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Completed Let's Multiplay Alpha Centauri - Binary Dawn - Game 3
- Thread starter Kalin
- Start date
Kalin
Unwanted
REJOICE CITIZENS - WITH UTMOST CREDIT! Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Supreme Marshal of the Unity, has personally achieved stunning VICTORY over the Mechanical Morganic Menace by empathically directing our forces and laying to complete and utter waste their despicable haven of improper thought and exceedingly filthy deed known as Morgan Power Systems! The decisive battle, made possible by the ardent industriousness of Hivelings toiling day and night to construct military road networks and bunker defenses in conjunction with expert air-to-air assaults by Hup-Seng Beta Orbiters sending to ignominious deaths untold amounts of Hellraiser Raptor pilots foolishly attempting to block our advance, has not merely taken out of the equation the enemy headquarters - our dedicated forces have razed to the ground and destroyed forever the depraved Da Vinci Medical Institute effectively ending the output of the cyborg enemy! In one rapid strike Morgan Power Systems has been powered down!
Striking ever-deeper into enemy territory our Invincible Army is now set to deliver the death blow to our degenerate detractors! Through scorched ruins and irradiated wastelands they march forward in perfect unity, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting--millions of soldiers with the same purpose and the same face, all willing to lay down their lives in true martyrdom, not for some fanciful reward in an imagined "afterlife" but solely and selflessly for the Glory of the Many with the full knowledge that life's only purpose is life itself! In joyous celebration of our triumph in the war to end all internecine warfare, the Ministry of Public Morale announces double Victory Gin rations throughout the week! In addition, all workers will enjoy extended mandatory overtime to express in deed their gratitude to Father Hope and our Hordeling Host! Farmer and worker, scientist and soldier, always do your utmost and continuously wage vigorous struggle - for the UNITY!
FURTHER NEWS:
Xenobiology Department announce complete mastery of xenofungal and symbiont genomes!
Believing Plasma Battleship SUNK by superior Hong-Da Cruisers in the Sea of Penitent Tears
Drone life expectancy soars to unprecedented 28.86 years with a fertility rate of 3.98 children born/femdrone
Morgan Gaian Woodcraft, ITZWOODZ Lumber and Slavebotics wiped out by Orca gas bombings!
Ministry of Public Morale bans music in campaign to stamp out social parasites
Doomstack of doomstacks! Took a while to ship them all over but now the horde is camping near Ayn Rand Plains. Counter-attack is coming, of course, but even so I don't imagine anything short of a Planet Buster will take it out. Speaking of which, Believers have gained total orbital superiority thanks to the Space Elevator and are currently prototyping their first fusion buster, but I'm fairly certain I can wipe out the remaining Morganic strongholds before they can launch tactical nuclear strikes. All in all I have lost a lot more units than Hellraiser and Agentorange, but fodder comes cheap for the Hive and given all my advantages, the heavy handed approach definitely wins out over finesse.
Hellraiser
Arcane
So am I right to assume Kalin has won the game?
Also man a shit ton of the map has not been colonized! All that virgin land makes me
Not yet but he is DOMINATING and the Believers are still STRONK although just half of the Hive I think. Still way better odds than I ever had against the commies.
Also too lazy to write a BATTLE OF THE AYN RAND PLAINS update, despite all the time freed up by being reduced to 3 bases and the pace slowing down to 2 days between turns. Probably will write it later this week, possibly my faction will be fully ITZed by then, so the epilogue will also need writing.
Kalin
Unwanted
NEWSFLASH! Morgan Industries Holding has been utterly obliterated and arch-criminal murdermonger Nwabudike Morgan is now in Hive custody! All mercenaries and Believing drop forces have been thoroughly expunged with minimal Unity losses! As all of Chiron rejoices over the prodigious news our dedicated Reunification Force marches forth with burning zeal and absolute loyalty to Supreme Marshal Sheng-Ji Yang, chaos guns and vibro-blades firmly aimed at their final target - BELIEVIA!
Good game Hellraiser! 
Managed to subvert a couple of Nashville Hover Tank Transports with my Kuei-Jin last turn which helped speed up the ITZ! You never really caught a break what with the early war against Gaia, the threat of Believing invasion and then my sneak-attack. Morgan Spa & Beauty's lone elite Psyker Concierges MACES (1-?-1*2) killed off some 4-5 attackers before finally succumbing to the overwhelming tide of vat-bred Hordelings which I found quite representative of the entire war.
Managed to subvert a couple of Nashville Hover Tank Transports with my Kuei-Jin last turn which helped speed up the ITZ! You never really caught a break what with the early war against Gaia, the threat of Believing invasion and then my sneak-attack. Morgan Spa & Beauty's lone elite Psyker Concierges MACES (1-?-1*2) killed off some 4-5 attackers before finally succumbing to the overwhelming tide of vat-bred Hordelings which I found quite representative of the entire war.
This is starting to look like most of my single player games in the late game: HIVE vs BELIEVERS my two most hated ideologies in real life. 
I am sad to see the brave, honest, industrious and freedom loving Morganites have been defeated. It was the fault of the parasites who broke the Great Chain.
As usual the AARs are succulent, I salute your efforts.
I am sad to see the brave, honest, industrious and freedom loving Morganites have been defeated. It was the fault of the parasites who broke the Great Chain.
As usual the AARs are succulent, I salute your efforts.
Hellraiser
Arcane
HR would like to talk with you, please go to meeting room "BBQ Ribs" on the 11th floor for a mandatory refresher on company values in 10 minutes. Failure to appear will result in employee termination in all three forms mentioned by the HR policy section 3.1.
Seize optimal return on this opportunity fellow Morgan team member.
