“People tried for ages to put technology back into its box, but it’s like with Pandora’s story. Once it’s out, it stays out.”

***Outer Rim***

***Antioch***

Everything was ready. All that was left to do was to execute the last few moves on the chessboard. This time I wouldn’t be much more than an observer, a director who gave rough instructions while overseeing the whole.

I upgraded my abilities several times during the course of this war, but Jill was right when she warned me that any augmentations which affect the mind have to be taken with a grain of salt and tested very carefully. It means that I’ll probably never catch up to what a Blue is capable of, nor do I want to. I am too young to go down the loony path.

The last large engagement with our enemies worked out just fine in the end, but it showed that a real A.I. still has the upper hand when it comes down to micromanagement. We held our ground, but Assistant was apparently created for strategical management. In a conventional battle, we barely managed to hold our own and in the long run, we would have been defeated. The situation showed that we shouldn’t be too confident in our military capabilities.

We won in the end, but that was only because we had more tricks up our sleeves than our enemies could deal with. Had it been a conventional military encounter, we would have lost the first exchange at the Prip homeworld. Assistant outmanoeuvred any minute changes we made to the positioning of our ships.

Among all the Demons, I suppose that only Jill has the mental capability to keep up with the A.I. And I would never allow her to control our forces in battle. Given her nature, that would mean putting a little too much trust in her.

In order to counter the current status quo, we implemented a proper chain of command, allowing most of our individual assets to work as parts of a greater whole. Any Demon who is capable of linking with the network is now able to join something similar to a Hivemind. They are still their own person, but their thoughts are open to the fleet’s network, turning all of us into a Gestalt.

I hope we don’t need it this time around, but should the need arise we will be on a more equal footing. Strangely enough, I would have expected to run into such challenges by confronting the Cyber, and not the G.S. In fact, despite their goals and nature, their swarm tactics and bodies, the Cyber felt more human in their abilities, actions, and behaviour. It was like there is some part of their humanity that they simply can’t get rid of. Their rigid caste system almost ensured that their overminds, those who managed to climb the pyramid to the top, would never take that last crucial step that would sever the bonds between them and their underlings.

All at once, I felt the heaviness of mental exhaustion and from my throne I could feel that the fleet was moving.

Thanks to infecting several large Prip colonies with the plague, we managed to create four additional superstructures in Haven’s image. That gave us seven to work with, and we decided to take five to the G.S. homebase where our enemies had – willingly or not – concentrated their forces.

Our preparations had ensured that each superstructure had a more than decent defence fleet in addition to its capabilities as mobile fortresses. Our first tests had shown that the passive defence systems were more than enough to burn anything smaller than a large asteroid out of the sky. Any attackers would have to hit the superstructure with some kind of non-conventional weaponry. They would also have to destroy more than fifty percent of Haven before there was any danger of losing control over the miniature singularity in its centre.

Everything was going according to plan as far as I was concerned.

Silith steps into the throne room. Seeing me, she approaches and sits down next to me on the throne. “It’s beginning?”

“Looks like it.” Waving my hand at the area in front of us, I instruct the holo-projectors to display a representation of what’s happening.

Five of our superstructures are approaching the system with the G.S. home base and the Cyber blockade. I know, it sounds like a military exchange is unavoidable, but space is vast. It’s unlikely that there will be any glorious battles today. We are just here to talk to our enemies and to introduce them to the new realities of warfare. To show them what we are willing to do.

The most that’s going to happen is that they try to stop us, but that’s why we are here with five colonies. They simply cannot deploy enough forces to stop each of them. If they decide to move against one, we will just pull back while the others move forward.

“Are you sure that we want to do this? Once the others realize that it can be done, they will try to employ the same weapons,” Silith asks, eyeing the map. “Maybe we should just take the losses and try it the conventional way.”

I shake my head. “They are all in one place. Or at least… most of their assets in this region are in one place. I want to be done and over with this as soon as possible. Then we can build up our forces in earnest.”

She huffs. “So the superstructures weren’t already earnest? It felt to me like we were trying in earnest the moment we arrived in this sector. You know, right after we had that discussion with the Lifer’s leader within the V.C.? The guy who is sending all these amazing scientists our way...”

