[civ2buf]

Incursion
72rd month of the SunGod Luminostra

Luminostra was furious, pushing the collective into a tornado of anger and a drizzle of despair. The Piundon homeworld was so well armed that only a desperate retreat left any of the fleet intact.

Outranged, outgunned and not enough napalm, Luminostra thought.

To make the problem worse, the enemy had streamed into the Collective home system when the all out attack began, now only a few minelayers were active in trying to parry the counterattack.

It was becoming obvious that the Piundon had supply and production centers outside of their home system.

The greatest difficulty was an internal one, something no other empire could ever know about. Luminostras' power was slowly easing from the overwhelming despair that circulated the collective. Wait long enough and Luminostra would become a high-powered broadcaster of the average collective thought. It was much harder to purge thoughts with a large memory.

This point made Luminostra hate the unworthy subjects on this side of the multiverse. The Ascendant collective was his proper home, here he was mostly a nurse correcting the problems of wimps.

One thing that provided a small streak of powermania was the newest ship classes. They were armed with Quantum Torpedos' Crystalline Armor and shielding, making the battle against the Piudon a bit more even.

73rd month of the SunGod Luminostra

The Piundon invasion force pulled back, unexpectedly, but with the result that the wounded battle fleet was trapped momentarily. Supremacy fleet was left with only two battle ships, one of them crippled, and many support ships for supply and mine sweeping.

74th month of the SunGod Luminostra

Luminostra knew that a victory over the enemy in the collectives' territory would give the collective a boost of warpride. And all but one of the Piundon ships had returned to their home system.

The Piundon were not trapped, they could afford to simply defend against the collective, he thought. We are the ones who have no chance, except through the destruction of the Piundon, we are trapped, cocooned by a force that should fall, but will not.

All we can do is build the insurmountable force. Spend two decades building it. Destroy their star, destroy the planet from afar, those were the two ways that seemed possible. Napalm was not effective to the collective mind, not anymore...

Victory over a heavily damaged Piundon vessel raised no cheers, it was not a worthy victory to celebrate.