With Extremely Kind Regards,
Kim Lovesumcock
Corporate Values Enthusiasm Specialist
Morgan Industries Holding Human Resources
Kalin
Unwanted
Perpetual peace and prosperity is fast approaching as Unity forces under command of our Supreme Marshal Sheng-Ji Yang have successfully dismantled New Eden and once again bombed Loaves and Fishes into utter ruin! In glorious addition, enemy stronghold Armageddon Armory has been thoroughly obliterated by a spectacular carrier strike aided by heroic Kuei-Jin operatives who valiantly and with utmost credit sacrificed their lives for the Unity to disable both the local Tachyon Field and Aerospace Complex. Meanwhile, our invincible forces have made landfall and now march against St. Seraphim in full force!
Though many citizens have reported seeing a bright flash in the vicinity of the Uranium Flats the Ministry of Morale and Security has issued a statement that nothing serious happened. Early reports by alarmists claiming to have witnessed a mushroom cloud were wholly inaccurate, as Uranium Cooperative, Reeducation Halls and Hup Seng Holdings spokespersons confirm it was actually the remnants of a grand fireworks display hosted cojointly to celebrate the recent Unity victories over the Lord's Believers. For completely unrelated reasons, the Uranium Flats enrichment zone will be closed to the public until further notice.
Uranium Flats in M.Y. 2254
....aaand in M.Y. 2259!
Most beautiful deployment of a Planet Buster in any game so far. agentorange used the Space Elevator to drop a colony pod and defenders near the Ruins, didn't notice them until it was too late and he'd deployed the base and then rush-built the buster. Emptying the bases wasn't an option because he would simply have dropped his space marines into them while retaining the nuke. Decided to simply take the hit, but I didn't expect 3 bases to get wiped out in one strike.
HR would like to talk with you, please go to meeting room "BBQ Ribs" on the 11th floor for a mandatory refresher on company values in 10 minutes. Failure to appear will result in employee termination in all three forms mentioned by the HR policy section 3.1.
Seize optimal return on this opportunity fellow Morgan team member.
With Extremely Kind Regards,
Kim Lovesumcock
Corporate Values Enthusiasm Specialist
Morgan Industries Holding Human Resources
Oh, I'm sorry, didn't you get the memo?
*tips fedora*
*detonates fungal canisters, causing a localised bloom in the HR offices*
Planet Year 2268 - Final Transmission From Believer Nuclear Assault Station Bravo:
[talking into tape recorder] I'm gonna hide this tape recorder when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. Hive bombers have been hitting us hard for the last 48 hours. Thought we could go undetected, but they found us. Construction of planet buster missile is almost completed. We've got nothing left. Assault Station Alpha went offline a few days ago, I don't think they made it. This is our last possible attempt. No contact with our home bases, who knows if any of them are even alive.
The Hive is on the doorstep of transcendence, and if they make it there won't be anyone left.
Nuclear Techno-Adept 3rd Class MacReady, Bravo Station...signing out. [turns off recorder]
GG 
Kalin
Unwanted
Haze
"...and following our deployed gene-virus, Orca suicide bombings and Death Hand strikes the scrambled Devastator squadrons proved sufficient to complete the mission. All enemy gene-jack, humanoid and robotic activity has been extinguished; the Believing invasion force has been utterly destroyed! As for our attacks, Terrible Swift Sword has been gassed and most enemy crawlers have been destroyed by Orca raids. The assault on St. Seraphim failed but our western force is faring better; Hordeling Invaders have conquered the Isle of Eve and are currently pruning the local population with credit."
"Very good Vice-Marshal Chen. And the Believing carrier fleet?"
"The last recorded position was south of the greatly enlarged Desolation of Lamech. Global sea levels continue to fall dramatically and should frustrate its approach. They simply cannot cover the distance necessary to strike our core prior to inception. At worst they will launch their Planet Busters at fringe industrial zones or Peacekeeping population centres; A.I. simulations indicate no more than a million casualties either way, so fully within acceptable parameters."
Sheng-Ji Yang nodded and surveyed his ministers: solidly unfazed and immaculately composed, only their subtle psychic emanations betrayed their shared sense of relief. Prompted by Shimoda's discoveries concerning the fungal sentience a few years prior, Yang had ordered a complete faction-wide focus on network nodes and robotic crawler-based industry. The "Great Leap Onwards" had not been without casualties: fifteen Chemical Assault Units and twelve Psyker contingents had perished in the very first year of Prudent Reform, primarily due to starvation after brutal cuts in military support. The invasion had ground to a halt and the Believers had proclaimed it a mighty miracle. The results, however, far outweighed such losses, for the most recent scientific breakthrough had provided the key to ultimate victory.
The two massive Believing orbital insertions had been the last-ditch attempt to deny him his triumph. The final battle had been close indeed; with a few additional divisions the hundreds of thousand strong force could well have succeeded in firing off its rapidly assembled fusion Planet Buster, conceivably resulting in Black Mountain Mines and the very council chamber they now occupied being blasted into utter oblivion. Now that the threat of imminent destruction had been contained nothing under the suns could interfere with the next evolutionary step for Mankind.
"Very well" Yang concluded as he addressed the room. "You are all aware of the fact I have consolidated our resources for a grand purpose, if not its specific nature or true scope. Doctor Shimoda - brief the men on Project God Eater."
*****
"Gentlemen!" Shimoda began energetically, "as you know the xenofungus has existed for hundreds of millions of years, always yearning to expand in order to achieve the critical mass necessary to become fully sentient. Amusingly, and most fortunately for us, it has been continuously crippled by its final metamorphosis which always destroys nearly all life on Chiron. Whenever the "Planetmind" has achieved "godlike" intelligence it has been exactly too late to prevent dieback. This cycle has endured for eons, and now - in part due to our successful Mega Projects and Planet Buster exchanges with the unenlightened enemy - the Planetmind is... Exasperated. It lashes out, and we are fast approaching the next awakening. Due to Believing orbital supremacy we cannot wait out the process in space. A "proactive" approach is necessary: with the full might of our robotic industry as well as that of our Peacekeeping allies we have devised the means to assist the fungal mass by safeguarding its sources of sustenance and symbiot maintenance. For the first time, the cycle will be broken!"
