The Crystalline Religion

[civ2buf]

(OOC: This story is based in the gameplay world of Proportions)

First Battle of infestation Soluk
536145.32 Teracycles since Emergence

An entire battle over one enemy ship, the thought flew across the collective as an incredulous fervor. Those on the emergence homeworld were three seconds behind the actions in the Tricali system that was found to be the exit of one portal. Even with the quickening devices, three seconds was the best sync disparity possible. This created brief 3 second rifts of opinion between the DeInfestation fleet and the emergence world.

It was only 33 teracycles since the discovery of the portals, but already a valuable lesson in Infestation training was affecting the thought waves of the entire Imperium.

Six containers were destroyed with no losses for the infestation, 5 of them being ships and 1 of them a sacrifice container with a large-yield nuclear explosive.

Zexlak remained at an onship broadcasting station on the fifth DeInfester frigate where the infestation was to be informed of its impending death. To properly ensure this, Zexlak had the distasteful task of learning the vibrations that made up the infestations language. They found out it was called the Soluk Empire. A thought rang through the collective, that perhaps, although tainted by the Infestation nature, this infestation had at least a few similarities to themselves. The Imperium now knew the name and their history. And they knew that the Soluk shared no regrets about trying to take over everything that opposed them. That was a good moral stance to the Cryslonite. It seemed they agreed quickly on things, another good moral to the Imperium.

Nonetheless, the Cryslonite role was being redefined only slightly. The collective felt that no infestation should exist, and the emergence world found nearby the infestation, which had produced a great deal of crazed thought waves in the collective, could not be properly investigated until the system was clean.

Kruzk had contributed a great deal to the onslaught of thought waves that concerned the first battle of Soluk. This was the first battle as opposed to earlier skirmishes.

The problem throughout the battle, which Kruzk first expressed, was that planetary infestation bases had too many missiles for the ships to consider coming in range of the planet. Plus ships on both sides were as fast as the missiles themselves. When the enemy frigate was surrounded, it was surrounded around the planet, thus ensuring it could hide from fire within the protection of planetary missiles.

An escort and a frigate were both destroyed for failing to fall back in time to avoid enemy military. The collective did not want to fall back from the enemy ship, because it would give it space to wait and attack again. This was a mistake of the collective reasoning process.

After everything looked hopeless, the ships moved away from the planet, while holding a roughly circular formation. With the complete focus of the entire collective on this battle, 3 second delay or not, They managed finally draw out the enemy ship where previously their enemy had operated with flawless tactics.

But even after being impacted by the suicide container, and being hit with a missile, the enemy frigate still held form. The frigate managed to fall back into close orbit with the infestation planet, safe there indefinately.

Larger ships were being built by the collective, but the suicide containers were discontinued due to lack of effectiveness. The Cryslonite were great researchers due to quick cooperation and sharing of information, and they managed to quickly learn to build large containers.

From what Zexlak could tell, the Soluk infestation world had not been affected in daily activities. Only those manning the missile platforms remained busy. From detecting the energy waves coming from the infestation, it appeared there was much speculation about the Imperium itself. Zexlak and his cadre had still not thought of any way to communicate back to the infestation. Perhaps the energy waves could be recombined in different patterns to tell the Soluk to surrender.

(Translators Note: all names are transliterations of Solukian and Praetorian naming schemes, created by Zexlak in order to interact with the infestations on a limited basis. Zexlak created his own name as well.)

[ April 10, 2003, 04:53: Message edited by: civ2buf ]

[Raging Deadstar]

Very good, a trully alien idea. I'm impressed

Check out the Space Empires Fanfiction Thread, i've posted a question there for you, read through the thread as well, it's only 4 pages long

[oleg]

...Ohh, NO ! What Proportion Version do you play ? If it is more than 2.0, Soluk is a joke. PvK created it using Piundon race which is crystolline, but Soluk .emp has no Crystallurgy ! It will eventually kill them because of research and ship design. To salvage you game, back up all Piundon AI files and replace them with files copied from any other race without racial traits, for example Terrans.
Good luck, I' looking forward the next chapter.

[civ2buf]

I really like the style of ship designs in Proportions. The armor system is great, and creates much more of a motif of the early Ironclad ships and other heavily armored ships.

Tactical battles with missiles on both sides are some of the most interesting types.

Plus the fact that the homeworlds are actually powerful really gives a lot more siege type plots.

