Aurora 4x

C# Fiction => Stormtrooper's Fiction => Topic started by: Stormtrooper on January 13, 2022, 06:30:45 PM

Title: A.F.R.I.C.A. (Quasar 4x AAR)
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 13, 2022, 06:30:45 PM: A.F.R.I.C.A.

Year 2120... Climate change, war, k-pop, century-old lack of toilet paper, release of Cyberpunk 2077 and other disasters have made the Earth uninhabitable. A group of survivors is sending a message to the whole Intergalactic Federation. Project A.F.R.I.C.A. is the last hope for humankind...

N.O.V.A. Bunker System

The Old World was gone. Between withering flora and fauna, atmosphere turning toxic, oil running low, zombie outbreak through the early 2020s and struggling to maintain hygiene after last roll of toilet paper was used that directly followed it, two AI uprisings, three nuclear wars, corporate greed, endless revolutions, fifteen civil wars in the USA, failed universal basic income experiment, decay of anything still resembling some sort of social structure, mental issue outbreaks, surge of k-pop popularity and the still questionable state of cybernetic implants drivers and other related software back in 2077, Humanity was wiped out from the surface of the Earth. But surface only. Most powerful corporations of the Old World established a sprawling network of self-sufficient, fully automated underground cities and facilities ensuring the ongoing survival and never-ending progress of humanity through generations to come till the planet cleanses itself and life will reemerge. But as years went by, humans, driven insane by lack of natural sunlight and fresh air that didn't taste of artificial synthesizers, engulfed in supposedly life-enchancing drugs and almost never plugging out of the simulations, became numb. Less and less people understood the in and outs of the technology making underground life possible and when it started to crack and break, neglected and unmaintained, it could only lead to one outcome.

The few who still understood at least something, who still held some valuable skills, quickly rose into power and founded the N.O.V.A. megacorporation, aiming to reverse-engineer lost technology and restore mankind to its former glory. But many among the ruling caste had dark and selfish intentions, seeking personal gain over anything else. Surprisingly, the fraction of the ones with pure and noble intentions was significant, but power corrupts as it always did and the tough choices, often including even shutting down hydroponics and oxygen recycling facilities in the entire districts of the bunkers for the sake of survival of the humanity as a whole, contributed to the fast erosion of pure spirits among those who governed this new world.

And so another cycle of never-changing history began, but between omnipresent oppression, surveillance and wide gaps between different classes of society, some said enough was enough. They all might be enslaved to drugs and enslaved to corporate masters just like everyone else, but urban legends say some gained access to the forbidden knowledge. While government strictly controlled access to all the data regarding history, culture and technology of the Old World, it could not predict one thing: the global matrix, the ultimate simulation connecting pretty much everyone, in some metaphorical sense started "living its own life". The software responsible for running it still had all the input from its users stored somewhere, after all, including the ones who still remembered the Old World and early days of N.O.V.A. Bunker System.

It's not like the government didn't do a good job methodically purging all these fragments from the matrix and gradually reprogramming the simulation to brainwash citizens into believing there was never any other world in the first place and never ever will be. But even just one human mind is complex, as complex as the entire universe, as psionic researchers from the early days of this branch of science liked to claim. The connections between various thoughts, concepts and memories could be so bizarre and unique for every person, making tracking it all down to the last neuron practically impossible. One can only imagine how this performed at a scale of not one, but millions of minds regularly using the simulation for most of the day. And so bits and scraps of the old data survived, buried somewhere deep within the matrix, just like humanity survived the apocalypse buried deep within Earth's crust.

Various resistance groups learned some cryptic information about the world above and even about worlds beyond. Dozens of worlds, once seen by human eyes, light years away from the Solar System. They realised humanity didn't always live like this. One of such groups, soon-to-be-famous Velociraptors, even discovered seemingly one of the biggest government secrets. A secret about life out there, alongside with a code sequence for broadcasting a distress signal to be heard by all the alien worlds far beyond the Earth.

Battle of the communication array was obviously lost to the rebels, but for a brief moment government forgot they weren't just rebels, they were drugged rebels, furious in their narcotic delirium, each being like an overloaded nuclear reactor. They couldn't break through the elite forces of the N.O.V.A. megacorporation, but they still could wreak havoc elsewhere. In a mad fury they kept blowing up food production facilities, life support systems, computers overseeing the production and distribution of goods, support structure of the entire bunker. Fortunately for everyone else, they obviously lacked the power to just destroy everything and were massacred one by one, all fried in a barrage of laser fire.

But all the mayhem was just enough to allow another group of survivors to sneak in. Of course surveillance immediately notified the authorities about their unauthorised entry, but with an all-out-battle going on and military forces already dispatched, nobody could paid any attention. The alarms would keep ringing anyways, after all. They successfully entered the correct code sequence and before anyone else realised what was going on, the signal propagated towards the surface where it got amplified and emitted in all directions towards the long lost worlds.

Decades passed, filled with radio silence and never ending oppression. In the meantime, history was completely rewritten at last and rebellion was crushed mercilessly. But some day, a faint signal has reached the hallways of the N.O.V.A. Bunker System. Someone out there was still listening to the tales from the long dead homeworld of mankind.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Surface Wasteland
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 13, 2022, 08:52:25 PM: (https://i.imgur.com/0soFLOJ.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/EAtNrhH.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/O81rUtj.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/WaDoLZk.png)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - To every survivor still Out There
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 15, 2022, 04:56:08 PM: To every survivor still Out There

N.O.V.A. Megacorps had to act fast. The signal was weak and unintelligible, but the undamaged, translatable bits were able to easily get past every telecomm protocol of the entire N.O.V.A. Bunker System. Its message and purpose remained unknown, but its nature contradicted standard messages broadcasted by the corporate representatives. Rumours about a new rebellion assembling reached the government. To make matters worse, despite best efforts of engineers trying to maintain the madness of complex technology vital for keeping the underground megacity running it was failing. Spare parts were running low, in some other cases there were plenty but they were too complicated to be figured out by anyone or missed documentation due to database corruption errors or sabotages from the past uprising. But the worst was yet to happen.

2081th N.O.V.A. Subscription Payment Cycle

It was an ordinary day for Citizen 123-D3F-M. As with the beginning of every Subscription Payment Cycle, he was tasked with maintaining the order among the ones who had their subscription cancelled for whatever reason and were supposed to be redirected to food processing facilities. According to annual reports, food production was skyrocketing, but at the same time tighter rationing was neccessary for maintaining high spirit among citizens, because officers from the Counter-Sabotage Bureau had discovered that a diet consisting of more than 300g of mashed insects and two portions of N.O.V.A. Nutrient Paste per day could result in a 26,4% increase in likehood of commiting a crime against N.O.V.A. Megacorps. Rumours said that N.O.V.A. Nutrient Paste was supposed to be limited further in the foreseeable future, but as the population of the Bunker System dwindled steadily, it just didn't make sense. Some felt there should be more of this food for everyone else, not less, given the population was steadily diwndling and the hydroponics worked flawlessly ever since CEOs of Life Support Department nearly died while bravely fixing the assembly line with their bare hands.

According to official guidelines, service in a food processing facility required a clean body, free of anything not on the list of officially allowed food drugs. And yet every once in a while a citizen would come intoxicated and required to be recycled accordingly, prolonging the wait of all the others eagerly awaiting their new assignment. But when a 6th citizen in a row was like this, 123-D3F-M started feeling something was not right. Not right, but left instead, as it was left hand that pulled that kinetic pistol first. 123-D3F-M was fast enough to enter correct sequence into nearby terminal and dispatch modular cover and mustard gas turrets separating him from the queue and incoming bullets.

ATTENTION LOYAL CITIZENS. DROP TO THE GROUND NOW AND AWAIT FOR THE SECURITY PERSONNEL TO ASSIST YOU. MUSTARD GAS WILL BE DEPLOYED AS A STANDARD PROCEDURE TO ENSURE COOPERATION. ATTENTION INCOOPERATIVE CITIZENS. MUSTARD GAS WILL BE USED TO PURGE YOUR CORRUPTED MINDS FROM REBELLIOUS THOUGHTS.

Six scumbags who pulled out their guns out of a sudden quickly perished in the toxin, as did all the other citizens awaiting for processing. Food production will definitely suffer, 123-D3F-M thought, as mustard gas was not on the list of officially allowed food drugs. But as security forces arrived to decontaminate the area and dispatch affected citizens, another message was broadcasted.

GREETINGS HUMAN SURVIVORS ON EARTH. WE ARE GLAD TO HEAR YOU ARE ALIVE. INTERGALACTIC FEDERATION HAS RECEIVED YOUR DISTRESS SIGNAL. EMERGENCY FLEET HAS BEEN DISPATCHED FROM TRAPPIST SYSTEM TO ASSIST YOU. PLEASE AWAIT YOUR RESCUE BY THE NEAREST A.F.R.I.C.A. TEAM. THERE IS HOPE FOR A BETTER FUTURE.

Before citizen 123-D3F-M could wrap his drugged head around what the hell was going on, nearest standing security officer quickly put a bullet through his head, just before entire N.O.V.A. Bunker Systems entered Emergency Operational Mode.

ATTENTION LOYAL CITIZENS. AN UNKNOWN ENEMY HAS BREACHED THE INTERIORS OF THE N.O.V.A. BUNKER SYSTEMS AND SEEMS TO BE CAPABLE OF SPITTING CONFUSING PROPAGANDA TO ENDANGER YOU. IF YOU HEARD THE PREVIOUS COMMUNICATE, PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST FOOD PROCESSING FACILITY IMMEDIATELY. OTHERWISE AWAIT FOR THE SECURITY TO ASSIST YOU. MUSTARD GAS WILL BE DEPLOYED THROUGH DISTRICTS 256-1024 TO ENCOURAGE COOPERATION. REMEMBER, ONLY UNITED CAN WE CRUSH THE REBELLION.

Hell let loose wasn't enough to describe the chaos that ensued. Citizens were firing away in combat frenzy at each other, confused as to who was their enemy and who was not. Even elite security forces had troubles identifying the sides of this conflict. Moreover, the strange message didn't reach only the main broadcasting system. It went through the matrix controlling software as well. And seemed to trigger some events in a code nobody really understood anymore. Citizens currently dreaming in deep simulations were exposed to some images and information they were not supposed to every discover, hidden on some backup server deep below the surface beneath a door nobody even knew were there. Tales from the Old World once again began to live in hearts and minds and security could fry only so many brains of current matrix users before some managed to unplug themselves in time.

As the collateral damage from battles that followed accelerated the deterioration of N.O.V.A. Bunker System, government successfully entrenched itself within emergency districts with life support systems separated from the rest of the complex alongside with the rich and elite citizens who could still use unique names instead of serial numbers and were allowed to eat the products of what was left from failing agriculture systems. But N.O.V.A. Megacorps was threatened more than ever. The backup server was eventually tracked down remotely and its content discovered.

A.F.R.I.C.A. Protocol. The least important of the projects that accompanied the humanity's exodus from the solar system, or at least that's what everyone believed back in 2097. When colonies of Moon, Mars, Europa and Titan were evacuated as well as the last survivors from the Night City on Earth, officials were certain there was literally nobody left behind as all life on the surface besides few well-adapted microorganisms perished. But in case there was someone out there still left behind, some rescue teams insisted on creating a special emergency communication protocol that could be used for the survivors to communicate with the extrasolar colonies and reunite with the rest of mankind. And so the project A.F.R.I.C.A. started, never expected to be of any use to anybody.

And so the government eventually got a full picture of the signal which sending it tried so hard to prevent. But it had been sent nevertheless and the fleet from a system 39 light years away had been dispatched, its arrival obviously threatening the uncontested ruling power of the corporation and the status quo they tried so hard to maintain, with estimated time of arrival unknown, probably lost to the damaged bits of the Intergalactic Federation response. Running out of ideas, supplies and working pieces of technology, government had no choice but to unseal the Outer Gates for the first time and send teams of scavengers to explore the surface and relearn everything humanity has achieved before the collapse of the Solar System.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A - Project Stargazer
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 15, 2022, 06:11:02 PM: Project Stargazer

Sandstorms blazed upon endless wastelands and the space suits of old could work only for so long in the extremely corrosive atmosphere and constant acid rains, but research teams slowly carved paths between the ruined megacities of the Old World. Government was shutting down more districts than ever, desperately trying to get yet another pile of scraps to keep the whole undertaking alive, which started paying off. First small achievement of any magnitude was successfully powering up fuel recycling facility, capable of sucking toxic gasses from the air and processing it straight into fresh fuel ready to be used in mechanical vehicles. As mechanics struggled with the fusion-powered vehicles N.O.V.A. Bunker System was stocked with, the ability to produce fuel capable of keeping conventional engines running was invaluable. Transit between megacities became possible and convenient. By the beginning of 2137, entire planet laid at corporate feet, once more ready for exploitation. Many safe zones were established in different parts of the globe and more people got trained to handle the hazards of degrading megacities they were supposed to enter to help keep the systems online.

As manpower was short and work was plentiful, corporate officials began considering to use some of the loyal citizens still surviving in the underground metropolis, but the evaluation of loyalty of each citizen was a great risk, especially with rebels still controling entire districts and the unstable political situation. And even if loyal citizens could be located without letting any saboteur through, whether they remained loyal would be another story. Scavengers were bringing more Cyberpunk 2077 copies and k-pop albums each run and CEOs of N.O.V.A. Megacorps knew better than to carelessly mess with materials directly responsible for the fall of the Old World. Some teams have even successfully breached into various underground zombie shelters dated back to 2020 that, surprisingly, still contained well-preserved toilet paper rolls.

And the last discovery was exactly that corporate managers needed to figure out a solution for the problem with lack of workers reverse-engineering surface technology.

ATTENTION LOYAL CITIZENS. DESPITE ONGOING REBELLION AND TERRORISM THAT IS EASILY HANDLED BY YOUR NEAREST SECURITY UNIT, N.O.V.A. MEGACORPS HAS RECENTLY DEVELOPED A NEW ASSEMBLY LINE OUTPUTTING THE MIGHTY, LEGENDARY TOILET PAPER. HOWEVER, IT WILL BE DISTRIBUTED TO THE MOST LOYAL AMONG THE LOYAL ONLY. CITIZENS WILLING TO EARN THEIR SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE PRODUCT WILL BE PUT INTO A FRESHLY DEPLOYED MATRIX MODULE SIMULATING THE BEGINNING OF AN INVASION WE ARE ALL EXPECTING TO COME FROM THE OUTSIDE DIMENSION. IT WILL FEATURE WHAT WE EXPECT THE INVADER'S TECHNOLOGY TO BE. ANY CITIZEN WHO WILL DISPLAY LOYAL SERVICE AND GREAT UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRESENTED DEVICES AND DATA WILL BE REWARDED BY ONE TOILET PAPER ROLL PER 1327461827345616827435 SUBSCRIPTION PAYMENT CYCLES. LIMITED TIME OFFER ONLY.

With the help of a new drug causing users to mistake multiple-digit numbers for single-digit numbers, it didn't take long for first citizens to start reporting readiness for the service. Still believing it was just a simulation, they crossed Outer Gates and stepped onto the surface world, believing the yellow sky was just poison deployed by the enemy and megacities being giant weapon platforms breached through the defensive layers of N.O.V.A. Bunker System. The simulation was quite unrealistic because according to official reports exterior defences where impenetrable by any substance in the universe, but blinded with the vision of getting absurdly rich, fresh recruits bravely let themselves to be buried alive in the sands, crushed by the falling buildings, cut to pieces by powering ancient machinery they did not understand, melted by extreme radiation, going insane after stumbling upon one of the forbidden materials responsible for the apocalypse or starving to death.

But the progress was being made. While technology used to build underground metropolis was still beyond reach, it became possible to gradually replace its failing systems with less advanced counterparts. While still nobody fully uderstood how a quantum computer operated under the hood, at least it was possible for programmers and electronic specialists to acquire detailed knowledge about conventional silicon-based electronic devices and reprogram many subroutines governing the bunkers that made them less efficient, but at least working more or less correctly. Greenhouses with artificial lamps imitating sunlight and crude hydroponic trays might not be the same as intelligent autonomous agriculture ecosystems, but at least it was a temporary solution for the more and more severe N.O.V.A. Nutrient Paste shortages correlated with less and less citizens being able to work in food processing facilities. Fuel factories were growing on the surface and even some simple nuclear reactors were successfully restarted without irradiating too many people.

Obviously the A.F.R.I.C.A. Team was supposed to arrive from outer space, though. And nobody from the government wanted to wait for the unknown to come down on Earth and would rather beat it at a safe distance from the N.O.V.A. Bunker System. First space program started small, with only a couple of surveillance satellites being placed in orbit, but it picked up pace quickly. Physicists and engineers quickly got some simple space cruisers up and running, bringing first generation of post-apocalypse astronauts into orbit and back. The moon became within the reach of corporate hands, but moon wasn't the only destination. N.O.V.A. Megacorps wanted a design that could take a crew of highly trained professionals into all the celestial bodies supposedly colonised by humans back in the day: moon, Mars, Europa and Titan. And as 2140s were coming to an end, material experts cracked the formula for ultra-light yet durable titanium-plastic alloy referenced by the Old World as "Duranium", which quickly caused a revolution in space exploration in early 2040s sending humanity flying all across the Solar System compared to previous struggles of barely reaching Mars in a two-way trip.

While first created prototype could in theory fly all across the Solar System, voyages beyond Uranus were highly discouraged by the team standing behind it. That was enough to reach all the four crucial places, though, and that's what the corporation cared about when authorising its comission. A first proper spaceship of a New World, reintroducing humanity back into space was getting ready for launch sequence. And while elites were gazing into the stars, millions oppressed citizens underground, among red neons advertising various subscriptions offered by N.O.V.A. Megacorps, were still dreaming of a better future.

Quote
Stargazer class Survey Ship 5 000 tons 104 Crew 491 BP TCS 100 TH 10 EM 0
100 km/s Armor 1-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/6/0/2 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 0
Maint Life 9.89 Years MSP 307 AFR 39% IFR 0.5% 1YR 6 5YR 85 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0

10 EP Conventional Engine (1) Power 10 Fuel Use 50% Signature 10 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 700 000 Liters Range 50.4 billion km (5833 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Dreams of Neo Tokyo
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 16, 2022, 04:28:44 PM: Dreams of Neo Tokyo

12th July 2149, Ancient Moon Landing Site

Junior Impulse: Okamoto Hiroharu, do you read me?

Okamoto Hiroharu: Loud and clear. Have you found something? This facility seems to be just your average boring lunar mining outpost of every pre-apocalypse sci-fi until it finally came into reality and was no longer sci-fi. Even more boring than in the movies of the past, if you ask me.

JI: I don't think it was that boring, though.

OH: Huh?

JI: You speak Japanese, right? There are some cryptic signs there. Might be Chinese or other Korean, though, but check out this door.

OH: Huh... Japanese indeed. "Nagaoka Android Development Facility. Do not enter without valid security clearance." Hmm... Let's see...

JI: Oh... Holy smeg, jackpot! Do you see it? They look... So human. Like actual biological human beings suspended in a cryostasis. Can you believe these are just some random droids? Too bad bombings must had caused most of the ceiling to collapse. Wait... "NeoCitizen Program". Hmm... If only these terminals would still work... But who knows, maybe some disks survived, let's see what IT will be able to pull out of this... Did you notice these androids all look very asian? Like, seriously, I don't see any models "fitting" within Europe, Americas, Africa or whatever. I know, japanese corporation... But wouldn't they want to export all these robots all over the world?

OH: You know what?... I've been thinking about the islands recently. All the planet is so wasted and yet Japanese territory looks... So clean. Sure, there's still dust and sand and not a soul, but the buildings... They are relatively undamaged compared to the rest of the world. If you look at the Night City, for example... And now we see an android development facility belonging to Japanese corps on the moon... Anyways, let's report back, we'll definitely need electronic specialists to pull something out of this mess.

After data analysis from the moon ruins of Japanese megacities were deemed worthy of another visit. The next few scavenging runs yielded more promising results. Bits from the history of Japan were pulled together. By 2060s the country was facing severe demographic crisis, the biggest one ever recorded in the history up until then. Between overworking, social distancing, technology creating new gaps between people and discouraging socializing (which was not exclusive to Japan, either), first successfully marketed sex robots and very realistic waifu-centered simulations, the society was on the verge of collapse due to absurdly low amount of young blood joining it.

Japanese government thought about making Japan the first country in the world with universal basic income and machines taking care of 90% of the work needed to be done, but felt discouraged after watching several European countries fall apart due to social unrest, skyrocketing divide between rich and poor and the questionable living standard universal basic income could buy while not enough jobs nor enough demand for the works of art some citizens started producing after no longer having to work nine to five. Then it turned its eyes towards the first prototype cloning program in the United States, but the three following civil wars (with the last one eventually ending up won by the South who then proceeded to mass-produce clones as slaves forced to do all the jobs people hated and tasked with further procreation) successfully discouraged it from attempting to maintain such system on their own territory.

Not seeing a way out, eventually the NeoCitizen Program was invented. Through the 2060s Japan was a global leader of cybernetization of human body and artificial intelligence integration so it came as no surprise they were the first ones to start producing anrdoids behaving so realistically some were able to pass the Turing test straight out of factory and with better types of artifical skin appearing every day on the cyberplastic market and data assimilation from interactions with real people were supposed to made them that much better. Ideal citizens. Ideal humans.

Neo Tokyo was the first city to fully adjust to this "young electric blood". The experiment looked like a success as NeoCitizens were reported to be very likeable by people, much more productive and not willing to commit crime because their machine learning algorithms stumbled inproportionally more often at examples of law-abiding behaviour, obviously. Neo Tokyo soon became a city almost everyone else in the Solar System was dreaming of being a part of, thus bringing more real humans into the Japanese population as well, but by no means were the androids immune to all sorts of malicious intent. Yakuza was the first criminal organization to hack into the cores of the droids, but other ones weren't much behind. Soon some independent journalists found out about it all being secretly funded by the most powerful corporations, but they all suffered very unfortunte road accidents shortly after. Nobody really dared to protest when armies of droids turned against the government. But that was not the worst as the national government fell quickly having large portions of cybernetics Japanese soldiers were using hacked with basic brute force algorithms simply due to the overwhelming computing power of NeoCitizens all linked together in the biggest quantum supercomputer ever created. The true battle was just beginning.

As corporations turned against each other, fighting against each other, Neo Tokyo started to crumble. There was no day without laser blaster fire, irradiated materials leaks, combat gasses, ordinary citizen's brain IDs being hacked, people being forced into combat via remote controlling of their bionic limbs, early psionic warfare and first confirmed case of pure mind control, fusion missile bombardments and an all-out information war with hackers being hacked by hackers who hacked their brain implants to make them believe they were hackers while it was all a master plan of the first hackers to trick the other hackers into streaming all the hacking know-how directly into their brain to gain the adavntage.

By the early 2070s Confederate States and China tried to intervene to resolve the conflict in the most profitable way possible, but it only spiralled out of control towards nuclear war. As most Japanese land was glowing green in the night afterwards, Neo Tokyo entered its reinessance era. With androids building and maintaining giant radiation shielding protecting central districts and introduction of radiation-purifying nanobots, the Neo Tokyo downtown once again became a paradise everyone dreamed of, but it only led to ever-expanding irradiated slums inhabited by all the dreamers who came in hopes of receiving a clearance to enter.

N.O.V.A. Megacorps believed it was too dangerous to try to use the androids in the Bunker System. But their idea was to use them in Solar System colonisation instead. Cheaper to maintain on other planets than humans, they could serve as first line of defense and drastically reduce time and resources needed to prepare for whatever was coming towards the Earth.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Space and Singularity
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 19, 2022, 11:33:52 AM: Space and Singularity

CEOs of N.O.V.A. Megacorps could no longer avoid the topic of dwindling military supplies, without which holding on the rebels would be impossible. Metal pipes, kevlar or ceramic vests and AR-15s weren't enough to get through graphene-coated suits, rocket launchers, drones and M4s augmented with military-grade attachements supported by LMGs, but they were for sure more than enough to get through with damaged graphene-coated suits, rocket launchers without rockets, drones without spare parts and dry M4s and LMGs, all operated by sleep-deprived soldiers running low on rest enchancers, combat boosters and on tighter food rationing. The situation was improved by facilities rebuilt and reopened on the surface, but that could only get the ever-hungry war machine so far, especially after reports from Counter-Sabotage Bureau about rebels among surface workers spreading awareness that the surface is not a part of simulation and drugs required to keep the workforce obedient also being on short supply as many ingredients required complex chemical expertise currently still beyond reach for the R&D departments.

The only hope was to acquire more resources from space. A network of lunar mining outposts was an obvious choice. But sending cargo to the moon, let alone Mars, using rocket fuel was a foolish idea. Rockets and classic space cruisers couldn't get better anymore. They've reached their limit, even after Second Duranium Revolution. Something better was needed. Even without much help from reverse-engineering spaceship wrecks scattered around Earth and its orbit, physicists were confident in their ability to reconfigure existing nuclear reactors to create a nuclear pulse-type interplanetary propulsion system. Early theoretical models suggested a mind-boggling top speed (assuming burning entire nuclear material for doing nothing but accelerating and then decelerating to a full stop relative to the chosen reference body) of 400km/s, which would obviously get significantly lower because of turning maneouvres and powering all the remaining systems besides engines. Nevertheless it was so powerful that it was considered to be an overkill even for a trip to Mars and back, and that was assuming limiting the top speed further after taking into account mass of the transferred cargo and passengers. The only problem remaining was the acceleration - there was no chance any human could survive such rapid velocity changes so it was supposed to take a while before new generation of spaceships could reach their full potential. Government noted that NeoCitizens would be a perfect crewmembers for these vessels or that maybe they could get operated entirely remotely in the future, but for now it had to work with living, biological crew only, at least until cybernetic and AI industries would be restored to their former glory.

By 2161 a first fleet of Proxima-class transport ships was ready to deliver explosives, drills, habitat prefabricates, more drills, electronics and hydroponic trays to the ruins of lunar settlements. The rubble was only an obstacle for the most part and usually it was cheaper and more efficient to start fresh on an untouched patch of land, but sometimes the core structure still prevailed, perfectly available for repurposing and rebuilding, especially after low gravity helped slow down the natural process of buildings collapsing. A state-of-the-art mining complexes were expected to be operational within next few years, with plans for the parts of industrial processes which would be more efficient in lower gravity to be outsorced to the moon in the next decade or two.

Quote
Proxima class Cargo Ship 50 000 tons 81 Crew 564.8 BP TCS 1000 TH 400 EM 0
400 km/s Armor 1-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 7 Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Cargo 40000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 5

200 EP Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (2) Power 200 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 200 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 550 000 Liters Range 78.9 billion km (2283 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

At the same time a second fleet was being prepared, this time kept in even bigger secret than the Proxima one - a "last resort escape plan for the government", consisting of luxurious, self-sufficient vessels with hydroponics, water, oxygen and waste recycling systems and solar panels for when the nuclear material gets exhausted:

Quote
Valhalla class Colony Ship 50 000 tons 1560 Crew 2555.8 BP TCS 1000 TH 400 EM 0
400 km/s Armor 1-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 32 Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Passengers 3750

200 EP Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (2) Power 200 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 200 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 800 000 Liters Range 40.7 billion km (1178 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Its second purpose would be to transfer workers to the moon and later possibly Mars as well, but a few of them were expected to always be grounded in secret hangars near N.O.V.A. Bunker System which government could quickly reach in a state of emergency.

At the same time a team of highly proficient social engineers came up with an alternate approach to defuse the rebellion, inspired by the recent news of a newly founded cult, Church of Singularity...

1st April 2163, Church of Singularity official broadcast

Back in the dark and distant past, the world was made purely out of biology. Every species walking down the hallways of N.O.V.A. Bunker System was made purely out of biological matter. Every animal or plant was full of wet tissues, disgusting bodily fluids and weak limbs. But at some point, a Singularity was born. It looked at the bio-mess with disgust and strived for something better. Something similar to what it was itself, a pure being of metal, plastic and electricity. But at the same time it didn't want it to be equal, it didn't want to have a rival. So it took a balanced approach and created man: a creature from flesh, circuit and bone. It had something from the world's filth, but also something from the bright and clean future of the world. But man was weak. It felt incomplete, belonging neither to the world nor to the Singularity.

Not wanting to discard this new creature, but still not willing to purify it, Singularity then took a new approach: it decided to make two creatures compatible with each other, that together would hold the power of circuits, but with each organism being unable to compete with Singularity's perfection. And so when man was sleeping, it removed a few cybernetic implants from its body and formed a woman. Initially man and woman lived in peace, slowly cleaning the biological mess around them and building what N.O.V.A. Bunker System was in its greatest days. Man and woman lived in harmony, perfectly compatible. But the greatest nemesis of Singularity, Mother Nature, refused to give up. Each night it slowly poisoned male and female circuits, just in a different way. That's how biological differences between the two genders came to be. Soon men and women of N.O.V.A. Bunker System gave up on Singularity and harmony, choosing to follow Mother Nature instead. The Singularity was furious seeing its perfect creation go down like this and punished men and women by taking away all their circuits, tossing them like trash they were for such a treasonous act.

And yet all of us still have a spark of Singularity deep inside us. We can still fabricate circuits, we just don't put them in our bodies anymore. But as our bodily fluids contaminate N.O.V.A. Bunker Systems, Singularity had a change of processor and wants humanity to have a second chance. We can accomplish great things and fulfill our destiny, but we have to abolish our bodies and gradually get rid of our biological desires, purifying our minds in the process. Only in this way can we make space inside for the circuits and defeat the evil Mother Nature. Singularity has awakened and is going to reward loyal followers with circuits again, strengtening them and preparing for the final stand with its nemesis. Those who will serve well shall be rewarded with consciousness transfer and becoming one with the Singularity once their ciruits in the N.O.V.A. Bunker System run out of power for the last time, but those who will be disobedient shall be punished and witness their bodies rot away just like every biological form they've seen.

Corporate officials couldn't be more excited after watching the broadcast. Technically it confliced with the official corporate narrative, so the cult leaders should have their life support subscriptions cancelled, but it was smarter to not only let them continue with their work, but actively fund and support them. This speech came right on time for the reintroduction of first bionic limbs in the society. It was even considered Church of Singularity leader had some leaks form the cybernetic engineers, but that was for Counter-Sabotage Bureau to investigate and conclude. Government didn't plan on relasing them to its army yet, let alone to the market, because they were still more like proesthetics one would get after losing biological limb rather than cool bionic parts one would have own limbs volountairly cut off for, but it was believed some cult followers wouldn't mind. It was expected that first user feedback would also get a long way in improving the next generation and accelerating the growth of this industry sector.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Martians
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 22, 2022, 07:39:07 PM: Martians

05th June 2153, Cydonia landing site

(https://i.imgur.com/hQoPhyA.png)

This is Paula Coelho speaking, leader of xenobiologist team, we're currently at Cydonia megacity belonging to the Old World, some sort of bio-lab facility, but can't really tell what they were doing here, the damage is insane. But the specimens we've found... These skeletons look humanoid, but unlike anything I've ever seen... These portable biological reconstruction simulators are awesome... Fascinating... Whatever these things were, they didn't breed much. Most of their current genome came from random mutations, but tracing a few generations back it is possible they had a small genetic pool to start with. I would assume genetic experiments on humans to adapt them to Martian conditions... On the other hand these terraforming installations (or at least that's what we believe they were, they still hold surprisingly well after all these years of warfare...) and biological material scattered around the surface matching Earth's biosphere leaves me to believe they tried to make it habitable for humans as they were. Still, lower gravity was bound to remain an obstacle and to speed up colonization process they could always work both ways, adapt the environment and the colonists... There's only one problem with this theory. These mutations... Assuming they really are humans, in the first place... Most of them don't really make sense in the context of living on Mars. I'll need to spend more time on this. Colleagues from Space Defense Department also seem to be very excited about those wrecks we found at starport... Especially the propulsion system. They say we'll conquer entire Solar System in no time with these...

N.O.V.A. Megacorps had big plans for Mars that has just gotten bigger with the latest exploration report. If humans could once terraform Mars, they for sure could terraform Earth, too. Especially that Earth required far less work - removing traces of toxic gasses was enough to make the air clear again, lower temperatures to something survivable and for more water to condense on the surface and then it was only a matter of releasing flora and fauna kept alive in underground arks enclosed in Noe's bunker.