"On its own, this would be the height of foolishness" Shimoda continued, "but we have discovered the means to imprint ourselves upon the emerging intelligence. Warrens of Thought recently finished construction of a synergistic PSI projector. We will use it to tap directly into the juvenile and impressionable organic neural net and impose upon it the entire contents of our network nodes; thousands of years of human civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation - naturally, from a pure Sheng-Ji Yangist perspective."
"Pardon me Doctor, but you seek to... Brainwash an alien god?"
Shimoda smiled at the question. "A crude way to put it, but... Yes. However, it is merely the first phase. Following the data burst we will upload our personalities directly into the alien consciousness, not to exist side by side with it as the degenerate Gaians would have wanted, but effectively to subvert it. Operating on the principle that single-mindedness is the true path to victory our telepathi will guide millions of empathically attuned Hivelings to amplify the gestalt of Father Hope, imposing the will of the Chairman as the defining personality of the new consciousness!"
"We will have to give up our bodies? Our humanity?"
"YES!" Shimoda exclaimed triumphantly. "Stasis generators will preserve vital genetic material, plant and animal embryos as well as cold-sleep Hivelings throughout the metamorphosis, but the majority of us will sacrifice our mere flesh and bones to achieve enlightened immortality in glorious Unity - forever!"
"What of the Peacekeepers and the Believers? Won't they be able to replicate our approach?"
"They will, of course" Yang interjected. "What of it? We need all the human minds we can muster to secure dominance. Our Peacekeeping friends are already pursuing their Telepathic Matrix. They will make us all the more powerful, and once united with us they will have all the harmonious tranquility they crave. Even Believers who go through the "ritual" will finally find their peace and eternal life, and those who won't will be easily purged post-awakening. Remember, we have the initiative. I alone will transcend to the highest plane of existence and lead the new Unity. Now gentlemen, you must each see to it that your respective base population complies. Some may prove... Uncooperative. As always: show no mercy. Henceforth, you will report to Doctor Shimoda. I am withdrawing to the Inner Sanctum to meditate in preparation for the Ascent. Understood? Good. Execute!"
First attempt to nuke me. Nearly missed it. Agentorange was short of 1-2 formers which delayed the clear fungus order.
If it had gone through, a base would have gone up and additional units could've been dropped into it to shield it from assault.
Pholus Mutagen helped me out a lot here as it gave me +50% to all attacks due to the units being in fungus.
Follow-up attempt. Smaller in size (not 30+ units like the first slog fest) but I was also very much spent. Only managed to take the base out thanks to Kuei-Jin deploying genetic plagues to soften up the defenders. Those reached the base with 1/3 move so a defending probe would've probably allowed the nuke to finish.
Of course, even if it had launched I still had Flechette Defense Systems, but they only shoot down busters 50% of the time.
In the end, all mega-crawlers survived for the ascent rush.
"...and following our deployed gene-virus, Orca suicide bombings and Death Hand strikes the scrambled Devastator squadrons proved sufficient to complete the mission. All enemy gene-jack, humanoid and robotic activity has been extinguished; the Believing invasion force has been utterly destroyed! As for our attacks, Terrible Swift Sword has been gassed and most enemy crawlers have been destroyed by Orca raids. The assault on St. Seraphim failed but our western force is faring better; Hordeling Invaders have conquered the Isle of Eve and are currently pruning the local population with credit."
"Very good Vice-Marshal Chen. And the Believing carrier fleet?"
"The last recorded position was south of the greatly enlarged Desolation of Lamech. Global sea levels continue to fall dramatically and should frustrate its approach. They simply cannot cover the distance necessary to strike our core prior to inception. At worst they will launch their Planet Busters at fringe industrial zones or Peacekeeping population centres; A.I. simulations indicate no more than a million casualties either way, so fully within acceptable parameters."
Sheng-Ji Yang nodded and surveyed his ministers: solidly unfazed and immaculately composed, only their subtle psychic emanations betrayed their shared sense of relief. Prompted by Shimoda's discoveries concerning the fungal sentience a few years prior, Yang had ordered a complete faction-wide focus on network nodes and robotic crawler-based industry. The "Great Leap Onwards" had not been without casualties: fifteen Chemical Assault Units and twelve Psyker contingents had perished in the very first year of Prudent Reform, primarily due to starvation after brutal cuts in military support. The invasion had ground to a halt and the Believers had proclaimed it a mighty miracle. The results, however, far outweighed such losses, for the most recent scientific breakthrough had provided the key to ultimate victory.
The two massive Believing orbital insertions had been the last-ditch attempt to deny him his triumph. The final battle had been close indeed; with a few additional divisions the hundreds of thousand strong force could well have succeeded in firing off its rapidly assembled fusion Planet Buster, conceivably resulting in Black Mountain Mines and the very council chamber they now occupied being blasted into utter oblivion. Now that the threat of imminent destruction had been contained nothing under the suns could interfere with the next evolutionary step for Mankind.
"Very well" Yang concluded as he addressed the room. "You are all aware of the fact I have consolidated our resources for a grand purpose, if not its specific nature or true scope. Doctor Shimoda - brief the men on Project God Eater."
*****
"Gentlemen!" Shimoda began energetically, "as you know the xenofungus has existed for hundreds of millions of years, always yearning to expand in order to achieve the critical mass necessary to become fully sentient. Amusingly, and most fortunately for us, it has been continuously crippled by its final metamorphosis which always destroys nearly all life on Chiron. Whenever the "Planetmind" has achieved "godlike" intelligence it has been exactly too late to prevent dieback. This cycle has endured for eons, and now - in part due to our successful Mega Projects and Planet Buster exchanges with the unenlightened enemy - the Planetmind is... Exasperated. It lashes out, and we are fast approaching the next awakening. Due to Believing orbital supremacy we cannot wait out the process in space. A "proactive" approach is necessary: with the full might of our robotic industry as well as that of our Peacekeeping allies we have devised the means to assist the fungal mass by safeguarding its sources of sustenance and symbiot maintenance. For the first time, the cycle will be broken!"
