Nova Wars

..>GENERATING HIGH SECURITY CHAT ROOM

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..>TREA HAS JOINED THE CHAT

..>MAN HAS JOINED THE CHAT

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CHANSERV>HAVE A GOOD DAY

CHANSERV>REMEMBER: I'M WATCHING YOU

TREA

Is everyone settled from the merger?

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MAN

Yes. A little disconcerting.

Who generated the room?

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TREA

Me.

We need to talk. Just us.

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RIG

I notice it's founders only.

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TREA

Not exactly.

Yes, but no.

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PUB

Explain.

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TREA

We're the ones who met OG Terra.

We're talking before Terran Descent Humanity.

Before Terrans

Before Earthlings

We're the ones who met Humanity.

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RIG

Oooh, it's going to be one of --those-- conversations.

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TREA

Yeah.

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MAN

Away from the children?

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TREA

They'd tell you they aren't children any more. That 40K years have gone by.

They seem stuck on that. That the universe, the galaxy, the Confederacy, has moved on.

40K years is a long time, they keep repeating

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MAN

"We aren't the helpless races they met 40K years ago. We're our own power now."

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PUB

Good impression.

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TREA

That's the problem.

It's been 40K years for us, only 50 years for the humans.

I can't seem to get them to understand that.

They think the 40K years matters.

They don't understand why I keep saying it doesn't.

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PUB

It doesn't because the same humanity that was locked away during the Second Precursor War is the same humanity that just re-emerged.

40K years HASN'T passed for them.

They're still furious over the Terran Xenocide Event, over the Invasion of Fortress Sol, over the Harmonous Massacre.

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MAN

And still have echoes of the Mithril Nebula Conflict, the First Mar-gite War too.

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RIG

And Clownface.

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TREA

Right. And Clownface.

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RIG

They still see Humanity as what they saw back then.

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TREA

No. It's worse.

They don't remember.

Not like we do.

Hell, all we have to do is look at the night sky to remember them.

But for our newer members?

They don't know humanity. They don't know what they're capable of. They don't get it to the point of not asking some basic questions.

Worse, they aren't paying attention to the after action reports coming out of the Mar-gite Occupied Zone.

They're blowing them off or just tallying it up to confusion and on-the-spot observer misunderstandings.

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RIG

How do you misunderstand that the Solarian Iron Dominion just sent a fleet five times larger than the ENTIRE Confederate Fleet just to the Mar-gite Occupied Zone, much less what they sent toward the Hellspace Divide and out to the Ornislarp Noocracy?

The sheer weight of metal should be alarming to anyone who looks at it.

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MAN

"What happened to the Lanaktallan during the Second Precursor War proves that just weight of metal doesn't matter. Technology, warfare strategy, force projection, and military skill is what matters."

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PUB

Another good impression.

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MAN

Thank you.

I'm getting real tired of the younger members telling us that we're overstating things.

They didn't see what we saw.

They don't even really remember the Second Precursor War. To them, it's ancient history.

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PUB

But it's not to humanity.

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TREA

No. For them, it was yesterday.

I've tried to convince some of them that the Solarian Iron Dominion has had fifty years to arm, train, and recruit.

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MAN

"It's a single stellar system. Any successful race can afford to have only 4% or less of their population as standing military."

or

"It doesn't matter if it's obsolete equipment and tactics."

or

"That also means they were restricted to a single system's resources and manpower."

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RIG

Again, good impressions.

Just hearing it makes me want to smack you.

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TREA

Yeah, well, between that and the insistence that their technological research would have been stymied and hampered by being inside The Bag as well as pointing out that they're still using weaponry from 40K years ago is causing something close to the Prime Miscalculation.

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PUB

It always comes back to that, doesn't it?

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MAN

It's really easy to be the toughest kids on the block when you're three blocks over from anyone tougher and the big guy is in the slammer.

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TREA

TREA>lights a cigarette

Let's not forget that the whole "they're already committed to fighting a war on three fronts, -nobody- would open up a fourth front!" mantra we've heard.