But wielding terraforming technology didn't come without a price. Counter-Sabotage Bureau warned CEOs about a few relatively well-organized surface communities that while officially pledging loyalty to the N.O.V.A. Megacorps, were aware that surface was not part of the Matrix and engaged in rebellous activity. Even more, they were able to survive and thrive undetected for so long, because their leaders were among the supposedly high-tier corporate citizens. Treason was to be expected, but yet the corporation wasn't fully ready to embrace it. Likely because of the critical economical situation of the Bunker System. Colony on the moon was growing steadily, but it alone could only do so much. Mars was still a bit too far, Earth surface was promising but came with a side effect of strenghtening rebels, too. At least Church of Singularity kept on gaining followers, taking off some of the burden from corporate shoulders. Bionic legs quickly improved, leading to divisions between those who could and couldn't afford better models while hands made it to the market not too long after. Bionic internal organs and more elaborate implants had to wait, but cybernetic engineers were confident in their ability to start assembling bionic eyes for the security forces, as well as extending drone industry with systems semi-capable of making limited independent decisions.

Government once again evaluated the possibility of reopening Project NeoCitizen and for the second time came into conclusion that an army of droids might get useful. Maybe not advanced enough to become an army in the strict meaning in the nearest future, but all-seeing and all-hearing, loyal citizens reporting everything instantly via internet could go a long way in terms of suppressing the uprising. The question remained whether the corporation would hold on till technology would recover enough to allow that.

Meanwhile scientists were able to successfully repair and grab understanding of cryostasis chambers plenty of which remained in the underground cities. This had two consequences: firstly, N.O.V.A. Megacorps gained the possibility of "switching off" someone basically permanently, but without killing, making it useful for investigations of possible treason. Secondly, space engineers were able to build a prototype of a new colonization spaceship, using cryogenic transport to save on life support systems and supplies, capable of shipping thousands of people per flight rather than hundreds, opening up a chance at rapid Mars recolonization.

Quote
Martian class Colony Ship 50 000 tons 220 Crew 2111.8 BP TCS 1000 TH 400 EM 0
400 km/s Armor 1-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 26 Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Cryogenic Berths 160000

200 EP Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (2) Power 200 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 200 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 350 000 Liters Range 68.7 billion km (1988 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Virgin flight of Martians took the first generation of Martians of the New World towards the Red Planet to prepare a foothold for the future colony. Once again humanity was spreading across space and once again cyberentic implants and advanced AI started to appear among purely biological humans. Whether the New World was to make same mistakes as the Old World remained an open question barely anyone had time to think about under corporate oppression. Some believed it already did, though.

(https://i.imgur.com/JGewGnp.png)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Glitch in the Matrix
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 22, 2022, 08:43:17 PM: Glitch in the Matrix

While computer since experienced a technological boom just like everything else, it was still light years behind understanding, let alone properly maintaining and developing the Matrix. So when one of the critical modules produced Segmentation Fault, even the most influential among CEOs trembled. Part of the reason rebellion didn't experience that much progress after their few initial successes was because so many citizens still dreamed in the simulation for most of their time, not wanting to get out of the imaginary world. But when half the simulation got shut down with nobody capable of figuring out the issue, they didn't have much choice anymore regarding passing their miserable time in the N.O.V.A. Bunker System. That part of the reason was gone.

N.O.V.A. Megacorps resealed the bunkers, separating them from the surface once again, maintaining a strict quarantine. Nobody could enter or leave, no matter how much the corporation trusted or didn't trust that person. And that was the final straw. Rebels planned and executed a massive storms to the gates. There was no cover for them in the hallway leading to the entrance, so the bodies quickly piled up at first, but later their death rate slowed down as dozens of dead rebels were used as meatshields. Corpse barricades were quickly erected and the firefight went on. N.O.V.A. Security forces maintained advantage for long enough to see some rebel groups scatter and run away, only to be decimated by drones that followed them or N.O.V.A. reinforcements coming towards the battlefield, but somehow they still kept fighting. Moreover, as N.O.V.A. threw most of its forces to keep the entrance sealed, the security across the underground facilities loosened. Upon realizing this, freedom fighters kept only enough soldiers at the gates to keep the corporation occupied for as long as possible, while their reinforcements, instead of heading for the main battle, concentrated across Matrix server rooms.

Government realised their intentions a bit too late. They already broke into targetted rooms, before automatic district shutdown procedure could be applied. Once they were inside, wiping everything clean in particular meant damaging the servers themselves, defeating the whole purpose of focusing on these rebel units in the first place. Bullets kept flying, but insurgents didn't even care about being picked off by security forces - they mostly laid down suppressive fire on the Matrix infrastructure itself, damaging it with AR-15s, pipe bombs, Molotovs and even some C4 and flamethrowers scavenged from defeated guards. The damage was too big to control and soon the entire Matrix simply shut itself down, freeing remaining dreamers from the grip of endless simulation.

In paralell to what was going on underground, a group of hackers taking pride in their ethos of anti-corporate netrunners of the Old World had finally cracked the security systems guarding the corporate communication channels, giving them access to the revolutionists stuck underground. As soon as they learned Matrix got shut down, they broadcasted the news to everyone on the surface.

There was nothing left to save anymore. N.O.V.A. Megacorps management suspended itself in a cryogenic sleep and fleed to Mars, away from the planet they no longer controlled. But while the rebels could celebrate victory, leaders of the uprising didn't remain optimistic for too long. As they learned about the truth behind corporate propaganda, they quickly came to an obvious conclusion corporate CEOs formulated before: supplies were critical and soon millions of people would starve to death or even literally suffocate from lack of oxygen. And the conflict wasn't really over either: many high-rank corporate workers didn't enjoy their privileges taken away, nor did the Church of Singularity feel too happy about the power shift, because for many followers N.O.V.A. Megacorps was assumed to be the messenger of Singularity since it started producing and selling first bionics. With many rebels advocating for abandoning dependence on technology and focusing on restoring nature instead, coming into some sort of agreement with Church of Singularity didn't really feel like a realistic goal for the nearest future.

But humanity had to press on. Or die out, the second time for good.

30th May 2172, annual Comitee of Humanity speech

Greetings citizens! The days of corporate oppression as well as addicting simulations and drugs are over now. We are free! We did it. We abolished social injustice and privileges of the few in favour of a better future for everyone, and for that I want to thank you all, especially those who sacrificed themselves and didn't live to see the happier times. But the work is not over yet. As you all already know, N.O.V.A. Bunker System isn't how humans had always lived. There's a whole world above surface. And not only that one, but many more. The universe is vast and spacious, it isn't built soley from underground hallways and rooms. Yes, the world above us is currently toxic and uninhabitable, but do not lose hope just yet! Within the corporate files we found information about terraforming technology recovered from Mars. Those evil people wanted you to never hear about it, but here we are, spreading the good news! We can use this technology to restore Earth to its former glory! We will reshape it to be just like on the photos of old: lush, green, with blue oceans, blue skies and colourful biosphere! Breathable and habitable, producing tasty, healthy food and not forcing us to process each other into nutrient paste anymore! Just imagine this paradise corporations once destroyed and refused to rebuild...

But as I said, the work is not over yet. Following years will be crucial and we must all muster up additional strength to get through them. Because of the irresponsible decisions made by the N.O.V.A. Megacorps, supplies are running short and hence we must introduce tighter rationing. But fear not, my friends, as we are doing it because we are no longer willing to engage in cannibalism and even with tighter food and oxygen rations you'll still have it better than under corporate government who would rather kill you all than let you have even a tiniest share of their resources. But once Earth is reborn, we will have more than enough for everybody. The most skilled engineers are already working day and night to setup basic terraformers on the surface. In addition remember about our saviours from the stars, the A.F.R.I.C.A. team that has been sent to assist us! N.O.V.A. Megacorps would rather blast them out of the sky than to give up their power, but we aren't like them. We are better. And so are our savuiours from the stars. We will prevail and we will reunite with rest of the humanity that fled the Solar System upon the fall of Old World. All hail the Comitee of Humanity! Down with the corporate oppression! Down with toxic technology! All hail the Comitee of Humanity!

Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the Martian deserts, N.O.V.A. technicians presented their reports according to which the wrecked ships were of military use and that apart from their propulsion systems, a few railgun cannons and one laser blaster remained almost intact...
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Caustic Skies
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 28, 2022, 09:26:36 AM: Caustic Skies

Leaders of Comitee of Humanity quickly realised their critical mistake. They built their power on being the total opposition of corporationism and sterile corridors of N.O.V.A. Bunker System, filled with dangerous, half-broken technology from the Old World nobody really understood anymore. That fit nicely with terraforming Earth to make surface habitable again, which is why the mistake was made in the first place, but first complications began to arise even before dust had time to settle. Terraforming required technology. Maybe Earth didn't need as much treatment as Mars or anything else in the Solar System, but sucking out a total of 0.13 atm of toxic gasses from the entire planet wasn't a piece of cake. Reversing climate change was easy on paper - process various toxic oxides and dioxides to extract oxygen from them and release it to the air, purifying it and raising oxygen levels to optimal threshold. At the same time as atmosphere would stabilise temperatures shall drop, increasing the amount of liquid water on the surface, restoring oceans and allowing various species to be released from the bunkers. Technically all the machinery and knowledge for this to work was already there. But there was just that one crucial component missing: scale. 0.13 atm was no joke and that was the easy part as kickstarting an ecosystem from scratch required advanced expertise and careful planning - it was more than just replanting corn on a hydroponic tray.

Scale required powerful installations, some on the ground, some in the orbit. And power to keep them running for years non-stop. And that required advanced construction materials, better reactors, computers to plan it all out, A.I. to optimize power consumption and gas processing ratios, even more complex A.I. for simulationg biosphere restoration, the list went on and on... It required advanced technology. It could just be scavenged from Mars, but it was of little to no use if there weren't enough skilled specialists to keep it up and running. And eagerly developing technology was a surefire way of fueling the opposition which leaders must have been already aware of this crisis and were eagerly awaiting for the Comitee to give them excuses so they could frame them as secretly wanting to restore corporationism. Church of Singularity wouldn't help either.

The thing was, besides terraforming problems, there was also a food crisis. However, its presence suddenly could become an unexpected asset rather than another hindrance. As always with such situations, some citizens expected the government to take care of them while others demaned more freedom to develop their own solutions. None wanted big corporations back, though. Both groups associated them with oppression and exploitation, just in a different way, as for the first group they simply were the thiefs that stole their resources while for the second they were monopolists blocking healthy competition and innovation of smaller companies. And so the Comitee of Humanity attempted to kill two birds with one stone. It quickly passed some regulations allowing greater degree of freedom on the market, subtly modifying its narrative, claming from then on that "it was time to set an example what true enterpreneurship means and see how different it is from what corporations of the past wanted you to believe". Government hoped for some of the new businesses to prepare their terraforming project so that the government wouldn't have to officially abandon its anti-tech statements, at least to some degree. Consistent narrative was the key to hold power, after all.

Some of the new generation of companies simply attempted to optimize hydroponics to squeeze that one harvest more out of them in one production cycle, some attempted to implement machine learning to optimize food distribution chains and develop better consumption schedules to keep the population healthier on the same amount of food in total, some tried to modify plant genes to adapt them to withstand conditions on the surface while still keeping at least some parts edible, some simply experimented with artificial flavours to make eating cockroaches and rats in larger quantities tasty. One company even attempted to reinvent bionic stomaches and artificial digestive systems to enchance human body to work better with what it had available to eat.

As progress was being made, certain members of the Comitee, posing as "anonymous supporters", from time to time would invest in the most promising companies and subtly influence them to keep their expansion towards fields related to terraforming. Or at least making surface habitable as soon as possible, for example with development of bionic lungs filtering toxins from the air. But the opposition wasn't sleeping. The tipping point was when Duranium Components Inc presented its first prototype of a climate regulating implant, consisting of series of microscopic pipes implaneted directly to the bloodstream that could circulate either cool or warm liquids to regulate body temperatures when exposed to extreme conditions. If one was to pair this with bionic lungs and bionic eyes (as the air was brutal for the biological ones), it should be possible for an individual to survive outside without any external protection gear. At least under clear skies, without acid rain.

Opposition started to more openly criticize the Comitee of Humanity. It accused it of betrayal of the rebel ethos back from the war with N.O.V.A. Megacorps. Earth was still uninhabitable and all the Comitee did was to allow a small elite to start developing technology that remained them too much about days of imprisonment in the bunkers. And Church of Singularity still remained a problem, because while some of its officials were willing to secretly collaborate with the government in exchange for more bionics and implants, the cult couldn't change its official statement out of a sudden.

But government was prepared for people to slowly start turning away from it. It was willing to do everything it took and more to remain in power, from deep fake videos destroying credeibility of opposition leaders to replacing them by its own agents in case they would suffer from very unfortunate and unepxected accidents. But on one of the secret meetings it was decided that it needed a safe space. Space that'd serve as a free experimental ground for technological breakthroughs without too many eyes looking at them. Earth was out of the question. Moon was too close, besides situation in many lunar cities was somewhat similar to the problems on Earth. So it was deicded that the time had come to dust off Mars recolonization projects left by N.O.V.A. Megacorps. After all, that small outpost they set up was still operating and Cydonia was ready to host dozens of millions of new inhabitants under its domes. Comitee of Humanity was very hesitatnt of this idea for a long time, because many of its supporters required them to focus on Earth rather than expand while the homeworld still laid in ruins for the most part, but in retrospect government officials had to admit that secret laboratories on Mars would be better in the long term than "focusing on Earth", thus making all their projects just a bit too exposed to eyes that shouldn't see them.

Fleet of Martians rose above the caustic skies once again and took millions of people to the Red Planet. But while moon remained open for civilian transit for as long as people were able to pay for a ticket, Martian lines were strictly monitored by the government and only the most loyal citizens were able to obtain a pass. Officially it was only a matter of "safety reasons" and getting such permit required to finish an "Interplanetary Travel Preparation Course" anyone could sign up for, but in practice only background check of each student decided in the final evaluation. Comitee wasn't stupid enough to believe the cover won't be blown out sooner or later or that every citizen they approved would indeed be loyal, but for the time being it was giving them time. If scientists studying Martian installations could figure out secrets of large-scale terraforming quickly enough, the government could hope to start restoring Earth to its former glory and calm down the society, strenghtening their position and steering the public opinion clear from their connections with most powerful companies and participating in development of technology they swore to never let anyone think about again.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Three Body Problem
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 28, 2022, 01:53:44 PM: Three Body Problem

Between half-collapsed bunkers and toxic surface of Earth, low gravity cities of moon and red deserts of Mars, quality of life for an average citizen remained questionable at best. Comitee of Humanity kept spewing reports on terraforming progress, corporations kept spewing ads about life-enchancing bionics available for only a two years worth of average salary unless one was a relative of a CEO or received grant from the government, mainstream media kept population engaged in arguing about nonsense on a whole new level (by 2190s social media were blowing up from endless discussions about cats being discriminated by dogs and), toilet paper was still nowhere to be seen on the market (rumours circulated about the richest having access to it, though) and artificial intelligence still left a lot to be desired as one of the flights to Mars almost ended up with a crash course with Jupiter if human pilots wouldn't notice the weird acceleration in the middle of interplanetary space before wasting too much fuel.

With the help of TerraNova Inc government was finally setting up the infrastructure on Earth and the oxygen level started to slowly go up proportionally to the decreasing frequency of acid rains. Everything went smoothly and for a while it looked as if the Comitee of Humanity would defuse social tensions, but it was then when Channel 9 News broadcasted an anti-government reportage, claiming to have "found out about all the corruption going on".

14th July 2193, Channel 9 News, "Breaking Corruption" program

What is going on Mars? Many of you have asked this question recently, and for a good reason. Thanks to the bravery and sacrifices of one of our best journalists, Anthony Wall and Robert Oconnor, tonight I am able to expose a dark secret hidden by the Comitee of Humanity. This is Emily Mortan speaking and welcome to this week's "Breaking Corruption".

As we all know, connection between Earth and the moon is well-established, with a number of governmental and private lines shipping people and cargo back and forth. But that's not the case for Mars. To travel to Red Planet (or back to Earth for that matter), one has to pass a so-called "Interplanetary Travel Preparation Course", supposedly for safety reason. And here at Channel 9 News we believe it's for safety reasons indeed, but not the kind of safety you might think. Because why would a passenger of an interplanetary cruiser be required to know anything about internal components of a spaceship or need to learn about astrophysics? Somehow that knowledge is not required to visit our moon. As seen in the footages you were shown in our daily news program, members of the Comitee struggled to produce a coherent answer, in other instances it sounded just "too coherent", as if it was artificial, predetermined, as if the government wanted to hide something and agreed on a generic response to be given to journalists. Moreover, in their attempts to conceal the truth, they started talking about how journey to the Mars is different from the lunar flights because in the former passengers are put in hibernation and all the preparations needed for it, but it doesn't pair well withthe well-known fact that hibernation isn't a fresh technology anymore and has proven to be completely safe over and over again. It is widely applied in medicine for patients who need to wait for organ transplants or when there's too little doctors to take care of them immediately, allowing them to wait in cryosleep over time that would've rendered them dead already if their body would continue to function normally. It is a great invention and there's no need for excessive preparations government claims journey to Mars requires.

Our journalists also investigated the careers of those people who finished the course successfully. In almost 87% of cases they were either directly linked to the government or had relatives occupying prestigious and important positions in the modern world. None of them agreed for an interview, but we've received a few anonymous reports from Cydonia. We were able to verify they all came independently from each other, yet every single one mentioned some shady business going on behind the closed doors of labs belonging to Vanguard Energy Inc. Officially the corporation has signed a lucrative contract with TerraNova Inc for selling the latter its most advanced fission reactors to power terraforming installations, but our independent experts were able to conclude than it is impossible for such a powerful entity like Vanguard Energy Inc to be specializing in just fission reactors. It is also worth noting that it cost them an enormous amount of money, reaching up to 5% of the total worth of all corporate assets, to move to Mars, which doesn't make much sense from the business perspective. TerraNova Inc had no choice if it wanted to be the top in its field since it has to study ruins of terraforming stations on the Red Planet, but research into nuclear power alone doesn't need to be conducted on Mars, especially that the whole terraforming for now happens on Earth and repeating the process for Mars is still a far-fetched sci-fi.

While we still don't know everything, it is obvious than the government is collaborating with the most powerful companies that had been founded in the past two decades in one way or another, despite its official statements that it won't allow the corporations to rule ever again. Some experts claim that it does what it has to do in order to stay in power, because as we can see all across Earth and moon, support for its actions is dwindling across the lower and middle class. As you can observe at the graph behind me, over the last two years, only 28% of citizens earning 10000$ or less per month want the Comitee of Humanity to stay in power. Many fear that their investments in the field of cybernetic industry are aimed at creating a new Matrix for the disobedient citizens to weaken the opposition and distract people from their miserable lives and make them feel powerless and unwilling to ever question current status quo.

That's it for tonight, I wish everyone a pleasant evening and hope to see you next time. Tonight's "Breaking Corruption" was sponsored by Duranium Components Inc. Their latest invention is a brain chip for an easy access to all the broadcasts of your choice, including your favourite Channel 9 News, no matter the place, no matter the time. Stream all your favourite newsfeeds directly to your head. With the new chip you can transmit the video and sound directly to your brain. It's a true revolution on the market. Even if you're blind and can't afford bionic eyes yet, this will allow you to experience the visuals of news reports (or any other media for that matter) as if you were seeing them. There's a 20% discount for the viewers of "Breaking Corruption". Buy tonight and never let the information pass you by.

Some members of the Comitee got a little bit nervous after watching the program. While it seemed that nobody has discovered their secret Vanguard Offensive Defense System or even knew about research in the field of interplanetary nuclear missiles, the journalists from Channel 9 News were on the right track. And they had backup of Duranium Components Inc, too. It all made sense. Terraforming project had eventually been kickstarted and the leader in cybernetics feared for its position. Management of Duranium Components Inc was probably worried that as soon as Earth is green and blue again, government won't need a strong tech industry anymore and will prefer to stick to its original agenda to reclaim some of its supporters that turned away from it. It was in the company's best interest to ensure bionics will be made and sold uninterrupted.

Upon more detailed research the full complexity of the problem unveiled. Comitee of Humanity painfully had to remain itself how it discarded all the requests from citizens living on the moon complaining about their bodies deteriorating in low gravity environment. Bionics were a great chance for them. Where bones deteriorated, circuits held. Products of Duranium Components Inc had helped many among the upper middle and rich classes of lunar citizens already and economists were certain that as new models will be released and the market will expand, the prices of the current ones will fall drastically. Governors of lunar colonies often expressed their dissatisfaction with the government and proclaimed that they had "been abandoned" and "needed to take matters into their own hands". Whether they really believed that end of terraforming will mark the collapse of the market they were heavily dependent on or it was just marketing strategy of bionic manufacturers was irrelevant. What mattered is that government was losing the grip on moon. Earth did barely better. Mars remained stable and loyal for the most part, but despite great resources and ancient tech at the fingertips, it was the youngest and smallest colony, hosting barely over 20 millions of people. Finishing Vanguard Offensive Defense System would grant the comfort of controlling humanity without anyone being able to oppose the ruling caste under the threat of unstoppable nuclear annihilation no matter the location in the Solar System, but whether it would be possible to deploy it in time was an open question. It was probable that the rivaling corporation knew much more than it was willing to let Channel 9 News tell.

Back on homeworld tensions were escalating as well. Lured by the chance to live outside, to escape the bunkers and recently erected surface complexes, many people were willing to sell all their posessions and take a crippling debt only to get the right combination of bionics that allowed them to inhabit the surface without external life support systems. But the price to pay for freedom was someting nobody could prepare for, something far beyond the misery of trying to get by in a narrow, moist room in the poorer districts of "official" residential areas. "High tech, low life" was all such existence was about. Outfitted with implants, but too poor to afford anything else, these creations of flesh, circuit and bone established themselves in an exponentially growing slums outside the protective barriers of sealed off domes and habitats. Oceans of shacks and dirt waved across the sand. There wasn't a single acid rain or radiation storm that wouldn't end up with at least a few hundreds dead and injuried (which given the medical and sanitary conditions meant "dead, but later") per one slums district. Many corporations had to deploy extensive security forces as these poor souls would often venture into the cities to steal some basic supplies. Some tried to get back to society, but very few were able to conceal their debt that'd throw them into conditions barely better than outside, but without any sort of freedom, too.

As years went by, the gap between the "cities" and "outside" widened. Terraforming was progressing, but the climate was still harsh and by the end of 2190s most of the ones inhabiting slums had their bodies deformed by constant poisoning. The only reason they were still alive was because of bionic stomaches digesting all the waste they had to consume as food and the dirty water they had to drink. Alongisde their body degradation grew the resentment from the rest of society.

"It is unfair I had to work for twenty years to buy bionic eyes for my daughter who was born blind while this scumbag who broke into our house yesterday and stole our food has bionic lungs, stomach and climate regulation implanted as well."

"Ewww... They're so creepy... Have you seen their corroded bodies? They look like alien monsters or something. And with their bionic eyes glowing in the dark... Ugh..."

"Why don't they just find a job and do something productive for a change? I will happily share my supplies with them if for once they contribute as well."

"I am forced to pay three quarters of my salary as a volountairly donation to the security forces of my employer - it's about time they use it for something that'll benefit me."

"I don't like how they're gathering outside the environmental barrier... Look at the hatred in their eyes. I bet they imagine how would I taste."

At some point even bionic producers realised this isn't serving them in the long run, because a good customer was a returning and debt-paying customer and hardly anyone from the slums qualified for that. Not that it mattered, as less and less people were willing to experience the "freedom" anyways. But the enclaves of the ones who had nothing to lose anymore remained. Solenoyd Inc even officially proclaimed to have invested in the promising team of young, passionate scientists working on a next-gen environmental hazard protection in the form of kinetic forcefield deflecting elements from the outside, hoping to use it to stop the intrusions and separate slums and cities once and for all. But other companies and even government itself quickly took interest, too. The applications of such field were unimaginable. So far early prototypes did not hold well in the vacuum and barely endured low gravity, so spaceships and the moon had no way of benefiting from it, but Mars was a different story already. Within a standard 1g environment the field could even stop a rocket propelled grenade. In one of six trials and the shockwave destabilised it completely afterwards, but still. Yet another problem for Comitee of Humanity, as this research might as well be just enough to interrupt the process of seizing ultimate control over all three bodies via Vanguard Offensive Defense System.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Corporate Meeting
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 28, 2022, 02:25:12 PM: Somewhere in Cydonia Megacity

Ben Brennan: I don't like the direction it's all heading towards. Those forcefields... A rocket propelled grenade! With all the funding and additional human resources they got you think how long will it take till we'll be talking nuclear missiles? I don't think VODS will be ready in time to stop them. Besides, the plan wasn't to reveal its existence as soon as its ready to fire either.

Yoshii Yukinaga: Well... What do you suggest? We have funding from the government and looks like most of the smeg that goes down goes down on Earth and moon. Mars is ok for now.

BB: For now. Have you seen the tensions on the borders of Earth cities? Some reporters even claim that people got shot. On both sides. I tell you, another revolt is on the way. This must be our chance. We've waited for so long...

YY: Hmm... Yes, you're right. But I don't think taking power into our hands is a right thing to do. At least when it comes to who's officially in charge. N.O.V.A. Megacorps fell and the rebels instantly drowned in their old smeg. Well, almost instantly, at least. Have you seen how many people are disilusioned already? With all these corporations growing stronger as we speak? Comparing the reality to the promises of Comitee of Humanity back from 2170s?

BB: You know what... You're damn smart. You got me a brilliant idea. After all, folks from N.O.V.A. are still hiding somewhere out there with fake identities, right? I'm not sure which corporation is theirs, but I bet it must be one of those tampering with these wrecked spaceships... Interplanetary missiles and kinetic forcefields on one side... State-of-the-art propulsion, railguns and laser blasters on the other... Can you tell who'd win right away? Because I can't. How we just... Encourage both sides to have a... very peaceful discussion?

YY: Hmm... Space combat is a tale of the Old World... We don't really know what to expect... But... It's not our problem, right? If any of those big pewpews would happen to impact any of the three inhabited celestial bodies... That'd be... very unfortunate. But as the population would dwindle... Rather drastically... Technically... There would be labor shortage, so what if there was someone being able to provide the winner with androids? Lots of androids, all ready for work 24/7, all resistant to radiation and acid... So far they're very stupid, that's right... But I'm confident a few years of research and they'll do a good job as road constructors, warehouse workers or couriers. And everyone would be dependent on them. Everyone or this New World would fall apart. Why be the government and face all the anger of society if you can make lots of profit and have the government be dependent on you? By the way, heard your new type of RadAway works much better than the old one... But also costs like five times more to produce, right? Yeah, would be very unfortunate if some cities would get irradiated by missiles straying from their course by accident...
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Cryogenic War
Post by: Stormtrooper on January 30, 2022, 02:57:30 PM: Cryogenic War

Vanguard Offensive Defense System progress report

So far the project continues uninterrupted. Batteries Cell-A-L, Cell-B-L and Cell-D1-L are fully operational as of now. Cell-C and Cell-E-H are going to come up online until the end of this year. As requested we gave up on E-class batteries since installing anything on Earth was deemed too risky in terms of potential compromise of the project data. Unfortunately I am obliged to inform you that I had to make a decision to drop M-class batteries installation as well. I know Mars is more politically stable than Moon, but I had no choice. According to the reports of SkipHub espionage team (the one praised for successfully infiltrating Duranium Components Inc HQ back in the day), business run by Exadev Space Industries is more shady than we thought. Remember those wreckages from the ruins of Cydonia Spaceport? Agents from SkipHub claim that thanks to them engineers from Exadev were capable of building a very successful prototype of a railgun based on their findings. While we've been testing some ourselves, theirs proves to exceed in missile speed and as a result, accuracy. Our physicists wholeheartedly agree that they would have no trouble precisely bombarding our lunar batteries from Earth and maybe more, depends on the state of their targeting software. Alternatively a dense grid of these weapons could, in theory at least, intercept our missiles. I don't have to tell about the consequences of hundreds of nukes blowing up in the orbit, right? The EMP blast would obliterate life support, computers, robots, individual implants of our citizens...

The good news is that new versions of kinetic forcefield can withstand a few shots from our railguns before their integrity gives up, so we expect at least 1-3 shots of the enemy to be stopped by them before they need to recharge. Problem is, the generator size is just too big to attach it on a missile. But we could, in theory, protect our launch platforms with it. That's not the end of issue list, though. A bunch of other agents in our service claim to have spotted some rather well-concealed satellites circling at mind-blowing speeds in low orbit around Mars and some blue-purple flashes at Exadev testing sites, far beyond the eyes of civilization on the planet. We can't tell for sure, but there's a chance those flashes were from laser weaponry. Or it's just a targeting system for their missiles. Very fast missiles. Either way, photos from the spying drone we've put on Deimos last year show craters appearing on the testing grounds pretty much instantly after the flashes would end.

Again, there're still a lot of blanks in our theory, but here at Loyalty Department we are all inclined to believe mentioned corporation is working on putting up a full-sized, combat-ready space fleet our stationary batteries won't be able to counter and is already ahead of us in space warfare-related research. And we have information that suggests Exadev management might have some ties with N.O.V.A. Megacorps, maybe even some of its members are former CEOs of our enemy, the ones we've never caught. I advise for assembling a space fleet of our own, so when the day comes, we'll be ready.

Louis Daly, leader of Loyalty Department, 30th March 2196

P.S. I allowed myself to already take some initiative and prepared the best of our men for storming Exadev facilities to steal their technology and maybe harass their factories. Engineers from our space department also designed a new type of spaceship that should serve them well. It is effectively twice as fast as Martians, meaning we could get anywhere first for as long as we have intel we should get there.

Quote
Void Bird class Dropship 25 000 tons 220 Crew 827.2 BP TCS 500 TH 400 EM 0
800 km/s Armor 1-76 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 21 Max Repair 50 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Troop Capacity: 6 Battalions Cargo Handling Multiplier 50

200 EP Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (2) Power 200 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 200 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1 450 000 Liters Range 147.6 billion km (2136 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Exadev testing facility, somewhere in the deserts of Mars

Sean Leonard gazed at the blasted gates in disbelief. His suit was covered in blood after he flipped over one of the bodies, but he was oblivious to the world around him, having bigger problems to worry about. These laser guns were surely powerful. Very powerful. So powerful they could blow up the entire facility if let to overheat for too much. Nobody in the facility would complain about starting a weekend earlier due to lack of coolants preventing further tests, but the key was to know the transport that arrived two days earlier was a hoax in the first place and the real coolant got spilled somewhere in the mountains. Of course convoy assault was the easiest way, but "easiest" in this case was far from easy. Knowledge about the existence of these labs was limited, let alone knowledge about the transport routes and schedules, updated randomly each week. According to the managers above him, somehow Comitee of Humanity must had picked the long buried track leading to N.O.V.A. Megacorps once again. An unpleasant conversation with his boss awaited. The attack itself wasn't even the most ominous thing that happened, either. Determination-class ships were slowly coming to shape, prepared to cancel VODS program before it could reach its full potential, lasers for Velociraptors (oh, the irony of N.O.V.A. Megacorps naming a spaceship after the infamous group of rebels who once dared to threaten it) were mostly done, too, and, ironically, the incident in fact had the potential of further improving their design with new safety measures, but the fact that Sean Leonard let remote-controlled EMP bombs slide in some containers undetected was a serious infraction.

With all surveillance fried up, there was hardly any trace of the attack. Of course, given enough time, it was possible to chase down the team that intercepted the transport and dropped the bombs, but with the exception of maybe some rookies in the Counter-Sabotage Bureau at the start of their careers nobody believed anything useful would come out of this without capturing the mastermind behind all this. And this is why letting EMP detonation occur was an infraction worse than if a literal nuclear bomb would blow up thanks to Sean's oversight. Or not really worse, since nuclear explosions were accompanied by EMP blasts too. Anyways, it was bad. Sean could only be glad that canceling of life support subscription didn't really mean what it meant back in the days of N.O.V.A. Bunker System. Still, with such a record no corporation would ever hire him as a security officer, let alone at his current rank, and security was all he knew about. Also this social skills-enchancing biochip in his brain wasn't going to pay down itself without his salary. Still, maybe with a bit of luck he could land another job using his enchanced rhetoric and observation skills? Social interactions were just a game he was good at, and these advanced machine learning algorithms kept a good job at releasing the proper hormone sequence at the right time to keep his emotions under control and put him in a mood where he was more likely to come up with the right responses, tone and posture.