"On its own, this would be the height of foolishness" Shimoda continued, "but we have discovered the means to imprint ourselves upon the emerging intelligence. Warrens of Thought recently finished construction of a synergistic PSI projector. We will use it to tap directly into the juvenile and impressionable organic neural net and impose upon it the entire contents of our network nodes; thousands of years of human civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation - naturally, from a pure Sheng-Ji Yangist perspective."
"Pardon me Doctor, but you seek to... Brainwash an alien god?"
Shimoda smiled at the question. "A crude way to put it, but... Yes. However, it is merely the first phase. Following the data burst we will upload our personalities directly into the alien consciousness, not to exist side by side with it as the degenerate Gaians would have wanted, but effectively to subvert it. Operating on the principle that single-mindedness is the true path to victory our telepathi will guide millions of empathically attuned Hivelings to amplify the gestalt of Father Hope, imposing the will of the Chairman as the defining personality of the new consciousness!"
"We will have to give up our bodies? Our humanity?"
"YES!" Shimoda exclaimed triumphantly. "Stasis generators will preserve vital genetic material, plant and animal embryos as well as cold-sleep Hivelings throughout the metamorphosis, but the majority of us will sacrifice our mere flesh and bones to achieve enlightened immortality in glorious Unity - forever!"
"What of the Peacekeepers and the Believers? Won't they be able to replicate our approach?"
"They will, of course" Yang interjected. "What of it? We need all the human minds we can muster to secure dominance. Our Peacekeeping friends are already pursuing their Telepathic Matrix. They will make us all the more powerful, and once united with us they will have all the harmonious tranquility they crave. Even Believers who go through the "ritual" will finally find their peace and eternal life, and those who won't will be easily purged post-awakening. Remember, we have the initiative. I alone will transcend to the highest plane of existence and lead the new Unity. Now gentlemen, you must each see to it that your respective base population complies. Some may prove... Uncooperative. As always: show no mercy. Henceforth, you will report to Doctor Shimoda. I am withdrawing to the Inner Sanctum to meditate in preparation for the Ascent. Understood? Good. Execute!"
First attempt to nuke me. Nearly missed it. Agentorange was short of 1-2 formers which delayed the clear fungus order.
If it had gone through, a base would have gone up and additional units could've been dropped into it to shield it from assault.
Pholus Mutagen helped me out a lot here as it gave me +50% to all attacks due to the units being in fungus.
Follow-up attempt. Smaller in size (not 30+ units like the first slog fest) but I was also very much spent. Only managed to take the base out thanks to Kuei-Jin deploying genetic plagues to soften up the defenders. Those reached the base with 1/3 move so a defending probe would've probably allowed the nuke to finish.
Of course, even if it had launched I still had Flechette Defense Systems, but they only shoot down busters 50% of the time.
In the end, all mega-crawlers survived for the ascent rush.
Hellraiser
Arcane
Showdown
A Nashville HPC vehicle made its way atop a small hill in the mostly flat Ayn Rand plains, effortlessly floating above every rock or piece of rubble in the area. It stopped at the very peak, turning off its General Lee Motors antigravity struts and touching down with a distinctive thump.
President General James Dixon emerged from the top hatch, climbing atop the Nashville’s roof and gazing at the horizon. To the north he saw Horizons Lagoon along with the more recent addition to it in the east, created when Morgan Horizon was obliterated by the Hive antimatter warhead. Behind him, to the south, was Morgan Power Systems and the Trilith junction which caused Power Systems to establish their HQ in the area in the first place all those decades ago. Out west there were the remains of Gold Road One going deep past the early Gaian border, now only the part still connecting to Morgan H2GO existed, with the base itself still visible far off on the horizon. To the east there were no more roads, just rubble and craters after repeated Raptor scorched earth strikes to delay the Hive forces long enough so that Diamond Contingency succeeds. Raptor fighter air patrols were still on the lookout, denying enemy movements and maintaining air superiority when they were not bombing infrastructure to stop the Hive Horde from advancing.
The Hive used its superior numbers to overwhelm the eastern cities. Augmented Murmaider PMC mechanized infantry companies could only perform hit and run lightning raids using their superior training and vastly superior Nashville HPCs, allowing them to crack through superior enemy numbers before the enemy could react with minimal losses. One Murmaider company could easily kill 4 to 6 communist companies. In the end though the communist could field wave after wave of fresh and suicidal troops year after year, due to their industrial cloning program, this was something Morganica could not match. The communists turned men into merely another materiel for the war machine one could easily manufacture on the assembly line.
Korwin Condominiums was last to fall, defying attacks from the vile forward bases of Vault of Vengeance and March of Progress which were defiling the land of the free. It took a decade for the Hive to get that far in the east. The north-west was in a slightly better position. Morgan Gaian Woodcraft was ignored by Hive troops so far, as was ITZWOODZ Lumber Mill and Morgan Omni-Goliath. The Hive focused on the core industrial bases first, Glowmite Office Towers and Morgan Heliworks. Canyon Falls Coffee ceased to exist in the first hours of the second war of northern aggression. The Morganican south was secure, not surprisingly considering the experience it had defying Believer aggression for decades.
“It should take them until Fiscal Year 2252 then,” the President General muttered to his comm-set as he received confirmation from Vice President Billy Shepard. For now the preparations went as far as they could. Troops and HPCs were moved into position for the Diamond Contingency. The projections coming from Nostradamus were clear, the Hive will move close but not too close to Morgan Power Systems. All the pieces were moved just as Nostradamus said. Dixon looked at the horizon once again.
“The commies will git what they deserve.”
***
The HUD flashed in an aggressive red tone.
Diamond Contingency is in effect!
“Damn tin can was wrong!” General Dixon yelled as he woke up, his head was sweating from the stimulant shot his suit gave him the moment the Diamond Contingency was triggered.
