Utopia War

Chapter 21 - Making An Example (ii)

The yellow-dwarf star Thigguroth was more than half enclosed by billions of underwater habitats. They orbited Thigguroth like so much dust. This gave the star its characteristic dimness when viewed from other worlds.

The solar collectors on the bottom of these orbitals captured a staggering percentage of the total energy output of the star, and this number creeped higher every century. This was the Grand Design of the Old Ones: to one day capture 100% of the star's total energy output. The transcendence of such efficiency held a religious appeal to the Old Ones.

Every colony, every outpost, every excursion made by the Old Ones to the stars beyond their home was all made in service of this multi-generational goal. The closest literal translation for the name of this construction was "The School of All". The preferred nomenclature was to refer to it as the World Ocean.

Surrounding the World Ocean, one of the great marvels of Old One science, was the Tesseract Shield. A defense field so massive it encompassed the radius of more than an astronomical unit around a star, and so sophisticated that to reached out into the 5th dimension, the Tesseract Shield made the Old One home star impregnable by most conventional hyperspace travel.

Of course, 6th dimensional hyperdrives made passing through the shield like stepping over so many painted lines.

The first sign of the humans was all of the hyperscanners around Thiggoroth suddenly becoming jammed at once. The second was dozens of ships exiting hyperspace inside the Tesseract Shield.

Countless weapons of innumerable forms and types opened fire at the humans ships and the sheer overwhelming firepower saw to it that they were quickly blown to particles. This, however, turned out to be playing into the human's hands. The first wave of ships had been an uncharacteristic sacrifice. They were cover for the second wave.

These ships, before the World Ocean's defenses could re-calibrate, dove for the cover of the orbitals. The defenders could not attack them without risking harming the Grand Design, and this was enough for most of them to cease firing. The humans were left to begin disarming the orbitals with their EMFMs, tearing off weapon pods and shield modules.

Once a sizable hole had been ripped into the defensive perimeter a new ship, the size of space station, exploded into the third dimension. Two heavy-duty weaponized EMFMs, the most powerful ever built by humans, came online. The weapons aimed for the new ship, heedless of what damage they could potentially cause to the orbitals. It was too late. The humans had established electromagnetic supremacy.

* * *

"The humans wish to establish contact!" read the chemicals of some frantic, nameless subordinate.

"Do so!" Elder Chitinsoul's communication chemicals were twinged with irritation.

The far-excreter began to brew the complex soup of the human computer's communique.

"I have a message for the Old Ones on behalf of the Human Consensus: We have never offered you hostility, but you should not misconstrue peace for weakness. I don't want the galaxy to mistake us. It is past time that attacking the Human Consensus have consequences."

"This portents poorly," added Elder Thickenzyme.

"I'm not sure what you expected to gain by taking Ran," added the human computer "I imagine you wanted to pull it apart and see what you could learn about it's construction. What would that have gotten you a thousand years off the timeline of your Grand Design? Two thousand?

"We are going to dismantle your industrial capacity so thoroughly that you'll lose more time in your precious Grand Design then you ever could have hoped to gain. That is, if you're lucky, and one of the many polities you've antagonized doesn't seize upon your weakness.

"You will eventually rebuild but you'll never fully recover from this. Your people, as a whole, will be diminished. In the aftermath I'm certain my people will condemn me. They will offer you aid, because that is our way. But for the same reasons they will condemn me, they will be unwilling to do what it would take to stop me. I want you to remember, and to tell your children, that attacking the Concensus has consequences."

"We demand-" began Elder Chitinsoul, but the communication was cut.

Outside, the humans were already making good on their promise.