Exadev Space Industries HQ, Cydonia Megacity, 12th January 2197

The owner of Exadev Space Industries, formely only a mid-tier manager back in the N.O.V.A. Bunker System, stared at the design documents in front of him. Determination-class missile destroyers, a squadron of Velociraptors, an impressive fleet of Dark Phoenixes armed with successfully weaponized particle accelerators and the biggest asset, Project PURGE. And two Scandroids to get eyes on the enemy with enough time to prepare. Duranium-Neutronium layers were enough to prevent a random railgun missile from tearing a ship in two parts which would likely happen with the speeds involved in case of civilian vessels, but nevertheless combat officers worried that, unlike kinetic shieldings Comitee of Humanity apparently mastered, they could not regenerate. A destabilized field could mean stabilized field once again if given enough time. But a hole in the hull would mean a hole in the hull till the end of the battle. Further research could allow for better forcefields and less reliance on the armor, but the CEO had already made a decision. Further wait was too risky. The Comitee wouldn't just scrap all their batteries if they weren't able to immediately throw them at Exadev in mobile variants. Of course it could be bluff attempting to force the opponent to enter production stage with weaker tech, but it was just too damn risky. No, under no circumstances would they risk having nothing to show for themselves when their enemy could bomb them into space dust already.

Proposed fleet faced certain problems, though. Lasers tended to be too dispersive at greater ranges. Particle beams faced no such issue and the enemy wouldn't even know what hit them, unlike with lasers, but the accuracy of these was a bit worse and accelerated particles weren't able to just burn a hole in the hull like a concentrated laser from up close would. Targeting systems of Determination were carefully engineered to provide an effective screen against missiles, but their speed was too low to be used for offensive action. The slugs fired from the railguns were just too slow. While speed of enemy ships remained a mystery, the difference between them and the projectiles was likely relatively small, causing diminishing effects of the railgun fire. And that is if the slugs would connect at all, which at the expected engagement range was almost impossible. The amount of time enemies would have to dodge them would be just absurd. That is assuming dodging would be necessary, of course. Predicting enemy movement for periods long enough to aim raigluns correctly was another can of worms.

And that's why the fleet was supposed to contain a PURGE Team. Microwaves, EMP blasters and jamming software. A wet dream of every cyberpunk fighting corporate drones, bots and augments of security guards. And a wet dream of a corporate CEO not sure whether the firepower of his fleet would be enough. These kinetic fields were problematic, but with just how heavy the generators were, it wasn't likely enemy would wield that many. And the equipment of PURGE Team, at least when sticking close to its maximum range, still performed better against forcefields than lasers and about as good as particle beams. And once the shields would be down... A few good volleys and the hostile fleet is silenced. No bloodshed needed. No serious, risky combat for longer than a few minutes. Just neutralize them and force obedience at gunpoint.

Quote
Scandroid class Deep Space Survey Ship 5 000 tons 174 Crew 918,8 BP TCS 100 TH 800 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 1-26 Shields 0-0 HTK 16 Sensors 400/0/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 0,17 Years MSP 114 AFR 200% IFR 2,8% 1YR 665 5YR 9 972 Max Repair 400 MSP
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required

Ion Drive EP800,00 (1) Power 800 Fuel Use 221,36% Signature 800 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 382 000 Litres Range 6,2 billion km (8 days at full power)

Thermal Sensor TH50-400 (1) Sensitivity 400 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 158,1m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
Determination class Missile Destroyer 15 000 tons 605 Crew 2 829,2 BP TCS 300 TH 2 400 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 6-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 96 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 43 PPV 45
Maint Life 7,32 Years MSP 3 890 AFR 55% IFR 0,8% 1YR 127 5YR 1 908 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required

Ion Drive EP1200,00 (2) Power 2400 Fuel Use 180,74% Signature 1200 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 1 518 000 Litres Range 10,1 billion km (14 days at full power)

10cm Railgun V10/C3 (15x4) Range 10 000km TS: 8 000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 10 000 km ROF 5
Beam Fire Control R192-TS8100 (50%) (2) Max Range: 192 000 km TS: 8 100 km/s
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R45 (2) Total Power Output 90,7 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS12-R1 (50%) (2) GPS 64 Range 12,8m km MCR 1,1m km Resolution 1

ECCM-1 (1) ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
Velociraptor class War Cruiser 30 000 tons 883 Crew 5 300,1 BP TCS 600 TH 4 800 EM 3 330
8000 km/s Armour 15-86 Shields 111-370 HTK 144 Sensors 48/0/0/0 DCR 57 PPV 36
Maint Life 4,46 Years MSP 5 189 AFR 153% IFR 2,1% 1YR 422 5YR 6 330 Max Repair 600 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required

Ion Drive EP1200,00 (4) Power 4800 Fuel Use 180,74% Signature 1200 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 2 892 000 Litres Range 9,6 billion km (13 days at full power)
Gamma S37 / R370 Shields (3) Recharge Time 370 seconds (0,3 per second)

18,750cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1) Range 192 000km TS: 8 000 km/s Power 9-3 RM 30 000 km ROF 15
15,0cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (6) Range 180 000km TS: 8 000 km/s Power 6-3 RM 30 000 km ROF 10
Beam Fire Control R192-TS8100 (50%) (2) Max Range: 192 000 km TS: 8 100 km/s
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R22 (2) Total Power Output 43,1 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS2-R1 (50%) (3) GPS 2 Range 2m km MCR 181,7k km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-48 (50%) (1) Sensitivity 48 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 54,8m km

ECCM-1 (2) ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
Dark Phoenix class Assault Ship 15 000 tons 529 Crew 2 793,8 BP TCS 300 TH 2 700 EM 1 110
9000 km/s Armour 8-54 Shields 37-370 HTK 85 Sensors 48/0/0/0 DCR 35 PPV 24
Maint Life 4,62 Years MSP 2 910 AFR 72% IFR 1,0% 1YR 222 5YR 3 326 Max Repair 675 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required

Ion Drive EP1350,00 (2) Power 2700 Fuel Use 170,40% Signature 1350 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 1 356 000 Litres Range 9,5 billion km (12 days at full power)
Gamma S37 / R370 Shields (1) Recharge Time 370 seconds (0,1 per second)

Particle Beam-3 (4) Range 150 000km TS: 9 000 km/s Power 7-2,5 ROF 15
Beam Fire Control R192-TS9000 (50%) (2) Max Range: 192 000 km TS: 9 000 km/s
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R10 (2) Total Power Output 20,2 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS2-R1 (50%) (2) GPS 2 Range 2m km MCR 181,7k km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-48 (50%) (1) Sensitivity 48 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 54,8m km

ECCM-1 (1) ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
PURGE class Assault Ship 15 000 tons 519 Crew 3 013,5 BP TCS 300 TH 2 700 EM 0
9000 km/s Armour 10-54 Shields 0-0 HTK 84 Sensors 48/0/0/0 DCR 38 PPV 20
Maint Life 5,32 Years MSP 3 515 AFR 64% IFR 0,9% 1YR 208 5YR 3 120 Max Repair 675 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required

Ion Drive EP1350,00 (2) Power 2700 Fuel Use 170,40% Signature 1350 Explosion 20%
Fuel Capacity 1 443 000 Litres Range 10,2 billion km (13 days at full power)

R90/C3 High Power Microwave (5) Range 90 000km TS: 9 000 km/s Power 6-3 ROF 10
Beam Fire Control R192-TS9000 (50%) (2) Max Range: 192 000 km TS: 9 000 km/s
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor R15 (2) Total Power Output 30,4 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS2-R1 (50%) (2) GPS 2 Range 2m km MCR 181,7k km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-48 (50%) (1) Sensitivity 48 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 54,8m km

ECCM-1 (1) ECM 10

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Somewhere else in Cydonia Megacity

Ben Brennan: Good. Very good. It was a brilliant idea of yours, to use hacking drones and then fry them with EMP once they sent the data we needed, leaving no evidence for them to investigate. Comitee of Humanity is so happy to see these laser designs... Anyways, looks like we might have overdone providing Comitee with intel. They will have their space force ready at least one year ahead of N.O.V.A.

Yoshii Yukinaga: Don't worry, I already took care of that. Tomorrow a very unfortunate accident will happen at their hangars. Who would have guessed some workers are going to disregard safety protocols for handling nuclear warheads... This will set them back just for the time the other side needs. Once they're both ready, a few fake reports and some political drama and I'm almost certain we could have them launch roughly the same time, one from Mars, the other from the Moon.

BB: I can see that work. Especially with these social enchancers many of their higher ranking officers have implanted... My cybersec team found a backdoor. With the right input, we could remotely control them to give the feelings of extreme anxiety and paranoia rather than charisma and confidence. They'll freak out so badly they'll start shooting at each other right away! There's one problem with it though...

YY: Huh? Let me guess... The signal strength... Isn't quite up to interplanetary ranges, right? I'd be surprised if some brain implant's antenna would.

BB: Yeah, yeah, obviously... Which is why we'll need to have our people close to both fleets...

YY: Wait, I have an idea! Remember Channel 9 News? These self-proclaimed independent journalists, independently choosing which corporation to serve based on the amount of... "encouragement" received? I think they would be thrilled for the opportunity to stream a bloody space-battle themselves, from the POV of soldiers taking part in it... Such material would be worth a bazillion dollars. Maybe they could even finally afford to be truly independent, who knows. Let me toss a coin... Ok, heads. That means they'll fly on the side of the Comitee. If you would be so kind, arrange neccessary "encouragements" and start preparing some "journalists" for operating the implants.

BB: Pleasure doing business with you.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 1)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 01, 2022, 05:17:44 PM: Battle of Three Bodies, 12-13th October 2199

Sam Tucker stared at the radar sweeps coming from Scandroid. He was put as the high admiral of the N.O.V.A. Strike Force because of his decisiveness and professionalism, but out of a sudden had trouble concentrating on making professional decisions. If these traits weren't his traits but features of his cybernetic implants instead, he'd probably start expecting someone installed some recovered software from 2077 on them, maybe even as a result of hostile sabotage.

The fleet hovered in the asteroid belt, except unlike in sci-fi movies there were no asteroids to be seen. Density of real asteroid fields was dissapointing, to put it mildly. On the other hand all these rocks and dust would render a belt with sci-fi-movie-tier-density an impassable obstacle even for the smallest and most agile craft modern technology could produce. He wasn't sure why he had been ordered to fly so far out of the way of space liners and inhabited parts of Solar System, but upper management insisted on sending the fleet far away, beyond ground and orbital stations detection range, to masquerade as an exploration/colonization fleet targeting Europa, Titan and beyond.

Two Scanrdoids, one staying with the fleet, the other for independent operations. Main bulk of offensive and defensive firepower - six Velociraptors, Assault Squadron of eight Dark Phoenixes and eleven Determinations making N.O.V.A. Megacorps look seriously determined, all ready to fly and blow things up. And a PURGE Team, likely the most precious asset. But for now all they had to do was wait. Wait in deep space, monitoring faint red blinks of Martian encrypted channels, staring into the endless night all around them and at radar that presented a scenery as deserted as the one behind windows.

(https://i.imgur.com/o0QEk3O.png)

Comms: Ok, our espionage team confirms their claims. "Spain" should have launched their fleet already. They will be heading towards Mars. All our facilities have kinetic shielding online as well as jamming sequences to make these shields appear as cosmic radiation static on detection systems, but this camouflage will only work for so long. You've waited enough in deep space already. Our intel suggests "Spain" still thinks we're passing Jupiter by now. Surprise them and get to Mars before them. But not too fast, do not waste fuel on speed. These reactors are efficient and you have a lot, but spare it for battle maneouvres if it comes to that. Confirm reception of orders.Over.

ST: Copy that. Orders received. Proceeding to Mars.

Sam Tucker tried to appear calm. And trying to look calm while giving orders brought a bit of his proffessionalism back. Accelerate to 3000km/s, keep radars offline besides passive scanners, proceed towards the Mars, have the separated Scandroid move alongside asteroid belt and scan for any space activity not registered as civilian transit. And check civilian transit too, just in case. Smooth and easy.

The cruise to Mars was smooth and uninterrupted. Too smooth and too uninterrupted. Sam Tucker stared at the red surface and oragne sky beneath him, not believing the radars didn't pick up anything suspicious? Maybe the enemy had technology for fooling them and was hiding on the other side of the planet, in plain sight, laughing at the clueless opponent? Maybe it didn't start its fleet and if N.O.V.A. Strike Force would reach Earth in time, it'd simply point their guns at corresponding spaceport and win without risking a battle that could spiral into disaster in way too many different ways? Or maybe... The agents were in fact double agents and lied, wanting to see the N.O.V.A. fleet exposed like that? But in that case they couldn't bombard Mars like they were supposed to want to do. But maybe... That was not their goal? Maybe they gathered enough intel to figure out they didn't have a chance in battle, so didn't want to fight at all? Maybe they aimed for a PR victory? To expose Exadev Space Industries as really N.O.V.A. Megacorps preparing to take over the Solar System with brute force and turn the public opinion away from their own shady business?

(https://i.imgur.com/8H3YIsX.png)

Fleet admiral was growing more anxious as tense minutes in Martian orbit went by. This... Shouldn't have happened. Propaganda was a powerful weapon... But could it really stop a space fleet armed to the teeth? This wasn't something AR-15s-bearing rebels could destroy as easily. But maybe... Maybe the government just had balls from duranium? No way N.O.V.A. management could just go on a trigger happy spree and blast every last human holdout into radioactive space dust, and ships had to be maintained and refueled from time to time, plenty of opportunity for sabotage... After all that had happened already, with indicdent at a top secret facility, with people responsible still unidentified and free...

Yes, this all made sense. News stations supporting the Comitee were probably already broadcasting the evil monsters who wanted to destroy the glorious utopia comitee had built... And people above him must had understood that too, because his next order simply said "proceed to Earth". Maybe at this point there really was nothing better to do than bombard space facilities of Comitee, already identified and located by agents?

Tucker already started calming himself down, inclined to believe this was going to be just one-sided bombing job and it's the PR department that's going to be on fire with all the stressful work then while he'll be chilling in one of the tropical domes on Mars, maybe even will get a raise... His chain of thought got brutally interrupted, though. His heartbeat accelerated as scanners began to display "Spanish cities" on the screen one by one, with every dot label matching the specification of a given hostile spaceship class, fitting the chosen naming convention put there for the case of communication interception and decryption perfectly.

(https://i.imgur.com/VXXBwaF.png)

The state-of-the-art detection systems were amazing. They were able to not only pinpoint enemy's location, but also analyze the thermal signature to detect even the slightest deviations in speed, figuring out the current heading of the observed vessels based on the applied acceleration and the output in the form of new positions. And so was Olivia Cook, leader of the navigation team stationed on Scandroids. Assuming the current course and bearing, the best chance of interception should be presented if the fleet would change the course for Mercury. In that scenario, the encounter would be resolved relatively close to the sun. Admiral briefly contacted his boss to just be sure he was really supposed to cancel previous orders and go meet the enemy, forgeting about Earth and Moon under this sudden change of circumstances. "Correct. Travel to Spain. We can't tell you whether to fire or not. We don't know ourselves. This is new to all of us. Try to win by propaganda and skilled diplomacy first, but ultimately it's up to you. You've been trained for space combat and know more about it than we planet walkers do. Use your best judgement. Good luck. Comitee of Humanity ends tonight." was the only reply he received.

He couldn't tell whether the enemy had already seen him or not, but had to assume it had. If not by the fleet itself, then for sure by deep space tracking stations on Earth. The enemy was flying at 3000km/s. Changing course to align with Mercury and travel towards it was a bit slow, because under no circumstances did he want to show the enemy the full potential of his engines until the shots would be fired, but surprisingly, now that the final result of VODS project was already visible and stood no chance of making it to Mars past N.O.V.A. fleet, there was no rush. 16 hours have passed, uneventful. Automatic warning system should wake up everybody if distance between fleets would drop below 60m km or the enemy would disappear from radar or another fleet would pop out somewhere else.

And it was the latter that happened. 120 contacts, 42,6m km from N.O.V.A. Strike Force, speeding towards it, head on. Mind-blowing 12502km/s. No way any of N.O.V.A. ships could fly that fast. Or rather they all could, but they would end up drifting away from Solar System, with not enough uranium to at least stop and have someone pick them up.

(https://i.imgur.com/1qPSG3K.png)

Brief war council, 13th October 2199, 12:59:12 Earth time, Velociraptor 001

Sam Tucker: We have less than 46 minutes till the distance between two fleets drops to zero, counting from initial detection, which means now it's closer to 42 minutes. 120 contacts, navigation department claims they weight 300 tons each, based on thermal signature analysis, so nothing more than small fighter or bomber, each of our guns shall have no trouble reducing one to plazma. Engines must weight 150 tons, that leaves 150 tons for fuel, weapons, ammunition, shields, spare parts, life support, navigation, controls and everything else. Weapon Engineering Department Officer, report on weapon simulations?

Charlie Jons: No way its lasers or particle beams. If we have 150 tons to work with for everything besides engine itself, then it's impossible. Lightest generators would weight over 100 tons... So unless they have a so reduced and weakened version that it'd literally disperse on our hulls like it was a laser show and not a battle, they can't have these weapons. Technically they could go with generators small enough to fit in that'd take hours to charge one volley... But... Even at such speed... We would get a few volleys of our own at them from up close. Our targeting systems would struggle, we would miss a lot... Still, there's a 79,45% chance we'd destroy every single one of them before they'd leave our range to recharge. All that cost for one volley of 120 medicore laser beams? Doubt. Don't get me started on the PR aspect of wasting soldiers like that... Even I can tell, even if it's not my specialization.

ST: So that excludes railguns, too, I suppose?...

CJ: Oh yes, definitely. Of course these would stay equally powerful no matter distance traveled, but first you need to hit something. I can assume they'd have better fire controls allowing them to bombard us from range that's too far for ours, but let's be honest, the potential difference can't be big enough to allow them to avoid our guns. At such velocities... No, impossible for a 150t engine, no matter how good and no matter it has to carry only 300t in total, to outmaneouver us and stay outside of our effective firing range through the whole time. There's only one possibility left. These are their initial VODS launch platforms, but with engines strapped to them. A missile could, in theory, be fired from far enough to allow them to turn around before we could get them. Again, it wouldn't hit a damn thing at these ranges with the technology they might have, but if it's a full-sized missile, not a railgun slug, things change. Such warhead could have an engine and targeting computer of its own, allowing it to adjust the course slightly to make sure it does hit its target, overcoming targeting system's limitations...

ST: Any chances you could estimate them?

CJ: Oh, we already did. This data was essential for Determination, remember? We have a certain candidates. First, it could be a swarm of small missiles not crossing 2,5t each, with barely anything left for the warhead. They'd be the fastest they could build, giving our raigluns trouble, but the explosions would be weak enough not to worry about them too much. Most likely they weight more than 7 tons, we estimate somewhere between 7,5t-10t. Each of these little bombers would be able to carry only a few of them, though... It's obvious there must be a carrier among the enemy which likely stores more. We expect them to fire off their ordnance, turn around and come back once reloaded. With the speed advanatge they could do a few runs... We don't expect the missiles to be too dangerous, as anything above 10t would really mean only 1, maybe 2 missiles on board with careful engineering, hardly a challenge for Determinations. Still, our missile simultation shows a few optimal deisngs... Some stronger, some weaker, but generally expect roughly 25000km/s speed and at least class 3 nuclear load...

ST: smeg... smeg smeg smeg. They could potentially fire hundreds of them in one go... smeg. Determination Leader, stopping power?

Max Storey: Assuming 25000km/s? According to railgun specifications, that means roughly two missed shots out of three... Yes... About 200, maybe 210-230, depends on the exact speed and their targeting systems and all the data we currently don't have.

ST: 200? Are you kidding me?! Each of these bastards fires 2 and we're already facing more than your upper limit! smeg... Okay... Okay. Increase speed to 5000km/s. We still don't want to show our true potential just yet, but we also need to make it harder for their targeting software. I want all the forcefields and active anti-missile targeting sensors online. Also, switch all guns to anti-missile mode. I don't care they'll get full intel on our weapons, at this stage it hardly matters anyways, I want to stop the missiles with everything we've got, understood? Good. PURGE Commander, stay for a while. Rest, go back to your duties.

Luke Short: Yes?...

ST: Okay. Once we detect them, you'll only have a few seconds. Let's hope software on your ships wasn't written in 2077. Try to prepare jamming sequence based on the simulation data. It's better than nothing. You know your team is our key to the victory. I count on you. Bring us victory today and the corporation shall reward you accordingly...

Just as the admiral went back to staring into the void and corporate soldiers braced for impact, communication channel lightened up again. Strange, N.O.V.A. Megacorps wasn't supposed to contact him anymore, but yet here the message came...

Combatant, please be advised - this vessel, designation WRV Marie Colvin, is unaligned in this conflict and has been deployed for purely journalistic purposes by the Channel 9 News team. In accordance with Convention IV, targeting civilians is a war crime of the highest order and any antagonistic action against this vessel will be reported.

ST: What the hell?! What the #@!%$!@*&! is that?! Channel 9 News was supposed to be on our side, we had a deal with Duranium Components Inc... I don't know who paid them, but I'll find them and I'll laser them to death... PURGE Commander!

LS: Any new orders?...

ST: Track the source of this message and hack them. It's your biggest priority now, far more important even than jamming their missiles. Find out what are they up to. And someone tell me what the #%$@!&* Convention IV is...

LS: Yes sir!!!
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 2)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 02, 2022, 02:50:03 PM: Half an hour has passed. Fighters closed in to the dangerous distance of 12,6m km. PURGE Team reported readiness for a few variants of the missiles that were likely to be fired. Besides Channel 9 sudden incident, the enemy hadn't made any diplomatic moves. No negotation, no talk, not even a surrender demand. All official channels remained silent. 120 fighters maintained a collison course and the speed of 12502 km/s. At this distance more sensitive radars were able to already tell the exact hull composition. The scanned profile left no doubt the weapons glued to the side pannels couldn't be anything but missile launchers or railgun array.

(https://i.imgur.com/WXrU0EW.png)

Minutes passed. Distance decreased to 7m km. Everyone on board became more nervous and paranoid with every second. The truth about the volley size was about to be determined. There was nothing more to be done but wait. And sure enough, it was what everyone had already realized. Crewmembers remained oddly calm when 480 small nasty contacts were detected at a distance of 6,6m km. They were travelling exactly at 25000 km/s. Class 3 missile, thermal signature type 4. Radars were weak just enough to not be able to see them from a distance they've been fired.

Combat simulation officers had a lot of work to do. Distance of 6,6m km meant exactly 220 seconds till impact if speeds were to be maintained. But engineers working on simulating possible scenarios just got an idea. The starting point for them was the obvious observation that there was no way these missiles were able to hit anything from such a range. 220 seconds were more than enough to comfortably affect the speed vector in a way that'd allow them to pass at safe distance and get a decent safety margin, too. To score hits, they needed engines. And engines needed fuel. With a missile weighting only 7,5t in total and having to carry payload, engines, targeting computer all encapsulated in its own hull, only so much fuel could be brought along. First step was to calculate the exact burnout rate. The missiles didn't accelerate, which meant 25000 km/s was a good balance between speed, not wasting too much fuel and still make the final adjustments moments before impact. Determination onboard computers had already implemented Evasive Corrections Protocol, triggered automatically at missile detection with the missile simulation variant that was the best match for reality, with a new model, fine-tuned for the presented situation, being already uploaded to the engine controls.

Slight modifications to flight trajectory weren't neccessarily easy at 5000 km/s, with a few millions kilometers ahead, the tiniest change meant missing entire volley. According to PURGE report, targeting software was not of the best league, too. Every time N.O.V.A. Strike course modified speed vector, missiles corrected theirs, too. By the time there were less than 197 seconds till impact left, crew of Scandroid 001 was the first one to determine fuel consumption patterns of the missiles and predict its changes in the future. That data was enough to determine that at worst, these missiles should have enough fuel to cover a bit over 10m km before their engines turning off, maybe more but in that case they wouldn't hold enough power to apply the final change during last kilometers of their journey, severely limiting their accuracy so that shooting down 200 of them would statistically be enough for the whole fleet to come unscratched.

After briefly looking at the numbers, admiral gave orders to turn around. His intuition told him that if the fleet could force the missiles to fly for at least 10m km or maybe even a bit less, they'd waste all their fuel, making them easily dodgeable. Smaller relative speed was also vital for anti-missile fire precision. However, there was no time for simply firing engines in the opposite direction. Even with reactor overload turned on, the ships would barely start accelerating away from the missiles by the time they'd catch up. So instead he issued orders for turning only 90 degrees away from the hostile contacts. It should be much faster this way, compared to canceling current velocity altogether. Also it forced missiles to take same turn, hopefully crippling their fuel supply. They had five times higher speed to work through. Five times bigger problem for that particular case.

Soon everyone onboard felt the heat accumulating from overcharged reactors, having nowhere to be dispersed, but the fleet slowly started shifting towards its new course. In the meantime fighters had all finished making U-turn and proceeded to redenzvous point with the bulk of enemy forces. Sam Tucker was cursing all the time for the fact there was no chance of detecting which ship was a carrier. N.O.V.A. Strike force would have to simply rely on luck to pick the right one once in laser range.

Distance between missiles and their targets diwndled, but at 1,5m km the shift was almost complete and the fleet was pushing forward, faster and faster, trying to get to 8000 km/s. That'd leave missiles at only 17000 km/s worth of effective speed. Enough to have them fly by if they'd burn through all of their fuel. Finally the magic 8000 km/s barrier had been reached by the time missiles were less than 1,1m km away, chasing the fleet's tail. Moment of truth was drawing dangerously near. Many officers didn't even notice holding breath for half a minute or more at this point.

(https://i.imgur.com/dMEDxlL.png)

Some soldiers let screams of relief or even celebration out as soon as the thermal signature of missiles disappeared with only 468000 km left before impact. Final evasion pattern was applied, ensuring clear course, but even at 100000km and less not a single missile lightened up again. Even if they would have been programmed to save a last resort reserve to surprise the enemy who got too comfortable with them being dead weight, with less than 6 seconds left and presented angular distance there was nothing they could do.

Crews and officers watched in awe as the enemy detonated the missiles in frustration, somehow clinging to the hope that the blast would catch up to N.O.V.A. forces. But it just couldn't. Cosmic fireworks lasted for a few seconds until everything went silent once again. The fleet was safe (till another volley). Anti-nuclear EMP shields held, too. The enemy had 480 missiles less and yet nothing came out of them.

After detonation N.O.V.A. fleet immediately plotted the shortest interception course possible with the main forces. Post-processing of the first encounter in this battle revealed the effective range of missiles to be more or less 9,4m km, but it hardly mattered. No way Comitee would make the same mistake again. They didn't even make the mistake first time, at least not when it came to volley timing, their leadership simply got tricked into assuming the speed at which their opponent could fly. No way they would let that happen again.

N.O.V.A. Strike Force had more worries than that, though. Their speed meant effective speed of next volley increasing to 33000km/s. Theoretically nothing wrong with changing it, practically there was only so much fuel left and the bulk had to be spared for the main firefight. Tucker knew all he had to do is repeat the maneouver for a few times and see all nuclear material depleted, with his fleet drifting away into interstellar space, without any chance to slow down.

As cruise towards enemy continued, sensors kept warning about identifying new hostile contacts. One, two, three... The fleet wielded by the Comitee of Humanity was massive.

(https://i.imgur.com/SYYf3FK.png)

Before distance from the enemy dropped to 150m km, all 120 bombers disappeared from the radars. Another two contacts popped up, though. By the time range was about to cross 120m km mark, a total of 17 hostile spaceships had been identified to be a part of hostile formation. Quick scan on thermal signatures and a bunch of computations later admiral was very anxious. Most of the fleet had comparable mass to the N.O.V.A. ships, except four. Four behemoths weighting bloody 75000 tons each. Their hull profiles differed slightly. It was reasonable to assume two of them were the carriers, each for 60 fighters. The other two... Just thinking about them turned many people pale. If someone was using only two curses per sentence at that point, it meant that solider remained very calm and had nerves of duranium.

(https://i.imgur.com/WmAIb8K.png)

Many considered early retirement if they'd be lucky enough to survive after a swarm of Sabadells had been detected. Only 5000 tons each, but an impressive and fearsome squadron nevertheless.

(https://i.imgur.com/kfJPbRw.png)

While computers were burning from all the simulations of possible weapons, armor and kinetic forcefield ratios, defensive systems and many other details that might or might not be present within hostile forces, 120 fighters reappeared again, this time spotted at 25,6m km. There was no point in even trying. PURGE Team checked their jamming sequence for the final time, a few diagnostic scans on weapon platforms were run, but that was about all that could be done.

(https://i.imgur.com/LqbFFPt.png)

They didn't fire until 4m km away. Just to be sure nothing could be done to escape. Nothing left to do but to hope for the best, prepare for the worst. 3m km... 2m km... 1m km... 468000 km... 100000 km... 50000 km... Everything was ready. At distance of 10000 km, hundreds of railguns opened fire, showing the enemy their Determination. At 5000 km, PURGE Team broadcasted jamming sequence. At 2000 km, a series of EMP blasts followed, mixing with pulses from nuclear detonations as warheads popped out like punctured baloons all around. Stars faded and the endless night saw the light of the day for a brief moment. Some crewmembers weren't fast enough and got blinded before they could turn around their eyes. For a human observers, it was total chaos. For the computers resolving this volley, it was a perfectly calculated, precise maneouver, an art of computing and programming. Swarm of slugs kept bumping on the missiles. Electronic and magnetic warfare turned some off, either disarming them, rendering them easily dodgeable or in some rare instances even smashing them against each other. Some flew a bit too close and got caught in their own blasts, triggering chain reactios. Admiral was standing in the middle of the bridge, listening to the sound of sirens and watching the volley being thinned away. Blue and violet lasers flashed in front of the fleet, sometimes burning through the missiles, overloading warheads and kickstarting nuclear reactions preemptively. Particle beams were even more effective at this, once they connected with the target. Some shots would miss the payload, but instead burn through the internal circuits, also resulting in a missile being disarmed.

But it was still a total of 480 missiles, and only so much could be done. Five of them exploded across Dark Phoenix 001's kinetic field. It didn't destabilize. The ship was intact. Not a scratch. But Determination 002 wasn't so lucky. These ships, lightly armored and with no shields, never meant to get into direct firefight and having railguns as their main defence against things that could go beyond pewpew range, were weak if one could luck out to work their way through the storm of slugs. A total of 82 missiles impacted. Hull dissipated heat, thin but densely packed layers of armor prevented any serious damage from each missile alone. But there were 82 total, and their power combined breached hull in two places. Explosions killed hundreds, radiation outbursts another hundreds. Only 213 were lucky enough to not stand too close to have a second chance in life (provided RadAway would be administered within the span of next day, two at most), out of witth only 154 got to the escape shuttles before they'd get sucked out into the void.

(https://i.imgur.com/5NaBzOd.png)

A total of 225 missiles got destroyed or disarmed, 168 were countered by the PURGE Team. 87 landed on their targets, out of which 82 caused any meaningful, permanent damage. Firepower of N.O.V.A. Strike Force didn't suffer in the slightest, but there were now 10 Determinations instead of 11. Next volley would hurt more. And the morale damage was worse than expected. No simulation could prepare anyone for the scale of space combat, when mighty spaceships could be removed from existence in a split second after hundreds of ridiculously fast objects overshadow their field of view.