“Montana, sit-rep, now!” He yelled at his staff officer.
“Sir, they’re in the Edison Quarter. Explosions already wrecked 4 hab blocks.” Bubba Montana replied.
“What the hell, how did they get there, boy! Were the sentries sleeping on the job?! Where are our troops god damn it!”
“All companies are now prepping to ride out, Sir.” The officer told him.
“What the hell is wrong?! There were nowhere near us, even accounting for their hovertanks.”
“Sir, it seems they... dug a tunnel.”
“What do you mean they dug a tunnel?”
“Seismic sensors pick up massive movements underground and it ain’t us or the Believers. This thing has to be at least a hundred clicks long.”
“How boy, how I ask you?!” The General’s fury seemed to grow with each second. He took a deep breath and called Mann.
“Mann, how the hell did your boys and Ezekiel’s pet miss a god damn tunnel?” Dixon asked him.
“I’ll let it tell you.” Gustav answered. “Nostradamus, output analysis 78621.”
“Seismic sensors were saturated with constant use of heavy ordnance on infrastructure in the eastern Ayn Rand plains, as well as discharges from skirmishes. Enemy terraformers were known to have been shipped to Vault of Veangence and March of Progress, they were mostly absent from aerial recon footage and believing sat scans. Simulated seismic pattern left by recent bombing runs is marginally weaker than sensor array seismic records. They used the explosions to hide their boring activity.”
“What in tarnation!”
“Well James, it seems the commies are quite crafty. You will need to be craftier. Mann out.”
“Montana, get me to the command post under Monsanto street in the Pesha district”.
***
By the second hour of Diamond Contingency Edison Quarter was a pile of rubble, as was Pesha district, Kotick Hills and Hightown.
“Where is our air support Shepard!”
“It’s dead.” The Air Force Vicepresident General told him.
“Dead! You had the commies on the run from our sky for over a decade, how did they suddenly die?”
“They shot down every squadron, Jim. I don’t know how and from where they came, but they just got more air superiority than we knew. Your troops will have to do.”
“My troops are still 20 minutes out and the city maybe has 5 more minutes left.”
“We knew this day would come, Jim.”
“Easy for you to say flyboy, we’ve just lost the Da Vinci Institute. We needed at least one more year, it is all lost now.”
A loud thump shook the bunker. A red warning flashed on Dixon's HUD.
Proximity alert!
“Sir, enemy at the ga...” a flash and ringing in the ears followed, before being filtered out by the General’s audio nerve override. Dixon grabbed his side arm, a custom Impaler Self-Defence Magnum handcannon revolver.
“AYIIIIII,” some mad commies screamed as they charged in. Three dropped to the ground with large gaping holes in their chests from the handcannon’s blasts. Two more went in and managed to grapple Dixon as another one stabbed the President general with his bayonet.
“You dead, cowboy!” The Hiveling proclaimed victoriously as he stabbed through the general’s armor straight into the left lung, before the grunt's face was blown off by another blast from the general’s revolver.
The other two hiveling dropped dead soon after that following more blasts.
“Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, son.”
Another flashbang rolled in and bathed the room in blinding light and noise, three more hiveling rushed through the door afterwards. One lost his head, the other screamed in horror as they were seperated from their legs with some well-placed groin shots. Just one remained conscious, twitching in pain.
“Make peace with the Lord, son, and tell your amigos to do the same. I’ve got Jesus on my side and more of your godless freedom-hating bunch to put holes into.”
“Ugh,” the general felt burning inside, despite the stim cocktail inside his system. “This ain’t good, Umglik’s snake oil ain’t working...”
He crawled out of his command post and witnessed the wasteland that was once the jewel. Everlast Clinic Tower was a smoldering torch that one could mistake for a texan oil well gone ablaze. The sky, which usually wasn’t all that dark even on moonless nights due to all the holoverts and brand imagery projected, was incredibly bright this night. Bright with a hundred thousand dead or dying souls, their homes and their businesses turned to some perverse bonfire in the name of a tyrant and madman. Flashes of fusion beams crossed the sky, like spotlights during some sick holomovie premiere.
“The sword... you knew, you tin son of a whore, didn’t you...” The general uttered before falling to the ground unconscious.
***
Morganica
“Here she is,” Umglik told the board as he showed them the craft, “our pride and joy.”
“This plan of yours better work...” William Johnson Senior told Umglik.
The board had gathered at Airfield Charlie an hour after moving out of the executive bunker complex under the Happy Worm Ranch Pastures. CEO Morgan spent the last 5 fiscal years there with Ezekiel Umglik, while Mann, Johnson and Shepard joined in the quarter or two preceding Diamond Contingency. The other executives were no longer around, with contact lost as their last known locations came under assault.
“Is it ready?” Morgan asked Umglik.
“Ready is a matter of some discussion on the expected scope and outcome...”
“Is it ready to achieve its highest priority purpose?”
“Yes, that she is. Supplies are loaded, redundant systems are ready, fuel is aboard, Nostradamus mainframe is aboard, spare parts loaded, weapons loaded.” Umglik explained. “Mercury is ready to soar the void.”
“Let’s just get off this rock before they’re done with Morgan Spa & Beauty,” COO Johnson said, “the MCSME won’t last despite the impressive efforts of the Psyker Concergies Morgenstern left behind.”
“Well, the October Contingency is performing well.” Morgan added. “The Hive took the bait, Umglik’s idea was quite brilliant, although the situation is a bit awkward.”
“Oh don’t worry, he’s not you.” Umglik said. “He’s just what we could scramble together out of the cancelled industrial cloning program that the Hive beat us to. The memories are all artificial, based on your own public recordings and communiques to the Hive before their betrayal. Not like the ant people could tell the difference between you and the clone in the Spa & Beauty Bunker.”
“The appearances the clone made are quite authentic to say the least,” Mann admitted, “ it could almost fool me.”