[oleg]

Yes, Proportions is IMHO the best mod around.
(JLC' AIc is here too) I am just a liitle bit worried about some discrepancies between empire files and actual AI files in the game you based your story.

[primitive]

Great story, keep it coming

Edit: A post of 5 (short) words, and I can't get the spelling right

[ April 11, 2003, 00:21: Message edited by: primitive ]

[civ2buf]

The Soluk campaign, planetary disposal phase
536255.50 teracycles since emergence

The infestation world was being irradiated, napalmed, plagued, attacked constantly by high yield capital missiles, and peppered by an even greater quantity of light missile fire. Well over three and a half billion infestation units remained by the beginning of the planetary disposal portion of the campaign, where the fleet faced no more resistance for a dozen teracycles.

To say this was the limit of what could be inflicted on a planet would be wrong, thought Zexlak, no, a planet that had withstood the might of the Cryslonite for dozens of Teracycles should rightfully be completely torn asunder shattered into a million pieces. The collective certainly had that in mind for future research possibilities, the thought waves of solids shattering were prevalant in the Last cycle with knowledge of victory in the second battle.

Twelve ships had shattered to the feverish battles and skirmishes of the Soluk campaign so far. It was no concern to the Cryslonite, as the thought waves of celebration crested with great intensity on the mind shores of several billion crystals.

Because of the regular container service to SunWorld, it was now rather easy for Crystals to make the Pilgrimage of Brilliance in vast numbers. In the past, only those who were elders with vast energies stored had the resources to attempt it. An astonishing two million crystals took the pilgrimage in the Last Teracycle, when the campaign appeared to be nearing the end of active resistance.

Despite the fact that the collective was declaring victory, it soon became clear that the planet could withstand more attacks than the fleet had supplies to deal with. Unless they could cripple the enemy, it might not be a victory after all. The Soluk could just rebuild the weapon platforms that had been so deadly thus far.

More Supremacy class ships, which were equipped with napalm as well as rapid fire light missile systems, were needed and more refueling ships were in need to keep weapons in supply among the fleet.

But, with nearly four billion Solukians still alive, the plague should do excellent at sundering large parts of the infestation, and the conditions where becomming deadly from irradiation (how plague and irradiation would mix was unknown among the collective). How fast the infestation would weaken was the cause of much thought wave activity

It was time to learn about some better means of DeInfesting. Kruzk pondered what could be used to even the odds against such a massive target as the infestation world. Something more deadly than anything before.

The collective took that goal as another fervor, among thousands of boiling thoughtwave fervors competing every pulse for the collectives' attention.

We must destroy better,
We must destroy better...

But before all the plans for destroying Soluk could be dreamt of, the fleet had removed the force shield that surrounded the entire planet, temporarily. All of this in turn, happened while planetary weapons platforms were launching great salvos of missiles against the fleet.

For several dozen Teracycles the fleet waited while reinforcements poured in. Finally, with two ships with missile defenses available, the fleet plunged into a close range missile fight. They had to overwhelm the planetary point defenses, and that wasn't helped by long range fire.

The best ships for such a battle were the few newcomers known by the Soluk as the Supremacy class. The collective knew the Supremacy had the faster firing rate and anti planetary capabilities specifically designed for close range fire.

The fleets' point defense was inadequate, and both point defense ships were destroyed in the battle, but they had served as a distraction to the Soluk weapon platform commanders, leaving Sumpremacy, DeInfester LC and IIDS class ships to pummel the world until the shields gave out. Then, finally, the plague weapons of DeInfester P class destroyers were not stopped by anything, and the plague began its incessant spread.

The collective savored the thought of destroying an infestation with an infestation discovered by Zexlak to have the Soluk name of Plague. Plague, the infestation that fights infestation.

"With enough refueler ships, there will be nothing left of you, I swear it to you who are known as Soluk ambassador," Zexlak had learned the energy waves the Soluk used for talking, and now was sending hourly updates on impending doom to the Soluk.

As an Imperium, it was known that Zexlak had a great purpose, but as a collective, thoughts still rumbled that he should be shattered as an outcast, despite the fact that Zexlak kept to as many synch pulses as any other crystal.

It might take 100 teracycles, or a 1000 teracyles even, before the Soluk had no existence, but the Cryslonite had already won in their view, they had shown the fury and might of the great Cryslonite Imperium.