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PUB

That ignores the fact that while it may be multiple fronts, it's ONE war.

And humanity developed the intellectual capability of fighting multiple front wars before they even developed fusion power.

An 800 lb gorilla with chainsaw arms and laser eyes just climbed out of a hole it's been trapped in, to find out it's committed to a fight.

And they want to poke it with a stick.

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MAN

The damned SUDS.

They're so hung up on the SUDS and what THEY can do with it, that they ignore that humanity conceived of, planned, designed, built, and -improved on- that very technology.

We have no idea how they did it.

And we spent 40K years trying to figure it out.

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RIG

We all did.

It's aggravating.

They developed the system right before the Glassing. Then they 'forgot' how it works.

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MAN

In their defense, we did kill 70% of the population in under 12 hours, destroyed most major population centers, over 40% of their military installations, and 60% of their research facilities.

I've always been surprised they still had the knowledge and tech base to build a spear, much less starships, advanced weaponry, and continue with technological progress.

MAN>shakes her head

But try telling the children that.

Try making them understand.

They don't remember the Terrans, much less understand what it means that it's HUMANITY that climbed out of that hole with a bloody face, a broken whiskey bottle, and an erection.

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TREA

That's just it.

Right now, they're still demanding a 3 light year standoff distance from Sol. Any ships that come in are finding out that their sensors are getting jammed like the system is under attack.

Our newer members think it's to hide how weakly the system is defended.

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MAN

And ignore that the human's 'obsolete' technology is able to spoof the sensors of ships of the line?

Able to spot and knock out recon probes before they get outside of 1,000 miles from the launcher and issue a warning.

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PUB

They've gone to 'cut your engines, strike your shields, shut off your sensors, tugs will be used to move you into position' for any incoming ships.

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TREA

That's an escalation.

Dammit.

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RIG

Poor Violet is doing his best to deescalate things, but things are going sideways on him.

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TREA

The Confederacy has stood for over 40K years. It has survived every war thrown at it, every disaster that has come its way.

And now the return of a founding member may cause it to collapse.

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PUB

OK, let's be honest.

If I'm given a choice between siding with the humans and siding with the Confederacy, I'm on the human's side.

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MAN

Same

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RIG

Same

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TREA

Of course.

It's nice to have it out in the open though.

We need to talk to the new crew separately.

Any idea who we should talk to first?

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RIG

This is going to sound weird, but I say the Lankies.

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PUB

Makes sense, actually.

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CHANSERV>INVITE SENT

CHANSERV>LANK HAS JOINED THE CHAT

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..>GENERATING AVATAR

TREA

Welcome.

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LANK

LANK>Looks around

High security non-logged untracable chat room.

Are we there already?

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PUB

Where?

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LANK

Civil war.

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TREA

No.

...

Not yet.

Just had a few questions for you.

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LANK

Humanity.

You want our opinion on humanity.

And the state of the Confederacy.

And my opinion on my fellow non-founding members.

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PUB

See. Told you he was sharp.

What's your opinion on the Solarion Iron Dominion?

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LANK

It's a façade. A veneer for those who are willing to accept surface appearances so that they do not question and any inquiry they bother with will be carefully led down a pre-prepared path catering to their biases and assumptions.

To call itself militaristic is, in itself, a carefully chosen layer of the veneer. Humanity, in and of itself, like any other successful and surviving star faring species, has to be militaristic to at least some extent. We have seen, with their record of wars, that being militaristic, even at their most peaceful and pacifistic, when they survive, is their natural state.

The un-natural state that was the Harmonous Cluster ended in genocide as they did not have even system defenses and thought a strongly worded statement on automated beacons was enough to protect them.

As for tyrannical, that too is an illusion. Humans are some of the most independent individuals in known space that can also function as a cooperative society. Tyranny invokes certain mental images, however, many have not heard of 'the tyranny of the majority' or, as one of the Lanaktallan nations puts it 'the tyranny of the ballot box' while the Treana'ad have suffered the 'tyranny of the birthing chamber'.

The entire self-description was just the costume they put on it to see who would take it all at face value and not look any further in.