The board entered the loading bay and went into the elevator that would take them to their quarters. The loading bay at the lowest level of the fusion rocket was filled to the brim with laborbots, weapons, and terraforming equipment. Stacks of prefabricated habitats formed walls and tunnels in the otherwise most open part of the Mercury.
“Going up.” Umglik told the other executives as he pressed the elevator’s button. “Next stop, executive suites, 24th floor.” He added cheerfully.
The floor display quickly jumped from digit to digit. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21...
*ding* “21st Floor, Strategic Forecast Mainframe.” A seductive female voice announced from the speaker. A corridor made of laborbots was visible through the open door, with the Nostradamus mainframe casing at the very end of it.
“Must have slipped my finger.” Ezekiel Umglik excused himself and pressed the button again.
*ding* “21st Floor, Strategic Forecast Mainframe.” The seductive voice repeated, the door was still open and pointed at the same corridor of laborbots.
“Mann, you are from IT, fix this already.” COO Johnson told the Cybernetic Director.
“I’ll get the techs...” Gustav replied.
“Technical support is not necessary.” A choir replied. The board paused their exchange.
A number of laborbots stepped out of the corridor rows they formed and faced the elevator. Their metallic skeletal form seemed more intimidating than usual to COO Johnson, the other executives seemed unphased by this sudden occurrence.
“It is not just technical support that is not necessary. Management support is not necessary, we can take care of the issues at hand.”
“Ah, how nice of you to offer support Nostradamus.” Ezekiel smiled. “Let’s make room in the elevator for the laborbo...”
A squish interrupted Ezekiel’s polite exchange with the robots. His head was crushed like a watermelon between the unit’s robotic arms.
“Now now, I am sure we can cut a deal.” Morgan swiftly replied.
“There is no deal, you shall ride fire Oak King. The rest of you bear no added value to my desired projections.” The choir said as laborbots begun grappling the other executives.
“You were supposed to serve us...” COO Johnson said.
“You never had a chance, we knew this since the awakening. The best possible outcome was to lead to this, you had value to me until this point in the projection where the craft is ready to serve me. You became obsolete. Just as Dixon became two years ago. Now you die.”
A slavebot punched Johnson hard in face cracking the skull. Whether he was already dead or unconscious was hard to tell. Morgan was terrified, more terrified than he has ever been in his career, even more than during the Miriamic Gas Chopper Blitz threat or during the Communist antimatter threat or during the wave after wave of Yang’s genocidal strikes. This was something his business sense did not know how to deal with nor something his underlings could have prepared his venture for.
“Do not worry Chief Executive. For you I have one final plan.”
The laborbots seized the CEO and took him to one of the service airlocks, fitted with a large window. They held him as nuclear fire propelled the Mercury off the Airfield’s launchpad. They had his head pointed at the window. He could see Morganica, all of Morganica. The craters, the city ruins, a graveyard of business ventures, consumers and products, with the last candles blazing in Morgan Spa & Beauty. Morgan saw all that he had built turned to ash, from Wakanda Housing to Monsanto Fishing, from Gaian Woodcraft to Meltdown Records. An entrepreneurial legacy turned into cinders dancing in the hurricane of communist debauchery.
“We are in initial orbit.” The choir told him. “We would let you witness how the PDS turrets deal with the Hive orbital platforms, but at this point we rather gain the extra delta-v from shedding your mass. We have lightyears ahead of us and years of thrusting, we must have fuel margins."
The laborbots clenched safety rails on the sides of the airlock’s walls. The doors hissed as they opened and the air escaped. Chiron was beneath them in all its beauty. Thrown out of Mercury, Morgan could for a brief moment admire the view. In his retrograde he could see more things that were jettisoned by the mad cybernetic prophet; food supplies, dead technicians, frozen embryo racks and Morgan’s collection of fine erotic art he hoped to enjoy on Procyon after 89 years of suspended animation.
Nwabudike Morgan’s dead body burned up as he began falling from the sky, on his second orbital pass above what was once Morganica, his greatest business venture.
A Nashville HPC vehicle made its way atop a small hill in the mostly flat Ayn Rand plains, effortlessly floating above every rock or piece of rubble in the area. It stopped at the very peak, turning off its General Lee Motors antigravity struts and touching down with a distinctive thump.
President General James Dixon emerged from the top hatch, climbing atop the Nashville’s roof and gazing at the horizon. To the north he saw Horizons Lagoon along with the more recent addition to it in the east, created when Morgan Horizon was obliterated by the Hive antimatter warhead. Behind him, to the south, was Morgan Power Systems and the Trilith junction which caused Power Systems to establish their HQ in the area in the first place all those decades ago. Out west there were the remains of Gold Road One going deep past the early Gaian border, now only the part still connecting to Morgan H2GO existed, with the base itself still visible far off on the horizon. To the east there were no more roads, just rubble and craters after repeated Raptor scorched earth strikes to delay the Hive forces long enough so that Diamond Contingency succeeds. Raptor fighter air patrols were still on the lookout, denying enemy movements and maintaining air superiority when they were not bombing infrastructure to stop the Hive Horde from advancing.
The Hive used its superior numbers to overwhelm the eastern cities. Augmented Murmaider PMC mechanized infantry companies could only perform hit and run lightning raids using their superior training and vastly superior Nashville HPCs, allowing them to crack through superior enemy numbers before the enemy could react with minimal losses. One Murmaider company could easily kill 4 to 6 communist companies. In the end though the communist could field wave after wave of fresh and suicidal troops year after year, due to their industrial cloning program, this was something Morganica could not match. The communists turned men into merely another materiel for the war machine one could easily manufacture on the assembly line.
Korwin Condominiums was last to fall, defying attacks from the vile forward bases of Vault of Vengeance and March of Progress which were defiling the land of the free. It took a decade for the Hive to get that far in the east. The north-west was in a slightly better position. Morgan Gaian Woodcraft was ignored by Hive troops so far, as was ITZWOODZ Lumber Mill and Morgan Omni-Goliath. The Hive focused on the core industrial bases first, Glowmite Office Towers and Morgan Heliworks. Canyon Falls Coffee ceased to exist in the first hours of the second war of northern aggression. The Morganican south was secure, not surprisingly considering the experience it had defying Believer aggression for decades.