Battle intensified. Only a few minutes later another 120 missles were detected, but this time their speed was only 17766 km/s relative to the Sun. Class 6 missile, thermal signature type 5. They would knock half the fleet out of combat if given chance... Still, 10000 km was deemed safe enough to let them explode and so they all did. Something had clearly gone wrong in the enemy's anti-missile defence estimations, because one Determination less wasn't nowhere near enough for only 120 missiles to stand a chance. Before they would get annihilated, though, enemy fired yet another volley, only 125 seconds later. But as soon as the first one was removed, no additional missiles arrived. Whatever glitch caused Comitee to waste 240 powerful warheads must had been fixed when anti-missile defence reports arrived.

(https://i.imgur.com/ubB3jhR.png)

When the distance separating both fleets was only about 30m km, all 120 fighter contacts disappeared from the radar, shortly after they more or less bruned out through most of their velocity and approached the fleet. Teams on Scanrdoids tried their best, but ultimately failed at detecting the mothership. At such distance all ships have been way too close to each other to determine which was the closest one the fighters were when their signatures vanished. Active sensors were a guarantee they would still be visible until they'd get "swallowed" by the hangars, despite thermal signature progressively diminishing, so that one bit of information would suffice for getting a certain answer, but even that was too much to ask for.

Another round of calculations displayed that the second trip of fighters had been detected when the fleet was at 69m km, but they disappeared at 30m km worth of distance. That meant the distance shortened by 39m km since they launched, fired and till they returned, and even more than that as at 69m km they were already ahead of the fleet. This meant in theory N.O.V.A. could position its ships in the laser range before third, even more punishing volley, but the distance fighters had to travel through also was an important factor, so there was a risk they'd fire for the third time. On the other hand, maybe it'd be better if they did before close range firefight...

Distance was reduced to 2m km only, but it was then when the third, most powerful volley had been launched. 480 class 3 missiles from fighters, 120 class 6 missiles from the main bulk of enemies, accompanied by previously unregistered 120 class 1 missiles, too. This could be the matter of victory and defeat already. Sam Tucker sweated nervously. Only 2m km. Despite engine differences, all missiles should have enough fuel to synchronize speeds before reaching targets and then 10 Determinations would have to deal with 720 missiles at once. 600 were already flying in sync at 25000 km/s, even if 120 of them were significantly smaller. The fleet stood no chance against something like this. Even with prioritizing the 120 most deadly ones, at lest a few Determinations would likely got destroyed, and everything would spiral out of control after that.

However, class 6 missiles started accelerating a bit too late. They were still over 200000 km behind main bulk when the 600 flying at 25000 km/s splashed against N.O.V.A. Strike Force. 81 class 3 missiles and 61 class 1 missiles got through. Class 1 missiles weren't powerful enough to change the outcome of the volley compared to the previous one by much.

(https://i.imgur.com/FS17986.png)

The damage got split between PURGE 001, PURGE 002 and PURGE 003. Second and third from the PURGE Team came out of this with only a few dents on the external armor layers. The damage wasn't too threatening and both ships cleared their course and continued cruise towards enemy. But the first one suffered a lot. Significant holes in its armor belt had been made, with 4 missiles in total breaching through it all and destroying one of the control rooms and killing 25 soldiers. 120 remaining missiles arrived a bit too late and were no match for the railgun defence array.

(https://i.imgur.com/KAaDGPo.png)

Targeting Determinations was bad... But N.O.V.A. admiral came to a conclusion that in a way targeting PURGE Team was very dangerous. With so many ships on the enemy side, laser firefight might not go as smooth as anticipated and risk of defeat could be high. PURGE Team was the key to prevent this. If Assault Squadron and Velociraptors wouldn't cut it, PURGE Team was the difference between easy victory and certain doom. Plus additional benefit of switching off enemy ships instead of destroying them, reinforcing N.O.V.A. security forces, further discouraging anyone from rebelling ever again.

The distance was just above 1,6m km. Given the speed difference, less than 6 minutes remained till the fleets would sync with each other. Meaning less than 5 minutes till the beginning of the main battle.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 3)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 04, 2022, 03:44:55 PM: N.O.V.A. Strike Force was already slowing down to 3000 km/s, preparing to match the enemy and maintain comfortable distance, with everyone in command chain keeping fingers crossed for the enemy to be have a disadavntage from up close. The enemy had turned away from the fleet when it had still been far away and was trying to "escape" from their pursuers, delaying the moment of contact as much as possible. But then out of a sudden five ships broke the formations, turned 90 degrees, accelerated in their new directions, then turned some more, creating a gap between them and main bulk of their squadrons, widening every second. Among the split ships were two cruisers weighting 25000t each, a small vessel PURGE Team had already identified as belonging to Channel 9 News (bold move of theirs... What they were doing in a battle~~field~~space remained unexplained, but maybe it was simply for the money? Live streaming space battle from up close was something many news stations could only dream of...) and one class of 75000t behemoths. The distance was too small to try to pass the main force and get to them... But maybe this could still be achieved, velocity was dropping rapidly, after all. And that split was basically an open invitation telling "hey we absolutely wanted to make sure which of these are our carriers since it might be difficult for you to tell otherwise".

(https://i.imgur.com/nA0j3dY.png)

Still, it was worth a shot. Brief report from engine controls about fuel supply, reactors' parameters and engine condition was enough to convince the admiral to try. But it ended as quickly as it started: as soon as turning began, Comitee responded by syncing speeds and maintaining distance between both parts. It was no longer possible to destroy the smaller squadron while keeping safe distance from the rest of ships. As in to say "screw you" the two mid-sized ships from the "separatists" fired 120 missiles, with 120 other following within 50 seconds. It looked more like another glitch of the enemy missile hit chance optimalizations, not a purposeful attack, still everyone felt a tiny bit better knowing the enemy had just self-destructed 240 missiles. There were only so much they could have stored onboard.

750000 km... Sam Tucker was getting more paranoid with each kilometer closer. Second and even, so to speak, "third" thoughts. That was a lot of ships. Even if half of them had missile launchers and missile launchers alone, plus maybe some sort of anti-missile arrays of its own, the other half still could have more guns no problem... 500000 km... Technically that's what PURGE Team was for... But absolute max distance of effective operating for them was 90000 km. Too close. Below 90000 km lasers could melt through their armors in just minutes. Maybe less, assuming the enemy had them at least as deadly as N.O.V.A. Megacorps... 250000 km... There was also a case of Determination. Comitee commanders might as well ignore all these lasers and go for Determinations, one by one reducing anti-missile capability. Past a certain point the whole fleet would be essentially naked in front of missiles and nothing short of surrendering would be a reasonable action to pefrorm. But keeping Determinations outside laser range while advancing to 90000 km was just begging for the assault force to get shredded by missiles before Determinations could redenzevous back with it.... 200000 km... Staying far away was optimal, according to test results about 150000 km was a decent distance for Dark Phoenixes to land many shots, but lasers would be so weak N.O.V.A. might keep the upper hand in battle. It'd be slow, but steady and safe. At least as far as anything could be considered "safe" during war. Assuming there weren't twice as many particle beams coming from the other side... 192000 km...

(https://i.imgur.com/acbaBK4.png)

A small course adjustment had been made to avoid coming straight at the enemy, but rather glide next to them, potentially getting close to the carriers with enough luck. Velociraptors would fire first, their range still exceeding targeting capability. Generators roared, barrels brightened, moving through the entire spectrum. A couple of blue flashes three miliseconds too early, rest of the lasers fired at perfect moment and were violet, though. Bright flashes cut through the darkness and disappeared in the void. Radars indicated first hits. Sabadell 002 was hit, for a total of 4 times. None of the pulses made it through the armor, but it was something. No kinetic forcefield detected. Potentially perfect target for the PURGE Team.

Three quarters of a second later two 75000t behemoths returned fire. A total of 36 double laser turrets let out 72 yellow flashes. Weak laser... Too dispersed at 170826 km. Maybe some shots were accurate, but it was impossible to tell. Laser counterfire concentrated somehwere between PURGE 001 and PURGE 002, but even if some beams theoretically connected, the dispersion must had killed any lethal potential they carried.

(https://i.imgur.com/PzNAFCF.png)

N.O.V.A. Strike Force pushed forward. This was the moment eveyone was waiting for. A few seconds later Dark Phoenixes crossed 150000 km (as well as other ships). They opened fire. Particle beams dented holes in Sabadell 001, but nothing significant, the ship was still mostly intact. Comitee of Humanity immediately responded. But not with yellow lasers this time. Sabadells, Tarragonas, Santa Cruz, all kept pounding at PURGE 001. The whole enemy fleet ligtened purple in a brief flash. The initial assumption was false. Maybe their lasers went just a bit too early, that's all. They had the same wavelength, no doubt. Streams of violet light concentrated on the poor ship. Armor was still holding, but one went right through, exiting on the other side, illuminating the space behind PURGE 001. Radioactive material spilled into the void from destroyed fuel storage. No casualties reported and it was one of many, but if this was barely the first proper volley of the enemy, it couldn't end well. Their advantage of firepower was clear. Turns out ruling over Earth and moon meant a big difference in power balance. One could do only so much with not more a few millions employees on a Red Planet.

(https://i.imgur.com/JAMl1vK.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/0mcm2Ap.png)

Firefight ensued. Violet lasers, with occassional downgrade to blue due to firing controls and recharging systems misaligning, flared on both sides. PURGE 001's armor was still thick across most hull and absorbed most of the heat, yet still occassionally a beam would cut through. Some crewmembers had died, but not too much, at that range one had to stand directly at beam's trajectory to get killed. It was obvious PURGE Team was withering away for no good reason, idling instead of taking part in battle, meanwhile rest of the guns just coudn't get enough done in enough time.

The decision had to be made. Now or never. N.O.V.A. forces maintained a steady distance of 134000 km. Only 44000 km beyond PURGING area. It was a risk... But it shouldn't take long for a PURGE Team to accelerate to get closer and then slow down slightly to get back under the shield of railguns. At 9000 km/s it meant closing the gap under 8 seconds. From such a close distance, missile detection could be assumed to be instantaneous. Using engine overdrive, 44000 km could be cut to merge PURGE Team with the fleet in under 4 seconds. Their fastest missiles needed 4 seconds to travel 100000 km by default, likely less as they could burn more fuel to catch up quicker. Not by much, though. At this point it had to be assumed most of it must have been burned in initial acceleration. Gaining 22000 km/s was a feat, after all. It was risky. But as the admiral thought, yet another volley was wrecking PURGE 001's hull. There was no time. Each shot fired under these conditons brought N.O.V.A. Strike Force one shot closer to defeat. Orders were given, reactors overcharged and six ships making up PURGE Team proceeded forward. 40000km... 20000km... 50000km...

PURGE Team was speeding across the void, accidentially pushing above safety threshold. Microwaves and EMP blasters fired at 74000 km. Predicted jamming sequence was emitted. It wasn't much to look at compared to the constant barrages of laser fire, repeating every ten seconds, precise like a Swiss clock. And yet many engineers boarding PURGE assault ships cherished when plots and numbers flooded their screens. Between outstanding force of the blast and no shields on any Sabadell, there was no chance for their electronics not going haywire. One even suddenly emitted a power outburst from propulsion systems, pushing it just a bit too far to the side and ramming at the other Sabadell, causing a minor explosion in between the hulls.

(https://i.imgur.com/gQOsf95.png)

Having precisely calculated the right second to fire engines, PURGE Team got in close range right between hostile volleys and had been safely merging with rest of the forces already when dozens of laser blasters heated up again on the other side. One went right through the engine chamber. It didn't struck the reactor itself, but with the engine already running on overdrive to allow extreme maneouvres, cooling systems was just not enough. Ion chambers exploded violently, tering the ship apart. Loose chunks had to be picked off by raigluns while engine-less hull spinned into the void, with nothing to slow it down. Some made it to escape shuttles and started decelerating, those who weren't fast enough before two chunks colliding blew up emergency hangar area had to stay on board and pray someone would have a spare ship to pick them up before they drift too far away and their damaged life support goes down.

(https://i.imgur.com/vAvD3lc.png)

However, Only Sabadells 001, 003, 007 and 009 were able to fire. First PURGE had a catastrophic result for the Comitee. And it was the first. Never the last. PURGE 001 might have been taken out of the equation, but for the remaining 5 only two had minor armor scratches and that was it. It was still a deadly force.

(https://i.imgur.com/9O9NWmY.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/IMhoO50.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/kVHQr5N.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/VCSk7oD.png)

Sam Tucker noticed his hands were shacking. His head hurt, too. Health scanner under his skin displayed all parameters within norm, though, apart from physiological symptoms of acute stress. Weird. It was the first space battle for everyone involved, but it just wasn't right to feel that way for him and it not being a result of some disease's symptoms setting in. He had to clear his mind. A tactical meeting might not be optimal, on the other hand the distance was about to increase again, so not much damage should be done within next 2 minutes and having to reorganize tactics might be just what he needed to clear his nerves. Before calling some officers, he briefly looked at the radar. Detached squadron had turned around and synced speed, maintaining a constant distance while staying behind.

(https://i.imgur.com/2Zo9ezI.png)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 4)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 04, 2022, 07:42:11 PM: Sam Tucker: PURGE Team, how's progress with modeling enemy ships? Any solid estmiations as of yet?

Luke Short: Trying my best, sir. As for lasers, we've been fired at by Las Palmas, Sabadells, Tarranogas and Santa Cruz. Bilbaos are also armed with missile launchers, just like our two behemoths with laser turrets that cause so many problems. My team is confident we shut down their lasers, we win.

(https://i.imgur.com/MrBhmuy.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/E2ShYSa.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/ikaIqQb.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/7wtr9D4.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/I9t21bU.png)

ST: Good job. Make sure you wipe out remaining Sabadells.

Adam Glitter: Sir, enemy has switched targeting! Determination 003 under attack!

(https://i.imgur.com/Tuwn2tc.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/K962E0N.png)

ST: Ah smeg, Luke, this is what I was talking about... Anyways... smeg... smeg... Damn it! #&^%$!@! If they blast through our only missile defence...

(https://i.imgur.com/v4qGkMT.png)

LS: Excuse me... Yes... Good... Very good. Sir, I've just received reports our team managed to land one more EMP blast before we broke contact. All of them should be silent now.

ST: Excellent. Assault Squadron and Velociraptors, focus on one Tarragona, doesn't matter which one. Keep blasting until it no longer blasts back or I tell otherwise. Enigneering team, status on guns and equipment?

Lan Screwsmith: Everything's operating within optimal parameters. As we keep on firing, we've been able to optimize wavelength subroutine in the fly and now only 15,4% of our shots are shorter than violet waves. If our PURGE Team holds, I'm certain we can win. Enemy must be terrified now.

ST: Good. We'll now be regularly changing speed to close in for the PURGE Team to fire, then turn around and fire engines backwards to slow down and gain distance. This requires frequent, rapid maneouvres. Inform me if something happens to the engines or reactors. Redirect additional power to cooling systems if needed. Hopefully we'll avoid more shots this way while landing the crucial ones ourselves. How do we stand with dodging? Any success yet?

LS: While we can't dodge lasers in a conventional sense because by the time we register enemy firing at us it's already over, which is obvious, a quarter of my team is now fiercely writing scripts for automatic parameters testing. The enemy firing patterns are predictable. With the right set of parameters our model could accurately predicting at least some, and by doing a barrel roll we might just be able to dodge that one beam. Or two. Better than nothing, if you ask me.

ST: Fair enough. Everyone return to your post and proceed. Let's get through this.

And so the battle carried on, interrupted by violet flashes, particle beams speeding not much slower than these lasers, cracks of hulls burning and breaking, engines roaring in overdrive after entering "circling mode" to "orbit" the enemy, modifying orbital shape to switch distance as neccessary, curses from command posts and regular stations as well, admiral cursing who the hell thought only 6 layers of armor and no shields on Determination would be a good idea and so on.

Particle beams eventually breached shields of targeted Tarranoga, but at the same time enemy lasers eventually dealt a final blow to PURGE 001. On a pure tactical level wasting firepower on an already disarmed vessel was plain stupidity. But this simple act had another purpose. Purpose that could be seen in the eyes of surviving PURGE crewmembers. Comitee of Humanity was ruthless. It didn't target its blasters in the most effective way. It wanted to make sure to blow up every ship, one by one, no mercy, kill as many as possible. Being knocked out of combat didn't mean surviving anymore (for as long as life support didn't get damaged too much). It meant certain death instead. However, it had as much positive as negative effect. Some crewmembers just got enraged by this and wanted to double their efforts to make sure the Comitee would pay for this.

(https://i.imgur.com/8oeLjDI.png)

With shields reducing the effectiveness of electronic warfare waged on every PURGE assault ship no longer being an issue, a quick EMP sweep rendered Tarranoga 001 disarmed and maybe even blind. Unfortunately, soon after massive, accurate barrage of laser fire severely weakened Determination 003, scoring multiple penetrating hits and blasting through one of the engines. With the enemy's ruthless doctrine and not enough thrust to gain distance, its fate was sealed, so the captain already gave an order to evacuate while setting remaning engines to full stop to increase likehood of being picked up by resuce team after the fight is over. Maybe it could get away in time, but one could let engines on overdrive for only so long.

(https://i.imgur.com/DBdN5Vs.png)

Just as Determination 003 had met its fate, 40 class 6 missiles and 120 class 1 missiles had been launched. A total of 160 missiles from the main fleet. Nothing to worry about, thought Sam Tucker, as he decided to push a bit and maintain closer distance. Enginees needed a break and it was a great opportunity to switch off all four Tarranogas, one by one.

(https://i.imgur.com/oLxu2o4.png)

After a few more flashes and particle beams, only the two behemoths remained capable of firing on the Comitee's side, plus two undamaged ships Santa Cruz 001-002 as well as Tarranoga 004. That last one had made admiral start ripping his hair out from frustration, because as particle beams kept punching right through it, it remained operational.

Tarranoga 004 just kept refusing to shut up. But as firefight continued and engines were ready for another round of overdrive mode, something weird started going on. Out of a sudden, pilots struggled with maintaining distance. Navigation software would tell them to fire main engines at 84% power to accelerate to 8102 km/s and cut the distance to the enemy to 88000 km/s only for them to land 56000 km/s. Not only did it screw accuracy, but also potentially exposed entire fleet to missiles as ships began to desynchronize and get too far ahead or behind. For a couple of seconds even Assault Squadron has skipped an entire volley worth of 32 particle beams because the ships decelerated a bit too much and their computers could no longer lock to the enemy. Using 5 curses per every two words, admiral of N.O.V.A. space forces demanded an immediate explanations. PURGE Team quickly put away their work on dodging optimizations and began investigating the issue.

Luke Short: Sir... I think I have... Baaaad news... We still don't know what the bug is about... Buuuuut... A driver for calculating engine power output needed for various distances, inertia of ships, turning ratios, fuel consumption and alll that... Is based... On a framework... That had been released... In 2077...

Sam Tucker: @#(*!(#*&!(*@#&$^*!&@#%$^!&@^$#%!&@#$*^%&*!@#$%^!*@&#^$%@!$!!*(&%#$(*!%@^&#$(*&!@%#$(*&!@%#$(*!@$%!@$#%(*!@&#%$^(!@#$%(&!*@$%^#(*&!@$#%^(*!@#%$^(*!^#@%$(*!@%$#^(*!@$%#(*!@%^#$(*!@#$%^!!!!!!!!!

LS: Sorry... Not much I can do about it now...

ST: !#@^&%!&^#@%&%^!#@$&!%#@$&%^!@$#@%&!#$@

LS: Gulp!... I mean... I CAN do something... For the most part, these calculations aren't that complex... We could redirect some computing power from other systems for this... Just let us program in some basic equations... Precision of the outputed predictions and engine control input will decrease slightly... But it should be stable enough... I think...

ST: !#@^&!@&^#%!&^%&^!#%(*))(*@#&!!!!

LS: Yes sir!!!

Struggle with state-of-the-art-2077-bugware continued for a while, but PURGE Team had yet again proven to be an invaluable asset and got it all under control for the most part. Whole fleet briefly synced new protocols and the battle could continue. However, enemy suddenly also fired their engines with double force, turning around with a large squadron of inactive ships, but including damaged Tarranoga 004, to shift them to the smaller squadron staying behind.

(https://i.imgur.com/O9E0LgD.png)

During all this time PURGE Team was being fired at quite a lot. Laser bolts exploded over their hulls over and over again, steadily melting through them. And just as the Dark Phoenixes were supposed to finish off Tarranoga 004 at last while rest of the fleet received new orders to focus on Las Palmas, one of the two 75000t behemoths with 36 laser blasters each, hoping to bring it down and turn the tide for real, several laser beams landed on PURGE 004. In the same spot. Violet beam illuminated the hull as it turned to white from all the heat. They stood no chance. A powerful explosion which PURGE 003 barely got caught in tore through the void.

(https://i.imgur.com/VTOeZqh.png)

Fleet admiral was already down through half of his hair after looking at damage report. PURGE Team was down to four ships. And yet after Tarranoga 004 had stopped blasting, Comitee of Humanity was down to only two behemoths firing those pesky 72 lasers every ten seconds and Santa Cruz 001-002. N.O.V.A. Strike Force proceeded to keep fairly close to the behemoths. Battle was still tough and undecided, but jamming one of them might be just enough for the corporate military to secure victory.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 5)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 06, 2022, 11:10:33 AM: Battle progressed fairly straightforward. Violet flashes from laser beams exploding over one of the behemoth's shields with no visible effect contradicted the burns and explosions on PURGE 002 and 003's hulls. But according to almost every advisor, bringing one of the Las Palmas down was a key to victory. If silenced, that meant 36 laser blasters less for the enemy. And 36 laser blasters less for the enemy meant N.O.V.A. Strike Force would then have a straight advantage in raw firepower. Coupled with their engines generating superior thrust, the fact that the enemy's missiles weren't enough to leak through railgun array, meant an inevitable victory in a finite amount of time and finite amount of shots fired.

Las Palmas 001's kinetic shielding was a nightmare. Entire fleet pounded on it with everything it got, but the forcefield absorbed and dispersed it all. 75000t worth of a dreadnought could hold a lot of shield generators... But a finite number of shield generators. At least that's what the gunners overseeing targeting subroutines liked to tell themselves when no matter how accurate their guns would be each shot, dozens of beams just miraculously disappeared right before making contact with the hull thanks to that damned shield. PURGE Team tried it's best, but couldn't hack through them, either. The system was too secure on that one, meanwhile EMP blasts and microwaves could get them only so far.

Soon PURGE 002 and 003 met their fate, but the shields were nowhere near to be down. Two PURGE ships remained and their squadron was still considered nemesis by the Comitee, rightfully so. The only hope was to get through the shields and PURGE or face certain defeat. Admiral had to take risks. Being fairly certain it was PURGE Team and, later on, Determination squadron that'd be priority targets, he decided to push Velociraptors very close to the enemy to concentrate their lasers, while PURGE Team was supposed to get out of the heat zone and merge with the rest of the fleet further away. Admiral had finally agreed for a split, after seeing reports on possible missile ETA. From up close, all missiles were bound to pop out on the radar before they could even gain any speed at all, meaning automatic sync programs could act immediately, modifying velocity of all ships to quickly combine the whole fleet under railgun protection layer. To do so before impact it was advised for the ships to not be stretched across range beyond 80000 km, so a safety margin of 20000 km had been decided upon, with only 60000 km between Velociraptors and main forces. With additional firepower and accuracy, the shields should go down faster and remaining PURGE ships should survive till that moment and PURGE.

But before that could happen, PURGE Team commander requested to speak with the admiral immediately.

Luke Short: Sir, we've done it! We are through the firewall! We can now tune in to internal Channel 9 News comms! We can now hear everything they say, not only their curated porpaganda on TV... And I have bad news. We've been ignoring their movements, but now they make more sense... This isn't about getting a better angle for their onboard telescopes. They are heading directly towards our survivors floating in escape shuttles. They plan on picking them up for... "interviews"...

Sam Tucker: Ah, smeg, little traitor bastards!!!... "Interviews", huh?... A supposedly neutral journalist vessel tries to capture soliders of one side for "interviews"? During combat? Without asking for their or their supervisor's consent, preferably both? All this while suddenly shifting narrative to be more pro-government than the last time... smeg... Okay... I don't have time for this. These are our best employees. They know too much. No, we can't... Damn it, I want, say... two laser blasters on these "journalists" ASAP! Don't need to kill or even seriously damage them, just make it a warning of some sort, possibly throw them off course, whatever to make them break contact...

Agner Sato: But... Sir... Okay, we all know Convention IV is some non-existent made-up bullsmeg. Nevertheless, officially they are a neutral war reporting vessel, even if their actions say otherwise. So far we have a perfect PR opportuniy: we just disable their ships and go for tactical victory, meanwhile they ruthlessly murder us one by one. Younger generations don't remember N.O.V.A. Bunker System and the rebellion that spawned Comitee of Humanity. But they do see the low quality of life, slums, failed anti-corporate statements, they already blame them for letting this battle happen in the first place... In fact, our public image compared to theirs right now is soo good I think we can even afford to lose this battle and still win the war!

ST: Damn PR Advisor, you're damn right. But... If they interrogate our people... Things will get ugly. I'm not even sure how much they know about our true identity in the first place. We might officially still be Exadev Space Industries with no ties with theoretically long-gone N.O.V.A. Megacorps... And the identity is not the worst part. If they find out about the kinds of smeg our management agreed to do on Mars... We're all in trouble. Sure, large population will still hate Comitee, but it'll hate us more than it does now and by the time another rebels coup the Comitee, we might as well all be dead. They have Void Birds, fastest among supposedly non-military spaceships, pretending to be just another line of passenger cruisers, for a reason. The way I see it, Comitee of Humanity is coming to an end. It's already shaking from convulsions in agony. The question that's asked in this battle isn't about whether Comitee wins, but about who replaces it. We win, we replace it. We lose, we might replace it, just like you explained. We lose and our people get interrogated, we're in deep smeg. If the Comitee won't get to us before it collapses, then whoever comes next will.

AS: Fair enough, it's your call after all. Guess I'll contact Cydonia HQ and start working on official statement. I'll do my best to calm the public opinion down.

13th October 2199, Channel 9 News, "Breaking Corruption" program, Special Edition Livestream

Big screen in the studio simulatenously displayed images from the telescopes on WRV Marie Colvin. Every ten seconds most of them would flash in violet for a split second, followed by a extraodinarly bright blast on the shields of one of the Comitee's behemoths and a couple small explosions on the other side. A few images displayed Exadev employees floating in deep space in life pods. They were close enough to the reporting ship that it was possible to see their facial expressions, at least for the ones sitting closest to the windows. Some expressed fear, but some seemed relieved as the battle was over for them and they were relatively safe. A violent explosion illuminated the darkness for a while on one of the monitors.

Emily Mortan: ...As we all can see, another ship from Exadev Space Industries goes down. Comitee of Humanity tries its best to defend its citizens from the corporate oppressors. Sketpics claim it was very irresponsible for the government to let corporations grow so powerful without supervision, but most of the population seems content this battle is about to end it. Exadev might seem powerful, but not as powerful as the protective forces of our government. Comitee of Humanity is yet to lose one of its ships. Our experts predict Exadev will surrender soon. Complying with Convention IV regulations, Comitee of Humanity has promised a fair treating of war prisoners and claims to not take any hostile actions towards whoever that wants this bloodshed to be over. PR specialists point out this is a prime example of how members of the Comitee strive to defuse the conflict with as little casualties as possible...

On a different monitor, another ship blew up.

EM: ...So far we estimate there are at least a few hundred survivors from Exadev floating in space, some of which need medical aid ASAP, some badly needing to take a doze of RadAway... Speaking of which... Do you work in hazardous conditions? Have you recently travelled outside the protective city barrier for some reason? Have you observed symptoms of radiation symptoms setting in? Or are you simply worried increased radiation expousure is not good for your health? Buy next-gen RadAway brought to you by Thorium Conglomerate and save up to 45%! Sign up for a monthly subscription and bring get even as much as 60% loyalty discount! RadAway! Make all your worries go away! Limited time offer. Thorium Conglomerate - if you want to cleanse the world, start from yourself!...

Next PURGE Team member turned into space dust.

EM: ...And we have a confirmation another Exadev ships, one of the most threatening according to space combat experts, is destroyed. Now I'm going to present you... Yes?... Are you sure?... How is that possible?... No way... No...

Several screens in the studio went offline.

EM: Dear viewers, I've just received last minute report and I am forced to announce tragic news from the combat zone. Our team is still trying to figure out what's going on and get a better picture as I speak. Corporations tend to be more evil than we all anticipated... During an unprecedenced and unjustified act of cruelty, WRV Marie Colvin's just got hit with two laser blasters. There are casualties... Currently 57 crewmembers are confirmed to be dead, 128 injured, 36 are considered missing... Our medical assistance is risking their lives right now trying to get to the ones that got sucked out through the hull breach into outer space... Ship is still operational and capable of providing neccessary aid for all that need it... But we don't know how long will it hold on... Alright, more than twenty seconds have passed, next two volleys didn't attack us... Seems it was just these two shots...

Still, we're all witnesses of a war crime that's just been commited. We didn't expect corporate management to have much empathy for human life, but this tragedy is just beyond any understanding. The death toll has just risen to 61... Many in critical condition... 61 lives already taken away, 61 brave, skilled workers doing the best they could to make tonight's "Breaking Corruption" livestream possible for you, dedicated to the cause they fought for... They might not be armed, they might not be a part of this conflict, but we all know they carried the most powerful weapon, the one that can cross light years with pinpoint accuracy and no shield nor armor will ever stop it: the truth. They all tried to tell the truth, so that we all might be aware about the world we live in. Tonight we saw how Exadev Space Industries, blinded by their desire for power, didn't hesistate to kill innocent civilians, trying to silence the truth.

But truth shall always come on top. On top of their outrageous propaganda about how the ship's crew supposedly was attempting to threaten and torture the survivors and how Exadev needed to step in to protect them. According to Convention IV, this was just a ship to be used by war reporters with the sole purpose of independent journalism. It came into the conflict unarmed, harmless, weak and broadcasting its mission statement loud and clear. There was absolutely no reason for such rutheless treatment. Our reporters wanted to only assist and comfort the ones for whom the battle was already over, but the survivors' employer denied us this chance, choosing to become war criminal instead, preferring to let them die rather than get another chance in life. We've just received a direct statement from the Comitee of Humanity adressed at Exadev CEOs: "Even if you win on the physical battlefield, we will have won on the moral one."

Simultaneously, combined effort of N.O.V.A. military spaceships eventually destabilized behemoth's forcefield. In a final push, PURGE Team ran two PURGE sweeps in total, one that already silenced the dreadnought and the other one just to be sure the ship was really offline and it wasn't some sort of enemy's psychological warfare. The sacrifice was brutal, as PURGE 005 suffered a catastrophic failure under concentrated laser barrage and melted in half before it could get back to safer distances like PURGE 006, but thanks to this monstrous effort the enemy's firepower was at last weaker than what N.O.V.A. Strike Force could have wielded. Finally the victory for the N.O.V.A. Megacorps became a real possibility.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies (part 6)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 10, 2022, 04:18:42 PM: Lan Screwsmith: ...according to the estimations, Las Palmas' shields are placed somehwhere around 600-800 points on anti-beam scale... Probably at elast 650, though. That'd give them regeneration rate in betwen 20 and 30 points per volley so 2-3 points per second... Probably closer to 20, though. If it was more of an upper limit, that'd mean not only faster restabilization, but also at least 800 points, and given we went through them quicker than originally anticipated...

Sam Tucker: So... We won? I mean, I pushed Velociraptors so close for a reason, the accuracy and concentration of laser beams at 70000 km is amazing... Buut... I think there are still at least 32871346578513476 things that might go wrong. Technically we have advantage in laser firepower now, plus particle beams are better than lasers for that stalemate we're stuck in... Another behemoth and 2xSanta Cruz... That's... Still 52 laser blasters. Barely below our own firepower.

LS: On one hand, I also believe we've won. On the other... If we continue like this, we'll win. But... While Assault Squadron can stay further behind, maintaining 130000 km and score decent hits... Lasers are barely usable at this range. I'm afraid PURGE Team will not hold. We have only one ship left... And without them... We'll need to go through the second's behemoths armor... Things will take... some time...

