... and even more so at Uxmai, in the nebula. The latter also has a fleet of almost a hundred fifty medium defenders, bearing Heavy Ion Cannons and Neutron blasters, but most of my remaining Huntress fleet is present for the battle, and...
...mine are better.
Sadly, my fleets are not good at orbital bombardment, a serious problem since the warnings I received from Zygot appear to be only too true. Nexus informs me that the Humans have secret labs at Uxmai, where they are attempting to duplicate their ancient bioplagues! They seem to be setting up similar equipment at Sol and Denubius - only their Kulthos colony, too new to begin such advanced work, is clean. The others will need some sanitation teams.
OOC Note:Okay, okay, so there's no such thing as Ancient Designer Bioplague Technology in Master of Orion, and I wouldn't know the Humans were researching it if they were, and there's no such thing as friendship with the GNN droid, and, and, and. This game is thoroughly over, and I'm deciding what to do at this point purely on the basis of scoring and roleplaying, so this report is taking a few creative liberties. I hope that's okay....My other discoveries in 2442 are far more pleasant: I now have functional Pulse Phasors, and in spite of the new projects this suggests to me, I decide to research Ion Cannons next to better understand the Humans and their conventional armament. And more importantly, I have confirmed all my theories about pre-Tritanium factory construction, and am ready to forge ahead with Advanced Construction Tech I: materials physics techniques never before conceived in the galaxy!
Meanwhile, I'm building Cleanup 6.0s to purge the last remnants of plague labs from Human worlds. Their maneuverability class is only 3, but they carry our Mark 8 computers ... and six nuclear bombs apiece!
Various Human fleets are showing up at my worlds, where they occasionally scratch the armor of a Huntress (they even destroy one - yes, one - at one point) in the course of being dismantled by small fleets of Huntresses and/or my Scatter Pack bases. Their bases and fleets at Denubius fall without incident to my Maneaters and Huntresses, and troops are dispatched to take the planet and dispose of the Humans' biolabs before they can start designing plagues. My initial Cleanup bombardment of Uxmai meanwhile shows Zygot that my war is not phony, and with his remaining mistrust of me banished, he comes to discuss strategy with me.
I explain the Uxmai situation to him gravely, and ask for his recommendations on how to deal with the labs there without putting my people or the galaxy's at risk. He answers grimly with a line from - ironically - an ancient human cultural treasure: "Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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Next: Modern Technology