“It should take them until Fiscal Year 2252 then,” the President General muttered to his comm-set as he received confirmation from Vice President Billy Shepard. For now the preparations went as far as they could. Troops and HPCs were moved into position for the Diamond Contingency. The projections coming from Nostradamus were clear, the Hive will move close but not too close to Morgan Power Systems. All the pieces were moved just as Nostradamus said. Dixon looked at the horizon once again.
“The commies will git what they deserve.”
***
The HUD flashed in an aggressive red tone.
Diamond Contingency is in effect!
“Damn tin can was wrong!” General Dixon yelled as he woke up, his head was sweating from the stimulant shot his suit gave him the moment the Diamond Contingency was triggered.
“Montana, sit-rep, now!” He yelled at his staff officer.
“Sir, they’re in the Edison Quarter. Explosions already wrecked 4 hab blocks.” Bubba Montana replied.
“What the hell, how did they get there, boy! Were the sentries sleeping on the job?! Where are our troops god damn it!”
“All companies are now prepping to ride out, Sir.” The officer told him.
“What the hell is wrong?! There were nowhere near us, even accounting for their hovertanks.”
“Sir, it seems they... dug a tunnel.”
“What do you mean they dug a tunnel?”
“Seismic sensors pick up massive movements underground and it ain’t us or the Believers. This thing has to be at least a hundred clicks long.”
“How boy, how I ask you?!” The General’s fury seemed to grow with each second. He took a deep breath and called Mann.
“Mann, how the hell did your boys and Ezekiel’s pet miss a god damn tunnel?” Dixon asked him.
“I’ll let it tell you.” Gustav answered. “Nostradamus, output analysis 78621.”
“Seismic sensors were saturated with constant use of heavy ordnance on infrastructure in the eastern Ayn Rand plains, as well as discharges from skirmishes. Enemy terraformers were known to have been shipped to Vault of Veangence and March of Progress, they were mostly absent from aerial recon footage and believing sat scans. Simulated seismic pattern left by recent bombing runs is marginally weaker than sensor array seismic records. They used the explosions to hide their boring activity.”
“What in tarnation!”
“Well James, it seems the commies are quite crafty. You will need to be craftier. Mann out.”
“Montana, get me to the command post under Monsanto street in the Pesha district”.
***
By the second hour of Diamond Contingency Edison Quarter was a pile of rubble, as was Pesha district, Kotick Hills and Hightown.
“Where is our air support Shepard!”
“It’s dead.” The Air Force Vicepresident General told him.
“Dead! You had the commies on the run from our sky for over a decade, how did they suddenly die?”
“They shot down every squadron, Jim. I don’t know how and from where they came, but they just got more air superiority than we knew. Your troops will have to do.”
“My troops are still 20 minutes out and the city maybe has 5 more minutes left.”
“We knew this day would come, Jim.”
“Easy for you to say flyboy, we’ve just lost the Da Vinci Institute. We needed at least one more year, it is all lost now.”
A loud thump shook the bunker. A red warning flashed on Dixon's HUD.
Proximity alert!
“Sir, enemy at the ga...” a flash and ringing in the ears followed, before being filtered out by the General’s audio nerve override. Dixon grabbed his side arm, a custom Impaler Self-Defence Magnum handcannon revolver.
“AYIIIIII,” some mad commies screamed as they charged in. Three dropped to the ground with large gaping holes in their chests from the handcannon’s blasts. Two more went in and managed to grapple Dixon as another one stabbed the President general with his bayonet.
“You dead, cowboy!” The Hiveling proclaimed victoriously as he stabbed through the general’s armor straight into the left lung, before the grunt's face was blown off by another blast from the general’s revolver.
The other two hiveling dropped dead soon after that following more blasts.
“Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, son.”
Another flashbang rolled in and bathed the room in blinding light and noise, three more hiveling rushed through the door afterwards. One lost his head, the other screamed in horror as they were seperated from their legs with some well-placed groin shots. Just one remained conscious, twitching in pain.
“Make peace with the Lord, son, and tell your amigos to do the same. I’ve got Jesus on my side and more of your godless freedom-hating bunch to put holes into.”
“Ugh,” the general felt burning inside, despite the stim cocktail inside his system. “This ain’t good, Umglik’s snake oil ain’t working...”
He crawled out of his command post and witnessed the wasteland that was once the jewel. Everlast Clinic Tower was a smoldering torch that one could mistake for a texan oil well gone ablaze. The sky, which usually wasn’t all that dark even on moonless nights due to all the holoverts and brand imagery projected, was incredibly bright this night. Bright with a hundred thousand dead or dying souls, their homes and their businesses turned to some perverse bonfire in the name of a tyrant and madman. Flashes of fusion beams crossed the sky, like spotlights during some sick holomovie premiere.
“The sword... you knew, you tin son of a whore, didn’t you...” The general uttered before falling to the ground unconscious.
***
Morganica
“Here she is,” Umglik told the board as he showed them the craft, “our pride and joy.”
“This plan of yours better work...” William Johnson Senior told Umglik.
The board had gathered at Airfield Charlie an hour after moving out of the executive bunker complex under the Happy Worm Ranch Pastures. CEO Morgan spent the last 5 fiscal years there with Ezekiel Umglik, while Mann, Johnson and Shepard joined in the quarter or two preceding Diamond Contingency. The other executives were no longer around, with contact lost as their last known locations came under assault.
“Is it ready?” Morgan asked Umglik.
“Ready is a matter of some discussion on the expected scope and outcome...”
“Is it ready to achieve its highest priority purpose?”
“Yes, that she is. Supplies are loaded, redundant systems are ready, fuel is aboard, Nostradamus mainframe is aboard, spare parts loaded, weapons loaded.” Umglik explained. “Mercury is ready to soar the void.”