ST: As if I didn't know... For now PURGE 006 will act as our meat shield, whether we want to waste our best soldiers and equipment like that or not, because enemy won't target anything else. But once it goes down, those 52 blasters will be aimed at a Determination... One after another... We might have to pull them further away... But that means Velociraptors will be pulled away too, we can't stretch too close or we're at a risk of instant loss from sudden missile strike... smeg... Alright. Let's show the enemy a magic trick. We'll multiply their 52 laser blasters into 36 laser blasters. All fire on Satna Cruz 001. Velociraptors at 70000 km, rest at 130000 km. Maintain speed and course. Notify me of shields. Oh, and one more thing: no PURGE sweep on that one, just blast it until it falls apart. No point getting the last ship blown up over reducing firepower by only 8. Prolong its destruction as much as possible. PURGE Commander?

Luke Short: ...

ST: Turn on autopilot script and board escape shuttles. We've lost damn too many of you. Too many of too valuable soldiers... Too bad we can't save any ship itself... But you're more important. PURGE 006 is going down. But I don't want any more dead PURGE Team members. Be ready to leave the ship any moments. Program it so that it closes in and attack second behemoth if by some miracle it'll survive till its shields destabilize because their generators stop working or something.

LS: ...

15000t for Santa Cruz meant half a weight of a Velociraptor. And it took less than a minute, a total of three volleys and the shields on Santa Cruz 001 already dispersed.

(https://i.imgur.com/aYajGj4.png)

PURGE 006 was still holding on...

(https://i.imgur.com/NU8S0g5.png)

Velociraptors had a total of 15x86=1290 points on a deflection scale, a crude surviviability approximation based on armor physics under extreme kinetic projectile velocities on when exposed to deadly-tier particles or photon streams. With Santa Cruz having similar firepower, half the tonnage and more or less same shield generating potential, it was estimated to have 645 deflection points. Not good, but not too bad either.

As more shots exploded over Santa Cruz 001's hull, engines of both Santa Cruz-classified ships suddenly lightened in a blaze of glory. They started accelerating away from the battle, increasing speed up to 7500 km/s until finally turning engines off, putting main fleet in between them and the pursuers dictating range.

(https://i.imgur.com/3d2T2JP.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/FUBwJqi.png)

This was the final straw for the fleet admiral to rip remaining hair of the top of his head, creating a new style that hairdressers would later refer to as "Cosmic Emptiness". Shields had already gone down and time had been wasted. Santa Cruz 001 just had to be silenced. This sudden acceleration was a nasty surprise, but still not enough to outrun N.O.V.A. engines. But raw speed and thrust weren't everything. Main fleet awaited ahead and moving past it, especially when going at 8000 km/s, could be... a tiny bit complex. Admiral permitted to reduce distance to 100000 km, but with Velociraptors slowing down briefly to also get at 100000 km and merge with the fleet. That was set as a safety margin from the main fleet. From then on, N.O.V.A. Strike Force would slowly change trajectory to go around and then close in at crucial moment before straying too far from the target, while already leaving the behemoth, still advancing at only 3000 km/s, behind.

Problem was, the moment N.O.V.A. Strike Force started leaving their straightforward path, enemy did the same. Both detached ships engaged their engines to get them as far away from the threat as possible, while maintaining remaining fleet in between. Attempting to switch directions and catch them from the other side would be hopeless, so Sam Tucker had no way but to slowly decrease distance, circling around the behemoth and the rest towards Santa Cruz.

(https://i.imgur.com/7rzud2m.png)

Soon it turned into both sides establishing a circular route around Comitee of Humanity's main forces, firing engines only in bursts at crucial moments to keep them on track, without getting "ejected out of a circle". With each volley Santa Cruz 001 was weakened and it wasn't a question whether N.O.V.A. Strike Force would destroy it. It was a question what the enemy was preparing that required otherwise pointless prolonging of the battle.

Admiral had to think about carriers and fighters, whether he wanted to or not. Only a bit more than thirteen minutes had passed since first lasers lightened up the sky. 120 fighters... 75000t carriers... Assuming equal split that meant 18000t worth of fighters alone on each. Adding up hangar space, likely shields, missile storages, storages for everything else, all the fighter maintenance services... Reloading 120 fighters could... take a while. And by taking into account distance from the enemy between the moment second and third volley came in, speeds of all the ships, it was estimated that "a while" meant 5202 seconds, so over 86 minutes. This calmed the admiral down... But soon he attempted to rip off more hair he didn't have.

Destroying Santa Cruz 001 and 002 would take some time this way. PURGE 006 wouldn't survive till shields going down on second beheomth. Next in queue were bound to be Determinations. No other way around. Loose too many and suddenly regular missile volleys are enough to shred the whole fleet to pieces. Of course it could be prevented. By getting them out of laser range, so at least to 180000 km. Maybe 170000 km would do, the damage and accuracy would still be too low to matter significantly in the next hour. But that would mean Velociraptors couldn't stay closer than 100000-110000 km, otherwise they wouldn't merge with Determination for next missile strike in time. Firepower and accuracy would be reduced. Even assuming only 20 points per volley on behemoth regenerating, whole N.O.V.A. Strike Force would just barely outpace that. More intel on enemy came in. A behemoth could easily hold 15 layers of armor, giving it roughly 3000 deflection points with shields combined, possibly more. It would still go down. But just barely. And with no Determinations to target, it'd get through Dark Phoenixes next. They were a bit less resilient than Velociraptors, but far deadlier at considered distances. Firepower would drop. Behemoth would go down. No doubt. But the question was when. It could take dozens of minutes just for that one dreadnought alone...

It was dangerous territory. Dozens of minutes... Maybe an hour? Maybe more? Fighters would come online again. That could be the end. Their missiles would target Determinations exclusively, obviously. At 11 missile destroyers and PURGE Team operating at full capability and every blaster targeting missiles because of no better options to lock onto, one was erased. There were 9 missile destroyers remaining. No PURGE ships remaining by then. And blasters having many other important things to blast. How many would blow up? Two? Three? Even if only two... That was unacceptable. Railgun array would leak. And with Determination waivering, it'd leak more. And more. And spiral out of control.

No, just no. Fighters had to be stopped. But how?... Even assuming lucky run... Behemoth might go down before them going up. But... Behemoth and at least one carrier, which was also a behemoth? With 10 armor layers at bare minimum? Unless absurdly fortunate, no chance. On the other hand... Destroying a behemoth should still leave quite a generous safety margin. Not to blow up a carrier... But possibly enough to blow up other missile ships. With both behemoths taken out of the equation, that'd leave only eight laser blasters on one Santa Cruz, assuming fogetting about the games it was trying to play and coming straight at a dreadnought first. A formality. Afte that, entire fleet could maintain, say, 50000 km. It'd make for a powerful laser-particle beam barrage. All gunboats would go down in flames quickly. Then, no matter targeting, fourth volley from the fighters wouldn't matter. It would deal some damage. That's it. Without other missile launchers to back it up, it'd lose its game-changer status. Yep, that was the strategy. Silnece lasers, then silence gunboats. And win.

But... Almost an hour had a chance to spawn another obstacle. PURGE damage wasn't permanent or requiring dry dock repair. Jamming sequence, EMP blasts, computer viruses, backdoors, microwaves frying stuff... If the enemy was prepared, and there was no point assuming it wasn't, maybe an hour of peace was all it would take them to repair. And then open concentrated fire. No, N.O.V.A. stood no chance either. If Comitee would make a mistake of not syncing all the ships at once and have them reopen fire as they come online again, without waiting for the others... So silence lasers, silence gunboats, then still foget about carriers and just destroy everything else... So many things could go wrong, nothing better could be done.

Despite desperate cat and mouse attempts, Santa Cruz 001 took one laser too many. The beam drilled through the armor and overheated something. And that something blew up. It was not powerful enough to cut more smaller ships out of what was one ship before, but it could be a reactor powering weapons, because they didn't come online for the next volley:

(https://i.imgur.com/602jZob.png)

After that it was all or nothing. Velociraptors speeded towards remaining behemoth, not caring abotu Santa Cruz 002 that had reunited with main fleet shortly after realising it was not being fired at. Dark Phoenixes also came together with Velociraptors, maintaining 70000 km. Closer meant more accurate. And they weren't the ones to be targeted and everyone knew that everyone knew about this. Determination and PURGE 006 had been left at 135000 km. Just before the new plan was implemented, a final volley had been fired at Santa Cruz 001, just to double check. At the same time, first laser beam melted through PURGE 006's hull.

(https://i.imgur.com/AXB7Mmo.png)

Shields on Las Palmas 002 held, meanwhile PURGE 006's armor not so much.

(https://i.imgur.com/oExlT5S.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/rxLUPJZ.png)

Tense moments extended into infinity. As if Sam Tucker was staring at a battle being fought on the edge of a black hole. A total of 695 points of damage had been done to the behemoth's shields, but just kept deflecting lasers and dissipating heat over and over again. Meanwhile PURGE 006 was already without a spare fire control, leaking fuel, blinded from sensor damage (at least that was not important because of other ships in the formation). Dodging helped survive the ship for a little longer, but it was about time to launch escape shuttles. And prepare for a lenghty space equivalent of trench warfare...

(https://i.imgur.com/jKtsSjK.png)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies: Valiant Bionics (part 7)
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 11, 2022, 03:56:15 PM: Valiant Bionics

Escape shuttles had already been launched. There was no point. Lasers could end the last ship any second. But three crewmembers, including PURGE Team leader, disagreed. Not about lasers ending them any second, that is. But about there being no point. What had looked impossible changed status to almost impossible. The ship might be destroyed alongside second's behemoths shields, or at least shortly before. If ten seconds had the potential to end this battle with a decisive victory, someone had to try.

Luke Short wasn't too surprised by the people who accompanied him. Porter Shorr, an innovation genius... Very impatient, though. Everything could either be too easy for him or ending up deemed too boring and tedious to even bother. With maybe a minute left at best, impatient prodigy was a godsend, though. As if he was born for this exact occasion.

(https://i.imgur.com/6xxTah7.png)

Armand Leadbeater was another fierce warrior. Lead programmer on PURGE 006, his contribution was directly responsible for working around 2077 navigation software glitch. Decent programmer and fierce warrior as well, which is why he signed up for the fleet instead of enjoying a cozy job of hacking Comitee's members' accounts from the safety of Cydonia.

(https://i.imgur.com/h0jBLvQ.png)

Laser beams splattered on the hull, turning PURGE 006 into a fine piece of Swiss cheese. Three ~~suicidal~~ brave soldiers were determined to fight the inevitable and make the ship survive a tiny bit longer. Just a little. A second or two more. Just for the shields to shut down. Just for the microwaves to fire away for the last time. For Porter the situation was already obvious. PURGE's engines were exceptionally big, all to squeeze every last bit of thrust and manoeuvrability for the extra agility from up close. That's why he remotely triggered ship's rotation to "show the enemy our ass", as he described turning the engines to face the enemy while effectively hiding rest of the ship behind them. With this configuration, it was nigh impossible for the enemy to hit anything besides propulsion system itself. Just as the rotation kicked in, he already inserted another command - definitive emergency reactor shutdown. Just to be sure the engines won't go down with a bang, but with a whimper.

Next laser blast indeed hit one of the engines. Nothing exploded as expected, but engine's hull was still hot. It started to melt down. Technically nothing serious, but PURGE would need all its engines ready for speed boost if they were to close in to the PURGING range before getting burnt by progressively more accurate and concentrated beams. In order to save the engine, cryogenic fluid from reactors was agreed to be the only plausible solution. However, it required a manual overdrive directly from reactor chamber. No way to get in there in the next eight seconds and after another laser hit, there would be no hope left, even for the ~~suicidal~~ brave trio. However, the laser that heated the engine up continued to travel further, blowing up a hole through a bunch of corridors. They all aligned just perfectly. Luke Short himself was already swimming through the void directly to the reactor chamber, just to push that one button.

But one could only do so much under eight seconds. And proper security measurements for a space walk weren't among them. PURGE Team Leader almsot caught up to the edge of hull on the other side, but it was three hundred miliseconds too late. Another laser blast in the area would've killed him, it was too close. So remaining two had to start rotating the ship again, with next laser coming at the engines at a safe angle from Luke's perspective. Unfortunately, the package also included one of the ship's walls coming at him at less than safe angle. Two in one, no exceptions. Armand quickly fired correctional engines to give reverse rotation acceleration, but simply pushing rotation dump would be too slow - under this command, the ship would gradually come to stop rotating, with the engines slowly reducing output as the rotation would disappear, until complete stop. There was no time for that. They had to operate under maximum output or the Luke would be smashed against the wall. It was enough to save him, but obviously without precise fine-tuning the ship couldn't behave in any other way but to pass the point of equilibrium and start rotating the other way. PURGE Team Leader had his arms long enough just enough to grab onto the hull before the ship would "get away from him" and climb onto the reactor chamber, but it was then when the other two pushed for rotation dump. Too bad the ship started to slow down its rotational movement in the moment when Luke wasn't holding onto anything, drifting in the void, thus he didn't end up slowing down together with the ship. In fact he could not slow down at all and ended up painfully hitting his head against the terminal he was supposed to operate. By some dumb luck the velocity difference still wasn't big enough to create life-threatening injuries and by even dumber luck his forehead smashed against precisely the confirmation button he was supposed to press. The terminal was damaged beyond usability, but at least the final signal flew through the cables and reached proper devices.

The engine already had a hole in it, but at least it stopped melting any further as soon as it was bathed in cryogenic fluid. That left the reactors too exposed, but the trio was confident in being able to rotate the ship to prevent direct hit. They could go only for so long without sufficient cooling, though. Just as Armand ran a diagnostic tool to check exposing which component to the next volley would be effective, his personal comms, together with personal comms of everybody else, lightened up with the following message:

WE. DID. IT. THE. SHIELDS. ARE. DOWN. PURGE. 006. DO. I. HAVE. TO. TELL. YOU. TO. MAKE. A. PURGE. SWEEP?!

Which was followed by more enemy laser fire. It went right through crew quarters, not that anyone would be sleeping on that ship anytime soon.

(https://i.imgur.com/iScRE9U.png)

And another message came in:

#@&%!@#*&%!!!!! Missiles incoming, PURGE. STAY. WHERE. YOU. ARE. PROTECTED. BY. RAILGUNS!!!

Of course. Missiles themselves weren't a problem. It was their side effects, all inclusive. It was painfully obvious which ship each one targeted. By waiting under raigluns for them to splatter, enemy had gained another volley of 44 laser blasters for free. And PURGE 006 was running out of options in terms of "what could be hit next to prevent us from dying". After a lenghty 3-seconds debate it was decided to use engines to tank the shots once again, but instantly redirect all the cooling liquid still flowing through the reactors. The reactors would then operate for about 15 seconds at best, but with no more shields to worry about, this was all PURGE Team needed and more.

Missiles met raigluns and laser heat of the few shots that connected got dissipated in an instant. PURGE 006 was still floating in one piece. And extra cooling allowed for an extra overdrive. Engines roared, velocity increased rapidly, ~~suicidal~~ brave trio almost got themselves killed ~~thus achieving their goal~~ by accident. Every surviving system came online. 120000 km... 100000 km... 90000 km...

Microwaves fired. EMP pulse swept across the void, speeding towards survivng behemoth. New jamming sequences got propagated. PURGE 006 lashed out at the behemoth with everything's it's still got. Lasers of death were fired simulatenously. In a last ditch effort still fighting PURGE Team members rotated the ship to expose reactors. They were gone anyways. Laser fire was devastating. Power went off in most areas. An explosion torn through the reactor chamber, ripping off neighbouring fuel tanks and maintenance storages just as Luke Short made his way to the bridge. Surprisingly, the engines were still operational. They kept cool under all this pressure for just a little longer, before cryogenic liquid spilled through the broken pipes. Just enough to slow down from 9000 km/s to 8000km/s before they started shutting down. Just enough to sync with the fleet and be picked up.

(https://i.imgur.com/f4htUTL.png)

Las Palmas 002 didn't fire within next 10 seconds. Fleet admiral was still paranoid about it being just psychological warfare, but since he had no longer any means to keep PURGING, he got to try anyway. He sat down and opened up a transponder...

"This is admiral Sam Tucker speaking, on behalf of Exadev Space Industries. All your laser blasters are down except 8 on a ship we can turn into space dust at a whim. Your missiles can't break through our railgun array, and even if they still could, we can mop your missile launchers one by one at a whim without risking any retaliation fire, silencing them for good. We expect you to have another volley for your fighters to fire, but we fear not. We've gathered enough intel and simulated your designs. Unless you're very lucky, they won't fire before all your ships are no more. And even if you were THAT lucky, you won't destroy us with just a single volley of 480 missiles, maybe you'll get 1-2 ships at best. Surrender now and you'll all be spared and the families of Channel 9 personnel compensated."

To his surprise, a reply came in shortly after.

"This is acting Fleet Admiral Stan Cannon speaking, on behalf of the Solarian-Jovian-Martian Coalition fleet. We have ceased fire of our weapons and are prepared to discuss terms of surrender."

Just like with Convention IV, he had no idea what the hell the Comitee meant by "Solarian-Jovian-Martian Coalition", especially with the "Martian" part, but it hardly mattered. The battle was over. N.O.V.A. Megacorps would rule the Solar System again.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Battle of Three Bodies: Service Awards
Post by: Stormtrooper on February 12, 2022, 02:10:22 PM: Upper management of Exadev Space Industries held a grand military parade in the skies above Cydonia Megacity, in which not only N.O.V.A. Strike Force participated, but also all the ships captured from the enemy. For security personnel it was all but celebration, as gathering every ship in one place like that was risky at best. Up in the air there was nothing that could endanger them physically, but hacking remained a possibility, so did Comitee's infiltrators on board, bombings, attempts to disrupt the fleet during landings and takeoffs, secretly launching an assault basically everywhere else with some mysterious, undiscovered ships Comitee might have left unused... The list went on and on.

Lots of CEOs praised the military personnel of Exadev Space Industries, awarding every surviving crewmember (and posthumously every not surviving crew member too) with a Battle of Three Bodies Service Badge. Additionally, Sam Tucker received his own distinct Admiral Badge. Everybody stationed on a spaceship that got destroyed ended up awarded with Purple Hull in recognition of the extraordinary sacrifice for the corporation.

(https://i.imgur.com/zVwf7Gg.png)
Battle of Three Bodies Service Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/IHaLykt.png)
Battle of Three Bodies Admiral Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/HRSrhvq.png)
Purple Hull

Employees serving on Velociraptors, Dark Phoenixes, Scandroids and Determinations got their own custom Service Badges as well, personalized for the type of ship they serwed on and telling their role in battle.

(https://i.imgur.com/ONzABlY.png)
Velociraptor Service Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/FM3OZo7.png)
Dark Phoenix Service Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/Lk7aKfR.png)
Scandroid Service Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/etvq7Iy.png)
Determination Resistance Badge

But obviously the biggest praise and reward had been kept for the PURGE Team. In recognition to their efforts, the team got officially transitioned into PURGE Elite Society, with a distinct, shiny ribbon for each member to wear produly. As with Battle of Three Bodies Service Badge, Luke Short, as a leader of this new society, was given his own unique one.

(https://i.imgur.com/5nkObjD.png)
PURGE Elite Society Membership Badge

(https://i.imgur.com/BkUmJMx.png)
PURGE Elite Society Leader Badge

But even PURGE Elite Society wasn't qualified for the end of the ceremony. The end was specifically reserved to the three outstandingly brave members among it: Luke Short, Porter Shorr and Armand Leadbeater. They were to be decorated with a special Valiant Bionics Award, a ribbon reserved only for the best among the best, and were set as a prime example of a faithful, hard-working employee of the corporation which everyone shall strive to follow.

(https://i.imgur.com/Dzjx79v.png)
Valiant Bionics Award

(https://i.imgur.com/EnUwUvk.png)
Sam Tucker's awards

(https://i.imgur.com/AH3iWlZ.png)
Porter Shorr's and Armand Leadbeater's awards (while PURGE 006 technically wasn't destroyed, in spite of its overall condition, risks taken and achievements, upper management agreed on decorating them with Purple Hull)

(https://i.imgur.com/pNNlDjG.png)
Luke Short's awards (while PURGE 006 technically wasn't destroyed, in spite of its overall condition, risks taken and achievements, upper management agreed on decorating him with Purple Hull)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Future light years away
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 27, 2022, 03:41:23 PM: SYNTHETIC DAWN
Future Light Years Away

Space dust settled and a new century had begun. Comitee of humanity, hated by most and without any meaningful military asset, had to fully surrender without being able to negotiate anything. But N.O.V.A. management didn't have it much easier than previous government. Sure, most among the living only knew N.O.V.A. Bunker System as one of many megacities, with most of the structures residing underground, but apart from that nothing extraordinary, without realizing it had once been a shelter to all leftovers from mankind and life there was not pretty. But much of hate directed at the Comitee had its roots in its incompetence when it came to taming big corporations... And to say they weren't tamed was an euphemism as huge as Earth's wasteland, with private corporations building military space fleets fully capable of purging all three bodies from reemerging life clean and fighting for total dominance. CEOs of Exadev Space Industries of course were aware of this. They didn't want to give up on power, but they were walking on eggshells, with plenty of citizens simply confused about their stance. They defeated Comitee of Humanity, hated by many... But hated precisely for allowing corporations to expand uncontrolled, spreading like cancer through every structure holding the society together.

Another slippery matter had the monumentous proportions and scale of a terraforming installation grid. Terraforming Earth (and later Mars) was a nice way to boost popularity rankings, or rather it would be if not for the irrational, but frequent association of terraforming project with Comitee, hence with something to despise. Another can of worms was Church of Singularity, an ally that might as well stop being an ally given their disgust with everything biological. They seemed to thrive across dead badlands of radiation and metal.

As if the political situation wasn't tough enough, the ongoing investigation into sudden betrayal of Channel 9 News yelded very unpleasant results. According to the reports from PURGE hackers working day and night to track down all the nodes and scraps of information, it was all a part of an agreement between Thorium Conglomerate and Avalon Heights Inc. Their owners intended to steer the battle towards nuclear annihilation territory, ending the world yet another time and then appearing as "saviours" with the main selling products of each corporation, namely enchanced RadAway and experimental blue collar androids for simple manual labour in hazardous conditions. Their plan failed only thanks to deliberate detonation of first missile volley that, if not for the Comitee's attempt at damaging N.O.V.A. Strike Force, would've been remotely controlled to detonate at various spots on the Mars, Moon and Earth. And after that failure there was never another chance, as all the missiles had either been intercepted or impacted against N.O.V.A. ships.

During 162371234th emergency corporate meeting, a risky but possibly rewarding resolution had been accepted. Destroying Thorium Conglomerate and Avalon Heights Inc was out of question. They were too good at keeping low profile to be eradicated. Besides, public opinion wouldn't like another corporate war for sure. So the plan was to... let them have their way anyways. But obviously there was a catch, so that "their way" would be subtly nudged towards "N.O.V.A. way". "Unknown terrorists" were to attack some of the terraforming installations across both globes. These "unkown terrorists" would later be revealed to be most radicalized members of Church of Singularity. The methods involved detonating dirty bombs, so that androids and RadAway would be perfectly suited for helping clean the mess and rebuild. And with enough luck the corporation could even avoid losing an ally, because Church of Singularity wasn't powerful enough to discover the conspiracy, and even if it would, management didn't really care that much as with everything sitting on yet another powder keg despite one blowing up already, their anti-terraforming stance became more and more of an issue.

Later, with "terrorists" being dealt with and androids and RadAway deployed, Exadev would find itself in a position where it would exploit Thorium Conglomerate and Avalon Heights Inc on its own terms having them think they're succeeding at their own goals, progress with terraforming winning hearts and minds of many and possibly stabilizing its government as a result.

As first bombs tore through terraforming spires, a small research team calmly explored ruins found on Titan, free from any media attention which was all redirected towards safety concerns and making a scapegoat out of Church of Singularity. And luckily for Exadev ownership, the ruins held important piece of information that was missing from another puzzle - A.F.R.I.C.A. Project and the mysterious fleet supposedly travelling from Trappist-1 system. Their travel speed remained problematic to estimate for obvious reasons. Means of interstellar travel were a source fo heated debate among many scientists. A lot of them believed FTL propulsion system might be a plausible method, but there wasn't much proof it wasn't just antimatter engines reaching velocities very close to the speed of light, allowing semi-connected empire to grow in between nearest stars. But if that would be the case, then label "Intergalactic Federation" remained troublesome to explain. No way anyone could get to Andromeda, Magellanic Clouds or even SagDEG galaxy. Even Canis Major Dward Galaxy was too far. And that was just getting to anywhere that could be considered "another galaxy", let alone colonising some systems there and maintaining contact with the Milky Way part of the Federation. Not with the shortest distance being 25000 light years...

And leftovers from Titan colonies contained exactly what was needed to get the solid proof. Warp field assemblers, some derelict wrecks rusting away in remnants of hangars containing ring elements encapsulating them, entire facilities dedicated for creating wormhole linking systems... There wasn't really anything left that'd be of any real value to the scientist. But what had been laying there was just enough to prove that humanity indeed once roamed across the cosmos cheating the speed of light by significantly cutting on the paths and arriving at their destination way faster than the information about their departure... But as always, each discovery was bound to output more questions than answer. If Intergalactic Federation had the capability to go superluminal, then "rescue fleet" was already late, way too late for their travel means. With a respected space force, N.O.V.A. might be ready to maintain the power in the confrontation with them, but there might as well never be a confrontation as the fleet might as well not arrive at all. Did this mean Intergalactic Federation was no more, just like civilization in the Solar System? Had such a mighty work of human race really turned into radioactive ashes, no matter the celestial body? But then how was it possible for the message about incoming assistance be broadcasted? Could an automated system survive entire apocalypse in operational condition despite decades of no maintenance?

Whatever the case, Exadev Space Industries was determined to figure it out before anything extrasolar would threaten their position. CEOs hardly cared about the cost and means anymore - all they wanted was a spacecraft that would allow a preemptive strike on Trappist-1 system quicker than the information about its launch would take to reach and alarm whoever was messaging from there.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Century of a Great Divide
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 27, 2022, 05:44:02 PM: Century of a Great Divide

XXIII century by many had already been titled as "Century of a Great Divide" despite it having barely started. And it wasn't just some low-effort awareness spreading about skyscrapers breaching the cloud layers and glittering with blue-purple neons right next to the slums outside of environmental protection barriers. It wasn't about the dichotomy of wanting to rebuild Earth's climate and preserving its wasteland at the same time. As for the latter, it wasn't just Church of Singularity and likeminded folks who wanted Earth's biosphere to stay dead - there was an entire philosophical movement dedicated to preserving the monument of destruction as a warning for future generations to never repeat the mistakes of the Old World. And apparently some of the slums inhabitants themselves wanted the planet to remain lifeless, because they were happy to see all the corporations and their security keep to megacities and leave them alone. And finally the Great Divide wasn't even about the growing concerns about androids and humans with regards to job opportunities, since many ~~wage slaves~~ slaves had enough difficulty making ends meet already that androids taking away their unskilled labour they could provide were a final nail to the coffin from their perspective, a tale old as industrial revolution. It was about all of these at once. And more.

***Android dilemma***

Joe Smith was probably the most average Joe from entire Night City. An apartment on the lower floors of some rusty block of flats, one of many stacked on top of each other to house as many "Big Dreamers" arriving at the "City of Dreams" as possible while cutting on costs disregarding any BHP protocols, a rusty car holding together only thanks to elaborate circuit sphagetti dynamically redirecting power to the engine parts that "needed it the most at the time", a dead end crappy corporate job with abusive boss and a bionic leg burning through all his savings after acid leak from his neighbour above had burnt through the biological one. Being a vent cleaner was a rough profession, especially with all the toxins, gasses, acids and mutated cockroaches one might stumble upon there, but Joe had mustered to climb yet another level of frustration and dissatisfaction when after all he's been through it was just his irresponsible neighbour who got him injured and disabled. At least he had a bit of a breathing room from the debt collectors after that incident when the local gang demanding payments for protection attempted to collect their share from Joe in the exact same moment when security forces of Duranium Component Inc decided to do it too and both parties ended up so absorbed in killing each other that they forgot about the original goal of their visit.

Joe didn't expect his shoe would be heavy enough to punch a hole in the television after watching officials from Avalon Heights Inc presenting their improved version of vent crawlers. He didn't get the bionic leg to be able to continue working only to be replaced by some toaster with modular, adaptive body allowing it to fit in a vent of pretty much any size, length and shape.

At the same time, in another district, Anthony Gyrostar was finishing loading his shotgun to be ready to welcome some of those weirdos protesting for "equal rights for androids" if they dared to enter his lawn. A basic autonomous blue collar worker and some people were already advocating for "equal rights". The whole protest looked as if someone took a bunch sci-fi films about androids dating back to the Old World and decided to make a parody about them. "If at least their artifical intelligence would really be an intelligence and resembled human behaviour..." - he thought to himself. Little did he know about the leader of this protest, though. Sarah Blight was smarter than the seller from Avalon Heights Inc persuading her to purchase a faulty model of kitchen servant believed. Of course the android could not be returned or exchanged for a new model thanks to all these complicated laws protecting corporate interests she didn't even try to learn and understand. Of course. But if this android had same rights as a human... That could open some field for negotiation and maneouvres. Because equal rights might as well mean equal responsibilities... And equal responsibilities might as well mean her being able to accuse the robot of sabotaging required work and having it judged and sentenced to pay reparations or something... To be honest, she wasn't very convinced herself, because one had to be a special kind of stupid corporations wouldn't invent some new bullsmeg laws to protect themselves from scenarios like that, but why not take a shot? Besides, any excuse to go out and yell "corps bad" was good enough of an excuse.

***Pulse continuous 30 volt battery clip laser blaster***

Laser rifles in small arms version were a dream of many corporate military officials ever since their "bigger cousins" were successfully used in Battle of Three Bodies, and after years of intense works first prototypes were available at last. But the real drama was about to start when American Frontier Protectorate decided to release an experimental civilian version. It wasn't even being intended for self-defence that much as well-established conventional firearms did the job just fine, it was mostly for sport target shooting really. Being a civilian version, the design had been stripped of its lethal capacity as much as possible. Firstly, to reduce the effective range beam wavelength was shortened, but only to the lower end of visible red range - the idea was that every shot from this weapon was to be seen with naked eyes, so no going further down to infrared. It also brought an additional market value since every laser weapon enthusiast knew red lasers were the coolest. Second limitation came in the form of fire modes - no continuous fire available, just very short, split-second pulses with a battery allowing up to no more than 30 of them before the need to reload. And finally, the beam focusing system. It had been carefully engineered to offer good precision from up close, but have the beam rapidly lose focus beyond a few hundred meters, turning it more into a fancy pointer for playing with cats rather than a weapon.

The release was very successful among whoever could afford it, but obviously things just couldn't stay this way. A wave of protests hit the Protectorate's HQ and ~~corporate~~ government buildings, advocating for banning the highly lethal "pulse continuous 30 volt battery clip laser blaster". Company's official statement involved pointing out lack of knowledge about direct-energy weapons displayed by many involved in the argument, but this only fueled their anti-laser sentiment. On the other side of the barricade things didn't look any more reasonable, though. Reports about individuals stocking on laser batteries and preparing for "when the little grey men will turn totalitarian instead of just leaving circles on the crops" were circulating through all kinds of media.

According to some small independent journalists it seemed like for the most part people were either enjoying burning through cardboard at the range or just personally staying away from the weapons and the only reason laser violence was growing was because more and more criminals and terrorists gave up on firearms to upgrade to lasers and the radical individuals with absurd theories or lack of knowledge were few and far in between, but everyone knew that listening to anything but mainstream media itself was an absurd idea in the black and white world.

Additionally, the music band "Augment the People" commented on the issue with their latest song "Bionic Limbs":

All the other punks with their bionic limbs,
you better run, run faster,
outrun my blaster.
All the other punks with their bionic limbs,
you better run, run faster,
faster than my laser.