“No. Building up a military force and smashing it a few months later doesn’t serve our goals. We did it the first time because we were caught in a power triangle with our foes. Nobody wanted to make the first move, fearing the third party would use the opportunity. We did our best to take ourselves out of the picture. Or at least we made it look like it. Now we are the ones who get to do the cleanup and I want to do it without losing half of our forces.”

I gesture at the map, zooming in on the Cyber’s forces. “I am not worried about the G.S. If they had something to attack the Cyber effectively, they would have done so by now. But these large vessels in their fleet are new and they have several of them at each wormhole.” Pointing, I call up a grainy picture of one of the vessels which was taken at extreme range. They are large cylinders with an indistinct surface. Our scout-vessels are doing a fine job, but there is only a limited amount of sensory equipment they can carry without the risk of detection getting too high.

The vessel in question is huge, rivalling one of our asteroid colonies in size. “Those things seem to be nothing more than oversized railguns with thrusters attached to them. I have a feeling that the Cyber are bringing them in through the wormholes to break the G.S.’s defences. Sadly, what’s effective against a planet will also be very useful against our superstructures. Apart from using the warp-drive, Haven isn’t exactly moving quickly.”

“We have electromagnetic defences which could divert even large projectiles,” Silith points out.

“True, but I don’t want to risk it. We planned this step by step and I don't want to change the plan now. Our preparations should be sufficient to make the result of this encounter a foregone conclusion.”

She nods. “Well, then let’s do it your way. Maybe you are right. We will use these weapons sooner or later, and we should show the enemy our determination. They have to see that a war with us requires more than a fleet of pretty ships.”

“It’s more about showing them that there will be no winner,” I whisper.

We sit in silence and watch the events unfold.

The Cyber act as soon as we enter their detection range. They split their forces into three in an attempt to bar us from gaining access to the system, while at the same time trying to keep the G.S. fleet contained.

We slow down the approach of two superstructures, which causes the Cyber to change their tactics, trying to stop the other three. In return, we speed the other two up again. This forces our enemies to make a decision.

In their stubborn way they tried to deny us access to the whole solar system, but as soon as they realize that they can’t stop all five superstructures without engaging one of them under less than favourable odds, they settle for keeping the G.S. fleet contained inside their perimeter.

That’s fine with us, since all we want is access to the local star, and the unspoken agreement between us and our foes allows us access to exactly that. The game of Math and manoeuvring takes several hours, and as usual none of the involved parties thinks it necessary to talk to the other side. It’s as if the lines are already drawn in the dirt and all that’s left to do is to kill the enemy.

“You know… I actually preferred it when we pretended that we are actually talking to the G.S.,” I comment. “The Cyber too. They never deemed it necessary to talk to us.”

“Well, officially, we are just the Lifer’s goons. Their hands in the real world. Would you expect them to talk to us? But to be honest, I am glad that John is handling things in the virtual world. Our job is just to ensure that the Lifers have a faction they can join.”

I laugh. “You are right. It’s better to be a subcontractor.”

She raises her hand. “Hush… they reached the local star and are starting the first test.”

Silith and I fall silent as we watch the live-feed of the experiment. If the Math holds up, then it should be possible to project a warp field deep into the outer layer of a star’s stellar atmosphere. The over-engineered nature of our superstructures should allow us to cause a major instability and get away unscathed.

My wife interacts with the network, calling up a few numbers. “It seems like the electromagnetic shielding is holding up. The ring-sections are fairly unaffected, apart from a few radiation warnings. Our nano-tech should be able to deal with any issues that would kill normal organics.”

I grunt, watching in fascination as a dimmed down external drone feed shows the immense surface of the local star, a yellow, medium-sized sun. Compared to it, the little white miniature star which powers our superstructure is less than an ant.

Nonetheless, a visible change is taking place on the star’s surface, made visible by filtering out most of the normally visible frequencies of light. Like a giant storm, the star’s atmosphere swirls towards a centre and the effect is spreading, growing rapidly in size.

It’s something that’s hard to miss, and it takes only a few minutes until we are being hailed on a public hyper communication channel – the G.S.’s preferred method to communicate over interstellar distances.

“Should we answer them?” Silith asks, bemused.

I shrug my shoulders. “Why not. It’s not like we can take anything back at this point.”