Chapter 7038: The Red Fleet’s Salvation

เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 มี.ค. 2569 17:22

The Dominators finished their battle the fastest among the three Cyber warfleets. Their new tech spooked the native aliens and drove them away before they could put up a proper fight. That was regrettable, but the live footage still contained enough demonstrations of the new tech put to use. It was pretty clear to Ves that the 76th Dominators Warfleet basically served as a vassal to the Heavy Ordnance Tower. In turn, the Heavy Ordnance Tower served as the Polymath's designated managers, custodians and maintainers of all of the new tech related to physical munitions. Ves grew more and more certain that a polity as large as the Cybernetic Empire could never be truly united as the Polymath desired. Instead of letting different factions emerge and cause chaos within her dominion, the Polymath must have decided to create her own factions in the form of the Thirteen Towers. This way, every major faction of her empire would at least be centered around productive research and industrial activity. The Cybers would be more inclined to compete against each other to earn more wealth, resources, talent and most importantly their sovereign's favor. Although there were definite downsides to making the Thirteen Towers so dominant in society, the Polymath must have made a careful calculus that proved that the benefits were worth the price. "What do you think about what you have seen and listened to our discussion, kids?" Ves suddenly asked. While they were just children, the three brats were also smart and precocious in their own ways. "I don't like the Dominators." Andraste voiced her opinion first. "They are boring. They clearly don't value their mechs because they are only there to protect their warships. It is all about heavy firepower for this fleet. While the big guns are powerful, there is no heroism behind their use. You don't even need people to man and control the guns. You just need to program the smart AIs to time the use of the new missiles and rounds and make sure they don't open fire at the wrong targets." That was a typical answer from a mech-obsessed child. Andraste's words proved to be quite insightful. She was right. The development of the Dynapulse and Polybite made warships more relevant again. The enemy phase lords needed to take human warships a lot more seriously once the new munitions became more prevalent. However, the new munitions also lowered the importance of ace pilots and reduced red humanity's dependence on their champions. This was good as there were simply too few ace pilots to cover every battlefield, but it was also bad because this development might cause their growth to slow down. High-ranking mech pilots had long cemented their position as humanity's best troubleshooters. They defeated the undefeatable and created miracles on the battlefield. Everyone had good reasons to believe that the ultimate way to end the Red War was to make their god pilots strong enough to force the entirety of the Red Cabal to surrender or die. "The Red Fleet has no choice but to cooperate with the Cybernetic Empire." Aurelia made a more politically insightful remark. "The RF has been one of the greatest losers of the Great Severing. It is cut off from the vast amount of warships left behind in the Milky Way. The ones they have left in the Red Ocean clearly is not enough to maintain territorial supremacy over human-occupied space, let alone the Red Ocean Union. They also lack power players in the form of god pilots and Star Designers. The only source of hope they have is a living dreadnought in the form of the Dominion of Man, but she and her crew have long fallen into the palm of the Polymath." In other words, the Red Fleet had turned from one of the two hegemons of human civilization into the weakest 'major power' of the new frontier! The fleeters had not stood still. Despite their reputation for being old-fashioned and sticklers for tradition, they had made a few earnest efforts to keep up with the rapid changes by adopting living AIs and letting at least some space peasants play around with warships, but that was not enough to offset their massive decline in reputation, power and military assets. This was why the performance of the Dominators was so astonishing to them. The superior tech developed by one of the ultimate mech designers of all people could very well be their salvation. The problem was that the RF and the CE were geopolitical rivals if not enemies. The Cybernetic Empire clearly was not satisfied with maintaining control over just a single central star node. It wanted to grab more territory. It wanted to subjugate its neighbors and bring them under the unified command of its empress. Early indications already showed that the Cybers thought themselves as superior to the ignorant and backward space peasants that had been 'left behind'. This also included the fleeters, who only remained powerful because they coasted on the attainments of their predecessor organization. If more people realized that the RF had degenerated more than what was apparent on the surface, the fleeters would have already collapsed by this time! In order to prevent such an outcome from unfolding in reality, the fleeters needed a way to regain power and prove their military might on the battlefield. They needed to do so without relying on high-ranking mechs or superdimensional matter. The munitions that Andraste dismissed as boring and uncool were just the solutions that the fleeters needed the most. Ves could already foresee the inevitable outcome between any secret negotiations between the two major powers. The Red Fleet would have to make a number of heavy concessions such as not enforcing its rules upon the Cybernetic Empire and maybe outright abandoning its mandate on governing a united human civilization. In exchange, the Cybernetic Empire would be happy to supply the fleeters with a greater share of the industrial output of special munitions. Perhaps the RF might even be able to acquire an exclusive monopoly on the heaviest battleship-grade munitions, but that would force it to surrender so many concessions in return. The Cybernetic Empire may even be able to take over