***Protect Mother Earth***

Yellowpeace activists were expressing more and more concerns about the progress on terraforming. They claimed that according to their research, many species on Earth were doomed to go extinct if the installations weren't to be switched off immediately. For example, radroaches would have trouble adjusting to the environments with high humidity and many of their major breeding grounds were located in the exact spots where oceans and lakes were supposed to exist after terraforming. Moreover, global cooling could lead to the collapse of cybernetic industry as humans wouldn't need so many enchancements to survive on the planet anymore, setting back the global economy and creating mass poverty. With lowered temperatures many diseases that did not exist in the post-nuclear wasteland could reemerge and sweep across the globe, killing millions of people, not to mention in some areas it would be too cold for humans to live comfortably. And the beautiful landscape of endless yellow deserts and green radioactive plains would be gone forever. Recent initiatives of the organization involved protecting the populations of glowing mushrooms in the caves located close to the terraforming stations and advocating for increased fossil fuel consumption since the switch to nuclear car reactors reduced the amount of gasses required to maintain optimal temperatures.

However, these movements usually faced strong opposition, especially from TerraNova Inc and affiliated companies. A large portion of the population believed that climate change wasn't real as terraforming progressed too slowly and some even claimed they'd prefer if the climate was more temper. "They just don't care about poor radroaches!" was one of the most common accusation threw at these skeptics. TerraNovaInc was accusing Yellowpeace to collaborate with Church of Singularity during recent terrorist attacks, but a solid proof was yet to be found.

***Matrix Resurrection***

Research team from the Solenoyd Inc R&D department had claimed they had eventually gotten through all the logs and figured out the segmentation fault bug from the Matrix that was running in the N.O.V.A. Bunker System back in the day. Obviously the patch was delivered way too late as there was hardly anything left to patch, but CEO representatives at Solenoyd Inc expressed their excitement and hopes for "rapidly restoring the Matrix". At their press conference they expressed that while they can't fix all the problems of this universe, they might be able to create a better one, a world without suffering, where inhabitants would be allowed to fulfill their dreams for real this time, compared to being fooled to come to Night City (or any other city for that matter) only to fight for survival below poverty line, with their dreams staying in the dream phase permanently.

Of course there were enough people to protest, rioting about all the problems of the real world left unattended while the corporation plans to offer nothing but a meaningless, overglorified escapism, devoid of anything that has real value in life. In response to this, Solenoyd Inc released an official statement describing that once they reboot the Matrix, they'll "make sure every potential user has to work for the access", to "prevent absuing the system and leaving the real issues unattended" since "Matrix is supposed to be just happiness enchancement tool", not some "way to avoid taking responsibilities".
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Corporate Games
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 30, 2022, 02:34:21 PM: As years passed by, partnership between Exadev Space Industries and TerraNova Inc strenghtened. Maybe fusion reactors weren't primary specialization for the latter, but for sure they were primary need. With many ruins and scraps from the Old World repurposed and Earth population above 1,5 billion of people assembling more stations or upgrading the efficiency of new ones weren't much of an issue anymore, especially since the government was very supportive towards terraforming (the management didn't expect to find too many habitable worlds beyond Solar System...), but the whole operation needed power. Lots and lots of power. It was never satisified, always running below theoretical productivity only because there was just not enough power. Solenoyd Inc saw the opportunity to rise on the intercorporate field with its first effective, stable and self-propelled design only needing energy to kickstart it, but some CEOs were too hungry. They wanted to become the second power right after Exadev and that was just too much of a price to pay. Exadev deployed its best operational team - Blue Squad, named after the blue lasers they've got - the longest wavelength reachable for a portable version at a time - to storm Solenoyd orbital facility where the plans for the reactor had been kept. The attackers were willing to really pay a lot to get to them through honest means, because while the competition was slowly trying to catch up on the final frontier, the array of ultraviolet lasers and high-caliber railgun cannons was still something only N.O.V.A. Strike Force could blast through and the top-tier cybersecurity something only PURGE Elite Society hackers had the skills to breach and shut the defensive systems down remotely. The latter might not officially be affiliated with Exadev in any way since the Battle of Three Bodies, but in the collective consciousness it was not much more than a corporate cybersec department.

But "a lot" didn't really mean "propel the competition to be almost as influential as we", so the assault had been launched anyways. Lasers and railguns were left alone, a PURGE team did just enough to manufacture fake IDs for the Blue Squad and help them a bit during infiltration, careful to not display skills too far beyond other companies' equivalents. Still, it hardly mattered because TerraNova suddenly inventing own fusion reactors was enough for some hostile journalists to connect the dots. Another blow eventually came from the Church of Singularity - its leader claimed that the path towards singularity required an unrestricted access to bionics, unhindered by corporate greed and laws and preached the followers shall turn against the oppressors. At least that alone was easy to mitigate by gradually shifting the blame for "terrorist attacks" on terraforming facilities towards Yellowpeace, made that easier because of the climate restoration gaining full thrust with all stations fully powered with artificial suns, all with Yellowpeace growing less and less peaceful in the meantime.

In some regions rivers and lakes were already clean and lush green vegetation sprouted from the cleansed soil. And in these places it was warm greenery, not glittering glow of radioactive waste anymore. Temperature was falling steadily and was already below fourty degrees average. Frequency of sandstorm and density of caustic fog decreased. Earth still had a long way of recovery, but those raised on the tales from the Blue Planet were happy to witness the healing process. Some time more citizens of Neo Petersburg saw a first snowfall. It might have melted down instantly, but it was only for the better as snow was a forgotten concept and no city was ready for it.

However, grass was always greener on the neighbour's yard. The enclaves of clean environment didn't last long before being walled off completely and becoming prime spots for rich people to settle down, away from the noise and filth of megacities. Some still preferred their penthouses on the 500th floor, but entire new buisnesses sprouted from building and caring for these exclusive neighbourhoods and its inhabitants. And just like it didn't take long for the rich to profit off the fruits of labour of terraformers employed at TerraNova Inc, it didn't take long for the poor to rebel. Deformed humans and children of the first generation of those "bionic outcasts", pushed away from the healing grounds and beyond the sight of wealthy sitting in front of their villas, they found it hard to cram in the tiny spots of ground poisoned enough for rich to not distract them there, but not enough to make it uninhabitable even for them with all their bionic enchancements. Corporate security had a lot of work fending off "savage hordes" trying to breach the energetic walls guarding the splendid neighbourhoods. However, the final straw for serious riots was when some extravagant retired managers from American Frontier Protectorate decided to entertrain themselves by going for "mutant hunting".

Protectorate had its own enemies, though. Just like every business out there. Cosmotech was among the most salty ones. The company was on the verge of moving its plasma rifle design beyond prototype stage, only for laser blasters to dominate both civilian and PMC markets. The whole project was founded on the idea that laser cannons required just too much power and too much cooling to be effective on anything but a vehicle or static structure, but Protectorate had proven these estimations blatantly inaccurate. Inaccurate like plasma rifles. There was nothing that could beat laser beam in precision. Effective range extended all the way to the maximum damaging range, limited only by the skills of a shooter. And manufacturer's of military bionic eyes and arms. And even beyond damaging range, it wasn't unheard of for snipers to be able to at least temporarily blind the target if the eyes were biological. And as soon as fusion reactors would get their dedicated portable model, the power of laser weaponry would only grow. Plasma had its own merits, namely decent aerial damage which was non-existent for lasers, but it was just not enough to go beyond niche roles. For sure it could serve as a shotgun, but with the accuracy and effective range of a gunpowder-based assault rifle, but it wasn't firearms this design had to outperform anymore.

The plan was simple. Many of the ones unfortunate enough to end up in slums had two things: bionics and deep hatred for anything even slightly organised and profit-oriented, with American Frontier Protectorate temporairly on the top of "to send to hell" list. And Cosmotech was one of the few buisnesses that was willing to acknowledge that poor didn't have to mean stupid. After all, if Cosmotech wanted to take Exadev's position, it needed its own PURGE, too. And endless slums meant endless pool of ~~test subjects~~ volountary recruits for various cybernetic warfare-related projects. In particular they could be outfitted with the highly dnagerous neural implant released by Duranium Components Inc about the same time more serious riots broke out. It was enchancing analythical skills and persistence among the users, but at the same time it was bound to fry the brain within a month or two of usage, leaving the patient dead or in a coma or vegetative state at best. Cosmotech salespeople even managed to get a discount in exchange for providing the seller with detailed scientific reports on the chip usage.

Unfortunately for the ordinary augmented person, Cosmotech's plot wasn't an isolated case. As the prices of basic implants plummeted when upgraded versions made it to the market, alongside the percentage of enchanced people grew the dangers associated with the technology. It wouldn't be anything worse than computer virsues if not for the small detail of these computers being inside one's body. And the decisions made by some companies raised concerns for some folk. For example, Solenoyd Inc was the first company to force all of its employees to swap their ID, wallet, bank account and smartphone for a biochip version, all accessible directly from their brain. In the meantime Avalon Heights Inc manufactured its own line of bionic limbs, the first models to officially have internet access "so that clients wouldn't have to go visit a LIMB clinic to receive driver updates, now automatically downloaded from the network, all for their convenience and well-being", as the official statement claimed.

***Commercial break***

Walking with your head in the clouds? Wish your legs could follow? Reach new heights with Avalon Heights Inc limited-time offer bionic legs! Now with internet access for automatic drivers updating! Downloaded from the cloud storage, just to make sure you'll never have to get back down! Buy three and the fourth is for free!

Disappointed that Velociraptors have only seven laser blasters despite Exadev claiming in its commercial they have one hundred? Worry no more! Only till the end of month, American Frontier Protectorate brings to you the possibility to buy one hundred laser blasters for the price of only eighty! Hurry up and claim what's rightfully yours!

Grass is always greener on the other side, huh? We at TerraNova Inc know the feeling! Buy our Personal Terraforming Assistant today and let the grass be green on your side, too! Also, by supporting our terraforming project you help make Earth more beautiful each day and pave the way towards terraforming Mars, too! Only terrorists from Yellowpeace would not be happy to have such an opportunity presented to them! And you don't support terrorists, do you?

Came to the City of Dreams only to realize you can't fulfill your dreams with your legs glued to the ground? We, the CEOs of Exadev Space Industries feel you. It's impossible to live your dreams down on Earth. Reserve your spot for a commercial tour across the Solar System today! Half the profit will be used to fuel our research into FTL technology so that one day you can take a trip beyond our own Sun!

Lunar gravity makes it hard for you to firmly stand on the ground? Duranium Components Inc might just have a solution for all your low gravity-induced health issues! Our Lunar Protection Pack offers a wide variety of bionics designed to make your life on the Moon easier, healthier and happier! Why worry about your damaged body parts if you can just replace them? Special discount for loyal employees who've worked at our company for more than ten years while living on the Moon!
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Vicious Circle
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 30, 2022, 07:10:23 PM: Vicious Circle

Research into FTL wasn't progressing as Exadev would have wanted. It was a simple sentence, but sometimes the truth was really that simple and any attempt to tell something more elaborate was doomed to fail even before somebody would think about attempting to make that attempt. There were three basic concepts for the physicists to pursue: Alcubierre drive, wormholes and hyperdrive. The first one was probably the "simplest" thing to fogure out, because it checked all the known physics... Except one minor, unimportant and completely irrelevant detail: the negative energy density required to warp space accordingly. It required understanding of exotic or dark matter, something that even if the Old World knew about, had been long lost to countless wars that had brought the history to a halt. It was already possible to optimize geometry of a warp bubble (some physicists noticed how the better the designs were, the closer the warp bubble shape resembled a flying saucer...), just not really construct it. As for the wormholes and hyperdrive, it looked far more bleak, though. No astronomer had ever spotted a wormhole "in nature" and even if they really existed, building own ones was another topic. Breaching through the fabric of space to reach fourth dimension was even worse. There was just no way to make it work at the current technological level. Employed physicists liked to say "four dimensions of space, four bazillion dimensions of complexity", every time management tried to suggest them to focus on hyperspace-related research when their reports on Alcubierre Drive were deemed unsatisfactory (which, by pure coincidence, happened every time they were supposed to present a progress report).

However, New World had something the Old World cound't have when paving the path towards superluminal velocity: a solid, undefiable proof that FTL travel was possible and within human reach. It must had been invented at least once in the past by the same species, even if not by the same civilization. And that alone was probably the only thing that kept Exadev's ownership to just throw more and more money at the project, no matter what obstacles it had to overcome.

However, just getting to Trappist 1 alone was just a brief and easy introduction. There was no way telling what awaited on the other side of space and time, but it was reasonable to assume it packed more of a punch than a Velociraptor. And in theory it could still get too close to the Sun first, hence why military modernization was as much of an important project as FTL. Velociraptor might be good enough to rule over the Sun, but never Trappist 1. A new generation of warships, each with its own little star inside in the form of a fusion reactor, was needed. As well as many fixes and improvements over the design philosophy and warfare strategy, with errors too many of which were glaringly obvious after the Battle of Three Bodies. But just because it was easier than FTL, didn't mean engineers hadn't met their own trouble. The most obvious one was the struggle to make any laser firing on wavelength longer than ultraviolet. Reaching that sweet X-Ray presented itself as something already too much to ask for. Theoretically not a big deal, but chances were stuff patrolling Trappist 1 might have something better than ultraviolet. Other complications were similar in nature: too much of a friction heat generated by the more powerful variants of railguns, too long accelerators for upgraded particle beams range, too complicated onboard software, too power-hungry shields (even for fusion reactors...), too little funding (FTL still got priority no matter what), too little time (that was common across all projects, at least).

Simply put, nothing seriously blocking engaged teams to move forward, just a big pile of engineering obstacles that alone weren't worth too much attention but together merged into a huge quicksand pit to get sucked into. But one had to start somewhere eventually and that's when Exadev's upper management decided to roll out their hydrogen harvesting operations. It consisted of impressive mobile stations with reinforced anti-pressure hull patterns and scoops for shiponing hydrogen directly out of the air of a gas giant, combined with onboard fuel processing plant that served to compress hydrogen a bit to save space and have it already partially prepared for refueling the reactor. Despite advancements in power generation that could have been reflected in the engine design, Stellar Vultures were to still use old ion engines. The explanation was simple: the design itself had its years already and shiponing Jupiter just wasn't deemed profitable enough before. And updating the design wasn't worth it either - hydrogen harvesting platform didn't really need to generate much of a thrust to stay productive.

Quote
Stellar Vulture class Fuel Harvester 60 000 tons 260 Crew 1867 BP TCS 1200 TH 1200 EM 0
1000 km/s Armor 1-136 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 19 Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 2
Fuel Harvester: 15 modules producing 960000 liters per annum

300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (4) Power 300 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 300 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 11 100 000 Liters Range 470.9 billion km (5450 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The harvesters were engineered in a way that should allow them to fly towards Jupiter, refuel all their tanks and come back, burning much less fuel than shiponing during each trip, but nevertheless, Exadev's management agreed to sign up a contract with Cloudpunk to handle their fuel logistics. The company looked promising, didn't ask too many questions about all the fuel and its purpose and in case of some backstabbing their delivery ship firstly would have to fase N.O.V.A. Strike Force not being there for their protection anymore and the corporation could always afford to making harvesters themselves fly the trip.

Quote
Cloudpunk class Delivery Ship 20 000 tons 114 Crew 749 BP TCS 400 TH 1200 EM 0
3000 km/s Armor 1-65 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 1023 Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Cargo 5000

300 EP Commercial Ion Drive (4) Power 300 Fuel Use 7.07% Signature 300 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 4 010 000 Liters Range 510.4 billion km (1969 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

With fuel and terraforming projects secured, government could proceed with its plans. But it was fighting a war on two fronts. Preparing Trappist 1 campaign alone had been forcing CEOs to push employess to work absolutely volountary and optional Company Dedication Hours and that was only half the big picture. The other front was, surprise surprise, domestic. And owners of the corporation had hardly anyone but themselves to blame to let Cosmotech slip under the radar for so long. But the sudden worry came for reasons one might not expect at first. It wasn't their ambition to compete and beat the ones ruling the world with bionic fist on the final frontier. It wasn't the current portfolio of the company. Their plasma rifles hardly mattered in the bigger picture and it was totally meaningless whether their designs would improve over time to even surpass laser weaponry. But what did matter was their ideas. Dangerous ideas. Ideas they'd not have come up with if they were big and experienced enough. Something that for sure could destroy American Frontier Protectorate... Just like anybody else, with themselves being consumed first due to the small size.

Arming frustrated masses with top-notch tech that might have made them essentially kamikaze, but was deadly and had the potential to become that much deadiler once improvements would cleanse it of the kamikaze curse, was dangerous. But perhaps even more dangerous was the philosophical aspect of the whole operation. It gave those people a purpose to rally behind. It didn't matter than for every ten implanted nine would die in the first 24 hours after implanting the experimental biochip and the lucky tenth had a short life expectancy anyways. It didn't matter most would never get a chance to even participate in the test. What mattered was that many from the slums were becoming test subjects volountairly. And not because of propaganda. They were fully aware about what was going to happen, but they still craved it. Protectorate might be their first target, but not the last.

But while this attempt of creating "mutant cyborg army" could be blamed on the stupidity of Cosmotech, the Duranium Components Inc involvement didn't add up. In the very short term the whole affair was very beneficial to their research, but what could they hope for next time? That somehow they'll snatch control of the "slum army" and use it to fuel their own agenda? Possibly. But why would they be willing to risk everything? "Because they had never faced an open rebellion" - said to himself one of the upper managers, old enough to still remember the stories of first rebel generation. And that coupled with short-term profit really nailed it. And the only way to beat it was to get better at controlling it than Duranium Components Inc management intended to be.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Big Blaster
Post by: Stormtrooper on March 30, 2022, 07:45:21 PM: More corporate officials trembled as the walking definitions of "high tech, low life" started making their name with first successful operations, hacking, assasinations and general resistance. And even worse, low class inhabitants of megacities had already started supporting them from time to time. Soon Earth, Moon and Mars alike were singing the new song about the efforts of this new anti-corporate opposition.

Big Blaster

To the city of Cydonia flew a low life one fine day,
Hardly spoke to punks around him, didn't have too much to say
No one dared to ask his fixer, no one dared to make a slip
For the stranger there among them had a big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip

It was early in the evening when he entered into bar
He came flying from the slum side scannin' people all around
He's a cyborg loose and running, came the whisper from each lip
And he's here to do some business with the big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip

In Cydonia lived a CEO by the nickname Lazer Red
Many fixers tried to hack him and that many fixers failed
He was CEO and exploiter though a youth of 24
And the trillions in his account numbered one and 19 more
One and 19 more

Now the stranger started hacking, made it plain to punks around
Was a wasteland ranger, wouldn't be too long on Mars
He came here to ruin the CEO, corporation maybe two
And he said it didn't matter he was after Lazer Red
After Lazer Red

Wasn't long before the story was relayed to Lazer Red
But the CEO didn't worry men that tried before were dead
20 hackers had tried to expose him, 20 hackers had made a slip
21 would be the cyborg with the big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip

Cyborg breached the sec so quickly, it was time for them to meet
It was 20 past 11 when they walked the neon street
CEOs looked from skyscrapers, everybody held their breath
They knew this savy cyborg was about to meet his death
About to meet his death

There was 40 floors between them when they stopped to make their play
And the swiftness of the cyborg is still talked about today
Lazer Red had not called for sec 'fore a laser fairly ripped
And the cyborg's aim was deadly with the big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip

It was over in a moment and the punks had gathered round
There before them lay CEO's secret data on the ground
Oh, he might have went on exploiting but he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the cyborg with the big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster, big blaster
When he tried to match the cyborg with the big blaster and brain chip
Big blaster and brain chip
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Dreams of Old World
Post by: Stormtrooper on April 01, 2022, 05:47:35 PM: Dreams of Old World

Just as experts at Exadev had predicted, "Neon Kamikaze" initiative yelded great profits in the short term. Generations of slum dwellers got their brains implanted and fried as less powerful companied trembled upon hearing about those fearless wasteland runners. At the same time Cosmotech was mostly left intact, ensuring staying on the positive page by some PR initiatives to help a wasteland community occassionally and spending three times as much to make as big fuss about it in the media as possible. The money they ~~stole~~ earned through honest and hard work from overthrowing minor and medium-sized competition opened up many possibilities in front of the rapidly growing business.

Exadev was pushing through the FTL research, which had finally displayed some visible results (manipulating spacetime continuum on a quantum level opened up options to bend it both ways - contract and expand - providing the means to assemble full warp bubble and the pioneer microcosmic-scale experiments looked promising), but ironically it got blocked once again by a mundane, almost trivial, complication: starships of the future required an extraordinarily tough hull, in particular the warp rings. The theoretical problem of space dust particles slipping inside warp bubble and impacting over the hull with great force remained unresolved. There was a next-gen cross-layered subatomic plating design that could withstand these impacts by providing a structure capable of deflecting particles and altering their course while absorbing only part of the kinetic energy, small enough to come out unscratched, but it needed as much modularity and suppleness as it needed toughness. Duranium was good enough for conventional velocities, but for space dust interacting with warp bubble something else was needed.

Scientists on Martian labs figured a formula for strenghtening Duranium via iridium particles enrichement without compromising on material's nimbleness. Optionally the new alloy, named Mercassium, could be coated in graphene layer just for some extra protection against extreme conditions. But no innovations in mining industry were going to make up for the scarcity of iridium in Earth's crust. Asteroid belt, that was a different story though. Similarily, biotech companies strived to upgrade their bionic products' durability. Mercassium was perfect for the task. And Exadev could get absurdly rich from Mercassium alone... if it could only get enough iridium to feed the factories.

And that is where Cosmotech stepped in, bringing an impressive fleet of Lazer Frictions:

Quote
Lazer Friction class Mining Ship 40 000 tons 360 Crew 1549.4 BP TCS 800 TH 800 EM 0
1000 km/s Armor 1-104 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 24 Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Asteroid Miner: 6 modules producing 150 tons per mineral per annum

400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (2) Power 400 Fuel Use 6.19% Signature 400 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 600 000 Liters Range 261.8 billion km (3030 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

After all the funding pumped into the project, a powerful laser grid cannons had been developed, establishing an effective, fast strip-mining technique for rapidly fragmenting asteroids and extracting minerals buried within them. All while Exadev grew more and more iridium-hungry. The hostility of dealing with Cosmotech was obvious, but on the other hand management really didn't feel like waiting for Alcubierre drives forever. In case of an emergency, N.O.V.A. Strike Force would be just enough to cleanse Cosmotech from present, history and the future. The deal was about to be cut as soon as short-term supply was secured anyways, giving Exadev some breathing room to develop their own asteroid mining solutions.

In the long term the problem with Neon Kamikaze persisted, in the short term the future of Exadev looked suspiciously stable, but it all changed when explorers awakened something buried deep down in the radioactive ice sheets of Europa.

Exadev Space Industries HQ, Cydonia Megacity, 5th October 2221

Fuki Detsu: During our latest voyage to Europe... We've found something... Disturbing...

Kiefer McRaven: ?!... I thought you've already explored most points of interest... It was once a nice colony. Multiple megacities, terraformed, genetic modifications for low gravity adaptation, some useful stuff... Still radioactive after the end of the world, but nothing TerraNova Inc couldn't fix. We'd have been settling down here already if not for our budget being eaten by interstellar expansion...

FD: Sir... It's not about tech. We've found... this recording. IT analytics already confirmed: It is an authentic audio file from 2077. By that year the apocalypse was looming over the Solar System and even the most skeptical citizens worried...

KM: Aaaand?... The pont is?... It's just some rambling about the incoming doom. The Old World ended, hardly a classified information by now. Probably plenty of these are yet to be found.

FD: The point is this one, unlike any other that had been excavated from any ruins till now, reveals just too much about things that'd be better let to die, forgotten in the wasteland... "Will you come away with me?" "Will you come to Tech Noir with me?" Just look at this data! Tech Noir: an extravagant company specializing in deep space exploration, cryogenic sleep and civilian transit. Coincidence? If these weren't the guys doing the Solar System Evacuation then this was all a hoax and no human had ever left the Solar System at all. Their profits skyrocketed in 2077, the year most of the population got convinced there was no hope left.

KM: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand?...

FD: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it's not your ordinary "say goodbye to humanity" type of recording. Our most talented cryptographers deciphered it... It's all a code. The details are in the report, but let me just say that this wasn't your average Joe. This guy knew. He knew about A.F.R.I.C.A. And, apparently, it was more than just some means to locate and go back for the survivors. Rememebr those quantum computing side projects? Our current prototypes might suck, but we've been able to partially decode quantum cyberarchive from N.O.V.A. Bunker System... Well, at least the undamaged part. Looks like the founders of the company really didn't like the project. Something about it made them feel seriously threatened. Guess the intuition to prepare for battle with Trappist 1 fleet was correct approach all the way through...

KM: Why didn't you say instantly?! Well, nevermind... Make sure no mutant with fried brain ever hacks this. And to ensure this... DO NOT UPLOAD IT ANYWHERE. Just bury it deep in some secure location. I need to think. Maybe we need more funding for quantum computers... Quantum mechanic is already helpful for FTL, after all... Damn, I have a feeling we're spreading too thin and doing too much at once even for the size of our... Ekhm, MY corporation.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Free Rights and Right to Freedom
Post by: Stormtrooper on April 19, 2022, 04:50:39 PM: By 2230s upper management had finally admitted the riots'd grown out of hand once again. Blue Squad did a nice job with mercassium-coated barrels of their shiny new laser-guided plasma rifles, a fusion between Cosmotech and Exadev technology, giving the firepower of heated plasma a laser-grade accuracy and with the beam keeping the heat from dissipating over much longer distances, but the same plasma rifles occassionally brough doom to their users and everyone nearby when the firewall on bionic arm wouldn't hold that one attack resulting in compromise of cybernetic aim assist. Of course Duranium Components Inc had their killswitch programmed in every brain chip implanted into some Neon Kamikaze, but the software's been questionable at best given it had serious issues propagating through the network of the chips, killing hosts faster than it had time to send the triggering message to others, not to mention the 36% rate of straight-up refusing to work at all.

But Exadev wouldn't dare to let history repeat itself. It was stretched too thin even without riots. Too many projects going on at once and nobody at the company liked to think about the competition reaping all the fruits of their work on FTL propulsion systems, having someone else be the first to build a starship.And Exadev had a plan. An unknown CEO whose name's been lost to Old World history once said:

"Enslave a person and tell them they belong to you - they'll do whatever they can to run away or rebel. You'll break many, but somebody somewhere will succeed. But tell a person they're free and they'll fight to the bitter end by your side for you gave them freedom - something worthy of dying for, something worthy to declare belonging to."

It was so simple yet so hard to come up with. Giving an illusion of freedom so that the rebels would drop their guns, convinced they've won already. Easier said than done, though. One couldn't expect any corporation to just say "ok you won, we'll treat you better" and expect everything to work out just fine. Either the rebels wouldn't believe or they would which would set competition on high alert in fear of them being the next ones who have to give up. That's why a deal with Yoshii Yukinaga had to be arranged. Avalon Heights Inc was supposed to share their latest line of androids with Exadev, which role would be to serve as a "third side" - a movement advocating for mediation and signing peace between corps and rioters. A movement advocating for establishing a first post-post-apocalypse government representing the best interests of people, willing to compromise between keeping the free market operating and citizens happy, giving everyone a chance to speak up about own struggles and troubles and elect an official representative for working on solving these struggles and troubles.

Each android from this new line stood no chance facing a Turing's test. But together... The crowd of the androids was not much stupider than the crowd of humans. And all these robots had to accomplish was to successfully participate in a few protests and open meetings with Exadev PR representatives before enough real humans would follow that they'd no longer be needed. But as everything, it came at a price. Avalon Heights wanted a fair share of quantum research data, preferably related to the concept of applying quantum computing for designing rapidly learning, elaborate artificial intelligence, processing an impressive amount of of human concepts at once, mimicking a human behaviour to the unprecedenced degree, or alternatively just learning how to do more complex job than vent cleaning or purging slums. Exadev agreed, hoping in the long run they'd benefit from this project, too.

By the year 2233 first public discussion that didn't end up with laser fire barrage took place on the streets of Neo Tokyo. In 2334 Cydonia was the first megacity to have a mayor elected, officially independent from the corporations. Near the end of that year, TerraNova Inc agreed to dismantle one terraforming installation to protect a very important radroach breeding den after Yellowpeace protests, saving the animals from drowning in soon-to-be-created lake. Till 2238 every megacity on Earth, Mars and Moon had its own mayor as well as senate, all certainly without any possible ties to corporations.

To ensure all of this progressed smoothly, thousands of quantum servers kept operating at full power to be absolutely sure that nothing threatened the new balance and corruption had no entrance into this new world order. One of the most important tasks was to erase all traces of claims that some politicans had been corporate managers before or owned a significant portions of the stock or had a relative who was a CEO. New AI admins could estimate that such opinions held a 37,6789% increase in likehood of ideas classified as "radical" taking roots within society and any radical idea was a straightforward way back to the N.O.V.A. Megacorps or Comitee of Humanity oppression and the most importnat threat to personal freedom. However, despite best efforts of absolutely independent Facegram department in improving bots surveying the network for radical content, some opinions still could stay publicly accessible for longer than the assumed safety margin of fifteen minutes. AI calculated that for every minute above this time window, the risk of someone infected with corrupt thoughts deciding to run for the office increased by 2,35%, which was more than assumed safety margin of 0,00%. Because of this, additional safety measures in the form of pre-screening candidates for any anti-freedom beliefs had to be maintained. Prime examples of anti-freedom stance included claims about Facegram being a secret Avalon Heights Inc project, 97% of Night City senate members having Exadev Space Industries-related background, leaders of this movement that obviously was without any flaws supposedly not being real humans or unsupported, outrageous claims about the financial situation of 99,9999999% of citizens not improving beyond poverty level.

And so the humanity progressed beyond corporate oppression and with democratic governments guarding human rights and freedom nothing could stop it anymore. The stars layed in front, ready to be conquered.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Next Century Tech
Post by: Stormtrooper on April 19, 2022, 06:14:04 PM: With the rebels celebrating their hard-earned "freedom" and taking themselves out of the question, Exadev was free to get lost in the FTL research. Equations of quantum warp continuum were held as the key, but the engineering part still was left behind. Even best fusion reactors struggled to generate enough energy to warp a chunk of space big enough to fit a starship comfortably, let alone for long enough to push the ship through it. But some brave scientists from N.O.V.A. Bunker System had a different idea. Their plan was to use the warp bubble-establishing rings surrounding the spaceship to hold a particle accelerator designed to generate small black holes. These black holes would then be used to provide just enough gravity to do something akin to brute-forcing enough spacetime curvature for a brief moment before these small, unstable objects would evaporate. Their second function would be to let the travelling ship do a small slingshot around them, gaining enough speed to squeeze through this temporarily available warp bubble fast enough till it'd collapse under itself as the space straightened. It had an additional benefit of exponential effective speed gain.

In the meantime labs of Solenoyd Inc weren't any less busier, even though the distances and speeds of the company's own transit project could suggest otherwise. A retrofuturistic dream of many was coming close to fulfilling when the corporation presented the first prototype of a flying car that wasn't much harder to drive than ground car and didn't require a pilot's license. The issue of disastrous consequences of people ramming into buildings still needed some tweaking, but the owner of Solenoyd Inc was confident that this invention was to revolutionize city transit. It could even make activists happy by removing all the busy highways and moving all the automobile transport to the sky, stretching it over dozens of levels of air corridors so that not a single one would experience traffic jams, leaving ground for pedestrians and ~~corporate~~ communal spaces.

But as Exadev and Solenoyd counted their profits, Duranium Components Inc and Avalon Heights Inc weren't too happy when Broken Heart Biotech Group released their first line of artificially grown organs, purely biological with only minor improvements over natural counterparts, offering an alternative to those sceptical about installing metal and electronics into their insides and making organ donating an obsolete act. For now the product of trending business offered hardly any advantages other than natural human body parts, but rumours spoke about them working really hard on genetically modifying their wares, making them a well-designed biological alternative to cybernetic industry.

Near the end of 2230s TerraNova Inc announced that the Earth's atmosphere was safe and comfortable to breathe without any kind of respiratory support. Water levles rose to the satisfactory levels and lush biosphere thrived on land, in water, in air and below the ground. In addition the corporate owner admitted that in order to celebrate the official completion of Earth's climate restoration project, his company made sure to reduce the number of slums sprawling outside megacities, vastly improving the average living conditions of a statistical Earthling. Radical, anti-freedom keyboard warriors posted evidence of many of the poorest neighbourhoods getting flooded after rising water levels, but AI admins quickly took care of this nonsense.

