up completely outclassed Sirzuzians.
I breathe in. "Naomi, I'm getting suspicious here."
"What do you think Elizabeth?"
"Are they really just going to waste the Sirzuzians like this? What's their plan here?"
She thinks for a moment. Switches channel. "Ladies, report status - tiredness and ammo."
I check. I feel tired. And I'm a little low on ammo. Hit another hypo to get myself up again.
From the reports of the other women... I'm not alone. It hits so differently in the real world than it does in the sim.
Naomi pauses. Looks at her husband. They're talking. "Ok Ladies, we have to condense ammo, we are hours from resupply. Volunteers for melee?"
She is the first. Eventually, I volunteer too. Not many others do, but eventually we have a group of us on the flanks and rearguard with these Praetorian neutronium filament swords out, plus Naomi and Buri upfront.
I feel naked without my rifle, now I have to engage hand to hand.
I wet myself at the next engagement as two Sirzuzians fly at my head.
Sure, both attacks bounce uselessly, but that was scary.
After another hour, us girls using our swords rises to more than half. Naomi orders the ones with ammo to hold it for Praetorians, especially explosives.
The tunnels down are really easy though - switch the zero point reactors into open-cycle ramjet mode, and blast down the tunnels off the waste heat. We go too fast for the Sirzuzians to intercept.
The core...
Naomi halts us. Looks at each of us. "Ok ladies. If it is going to go wrong, it'll go wrong now. Intel says inside this structure is more Sirzuzians, but equally, the intel is old information. Two, three, four and five have achieved their objectives, and they are acting as a relay between me and overall leadership. Whoever is inside, knows we are about to knock. Buri and I will go first." She looks at each of us, as Buri stands with her. "If there are Praetorians, we will engage them in melee. If we can't beat them, we will at least buy time for you to detonate everything you have left at them. Irrespective of Buri and I, you must take them down. Full danger close. Am I understood?"
We all look at each other.
My heart is pounding.
I don't want her to be right.
But...
She kind of is.
I think of an alternative. "Why not wait for backup? We're down on ammo, we could use support. We have time."
She shakes her head. "Team four has discovered the primary batteries have been re-routed to be operated off the reserves inside here. They won't have the firing rate they had before team two disabled the reactors of course, but those primary batteries are still online."
I nod. "Ok."
Naomi plants the breaching explosives.
Those with guns take positions.
Breathe.
We breach.
The battle's off to an epic start so far. Glad to see Elizabeth has survived so far.
Here's is a neat coincidence: This is pretty much one half of the core concept of a future Stellaris story I've been workshopping.
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Gateway Assault, Part 6
"Gateway Assault, Part 6"
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
27th Daas, 10 (2189)
Elizabeth Herminton
How am I feeling?
Sick. Honestly I am wishing I was back in Appia's bedroom right now, making love with her. I was safe when I was her sex toy, and freedom terrifies me. Because freedom...
Freedom means I'm holding plasma grenades to throw just as the smoke clears from the breach and Buri's roar is loud enough I feel it through my armour, and...
Force myself to focus.
We hold a line for dealing with charging Sirzuzians that come past Buri and Naomi.
But none of them get that far...
They were lined up as a sacrificial set of dummies, and Buri's sweeping blows fling dozens into the air at a time; he routs them. We just stand and watch the carnage of an apex predator obliterating prey.
But they aren't the target.
There's the Praetorians, who are all standing guard at a door. Ten of them.
Think.
I look at the other girls. "Volley! They need support to close the distance!"
Girls with guns start firing at the Praetorians, just as they recover from watching the savagery of Buri's assault; Naomi gets one with her guns, and we ruin their formation with our fire. Buri's timing is perfect - he leaps across the room, and uses three Praetorians to break his fall just as they recover from the explosions.
We hear their armour smash, and they don't get up.
Naomi dances with two, a sword in each hand.
Sheesh, these Praetorians are fast; its a blur trying to keep up with the speed that they and Naomi can fight at. We stop firing because by the time we have a target, Naomi or Buri have already changed positions... No wonder Naomi said to use explosives.
They run from Buri now, they've figured out how deadly he is in a brawl; walls, floor, roof, he uses very heavy impacts to do brute force trauma. No slicing or thrusting, just smashing.
We aren't firing out of fear of hitting Naomi and Buri. I look at the girls with rocket launchers. "Girls, we can use the rockets to deny them areas of the floor and keep them confined into the area where Naomi and Buri are."
Everyone agrees that's a great idea, and we start firing again, those of us with grenades advance close enough to throw them, setting plasma fires to deny them escape.
Naomi is fighting them conventionally, and they realise she's the weaker of the two, but Buri...
Focus on Naomi, and Buri gets you. One of them isn't fast enough - Buri throws him by the leg, and he goes head first into a wall. He doesn't get up either.
They are perfectly in tune, which cannot be said for the Praetorians. I realise Naomi isn't fighting them. Nope, she's positioning them for Buri to whack.
The last two lay down their weapons.
Good. Just need to keep it up...
It is quite an interesting circumstance, isn't it?
Prersumably it's a plot-point that comes up in Angel of War?