And Zygot is willing to climb on the bandwagon too!
Lasitus is willing to join the winning team as well, but only if I throw in a ridiculous bribe. Suuuuuure. I trust the honorable little lemur about as far as my smallest newborn larva can throw him. He'd probably just thank me for the bribe and break the alliance next year if I agreed.
More good news keeps rolling in: Tritanium Armor exists! I can now build my starships from material that appears to overlap itself in space and time! This incredibly strong form of matter gives me hope that I can cut the costs of factory construction in half yet again, and I at once pursue Improved Industrial Tech 2!
My diplomats are still hard at work, bombing every Silicoid world they can reach, and my allies (and even the unreliable Humans) are very happy with me. One of my spies grabs the Silicoids' plans for ECM Jammer Mark I at their Jinga colony - every little bit helps, I suppose - and in 2305, apart from the little matter of my relations with Sedimin, all seems well in the galaxy! A working laboratory prototype of Ion Stream Projector finally manages to complete its test sequence without disintegrating the test equipment, and the principles involved in fixing the problem, combined with those that led to Tritanium, suggest yet more conventional-physics-defying possibilities! I would have little use for a tachyon beam, and I don't know that Pulson missiles would be all that much more effective than the Stingers I'm already using, but a rocket payload that seems to overlap itself in spacetime would make it possible to build Scatter Pack VII Missiles, increasing my level of defensive security from "Absolute" to "You've Gotta Be Kidding Me!" Meanwhile, my two best friends are now right on the same page as me, with relations at off-the-charts Harmony, and Lasitus - perhaps sensing the way the wind is blowing - agrees to a full alliance, and joins the party! He had briefly made peace with the Silicoids, but I persuade him to rejoin the universal war against them immediately. So what's the next matter to come before me, in 2407?
Lasitus, I hate to tell you this, but breaking an alliance with the largest and most powerful civilization in the galaxy, whose most heavily fortified, impenetrable defenses are right on your border, is not the way to get those star systems of which you are supposedly in dire need. I suspect you have another reason for your actions, but I can't tell which it is: Manic-Deppressive Disorder or Multiple Personalities?
Something's seriously wrong with those Humans, but I don't have time to work out what it is. I'm busy with my beloved research projects! 2408 sees the development of Advanced Space Scanners and my latest factory construction technology, all of which makes it possible to start initial plans for Improved Robotic Controls V (or, as usual, a superior battle computer) and Adamantium Armor - another purely theoretical substance that might just be possible, based on the way our Advanced Scanners' subspace waves behave in Maalor's vicinity.
With that established, I am at last able to turn my attention to the stars once more, and see all of them, at last, in all their glory!
Wait ... wait ... wait! Let me see that again! This data didn't all come from the scanners I just designed!
By Artemis herself! My Scanners are interacting with a data center somewhere on the surface of the Guardian's world ... and the world is named Orion! The Klackon legends, the Human legends, and legends of which I've learned from both the Psilons and Bulrathi since our alliance began, all speak of this fated pair - Orion the hunter, and holy Artemis the huntress who defeated him. I see now how to awaken the triad; I must live this legend! From the knowledge gained at my beloved world of Artemis, I must create the means of defeating Orion's Guardian!
2410-2424: Prelude
All my worlds ensure that their infrastructure is as strong as it can be, and continue to research in close coordination with each other, as part of me. I am rewarded with the development of Scatter Pack missiles in 2413, and ignore the hand phasors and plasma cannon that I see are possible in light of the Scatter payload-phasing experiments, putting all the energy I can instead into the development of the other weapon they seem to suggest is possible: a Gauss Autocannon.
When Jimbo returns in 2415, I ask him to put me through to Lasitus, and offer a non-agression pact again. The Human emperor shakes his head sadly, explaining that he hardly dares trust me with all the treaties that have been broken between us already - every one of them by him! I laugh him right off the holo transmitter, and laugh Jimbo half way back home.
The last glitches in our Adamantium Armor tests are identified in 2416: I have been creating trace amounts of an even denser and more resilient phased material than Adamantium, and proceed with all possible speed to find ways of isolating it in larger quantities: Neutronium Armor is my next construction priority! I perfect my enhanced factory controls the very next year, and with the seven-dimensional subnanocoding this allows, prepare to work on Battle Computer Mark VIII, in lieu of advanced ECM. And Sedimin proves he's an even better comedian than Lasitus:
Suuuuuuuuure, kiddo. I'll tell you what: Go ahead and make peace with the Bulrathi and Psilons, and when you no longer need me to break an alliance I hoped for and worked toward for hexades on end, then you can come back and talk to me about ending this war that I'm winning in my sleep.
Not literally in my sleep of course - as a reflexive biological organism, I do not sleep - but certainly without paying it much attention; my thoughts are on other things ... like Neutronium Armor. In 2322, I complete construction of the most structurally perfect substance in the galaxy, and can think of no way to improve upon it. I don't believe it's quite impossible - that was said about Tritanium, now long supplanted by superior versions - but it will take long study of every possible permutation of construction science to find a way. I begin with armored exoskeletons, the only project I can think of in the field that isn't already obsolete!
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Next: The Challenge