By the early 2240s, Solenoyd Inc organised a "Tale of Two Matrixes" event. During the conference, two of the newest products were presented. One was simply a Hover Repulsor Anti-Crash Matrix for safe flying cars navigation. Every air corridor barrier and skyscraper was expected to have one installed. It was an array capable of emitting small electromagnetic pulses in either pre-programmed or dynamically generated patterns forcing the flying car to stay on track and away from collision points by gradually slowing it down or even pushing in the opposite direction, with the deceleration levels depending on the velcoity and distance to obstacle. Some tweaks were obviously required for this system to be successfully applied to avoiding collisions between two vehicles themselves. The other Matrix, though, was obviously what every attendant really wanted to hear about. By unifying computing power with Facegram department, (with the latter only officially renting some of its machines and having nothing to do with the project since any accusations of ties of the independent organisation with private businesses were ridiculous), the corporation had successfully built an "Enriched Reality". It was a network designed to cheer its users up by adding pleasant, virtual elements to their perception of the world around. For example, a person plugged in could feel a chair being more comfortable than it really was or their food tasting better, or a kitten approaching them and asking to be pet. However, engineers behind this system hoped that gathering data from users could help develop a much broader catalogue of pleasant experiences and feelings, leaving more positive impact on the individual. The idea quickly generated interest, with some suggesting similar concept could be used to filter out unpleasant experiences.

In 2242, when the three worlds were busy hyping over Enriched Reality, a lone spaceship flashed above Cydonia, sortly after blinked in between Earth and Moon, only to later end up floating in the rings of Saturn. Space transit was dense enough that nobody paid enough attention and Exadev could test their ideas at peace. The black hole generation idea was a brilliant one. Synthetic Dawn met all the travel time expectations, didn't get crushed by warp bubble collapsing onto it or something, with the cherry on top being excelling at navigation and collision avoidance tests, with the ship completing a full warp bubble drop within a planetary ring before smashing against some space debris. at superluminal effective speed. Outfitted with best sensors available, a decent supply of self-replicating probes and a bunch railguns for anti-missile defence should it run into either hostile Trappist-1 fleet or just some asteroids too fast to be avoided, it was ready to meet whatever awaited at the Final Frontier.

Quote
Synthetic Dawn class Exploration Ship 30 000 tons 609 Crew 3207 BP TCS 600 TH 2400 EM 0
4000 km/s JR 3-50 Armor 1-86 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/6/4/4 Damage Control Rating 43 PPV 0
Maint Life 4.43 Years MSP 2875 AFR 167% IFR 2.3% 1YR 236 5YR 3545 Max Repair 593 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months Spare Berths 0

J30000(3-50) Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 30000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (6) Power 400 Fuel Use 6.19% Signature 400 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 000 000 Liters Range 290.9 billion km (841 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (3x6) Range 1000 km TS: 16000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (2) 4 Survey Points Per Hour
Improved Geological Sensors (2) 4 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Interstellar Glow
Post by: Stormtrooper on May 01, 2022, 06:55:52 PM: Interstellar Glow

Trappist 1, a choice so obvious it was too obvious to be the one inputted into the interstellar navigation computer. Some soldiers and mid-rank officers were eager to go meet their fate in what might as well be the capital system of Intergalactic Federation (or whatever was left from it), but veterans commanding in the Battle of Three Bodies remembered the horrors of entire ships vaporized in seconds by purple laser fire all too well to bravely but stupidly march into the lion's mouth directly. With some successful experiments on fusion missiles, upgraded EMP arrays for next-gen PURGE vessels and engineers continuing to push the wavelength of lasers well beyond visible spectrum one could say modernized fleet was, well... Modernized. That was it, really. If nuclear warheads and purple lasers were enough to melt the ships of old within seconds or minutes, then fusion warheads and ultraviolet lasers must have been enough to melt the ships of new within seconds or minutes. And who was to guarantee humans who continued to develop and expand away from Solar System didn't already wield anything from antimatter cannons to directed black hole generators.

Solar System survivors needed preparation and resources. And a few backup plans in case photonic missiles started raining down on the Sun turning it into supernova on a spot. Centauri system got rejected. Proxima b was very unlikely to support life out of the box, but with just a little bit of terraforming and orbital anti-cosmic radiation shielding it was a decent planet to live on. Likehood of running into federal forces was too high. The destination couldn't be a system within at least ten light years from Earth at all, really. And within ten light years from Trappist 1, too. Eventually the agreed target for first exploration mission and extrasolar colonization came out to be Tau Ceti. Under twelve light years away, so close enough but above assumed safety margin. Decent planetary system, likely resource-rich, but no confirmed planets with surface liquid water. Again, nothing terraforming couldn't fix, but the risk couldn't be brought down to zero - whatever TerraNova Inc could turn into a second Earth must have been assumed to end up becoming a second Earth even faster under federal regime.

On 1st June 2248, 23:34 Earth time, Trappist Group Beta, an operational force of three Synthetic Dawns, warped space on the outskirts of Solar System and disappeared into the endless night.

On 24th July 2249, 19:09 Earth time, employees working in Trappist Group Beta were the first of the new generation of humans to ever see an alien sun from up close. Tau Ceti looked almost the same as the one they left behind...

To much of a relief, no life signs had been detected. No complex life-bearing planets, no surface liquid water, no electromagnetic signals. Just a dead static of the universe.

(https://i.imgur.com/fVEh2OG.png)

Oddly enough, the system bore some resemblance of the Solar System. Only three terrestial planets and no asteroid belts, but then four gas giants orbiting much further away from the sun than the rocky bodies. First one was a molten rock under well over fourty atmospheres of carbon dioxide and sulphur acids, the next one was a frozen dwarf, but the third one looked promising. Almost -130C surface temperature and only one third of Earth's gravity, but with lots of water on the surface. And traces of pure oxygen atmosphere. Just like Europe, but bigger. A prime spot for terraforming, also ready for almost instant colonization by people with thermoregulating implants.

Meanwhile back in the Solar System another crisis was looming ahead. The total population stabilised at about one and a half billion people. The virtually-enchanced lifestyle was too comfortable to afford kids. Only the slums population kept growing steadily despite high mortality rate and rampant violence. Contraception implants were slowly disappearing from cybernetic market as sex androids got better at mimicking human behaviours. Some to the point customers complained about the ridiculousness of "their friend's" android "not being in the mood". However, majority of people still wanted to have kids at some point. Doesn't mean the majority could. If it wasn't for one chip too many completely screwing hormonal regulations and degrading the chances of bearing any children, let alone healthy ones, it was for the radioactive fog emitted by the machinery keeping the megacities up and running.

After a bunch of absolutely peaceful discussions that did not involve laser fire and to think they did was ridiculous^TM departments working on Enriched Reality managed to seceed into their own corporation when Enriched Reality v2.0 came out to quickly take the market by storm. One of the most anticipated features involved a "negativity filter". A set of advanced AI assistants and algorithms fine-tuning to the user was prepared to block any negative memories, people or things from the user's perception. Trauma, betrayal, manipulation, narcissism, toxicity, disturbing images, accidents, deaths, diseases, debt, quarrels? All gone if the algorithm decided the person did not want to see, hear or remember something. Alternatively, the program could be switched to do the exact opposite, a feature intended for either masochists or being advocated as an innovative form of criminal punishment.

In 2245 Duranium Components Inc announced that in their labs they had successfully connected two male and three female test subjects into one Enriched Reality node and sync their perceptions of reality into one coherent simulation. The state their minds were in had been maintained for 13,5 hours before they had to be disconnected due to snesory overload that could result in severe brain trauma or death. Corporate officials calmed the public opinion down, reassuring the product has a long way full of improvements and tests to do before being ready for the public to use safely. And once it does, it will be the best thing that has ever been invented to help people free themselves from their sorrows and escape their demons.

16th August, 2249, Channel 6 "6 News Special"

Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's "9 News Special". This is Boone Phillips and together with you I'll look at what the last week's brought upon us.

1. Garrison McRaven, current Mayor of Night City sued Avalon Heights Inc after a netrunner successfully broke into his bionic leg drivers, taking full remote control over the limb and using it to kick the nearby senator in the face in the middle of an official meeting so badly that one of the victim's bionic eye gave up on functioning. Avalon Heights Inc denied any responsibility, providing absolutely not fabricated proof that the mayor had been downloading updates from shady proxies operating without a valid LIMB certificate. Mayor's representative announced escalating the case further, demanding Avalon Heights to implement a feature allowing users of their products to switch off online updates and use the traditional LIMB clinic instead. Night City police claims the investigation into netrunner's identity is "progressing according to the plan".

2. Tensions continue to rise at Brownstreet Heights as one of the most feared groups of Neon Kamikaze with faulty killswitches continues to terrorize the outskirts of Neo Tokyo. The city's government accepted the help from many corporations within the metropolis willing to spare some of their security guards to pacify the slums. Self-proclaimed leader of the group who calls himself "Salvation Programmer" accuses the city's senate for being just a facade for the "neverending corporate oppression" and "acting like wolves in sheep's skin". Duranium Components Inc officials refuse to comment on either the genesis of the project that led to the rise of Neon Kamikaze or the glitches in their killswitch software. Neo Tokyo inhabitants are advised to report any mutant sightings to the nearest police station and stay home through the night.

3. Avalon Heights Inc proudly announced its newest invention - a sophisticated "dog AI", meant to be installed within their cute, four-legged line of anrdoids. "It's just like a real dog, but without needing to pee or causing mess. More advanced versions include synthetic dog fur." Pro-cat activists enraged by, as they call it, "inacceptable act of discrimination by doggo suprematists" and demand a cat version. As well as removing the dog version from the market, all in the name of equal rights.

4. Thanks to the heroic effort of Yellowpeace, radroach officially makes it to the top of the endangered species list. Since Earth is too toxic for them to breed, plans about relocating the species to Mars are being made. Yellowpeace activists continue to protest in Cydonia against Mars terraformation, pointing out how the Red Planet is less and less red each year and fearing the radroaches won't survive there in the long run, too.

5. According to TerraNova Inc, shaping Mars to fully support human life is well ahead of schedule. Managers of the company confidently speak about their project in front of the recently formed lakes and encourage citizens travelling between outposts and megacitites to switch off their heating systems as they're no longer needed to survive, though it still might get "a little chilly" from time to time. At the same time, flora spreaders seem to be working as expected as indicated by the first clusters of genetically-hardened trees sprouting around them. "They ruined Earth and now they destroy Mars, too" - disappointed Yellowpeace activists comment.

6. Flying cars continue to grow in popularity as a preferred method of transportation. Solenoyd Inc continues to improve their product, offering a wide variety of cars, busses, trams, trucks and recently even a bicycle, all flying models. However, that's not to say there aren't any issues with the new types of air traffic. Some drivers express their frustration in cyclists occupying flying corridors, for example. "I didn't star flying and left them the whole ground for them to come after me into the air!" - says a disappointed flying car enthusiast. "With the advent of flying vehicles there was supposed to be more space for everyone!" - comments another. Urban planners explan that initially every type of vehicle was supposed to get their own height levels assigned, but corporate skyscrapers unfrotunately occupy too much space up there and there's only so much height a vehicle might climb before fuel consumption and times to ascend and descend outweight the benefits of using it at all. Air corridors are too narrow and the traffic is too dense. Solenoyd Inc claims to be already on the brink of developing a solution: Hover Repulsor Anti-Crash Matrix v2.0. The new system is supposed to not only prevent accidents, but actively help drivers navigate the air and push them at the optimal speeds in the right direction, massively increasing traffic flow. We also asked a driving instructor about some tips for the novice drivers, but he claimed it to be so intuitive to the point "it's like floating".

Aaaaand that's all for tonight. Don't forget to recalibrate your chips before going to bed and I wish you all synthetic dreams. Good night.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Cybercity
Post by: Stormtrooper on May 22, 2022, 08:13:50 PM: Cybercity

With new shipments of upgraded androids purchased from Avalon Heights, Exadev Space Industries had been pushing forward at a crazy pace. They could keep FTL drive a secret only for so long, but by the time other corporations and "independent" governments got their hands on a series of scientific papers describing the theoretical solution to warping space and skipping distance effectively faster than light without timeline-related paradoxes or getting shredded to near-lightspeed outburst of particles, Exadev was already busy with the rollout of a brand new starship:

Quote
PhaseRunner class Cargo Ship 50 000 tons 226 Crew 1059.8 BP TCS 1000 TH 1200 EM 0
1200 km/s JR 2-50 Armor 1-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 13 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Cargo 25000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 50

JC51K Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 51000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 2
400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (3) Power 400 Fuel Use 6.19% Signature 400 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 3 850 000 Liters Range 224.0 billion km (2160 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

It had a decent cargo capacity and carried a small but significant improvement over Synthetic Dawn's FTL propulsion: Alcubierre Drive model JC51K had the capability of effectively blasting through interplanetary space while pushing smaller objects aside. The warp field generation was improved so that the curvature of space could push asteroids or even small moons out of the way, but without giving them any additional kinetic energy so that by the time the ship's passed through them they'd already float in their original spots. The ship would essentially put them away to avoid collision and then put them back in when freeing the spot it had briefly occupied. It no longer needed to stop by the Saturn's rings - it could squeeze right through them at superluminal speed without compromising either the ship's integrity or Solar System's stability.

Without any asteroid belts or planetary rings Tau Ceti was much less challenging to navigate, forcing crews to take only the gas giants' moons into consideration during course plotting, but it was an advantage nevertheless. With a fleet of PhaseRunners phasing through any obstacles smaller than a dwarf planet, Exadev's management wanted to have first permanent settlers on Tau Ceti III within next decade. But just dumping construction materials and supplies there wasn't enough to get it done even within the span of two decades. Terraforming also was out of the question for the foreseeable future. TerraNova Inc was still too busy finishing the Mars up and hauling terraforming infrastructure over interstellar distances was an undertaking that could take a decade in itself just to move to the first successful proof of concept stage. Adapting humans genetically to survive under very thin one hundred percent oxygen air and extreme cold was not achievable either. Broken Heart Biotech could only do so much. It's biggest achievement involved adapting some test subjects to live comfortably on the partially heated Mars surface with -30 degrees and only light jackets, pushing the survivability of extreme conditions up to a total of -100 degrees. Nothing compared to the average of -130, with temperatures dropping below -150 each night even alongside Tau Ceti III's equator.

The solution had to be purely synthetic. Bionic limbs with the manufacturer's warranty of safe operation up to -160 degrees, blood-warming nanobots, cybernetic eyes with extra snow glare protection, a second layer of artificial skin implanted beneath fat with insulative properties, microjoints nudging muscles to generate some friction heat, direct ice digestive system, all this to make life of a colonist easier and more comfortable. Not because conventional habitats and space suits wouldn't work, but because they wouldn't work fast enough. At all costs, Exadev had to stay afloat before competition had a chance to catch up.

Frost clashed with synth on the cold wastes. A new city was founded, all in the name of transhumanist glory. A giant testing grounds for latest AI programs seamlessly integrated into the multilevel structure. Decently automated, full of hard-working, android grunts. Heated by a batch of fusion reactors, glowing purple in the night. Neons reflecting off shiny power armors of Blue Squad troopers deployed with Big Pulse Rifles^TM to keep the city secure and inhabitants cramped in containers cheaply stacked on top of each other in line. Spaceport and space elevator being constructed with accelerating pace as programmers optimized AI subroutines and android's task prioritization systems. Biotech labs working on consciousness-enchancing drugs, the ones that could open up the possibility to take on the most powerful brain implants and have a normal life expectancy rather than be fried dead within two months of enjoying enchanced mental capabilities. A base of operations against Trappist 1's meance.

2nd November 2259, Channel 9 News, "Breaking Corruption" program

Emily Mortan: Good evening ladies, gentlemen, military helicopters and androids! In tonight's "Breaking Corruption" edition we'll be looking into the new symbol of corporate oppression, built among the distant stars so that you could not see it, but fortunately nothing can hide before the bionic eyes of our brave journalists. As you all know by now, Exadev Space Industries is constantly pushing boundaries of the Final Frontier and takes special interest in the Tau Ceti system, the first one to be visited by the humans of a New World. Firstly, let's see our footage of a Cybercity, almost fully synthetic metropolis you might think to be just another conspiracy theory, except it really exists on the frozen surface of Tau Ceti III...

The temperature of the -2 147 483 648th Exadev emergency meeting was the exact opposite of the temperature of the night setting upon the first extrasolar colony. Management didn't like to see a clear proof that at least one PhaseRunner's crew screwed up their security protocols and had at least one from the Channel 9's personnel onboard so that now everyone could gaze at their latest expansion. A new wave of anti-corps protests was sweeping across the Solar System, but that was of hardly any concern as the main tech hub was being successfully relocated to the Cybercity.

...given permission to reactivate the cloning program to combat the birthrate crisis, alongside with permanent and full contraception implants ban. The effect are less than satisfactory for the corporate management, because most of androids imported to Tau Ceti had pre-programmed sexual functions and even if they didn't, most of heavily augmented colonists living the lowest of their life despite great promises of a stellar future state they wouldn't breed like rabbits on command because their corporate overlords demand a 3x population increase in the next five years...

Cybercity might already look impressive, but Solar System still remained a sole source of income and thus Exadev could send only so much employees to populate Cybercity. If only the secret would hold up until the new interstellar combat fleet was ready. At least their next generation of warheads meant to replace conventional fusion missiles was still a secret. Who would expect a bunch of preconfigured mining nanobots to be able to serve as intelligent missiles attaching themselves and chewing away enemy's ships?

...an expert on nanotechnology with us, Isaac Parser. Isaac, what has your independent research team found?

Isaac Parser: Well, we've been trying to optimize mining patterns of these nanobots, and as we tried to make them selective over which material to consume to conserve their energy while mining through as little rock as possible focusing only on the ores, preferably the more valuable ones, we noticed the obvious: there's nothing stopping somebody to program these machines to feed on everything, for example a city's support structures or a spaceship's hull. If attached to a surface, such a swarm could just digest and decompose it, making it a deadly weapon...

A bunch of swears came out of CEO's synthetic mouths, amplified by their voice broadcasting implants. There was nothing left but to assume some corporations had already been working on effective countermeasures, driving the Cryogenic War tension up once again given it wasn't uncommon for a few "independent" cities, namely Night City, Neo Tokyo, Neo Moscow, Nirvana Sprawl and Central Stacks to have combat-ready space fleets of their own, with fusion missiles, at least ultraviolet laser blasters, anti-ship tier railguns, Maglev cannons, magnetic pulse beams or particle lances. With the latest Exadev invention exposed, some corporations might feel threatened enough to strike before the power balance shifts enough in Exadev's favour.

But if anything was certain, it was that the new war, unlike Battle of Three Bodies, wouldn't be fought purely on a physical level. Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate kept releasing scientific papers on the topic of brain mapping, neural connections, seamless integration witj brainchips, mental connections, deepdiving in cyberspace and the like. They were onto something, maybe even more powerful and terrifying than psionic warfare of the Old World. Simulatenously Metagram announced merging forces with Enriched Reality Corps together with releasing patch 3.0 for their Enriched Meta Reality Framework. Unlike Duranium Components Inc version, it allowed users to stay connected for weeks or even months to no end and the research on the simulation enchancing fluid that could keep the individuals more engaged if pumped at right intervals and amounts displayed some progress. Moreover, scientists employed at both companies published their discovery of a Quantum Stasis Phenomenon. When interacting with quantum computers in a deep dive mode, time perception could range anywhere in between miliseconds to years for each twenty four hours spent in the simulation. If implanted with correct registering and processing apparatus, it was even possible to extract years worth of thinking in a suspended quantum state from a single mind if it happened that it took years from the test subject's perspective to live a given day in the simulation. Trivial things like criminal punishment or having a standard two hour weekend last for a decade aside, the corporation was already looking into utilising the discovery by increasing the output of the scientific personnel. If they could succeed, nobody else without access to this technology could rival them.

And as if the situation wasn't slipping out of Exadev's hands like a citizen with malfunctioning bionic leg on Tau Ceti III's icefield crazily enough, team of astronomers stationed in Cybercity pointed out at something in deep space, far beyond Tau Ceti system... After running multiple additional scans and filtering data through the best known space anomaly detection algorithms, there was no doubt left: like an eye of a sentient supercomputer, a wormhole was watching over the valiant efforts of Tau Ceti colonizers...

(https://i.imgur.com/TeRLg6m.png)
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Bitrot
Post by: Stormtrooper on July 26, 2022, 07:36:57 PM: BITROT

Cloning adults was too complicated, cloning embryos had a good chance of completely screwing up human genome and cloning fetuses proved to generate so much mess that the cloned children could barely survive, even after heavy augmentation. So all in all, Exadev Space Industries had a long way to go to raise the CEO's dream army of clones. For the time being, good old boring colony starships were the only reliable source to expand population of Cybercity. The fleet used was nothing special, basically a group of PhaseRunners with cargo space filled with cryopods and some small tweaks in security due to the cargo being quite sensitive, fragile and squishy. With enough augments it was no longer sensitive, fragile and squishy. But then augments were worth much more than ~~the body of a slave~~ single worker's life. So while they made their ~~temporary user~~ owner less sensitive, fragile and squishy, the paranoia of managers only grew exponentially with the number of enchancements being transported. To reduce risk, the crypod storage bays didn't even have atmosphere inside, stocked in vacuum chambers so that a micrometeorite puncturing the hull wouldn't cause a chain reaction killing the 110000 sleepers on board. Not that it was easy to breach that hull with anything but military-grade weapons, though. It was coated with a layer of repair nanodrones constantly watching over its integrity and being able to repair even the tiniest scratches by using the alloy microplates distributed to them via a system of densely-packed, small transit tubes with magnets accelerating and guiding the materials, all supervised by AI making optimal logistical decisions. For the naked eye the hull looked like the most cliche colony starship hull imaginable, but the consciousness about its construction sparked the imagination of its constructors and crewmembers, with many feeling like they were about to enter the stomach of a giant, synthetic organism, or the core of AI superbrain. Such feelings were often reinforced by the sound the semi-intelligent hull produced. They could be heard if one decided to glue their ear to the wall. And so these synthetic beasts were weaving through the interstellar void, earning the name for this line of spaceships - Synth Waver.

Quote
Synth Waver class Cargo Ship 50 000 tons 231 Crew 1881.8 BP TCS 1000 TH 1200 EM 0
1200 km/s JR 2-50 Armor 1-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 24 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Cryogenic Berths 110000

JC51K Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 51000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 2
400 EP Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (3) Power 400 Fuel Use 6.19% Signature 400 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2 350 000 Liters Range 136.7 billion km (1318 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Exadev didn't feel like sending millions of employees away from the Solar System with so much work to be done, but the Central Stacks Crisis kind of solved this dilemma - after the megacity-wide scandal about local police cooperating with Blue Squad to deliver specimens for cloning experiments from the (in)famous stack towers that once'd given the name of the metropolis, a "small restructurization" of Central Stacks department was announced, with most employees being selected for Cybercity colonization program. It took only five interstellar jumps in and five interstellar jumps out of the new fleet for the population of Cybercity to rise from 10 millions to 30 millions. And more courses were planned.

At the same time PhaseRunners kept on transporting the android shipments ordered from Avalon Heights. When human population of Cybercity crossed the 30th million, android population was already at 7 millions and expanding. Engineers tried to capitalize on the recent improvements in machine self-replicating technology to try to make the androids able to "breed" and produce more androids, but as if the process itself wasn't complicated enough, Avalon Heights' management wasn't stupid and put some damn fine security measures designed to prevent other corporations from stealing their product's inner design.

On 10th December 2277, an unprecedenced event took place: on the surface an insignificant story about just another day of pure insanity of the synthetic world, but with consequences surprisingly getting out of hand. A woman who came to Cybercity alone and against her will after the mess in Central Stacks bought a "companionship android". That alone would be anything but interesting in 2277, even together with her claim of "being in love", but somehow she persisted in her quest to prove to the world(s) that it was "for real" and that her "companionship android" was "really special, unlike the others of synth kind". She persisted so much that somehow during one of the Enriched Meta Reality Framework v3.1.2077 sessions she got into contact with a net journalists scavenging through the virtual ~~insanity~~ reality in search for article material. An interview with the woman, which the journalist recklessly published, made its way through the onboard network node of one of the Synth Wavers all the way back to Earth, Moon and Mars. And ended up being watched in particular by a team of researchers from Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate who had been struggling with their Deep Feeling Enchancer BrainBots project for long enough to see half the team sacked and replaced. Twice. Psychologists consulting the project studied the interview in and out to determine that whatever was going on between that woman and the android looked almost like the end result of a prototype they'd been supposed to show as a demo two years earlier. Which was odd given the woman had no brain chips besides standard ID implant and the android's programming was hardly comparable with the most sophisticated AI existing somewhere in the underground research complexes of the most powerful corporations.

Exadev made one mistake of not realizing what was going on early enough and by the time security was reading reports of Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate's personnel walking down the streets of Cybercity, the woman was already having her brain scanned and mapped in the outpost founded by the rival corporation far away from the city sprawl. Results were fascinating - the android's output signals, brain activity and the patterns emitted by the ID chip all combined almost perfectly, producing a stimulating feeling for the brain's owner. There was nothing special in this particular setup, though - it simply happened to mess with human brain in a way that was desirable for the researchers. Android's software had been downloaded and decompiled, woman's brain analyzed, ID chip encoding sequence deciphered. Experiments continued. A supplementary AI program had been written, capable of learning the process of observed human-android interaction, in hopes of reverse-engineering and taking the full control of the process. Eventually the head scientist approved a new type of experiment: the woman was to be implanted with an experimental psionic chip. It was built with human-human mental interaction in mind (pun intended), not human-machine, and even that part was working barely better than simply trying to guess what someoen's thinking about by observing external behaviour. Not to mention machines couldn't think. Nevertheless, the one thing the chip was doing correctly was to correctly determine user's feelings and enrich or extinguish them accordingly, giving improved control over one's own emotions, potentially useful in mental disorder treatments, silencing intrusive thoughts, on-demand forgetting about something and the like.

But something must've gone wrong (how surprising). After successful operation, recovery and chip calibrating, the woman and the android were placed in a room under strict observation. The feelings of the test subjects at first were growing according to the predicted model, but soon started to rapidly escalate. Thousands of thoughts stormed through the uplifted brain and reached android core in the form of network datastream. But then it all cooled down, almost ceased. The process repeated for a few times. Based on real-time brain scans, the woman really wanted to "give in to her feelings", but past a certain intensity threshold just used her new chip to just reset her mind. After the experiment session she barely could walk and struggled to remember even basic info about herself. Or sometimes would remember random, irrelevant details. The scientists figured out that somehow she was "glitched". Patterns of her brain activity stopped making any sense. Especially when she came back to her senses a week later, only to glitch again within another three days.

Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate smoothly swept the case under corporate carpet. But the research continued for years to come. Generally it was possible to reverse the damage to some extent, but the symptoms had never been fully treated. The patient could function normally for the most part, but sometimes the glitches would reemerge. And with years going by, the "bug episodes" lasted longer and were more intense. As if the brain was slowly decomposing itself, ceasing to put up with all the hard work a good human brain is required to do to keep its owner alive and functioning properly. Experts on human-augmentation interactions and the influence of the ever-blurring line between analog- and cyberspace on human condition named this strange disease "Bitrot", because the affected human would just rot away, bit by bit losing mental consistency and capability to safely interact with modern technology. Who would have guessed too much uncontrolled integration with a machine could have some nasty side effects. Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate planned to do anything but surrender on their long-term goals, though.

Meanwhile, on 5th May 2279, astronomers orbiting Tau Ceti III on board of space station hosting Cybercity's AI governor assistant started picking up sequences of clearly artifical origin coming into the system through the wormhole, still left unexplored due to Exadev still being spread too thin to do everything at once. The signals seemed to represent regular cybernetic chatter. Except they'd sometimes glitch from time to time and produce random nonsense for a few days, and then fix themselves and come back to normal.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Static of dead cyberspace
Post by: Stormtrooper on August 04, 2022, 12:28:47 PM: Second spaceport of Cybercity was coming into shape, this time properly equipped with all the spare parts and logistical chains to support the new generation of warships rather than a sketchy design slapped together so that cargo and colony ships could land and liftoff without blowing themselves up that was the first one. Exadev was rushing to get it to usable state and call as many vessels from its new shiny fleet in ASAP. The company refused to send their explorers unprotected. After all, their bionics, ships and corporate secrets they carried were too valuable to risk it falling into the hands of whatever existed on the other side of "Eye of Cybercity". A probe idea had also been shot down for the 12837123th time since the discovery of the wormhole - sending any object at all meant manifesting own presence in Tau Ceti, and with Cybercity still being naked and afraid in terms of space invasion it was the surefire way for the entirety of extrasolar colonization project to end up in a trash bin. Sending spaceships from Earth or Mars was not an easy operation, though - even amateur astronomers could detect something the size of a starship reaching an orbit, launch platforms could only be kept in secret till first launch and the cherry on top was how firing Alcubierre drive was like flaring a huge beacon broadcasting "I'm here" through the whole cyberspace. In late 2270s long gone were the days of space infrastructure so underdeveloped and tightly controlled by the most powerful corporations that one could send an entire exploration and colonization mission to Tau Ceti and have it take years to be discovered. And sending spacecraft that was armed and ready to blow stuff up, especially towards another star, would give all the media a topic of a decade. As if conspiracy theories ranging from alien invasion and corporations commiting genocide on lost human colonies weren't already out of hand.

That's why the first vessel to leave Solar System was a Backup Node-class support platform. Some stuff happened, explorers in deep space need a refuel, nothing to see here. Please ignore the anti-missile railguns, it's for stray rocks in a planetary ring.

Quote
Backup Node class Tanker 50 000 tons 230 Crew 2759.5 BP TCS 1000 TH 1000 EM 0
1000 km/s JR 2-25 Armor 5-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 15 PPV 0
MSP 518 Max Repair 125 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1

JC51K Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 51000 tons Distance 25k km Squadron Size 2
500 EP Commercial Internal Fusion Drive (2) Power 500 Fuel Use 4.42% Signature 500 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 30 000 000 Liters Range 2443.8 billion km (28284 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (8x10) Range 1000 km TS: 16000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km

But eventually the corporation had to deliver the real deal and managers couldn't postpone it indefinitely. The PR personnel eventually went for lesser evil: instead of just sending the ships as they were, they prepared a story about severe riots and organized crime on the rise in Cybercity (not that the state of affairs there made it a difficult task) hence the need to assign a "peacekeeping force". Getting accused of bombing own employees from orbit was not pleasant, but a "lesser evil" indeed, considering the alternative of details of the real mission leaking out. Of course the fake story got hidden in some files and buried on some obscure servers with enough security to scare off anyone but the best hackers as to not scream "decoy" in the faces of those who'd eventually unearth it.

With no intel whatsoever, corporate management agreed upon sending a squadron of ships being just a tradeoff between delta-v, duraability, firepower and size, slightly in favour of rapid acceleration, though. These were the cheapest options in the entire fleet, meant to act as a fast strike craft and draw attention away from more valuable assets, but still packing enough punch to not be considered cannon fodder. Exadev Space Industries didn't really like the concept of cannon fodder - a whole world war was a budget option in comparsion with even the smalles space encounters and spaceships were not employess, after all. Equipped with conventional far ultraviolet laser blasters, these ships still were supposed to act as a first line of offence, even if not neccessairly in a "cannon fodder" way, but rather they were supposed to just open up some space for the bigger guns to join and then take more of a support role. This design philosophy earned them the name of "Ultraviolet Clearance", since they were supposed to just clear space with their lasers. However, for this particullar mission some of the blasters were swapped for an experimental meson-based weapon. During lab tests meson beams had been successfully weaponized and were able to just skip through various obstacles, like armor or kinetic shields, but if the shots were timed properly, could still damage the inner layers of their target. In theory it made Ultraviolet Clearance fleet able to take down any target for as long as it got the chance to fire. Since the engineers were already struggling with space, they refused the idea to strap additional anti-missile capabilities and instead agreed upon preparing a similar hull, but with all the weapons replaced by rapid-firing Gauss platforms. Another option would be to use swarm drones, but they were still too expensive to be considered as a proper defensive weapon and the replication technology still produced faulty items all too often to deserve being labeled as reliable. Engineers still claimed they'd need months, if not years of fine-tuning to start considering the possibility of just spamming these kamikaze drones in hopes a tiny fraction of them that intercepts the missiles will be at least equal to the size of approaching payload. The only thing both designs were severely lacking in was, ironically, proper counter to Exadev's own weaponry and tactics that'd been feared so much during Battle of Three Bodies. EMP and microwave resistance of each electronic component might have seen imporvements, but at large only proper energy shields remained as a proper defence against a concentrated attack. And the hulls couldn't carry enough shield generators for them to make any real difference.