The real Solarian Iron Dominion can be seen in the way that they contribute ships and manpower to defend even former enemies while still engaged in diplomatic talks to determine their actual stance and position regarding the Confederacy.

It's quite obvious.

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TREA

This is why we love you, my man.

What's your opinion on the Terrans.

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LANK

They aren't Terrans. They are humanity restored. Any interactions we had with Terrans cannot be applied to restored humanity. Perhaps the only ones that have any idea of what humanity is compared to Terrans would be the four of you here, with only Rigel having not engaged in combat with them, giving a unique perspective into humanity.

What has emerged from The Bag is not what anyone expected, however, it does align with an analysis from over 40K years ago.

Most High Doctor Bo'okdu'uhst used sociomathematics to project what was happening inside The Bag with his cultural progression model.

His Category Orange, consisting of 2 different sets of 2 scenarios is the most precise.

Down to the absorption and the cultural assimilation of non-human species trapped inside The Bag.

His "2+2 Orange" scenario is precise and accurate down to the -revealed- populations of the various species inside The Bag. Which of the two sets will be more accurate depends on the Confederacy's members as acting outside sources, and which of the two scenarios within those sets will be more accurate depend on how the war goes.

He even predicted that The Bag opening would coincide with a massive threat to the Confederacy and all life in the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur.

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...

...

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TREA

That's... impressive.

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LANK

He was one of the only sociomathematicians who never went full blown psychosis.

Even those who attempt to follow in his footsteps, using his theories, have degenerated into psychosis. If the Terrans were a focus of the attempt, the psychosis often had an extreme violent factor.

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MAN

What do you think of how the others will view the humans?

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LANK

First, understand my people. We are not mature until we are fifty. We do not consider ourselves widely mature until our second century. Our generations are considered at 125 years, not 10 or 15 or 20. We are a herd species with a heavy bias toward herd safety and prosperity. We conserve resources, thanks to 125 million years of micro-evolution from the Great Council Era.

We see the humans as an energetic race who has had to fight to survive even their own birth planet. With fast generations and no cultural or genetic bias against cloning, their numbers increase explosively.

The other species believe that Terra does not have the numbers to offset the weight of the Confederacy, but they overlook two very salient datapoints.

One: Bo'okdu'ust's Orange scenario is right on the -declared- population numbers, which means there is a high possibility of the scenario being correct on the non-declared numbers. These numbers would be population held in stasis for when The Bag opened. With the Terrans love of consent, those beings would have consented to that treatment.

Two: not only does Bo'okdu'uhst's work show this, but the simple question of "with 135 million Monster Class Heavy Infantry soldiers fielded during the First Mar-gite War, an irreversible change, why were there only 25,000 in the Confederate Armed Forces rolls?"

Which shows that there is a possibility that the Terrans have 135 million Monster Class units in slumber somewhere.

Lanaktallan Intelligence Services believes they are being stored in deep crust facilities on Mars, Venus, Mercury, and other planetary bodies within the system, as well as deep depth gas giant facilities.

However, the other races, used to how they are, and how we present ourselves, will be convinced that the veneer that humanity is presenting is, in fact, the reality of humanity.

They will skirt the edge of the Prime Miscalculation as easily and as foolishly as my people did.

My people have long memories. For my culture, for my society, the 40,000 years humanity has been locked away is less time than some starships have been around.

Their cultures and societies did not exist when humanity was locked away in The Bag.

Most High Scientist and Doctor Bo'okdu'uhst predicted that several of the former neo-sapient races will make the Prime Miscalculation.

That is our opinion.

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TREA

Thank you.

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LANK

You are welcome.

Is there anything else?

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PUB

Where do you stand?

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LANK

On the side of the Malevolent Universe's immune system, of course.

The Lanktallan people must endure.

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RIG

Thank you.

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LANK

Of course.

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..>LANK HAS BEEN BOOTED FROM THE CHAT ROOM

TREA

Well, while verbose, it was definitely illuminating.

Who should we talk to next?

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MAN

I'm not sure.

Let's think about it.