the RF outright, which was the worst outcome for many people! Ves reminded himself that he needed to talk with his RF liaison in order to find out whether the fleeters even had a future in this new and changing dwarf galaxy. "What do you think, Marvaine?" Ves asked his youngest child. The child looked thoughtful even as he hugged his colorful lion plushy. "Hmmm… if the Dynapulses become so common that transphasic energy shields can no longer do their job of protecting warships, won't the native aliens switch to putting thick armor on their vessels like we do? This is not the weapon that we have that can counter energy shields. We have the Dark Zephyr and superdimensional mechs, and others have space suppressors and transphasic weapons." Both Ves and Gloriana nodded in agreement. "You raised another good point, Marvaine." Ves said with an impressed voice. "Every invention provokes a reaction. It depends on how extensively the Cybers are willing to let their Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles proliferate, but even moderate availability will still put their shiny and expensive battleships at great risk. The alien naval doctrine of going light on armor and heavy on energy shields will probably die as you have guessed." Gloriana did not look too optimistic towards this development. "This does not actually improve our chances of winning the Red War all that much. The native aliens control much of the Red Ocean. Their industries are abundant and still largely intact. They can easily redesign their warships and order the mass production of new armor-heavy warships that are less susceptible to space suppressors and the new Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles." "I am sure that the Cybernetic Empire has developed special munitions that specialize in penetrating transphasic hull plating as well, but I agree with your point. It is a lot easier to disrupt the functionality of energy-based defenses than penetrate through meters worth of dense alloys." Ves said. The native aliens would suffer for a few years as most of their warships were still biased towards energy shields rather than armor. However, once their ponderous shipyards had begun to roll out the new warships, the significance of the Dynapulses would probably decrease, though not to the point of irrelevance. After all, no one prohibited the practice of piling a warship with both energy and material defenses. The only downside to all of that was that the vessel would become fat, slow and relatively light on firepower. "My overall conclusion is that the Dominators are meant to showcase what ordinary red humans can do with the help of special munitions." Gloriana said. "I am sure that the CE will sell their Dynapulses and Polybites at a premium, but I do not have the impression that they are expensive to produce. Perhaps the Cybers will intentionally increase their complexity and blend in useless materials in an attempt to increase the difficulty of reverse engineering, but that does not change my original point. Making it difficult to reverse engineer is not a purely selfish choice." "I agree." Both of them knew that the Cybernetic Empire was on guard against the Cosmopolitan Movement. Red humanity suffered from their technology theft too many times. The native aliens had rapidly gained technological parity with their human foes by shamelessly taking advantage of stolen human technologies. The Cybernetic Empire's closed borders and reticence towards trading away its superior tech might frustrate a lot of humans, but it also denied the cosmopolitans another easy way to contribute to their alien masters. After making sure that he had seen what he needed to observe from the live feed of the 76th Dominators Warfleet in action, Ves was finally ready to switch the channel and observe another battle. Of course, by this time the engagement had already run its course, but Ves simply rewound the broadcast until it had reached the start of the battle. "The 24th Gamma Scorchers Warfleet has caught my eye for a while." Ves said as the footage began to play again. The projected view clearly displayed the hundred or so warships and a mech regiment flying forward in space. The ship designs appeared fairly consistent, though their gun batteries consisted entirely of energy weapons rather than kinetic ones. The mech designs looked much different, with most of them bearing all manner of energy weapons on the mech frames. Even their melee armaments came in the form of energized or energy blade forms. The assets of the Gamma Scorchers clearly consumed a lot more energy than average when compared to the mechs and warships of the Dominators. It did not do their sensor profiles a lot of favor. Their mechs and warships must be glowing like lighthouses when they start to warm up their weapon systems and put themselves in a more active state. "Hugo Fournier told me that the Energy Weapon Tower has received greater priority than the other towers." Ves said as he leaned forward so that he could focus more on the action that was about to unfold. "I assumed that the Cybers did not invest heavily into physical weapons, but I was wrong about that after learning about the Heavy Ordnance Tower. Even so, I think that the performance of the Gamma Scorchers will definitely be a treat for our eyes." "If this is the case, then I think that the tech demonstrated by the Gamma Scorchers will be more difficult to obtain by third parties." His wife warned him. "Do not assume that we can obtain superior CE energy weapons through exchanges. The Cybers can trade manufactured special munitions to the rest of red humanity without needing to fear for copycats, but the same does not apply for energy weapons as you cannot sell munitions for it. You can only sell the whole mechanism." Ves paused in thought." You are right. Once we are able to obtain a few copies of the new CE weapon systems, reverse engineering them means that everyone can produce their own versions, and that includes the native aliens." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖 If this was true, then the Cybernetic Empire would probably do their best to keep its energy weapons exclusive for its own usage!

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