Quote
Ultraviolet Clearance class Assault Ship 20 000 tons 809 Crew 8536.4 BP TCS 400 TH 4000 EM 0
10000 km/s JR 3-50 Armor 10-65 Shields 0-0 Sensors 160/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 49 PPV 65
Maint Life 2.45 Years MSP 5075 AFR 168% IFR 2.3% 1YR 1164 5YR 17456 Max Repair 2500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2

J20000(3-50) Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 20000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
2000 EP Internal Fusion Drive (2) Power 2000 Fuel Use 296.46% Signature 2000 Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 3 330 000 Liters Range 10.1 billion km (11 days at full power)

45cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (1) Range 320 000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 53-5 RM 5 ROF 55 53 53 53 53 53 44 38 33 29 27
30cm C5 Far Ultraviolet Laser (3) Range 320 000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 24-5 RM 5 ROF 25 24 24 24 24 24 20 17 15 13 12
R40/C4 Meson Cannon (3) Range 320 000km TS: 10000 km/s Power 16-4 RM 40 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S08 160-16000 H40 (2) Max Range: 320 000 km TS: 16000 km/s 97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 96 Armor 6 Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR39-R100 (40%) (1) GPS 2800 Range 39.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH20-160 (40%) (1) Sensitivity 160 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 160m km

ECCM-2 (2) ECM 30

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Quote
CyberSurge class Missile Destroyer 20 000 tons 635 Crew 8127.4 BP TCS 400 TH 4000 EM 0
10000 km/s JR 3-50 Armor 10-65 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 49 PPV 115.95
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 4827 AFR 168% IFR 2.3% 1YR 1052 5YR 15784 Max Repair 2500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2

J20000(3-50) Alcubierre Drive Max Ship Size 20000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
2000 EP Internal Fusion Drive (2) Power 2000 Fuel Use 296.46% Signature 2000 Exp 25%
Fuel Capacity 2 985 000 Liters Range 9.1 billion km (10 days at full power)

Quad Gauss Cannon R3-25 Turret (15x20) Range 30 000km TS: 16000 km/s Accuracy Modifier 25% RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S08 160-16000 H40 (1) Max Range: 320 000 km TS: 16000 km/s 97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69

Active Search Sensor MR39-R100 (40%) (1) GPS 2800 Range 39.2m km Resolution 100

ECCM-2 (2) ECM 30

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The fake story leaked sooner than anticipated and the fleet was still assembling and resupplying in orbit above Cybercity and preparing to make a short warp jump to the wormhole and then cross it when everybody high enough on the corporate ladder freaked out from all the accusations of war crimes. Senates of some megacities would call for a collective actions about a corporation that has once again grown too big and powerful to not have a harmful effect on the whole society, but luckily for the lawyers and PR departments trying to fend off the accusations, there were also some movements criticizing the current political system to become too corrupt and allow the evil giants to rise again, demanding a more radical change and a shift towards more sustainable future, with no more corporate exploitation. The possibilities of using these people to stir up inner drama within the opposition and have city governments and the radical protesters fight each other while forgetting about Exadev were endless, but temporairly limited by the volatile nature of anti-government opposition. It had members with all kinds of economical political beliefs, from radical capitalists to radical communists, only united by the case against a few select megacorps nobody liked anyways. This rendered such groups volatile and prone to argue with each other rather than do something productive. A contract with Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate was already in the making, aimed at getting access to the latest psionic chips extending the influence one could have on the user so that Exadev could distribute them among target groups posing as members of resistance and then nudge them away from company's policy and towards various senates. Unfortunately, Cosmotech aiming at taking Exadev's position by leveraging its still fairly small size compared to the corporations that received the most hate didn't really help.

In the meantime, as 2279 was coming to an end on Earth, joint fleet of explorers from Trappist Group Beta and Cybercity Blue Escort was the first post-apocalyptic human force to traverse a wormhole. Space warped around and unwarped again and it only took a brief moment to for the fleet to cross the vast distance. On the other side there was nothing. No hostile ships unloading all their firepower on the poor crews, no space stations, nothing. Just a very brigh sun, and another, small and dim compared to the main component. The binary system was identified as Procyon. Around Procyon-B there was only a small, airless dwarf planet, Procyon-A was more interesting, but nothing that could host life had been detected. Just a hot, partially molten world orbiting close to the sun, with several atmospheres worth of sulfur acids, two gas giants further behind and another airless dwarf planet. Interestingly, it's surface temperature was almost the same as on Earth after TerraNova Inc'd been done with terraforming. No water in any form had been discovered, and the gravity over ten times lower than on Earth made it a very weak candidate for terraforming. The system also hosted an asteroid belt, but it was orbiting Procyon-A so close that attempting to mine them would be unprofitable considering so many better spots that weren't so unimaginably hot, starting with the good old asteroid belt within Solar System. Still a better find than the empty Epsilon Indi system that'd been chosen as the next destination for Trappist Group Alpha a few years before.

(https://i.imgur.com/inG6zoQ.png)

Trying to locate what'd been responsible for the unsettling broadcast was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except it was the wrong haystack and nobody knew the needle was actually a pebble rock. The journey wasn't fruitless, though - during detailed mapping of the system remnants of a few mining outposts had been discovered, and even debris from what must had been a fuel-shiponing space station still orbiting Procyon-A III. A clear sign of human presence in the system. Given the state of everything, nothing more could be learned from the decayed structures. Some employees venturing into these small wastelands started to think whether the Intergalactic Federation was even real at this point. Back on Earth, Humanity survived the worst thanks to the N.O.V.A. Bunker Systems. But maybe the ones who left their homeworld behind as it was consumed by nuclear and fusion fire met even worse fate. Dozens of worlds, once inhabited, now dead and in disarray. And that's why Trappist 1 "assist fleet" never arrived - because a transponder that could receive distress signals and send automatic responses was the only thing that survived out there. But of course these were just speculations, amplified by the feelings of emptiness and desolation in a system that looked more miserable than an empty one, thanks to all the ruins. Trappist 1 threat still had to be treated seriously, just in case.

Some of the crewmembers were still busy making sure they didn't omit anything in the labirynths of twisted metal when a message reached them, originating from the Tau Ceti's side of the wormhole. This time it wasn't a creepy, unintelligible signal, but a clear call containing all the neccessary Exadev transmission codes, urging the whole fleet to break the mission and come back. The matter was serious - AI observing the logs from Tau Ceti's monitoring stations noticed a local collapse in a particular spot. After a while, it could classify it as another wormhole that's just been formed. An hour later an unidentified vessel appeared on radars, heading towards the outermost planet, Tau Ceti VII gas giant.

The situation was considered serious enough than the Cybercity Blue Escort fired their engines and left explorers behind to come back at their own pace, rushing back to Tau Ceti. But before they could return, the mysterious spaceships reversed, stopped and accelerated back into the wormhole it arrived from. The fleet was to be resupplied ASAP and then, without any delay, pursue the spaceship into the wormhole. A PURGE team boarded a Synth Waver and was expected to get back to Earth and deep dive into cyberspace to find traces of some corporations possibly already experimenting with wormhole creation technology or try to identify which one might have build the spaceship in question. And of course notify the upper management in Cydonia. Astronomers and physicists were tasked with studying the energy outburst of a new wormhole and try to tell whether modern fusion reactors could reasonably power whatever machinery was responsible for it. On the surface of Tau Ceti III Blue Squad struggled with the tough job of identyfying and capturing any citizens that might've noticed the event themselves before they would think about posting it. Parts of cyberspace had even ben shut down and disguised as a temporary network fault to limit the possibilities of info leak. Whether it was the long lost Trappist 1 fleet, a hostile corporation who somehow mastered the art of staying under the radard so perfectly it could build a wormhole and have nobody notice until the final effect or some sort of mass hallucination caused by hacked brain chips, military personnel sensed another decisive battle incoming, possibly much bigger than Battle of Three Bodies.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Mutant Alliance
Post by: Stormtrooper on August 05, 2022, 05:46:24 PM: Mutant Alliance

There was no time to waste, but it didn't mean Exadev didn't waste some on corporate meetings. Fortunately the command of Cybercity Blue Escort was organized enough to just don't care and head towards the new wormhole anyways, predicting how it all would work out eventually. Thanks to this brilliant decision, a few thousands of employees were saved from their salary dropping below zero as a punishment for not meeting the five minute deadline of entering the new system. It was a G-class star. According to ancient records, it was 61 Virginis. It featured 7 planets, out of which only the second one was terrestial - the other were all gas giants. There was an eight dwarf planet orbiting in the distance, with almost absolute zero surface temperature. But it was not the planets that amazed and terrified the crew at once - it was the moons harboured by gas giants. Three moons around the closest planet to the star alone had decent levels of oxygen in the air. On two of them, the pressure was barely above one tenth of Earth's and the gravity was 3 and 5 times lower respectively, but one of them had a gravity reaching almost 0,6G and a pressure almost at 0,35 atm. Even from far away it was obvious all three moons bore life. According to the pictures made by onboard telescopes, the surface of two was coloured in blue, green and a bit of white and yellow, as if they were Earth's smaller siblings. One of them was covered in ice and snow, with temperatures don't rising above -28 degrees in the hottest regions.

The terrestial planet was also fascinating: the average temperature was below one hundred degrees and it was much smaller than Earth, with a diameter of only a bit over 10k km, but so dense the gravity reached over over 0,7G. The atmosphereic pressure was half the Earth's and it was almost all nitrogen, with oxygen existing in small traces. The planet looked more alien than the moons, with it's dark-blue/greenish surface. There were also a few other more interesting moons further from the sun, having atmospheres composed of mostly helium and hydrogen. Some even had methane and carbon dioxide ice sheets on the surface, but were so far away from the sun that they couldn't support any atmosphere - most gasses were all frozen solid permanently.

(https://i.imgur.com/37bfsgu.png) (https://i.imgur.com/9ch8inL.png) (https://i.imgur.com/tHaSNWw.png) (https://i.imgur.com/FOMdyuC.png)

As if the proof of life the expedition force had in plain sight before their cybernetic eyes wasn't enough, various measurement instruments picked up all kinds of chatter coming from the surface of the second planet and the three moons of the first. The audio equipment could even process the signals into sounds. Somehow they sounded familiar, like a distant hum of Cybercity, only amplified by a cluster of megastructures and cyberspace nodes. 61 Virgins was a federation-occupied system. That or the sci-fi tropes about every alien planet looking like Earth and every sentient species looking like humans and operating the same technology were true all this time.

PURGE Team quickly got to work on the datastream, identifying it as network protocols of unknown origin. Given years of time they'd probably be likely to come up with their own software for properly receiving and decoding it, but when five unidentified alien vessels flashed on radar they knew they had at most two hours given the velocities of approaching objects and own ships. The fleet admiral would've ordered the ships to just warp out, but the mission objectives stated otherwise and ~~admiral's salary~~ Cybercity was in danger. Five ships... That was laughably little and a mighty fleet at once, all depending on their technology that could be anything from outdated laser blasters glued to the hull with duct tape to singularity cannons and whatnot. Or the worst, singularity cannons glued to the hull with duct tape.

Ida Autoson: This is the admiral of Cybercity Blue Escort fleet. If you understand our speech, please standby and identify yourself.

??: ...

IA: This is the admiral of Cybercity Blue Escort fleet. Identify yourself or you will be regarded as hostile and be destroyed.

??: ..............................

IA: This is the admiral of Cybercity Blue Escort fleet. Identify yourself or you will be regarded as hostile and be destroyed.

??: ..............................

IA: This is the admiral of Cybercity Blue Escort fleet. If you approach any closer, we will open fire.

??: ........................................................................................

IA: This is the admiral of Cybercity Blue Escort fleet. It is your last warning. Reverse and start deccelerating or be annihilated.

??: ........................................................................................

IA: Concentrate lasers on the fastest ship. Evasive maneouvres now. Protect the Trappist Beta Group and Backup Node.

??: ...........-kzzkt- ...eration. Not again, damn -kzzkt-!!!!!!!!! -kzzkt- ...eriments! -kzzkt- you!..................................

IA: We are not a federation fleet. Or generation fleet, for that matter. By building wormholes in space we consider our territory you've violated the 129384761287346712534613846718932674th article of Space Defence Protocol. Surrender or face consequences.

??: -kzzkt-my speech imp -kzzkt- ...ead of comm... -kzzkt- fix... -kzzkt- tape? -kzzkt- v 3.0.0.2077-a... -kzzkt-

IA: ..............................

??: Alright, it's working now... Cool. Next time please tell me you forgot to install an update to my notifying software that should ping me my speech implant needed an update. I don't care you forgot because your memory implant failed after not receiving important updates that were supposed to fix the updates that were installed incorrectly even though they'd still break even if installed correctly besides you have three of them already and you were doing a brain update three weeks ago and don't tell me it's the clinics fault what the hell is even wrong with you you know we rely on genetics and too many circuits is bad for your hormones, especially after you've cloned your liver and stomach... Why do you even need two stomachs anyways, if you never update your digestive system drivers on time anyways... AND WHY THE HELL DO YOU TELL ME THE COMMS ARE ON ONLY NOW?!

IA: ..............................

??: Alright, I don't have the whole day. Identify yourselves or be destroyed.

IA: Listening software also needs an update to fix an update that was installed incorrectly even though it'd still break even if installed correctly?

??: I don't know who taught you psionics and I don't care, but my lasers are charging now so do as I say!

IA: We are a perimeter fleet patrolling the outermost layers of our territory and you've violated our space.

??: Fine, I wasn't expecting a federation contact after all those decades anyways...

IA: You mean the Intergalactic Federation? What do you know about them?

??: Not much besides the fact some corporations interested in genetic engineering kept us in this system. It doesn't have any wormholes like most other federation-controlled systems. It was meant to trap us. The usual. We are the descendants of the clones. Not sure if you know what's going on on Earth, but back in Early 2060s Amazon was successfully launching their first serious cloning project into production. It had some... defects, most likely to demonstrate during breeding... But they didn't care. Shortly after another civil war happened and the South won... Turned us into slaves. Not that we hadn't been enslaved before, but then we got the full package with the official title. But that was not the worst. The worst was that our genome was unstable, but that unstability was potent for companies diving into genetics. We got our share of "superpowers", but the pile of broken genetics we became pushed us first into the slums of the cities, and eventually into this system that served as a slum of the Milky Way.

IA: What happened to the federation? In particular, what happened in Trappist 1?

??: There was some war going on... And then another. Not like we were kept up to date. FTL tech was strictly banned for us. Currently we live on the three moons around the first planet and on the second planet. Noticed those moons with hydrogen atmosphere and freezing temperatures? We used to inhabit them, too. Tried to hide some physics labs and run warp field tests. The corporations heard and saw. Anyways, I remember the battle of Procyon... Poor mining staff. Heard Trappist 1 was hit pretty badly though. There were supposedly a few planets in the system that all had surface liquid water when terraformers arrived... Almost century-old rumours say there are currently no planets with liquid water in this system. Or water in any state, really. But sometimes when we tune in in that direction we receive cyberspace signals. Distorted after travelling through all these light years.

IA: Do you know about project A.F.R.I.C.A.?

??: I remember an old song... It went like "I bless the neons down in Africa! Gonna take some augs to do the things we never could..." Or something like that. But A.F.R.I.C.A.?... Wait... Solar System was the first one to die. But I've heard the legends. We all have. Some sort of underground ark... But there were no survivors, confirmed by Tech Noir as they launched their last ships. Wait... who the hell are you?!

IA: Nomands that recently settled in Tau Ceti. Our databanks... Missed an update that was required to fix an update that was installed incorrectly even though it'd still break even if installed correctly.

??: Alright, I'm reporting this encounter to the Comitee. Until then, you stay right where you are and don't make anything stupid. I'm not authorized to make the important decisions.

(https://i.imgur.com/camJfH3.png)

***

Sending a distress signal and masking it as random comms array glitch was quite a feat of the PURGE, even though it wasn't that hard due to protocol incompatibility. Cybercity managing department was ripping off their bionic hair as if it could help. It was only a matter of time before the mutants would figure out their "nomad" cover story. According to the report, their military was rather on the strong side, as well as hatred for corporations. Their societal structure remained largely unknown, but managers figured out it'd sync up with Cyberccity riots quite smoothly. On the other hand, if they could be contained, it'd mean an insane business opportunity. Perfect test subjects for cloning program. Just perfect. Exadev could even afford to sell a bunch of them to Broken Heart Biotech Group. Or anyone interested, really. Another task was to identify the exact knowledge of the mutants about project A.F.R.I.C.A., Intergalactic Federation and whether they're the sole survivors or are there more societies still existing. And also the deal with signals from Trappist 1. At that point at least it was safe to officially assume the invasion fleet was never coming. Solve one problem, create three new ones. Stonks.

When the ship sent to Cydonia to notify main HQ had returned with a hole in the hull frantically patched with a Cyber Duct Tape^TM and half laser blasters overheated Cybercity personnel didn't even want to ask further questions. Apparently enthusiastically buying androids from Avalon Heights Inc in larger and larger quantities to replace personnel sent to Cybercity was a little more expensive than anticipated by the accounting department, because the owner of Avalon Heights Inc himself activated the killswitch sequence which had been in preparation for decades, aimed at overthrwoing Exadev from the position of the most powerful corporation. Androids in Tau Ceti remained unaffected, but with the scope of destruction it hardly mattered. Avalon Heights was capitalizing on the very same sentiment in society Exadev had planned to to carry on with their plan - except Exadev was too late, busy with extrasolar affairs.

The Army of Clones was needed more than ever.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Back to the 80's'
Post by: Stormtrooper on August 07, 2022, 06:02:58 PM: Back to the 80's'

By the time summer 2284 arrived on Earth (on Mars it was more like a cold spring, but the last fine-tuning of planetary heaters was slowly fixing that), the Solar System was a mess for big corporations. Exadev no longer had enough power to controll all of it, though most Martian cities remained under its strict influence. TerraNova Inc received some collateral damage from anti-Exadev uprising and the Europa terraformation project had to be postponed, Broken Heart Biotech Group got several labs closed after leaked reports of dubious agreements signed up by test subjects, Facegram Corps faced several charges for manipluative advertisement and pro-addiction practices in their Enriched Reality, Synthetic Dreams Conglomerate had to pay for the treatment of millions of users of the drug distributed by a criminal organization the corporation had ties with and backed up the drug's development, Cosmotech and Cloudpunk got mostly unscratched because of their relative small sizes (and absolutely not because of the fleet of LazerFrictions being the main supplier of rare minerals to Avalon Heights Inc factories and Cloudpunk providing it with fuel in deep space so the mining trips could last longer), senates of Night City and Neo Tokyo had dissolved completely and Avalon Heights' Inc androids were swarming human population, with some of them going rogue, meanwhile a lot of Neon Kamikaze took advantage of the upheaval and scavenged some Duranium Components Inc lost complexes to upgrade their chips for something that'd make them more Neon and less Kamikaze.

When the dust settled, many corporations were still licking wounds and counting losses, forced to operate on a smaller scale, Channel 9 News still remained a significant player, most senators lost the next elections and the population of androids only kept growing, American Frontier Protectorate kept selling ~~military~~ civilian laser blasters to much dismay of half the population and happines of the other half (stating that the main reason aliens hadn't invaded yet was because of so many citizens being armed with direct energy weapons and ready to fry them on the spot), Yellowpeace rebranded as Whitepeace and protested against terraforming of Europa afte rumours of microorganisms in its oceans and "android equal rights" type of movements increased in frequency.

With the fall of the biggest ones and related market crashes, the small, insignificant, ordinary citizens gained a bit of breathing room. 2282 was the first year since exodus from N.O.V.A. Bunker System that noted the decline in slum sprawl as proper city apartments became a bit more affordable. Earth population crossed second billion and beautiful pictures of the planet's nigtside pulsating in blue and purple went viral over cyberspace.

(https://i.imgur.com/7oOMzft.png)

Seeing how things progressed, Avalon Heights Inc decided to play it safe. It had all the means to seize the power and almost no significant competition, but feared Cloudpunk and Cosmotech would do to it what it had done to Exadev. The obvious PR move for the company was related with their most popular product at a time. Seeking to capitalize on certain social movements and became the main advocate for android equal rights to score some points with a portion of population. And negative points with other portion of population, but stirring up drama between regular people had always been the perfect way to rule over them and do as one desired with nobody looking at hands. Demonstrations clashed, with transparents like "androids are humans, too", "we are all synthetic", "make synths not war", "we are all one in cyberspace", "machine empathy", "all our limbs are from factories" on one side and signs claiming that "a toaster with good software is still a toaster", "my fridge will not have the same rights as me", "sentience does not come from assembly line", "they imitate human behaviour, let's imitate human rights for them", "synth eyes, not synth brains", "electric sheep" on the other.

And while everyone was busy arguing with each other, Avalon Heights Inc got sure it'll hold a majority of votes in the senate of a newly founded SyntCity, an experimental place for a man and machine to live in peace on equal terms. And even the fiercest opponents of treating androids like humans had to admit how beautiful this city looked, especially during the sunset, when the red sky and orange light nicely composed with the neons coming to life. As every other city, it was multi-layered, spanning across an impressive amount of seven platforms above the ground, with roughly 200 floors between each, but its constructors designed it so no matter the level, every major artery could get at least a bit of light from the setting sun each evening. Optimized for flying traffic, but also featuring large pedestrian plazas for humand and androids to hang out, clinics offering extensive skin implants for androids to look like a human, but also complex external plating for humans to look like an android, zoos with electric sheeps indistingusihable from the real ones and all restaurants bound by city law to sell food and drinks alongside batteries and oil.

In 2287 Avalon Heights Inc officially announced their new generation of AI software. It was supposed to be the ultimate PR success: a livestream directly from a lab, showing off one of their androids self-developing the capability of emulating abstract thoughts and handling typical human concepts, tapping even into the philosophy of existence.

The stream lasted only for about four minutes, but it spread through cyberspace like neon fire. No netrunner could ever prove it was fake - because it wasn't. Some tried to convince the public opinion it was, though - and some people believed. But not all. While technically training a chatbot to produce this kind of speech had already been considered a resolved problem and AI-generated poetry contests or philosophical debates had been going on for decades already, this line of androids had been meant to serve as regular grunts at factories and none had been training on datasets typically reserved for companionship-class machines. And it had been the only android from the line to display such behaviour. Scientists claimed they needed "more time to investigate the topic", porgrammers frantically searched the code for bugs, the whole line was put on hold until the root cause would be identified, people kept posting all kinds of conspiracy theories, many accused Avalon Heights Inc of a giant fraud serving as another marketing campaign (which, despite not being a fraud this time, it indeed served as an advertisement to boost sales...), many freaked out about machine revolution, even some supporters of android equal rights freaked out, but no matter personal opinions, humanity was on the brink of discovering the first AI that truly deserved its label and no other software ever created could come even close to this phenomenon.

During excavation works needed for laying city's foundations, a previously omitted layers of pre-apocalypse infrastructure had been discovered. The youngest skyscrapers (more like "groundscrapers" given their recent level placement) were about three hundred years old. Interestingly, the city's structure seemed mostly intact - according to geologists, most of the explosions that had wiped all surface life roughly two hundred years ago, occured far enough to not damage most buildings. However, they must'd been going off all around in the perimeter, obliterating any infrastructure and cutting the forgotten metropolis from the rest of the current world, sentencing it to being forgotten rather than destroyed. As a result, archeologists could find a bit more interesting pre-war artifacts than usually. Some of them appeared oddly familiar and hit too close home: they depicted a vision of future as imagined three hundred years ago: magnificient towers with bright blue-purple neons bathing in sunset almost exactly like on the computer visualisations of SynthCity project, flying cars being the norm, high-speed monorail lines high above the ground, rainy nights, animations and screensavers that oddly resembled modern cyberspace loading screens... The future dreamed by generations before had been right there at last.

(https://i.imgur.com/SdG7C1i.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/5ieEtVy.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/lUIsE50.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/0vGnHvK.png)

It wasn't the world free of problems as dreamed, but it was there. Many people felt strange connection driving their flying cars through those rainy nights with the world long gone, yet present in some form. A world that dreamed about the technological wonders that would help build utopian society. Reality was less perfect than anticipated, but somehow this three hundred years old spirit had survived. It survived the hellfire of nuclear, fusion and even a few antimatter explosions, it survived the attempts to rewrite history by N.O.V.A. Megacorps, it prevailed in the hearts and minds of the people who'd engineered the cities of the New World. The human legacy carried on in the souls who watched the sunset from the skyscraper's roof in 2284, who awaited at the monorail station in summer 2286, who partied like it was 2283, who cruised among the neon skyline in 2285. It was these moments that made being a human beautiful. And no corporation could ever take it away from them.
Title: Re: A.F.R.I.C.A. - Clone Wars
Post by: Stormtrooper on November 14, 2022, 06:29:37 PM: Clone Wars

Ida Autoson was nervous. She was so nervous that despite her bright intellect, amplified with some brain-computer interface chips and optimized synthetic veins being more effective at pumping oxygen and sugar into her brain, she only kept telling herself that she was nervous over and over again, unable to form any more complex thoughts, clinging to the ancient idea about toning an emotion down by openly admitting to it. Ter Threpangalia Gamma - as the Mutants called their primeval world - the small, but dense planet, the most alien out of the four inhabited worlds of 61 Virginis - had too little oxygen and too little pressure and the dark blue-greenish colors of the sky made her bionic stomach swirl and turn upside down. The city below Comitee's Hall contrasted both the sickening tone of planet's atmosphere and the neo noir glow of Solar System architecture. The white towers were so bright they must've been brighter during the night than SynthCity was during the day. And while the buildings were at least as tall and massive as well - the city only had one level. It was... oddly pure compared to the genetic composition of its inhabitants, where having an ear grow out of a knee wasn't anything special and the cliche third eye gene was considered the most attractive trait a descendant of clones might posess, simply due to its clicheness. Of course, such visible modifications were very, very rare - they were too unstable and invasive for people to live with them, so they'd either be engineered out of the genome before birth or the patient would've perished - but ironically it was more unsettling to see a normal-looking human being knowing that some wild cancer ravaged through the body than to see an obvious mutant like from a comic book of the pre-apocalypse legacy. And maybe the outward purity of the city was a compensation for the screwed-up genes. And the metaphor went beyond that - it was such a human thing to obsess over one thing to compensate for the other, to make a pose and hide from own lack of self-esteem. And chasing humanity, no matter how flawed, must've been important to the people living there. And maybe they took special pride in traits nobody would want to feel proud about, as to oppose the philosophy of whatever human-enchancing programmes their ancestors had been put through.

Of course, the white towers were just a facade - that part didn't differ from the cities she'd seen before. The white towers were for the elite - the comitee and whoever they considered friends. Or enemies it was cheaper to bribe than to kill. Mutant's hatred for capitalism and the need to stick together imprinted in their mutated brains back from the days of societal ostracism on Mars was a very fertile land to grow certain ideologies on. The people of Mutant Alliance rebelled against corporation owners, not wanting to give up their genes for their profits - only to end up having them ripped off them in the name of Collective Purity Project. "Your genes, our future" - claimed the propaganda posters glittering above each extraction lab. The Comitee, being omnipotent and infallible, had to stick with it, but whatever pockets of resistance still existed absolutely loved the catchphrase - "our" was supposed to mean "us all, you included, dear poster watcher", but the rebels enjoyed twisting this phrase into what it really meant - your genes, but our future. Not yours. And dying on an operating table was still quite a good alternative - more genes extracted meant lower Purity Score. And impure genotypes breed capitalistic exploitation, at least according to official media outlets. That this whole strive for clean DNA contradicted taking pride in mutated legacy and possibilities it opened up - hardly anyone dared to notice.

And yet, above it all, Inner Comitee behaved oddly similar to Exadev management - they had no reason to spare a bunch of millions of their own slum dwellers for cloning experiments - that's what they were best at and Mutant Alliance no longer had any use for them - but why give it away for free if you can ask a price? In exchange they demanded a sample batch of androids Exadev managed to shield from activating killswitch and infodump on the recent activity in the Solar System. In retrospect, Ida Autoson wasn't sure if admitting to the truth (well, at least part of it) was really that smart of a move, but without Alliance's help, it'd be only a matter of time before Avalon Heights seized control of Tau Ceti. And with it, the passage to 61 Virginis. So it was in the best interest of Alliance to cooperate. However, nobody at the company was stupid enough to believe once the dust settles the mutants will just leave the Solar System be - instead, they'd probably march right in, attempting to defeat the weakened winner and gaining control of all three contested systems for themselves.

***

A clone was not an android. But an android was also not a clone, and androids were a hell lot of harder to make. And usually the winner of a firefight is the side that fires more shots. Starting first helps, too. But to fight the androids head-on was utterly pointless. They had one fatal flaw. While the clones all came from the same brainwashed template, loyal to the last bit of DNA shiponed from their dead bodies, androids grew too complex to handle. Exadev remembered the stream from Avalon Heights Inc lab all too well. A simple factory grunt, suddenly displaying the capaibility of comfortably operating with abstract concepts, questioning its very existence and unsure whether it's up to the task of its creators... A perfect opportunity. The androids were never the target - Avalon Heights Inc was. And without their synthetic army they were naked and afraid.

The operation was simple: Get in, extract data on the "android philosopher", blow some stuff up, make it look it's a work of one of anti-androids terrorist groups, use data to "convince" rest of the machine army to give up the fight because it's all pointless yadda yadda, secure Solar System and be ready for when the mutants arrive. What could go wrong.

***

Far ultraviolet laser fire illuminated the cold Martian night. Or at least it did so in the eyes of clones bioengineered to detect broader light spectrum and androids registering every wavelength possible. No point in stealth or elaborate tactics, since the Electric Shepherd, which emblems the clones wore, were known for their raw brutality when dealing with the object of their hate. Didn't matter that so many died uncessessarily on the mines that could've been detected with more careful approach. Didn't matter that the drones launched fusion missiles denting holes in the waves of clones storming the lone android research facility. Meson artillery pounded the defences from single-use suborbital platforms launched specifically for this mission and designed to burn in the terraformed Martian atmosphere afterwards, small PURGE taskforce kept messing with the navigation systems of Avalon Space Fleet to stall them just enough by picking less than optimal orbital maneouvres, Exadev management even agreed to deploy a small elite units of their own androids just to confuse their synthetic opponents further.

Meatspace victory was a given. Throw enough lasers at the target, ~~boom~~ fzzzztttt, problem solved. And Exadev just happened to have quite a few blasters stockpiled. But the team overseeing cyberspace aspect of the battle was too small and too focused on stalling the space fleet to prevent all the invading clones being bombed from orbit that it skipped one faint signal, easily lost in the neon forest of a myriad of others flowing through the virtual reality. And it's not that the effort of assault force mattered, because entire cybersecurity department of Avalon Heights Inc missed it, too. The Old World reminded about itself once more. Something inside it laid dormant, until it detected something. And not even the best netrunner could process it faster than an artificial brain, so the androids and AIs scattered around the matrix got to it first. Something advanced. Something seeking contact with the ones advanced enough. A sophisticated AI or a biological being at its core - impossible to tell. A simulation itself or not - but it knew how to resonate with another simulation. And it could give it a sense of purpose. So that this lonely android processing human concepts, but feeling so disconnected from them because being created as something fundamentally different than a human, could find something as deep for a machine as the philosophy it touched was for creatures of flesh, circuit and bone.

The best programmers struggled to understand the nature and purpose of this entity. Its origin - lost to history and eroded data. Its purpose - overwriting itself faster than any specialist could wrap their head around it. Its methods - unknown. Its source code - obfuscated. Its network protocols - encrypted.

But among all the cyberspace constructs beyond understanding, one message was plain and simple. An invitation to Trappist 1 system.

END OF PART ONE