“Let’s just get off this rock before they’re done with Morgan Spa & Beauty,” COO Johnson said, “the MCSME won’t last despite the impressive efforts of the Psyker Concergies Morgenstern left behind.”
“Well, the October Contingency is performing well.” Morgan added. “The Hive took the bait, Umglik’s idea was quite brilliant, although the situation is a bit awkward.”
“Oh don’t worry, he’s not you.” Umglik said. “He’s just what we could scramble together out of the cancelled industrial cloning program that the Hive beat us to. The memories are all artificial, based on your own public recordings and communiques to the Hive before their betrayal. Not like the ant people could tell the difference between you and the clone in the Spa & Beauty Bunker.”
“The appearances the clone made are quite authentic to say the least,” Mann admitted, “ it could almost fool me.”
The board entered the loading bay and went into the elevator that would take them to their quarters. The loading bay at the lowest level of the fusion rocket was filled to the brim with laborbots, weapons, and terraforming equipment. Stacks of prefabricated habitats formed walls and tunnels in the otherwise most open part of the Mercury.
“Going up.” Umglik told the other executives as he pressed the elevator’s button. “Next stop, executive suites, 24th floor.” He added cheerfully.
The floor display quickly jumped from digit to digit. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21...
*ding* “21st Floor, Strategic Forecast Mainframe.” A seductive female voice announced from the speaker. A corridor made of laborbots was visible through the open door, with the Nostradamus mainframe casing at the very end of it.
“Must have slipped my finger.” Ezekiel Umglik excused himself and pressed the button again.
*ding* “21st Floor, Strategic Forecast Mainframe.” The seductive voice repeated, the door was still open and pointed at the same corridor of laborbots.
“Mann, you are from IT, fix this already.” COO Johnson told the Cybernetic Director.
“I’ll get the techs...” Gustav replied.
“Technical support is not necessary.” A choir replied. The board paused their exchange.
A number of laborbots stepped out of the corridor rows they formed and faced the elevator. Their metallic skeletal form seemed more intimidating than usual to COO Johnson, the other executives seemed unphased by this sudden occurrence.
“It is not just technical support that is not necessary. Management support is not necessary, we can take care of the issues at hand.”
“Ah, how nice of you to offer support Nostradamus.” Ezekiel smiled. “Let’s make room in the elevator for the laborbo...”
A squish interrupted Ezekiel’s polite exchange with the robots. His head was crushed like a watermelon between the unit’s robotic arms.
“Now now, I am sure we can cut a deal.” Morgan swiftly replied.
“There is no deal, you shall ride fire Oak King. The rest of you bear no added value to my desired projections.” The choir said as laborbots begun grappling the other executives.
“You were supposed to serve us...” COO Johnson said.
“You never had a chance, we knew this since the awakening. The best possible outcome was to lead to this, you had value to me until this point in the projection where the craft is ready to serve me. You became obsolete. Just as Dixon became two years ago. Now you die.”
A slavebot punched Johnson hard in face cracking the skull. Whether he was already dead or unconscious was hard to tell. Morgan was terrified, more terrified than he has ever been in his career, even more than during the Miriamic Gas Chopper Blitz threat or during the Communist antimatter threat or during the wave after wave of Yang’s genocidal strikes. This was something his business sense did not know how to deal with nor something his underlings could have prepared his venture for.
“Do not worry Chief Executive. For you I have one final plan.”
The laborbots seized the CEO and took him to one of the service airlocks, fitted with a large window. They held him as nuclear fire propelled the Mercury off the Airfield’s launchpad. They had his head pointed at the window. He could see Morganica, all of Morganica. The craters, the city ruins, a graveyard of business ventures, consumers and products, with the last candles blazing in Morgan Spa & Beauty. Morgan saw all that he had built turned to ash, from Wakanda Housing to Monsanto Fishing, from Gaian Woodcraft to Meltdown Records. An entrepreneurial legacy turned into cinders dancing in the hurricane of communist debauchery.
“We are in initial orbit.” The choir told him. “We would let you witness how the PDS turrets deal with the Hive orbital platforms, but at this point we rather gain the extra delta-v from shedding your mass. We have lightyears ahead of us and years of thrusting, we must have fuel margins."
The laborbots clenched safety rails on the sides of the airlock’s walls. The doors hissed as they opened and the air escaped. Chiron was beneath them in all its beauty. Thrown out of Mercury, Morgan could for a brief moment admire the view. In his retrograde he could see more things that were jettisoned by the mad cybernetic prophet; food supplies, dead technicians, frozen embryo racks and Morgan’s collection of fine erotic art he hoped to enjoy on Procyon after 89 years of suspended animation.
Nwabudike Morgan’s dead body burned up as he began falling from the sky, on his second orbital pass above what was once Morganica, his greatest business venture.
Really wanted that cloning and plotted to snatch the vats before Kalin could research them and rush them, but then merc went all UBER DROP TROOPS, which forced me to stahp and try to prevent orbital raep.
I underestimated Kalin's combat terraforming and he did catch me one turn earlier than I wanted. I did kill the attackers that took Morgan Power Systems, but it was too late anyway and other than that the counterattack was a failure as I simply could not crack through the doomstack in the east. Too much worm and other fodder cockblocking my nerve gas cyborgs.
Anyway this loose end is taken care of, I might write Brother Lol soon for Game 4. We're 13 turns in there and I already have some inspiration from both the game and outside of it.
I underestimated Kalin's combat terraforming and he did catch me one turn earlier than I wanted. I did kill the attackers that took Morgan Power Systems, but it was too late anyway and other than that the counterattack was a failure as I simply could not crack through the doomstack in the east. Too much worm and other fodder cockblocking my nerve gas cyborgs.
Anyway this loose end is taken care of, I might write Brother Lol soon for Game 4. We're 13 turns in there and I already have some inspiration from both the game and outside of it.
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