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The Crystalline Struggle
536714.2 Teracycles since Emergence

Zexlak was shattered, excommunicated and denied to ever have existed by the collective. He had said the Praetorians were a proper ally, and not the infestations that they obviously were. He then went on to actively try to evade pulses of the collective in orders to be his own I.

Kruzk remained, he had championed the cause of armor, which proved useful. The Praetorians had grown too fast to be overwhelmed by planetary weapons. The collective could not grasp the apparent weakness of their weapons.

They kept expecting the missiles to destroy ships as fast as the napalm destroyed planets. One of the oddest things of all, of the nature of the Cryslonite, was that they could depopulate a planet much faster then they could weaken an enemy ship.

Even in the first campaign, they had struggled against enemy ships. The victory over the Xi only happened because of their lack of ships. It led to extensive development in that area, leaving the Cryslonite outclassed in anti-ship weapons.

This was being corrected, slowly. Crystalline weaponry was really time consuming to explore and research and ineffective, so the collective thought at least.

Kruzk contemplated the latest developments of the new struggle. The fleet was avoiding all ships and trying to break the enemy homeworld.

Weapon platforms failed miserably against the Praetorian might on a colonial emergence world that was rioting.

The death of all the rioters was vaguely pleasing. "They showed themselves as worth only the name infestation," was the thoughtwave.

A new "ambassador" to foreign nations was picked, and he refused to have a name. He vowed to abide strictly by the old code. He refused to conduct his work anywhere but the loyal emergence worlds.

The greatest chance the collective had, was to make a charge straight into close range of the Praetorian homeworld and ignore the losses from ten enemy bases and anything else. The collective felt it be the greatest honor to itself to succeed, despite any losses.

The Imperium had planetary ships that could destroy the weapon platforms, but the fighters were a great peril, despite the presense of great battleships.

To describe the relationship between the ships and the collective, it is best to give them names such as Supremacy, Superiority and Victory for the capital ships. The most revered ships were the planetary depopulaters, the Supremacy ships. The newest were battleship sized juggernauts of destructive power that were thrice as deadly as those who had attacked Xi.

The collective also several types of specialty ships. Despite several refueling ships, supply remains a large problem.

Point Defense, the new DeMine group and the old standard containers, one of which was in service for six hundred teracycles already. This container carried passengers to the Last point before the pilgrimage and the plunge into the SunWorld. This container was already legendary among the Cryslonite, and it made trips every 4 teracycles.

The collective also had 10 megatons of planetary defense platforms.