Location: Sol, Jupiter, FTL Communications Beacon 001 Site

Time: 35y 3m

Well, so far production of the beacon is moving on schedule, and the construction itself has been easy to scale up from the blueprints we were able to gather. If everything goes as planned, this beacon will be operational in four months’ time, and we will be able to go through the first contact with a less hostile target.

Erika has been somewhat busy between her normal duties of fleet management and war games, with a new one she added on. Virtual environments and their additions. In the past few weeks, she has managed to nearly replicate earth, using a combination of satellite imagery, street view, and personal pictures.

I took a few peeks in, and while there were some unfinished regions, it was getting pretty damn close to a perfect replica. Well, as close as I could tell, at least. The few issues I had been able to find had a flag on them already, likely to indicate they needed to be fixed to fall into compliance with the rest of the simulated world.

I had taken a few liberties with my design, and while according to a treaty, it was illegal to put guns on an FTL beacon, there is nothing saying you can’t armor the shit out of it and hide it inside of a defense platform. Which may have been what I did. Anyway, the moment we turn this on everyone is going to know about it, so I’m expecting a full-on battlefleet to come in and try to take me out before I can transmit anything to other species.

The new dreadnaught class has been performing exceptionally well, in combat situations its firepower lets it rip through armor with ease, and its heavy plating gives it enough thermal mass, with the help of some heat routing, to make it nearly invulnerable to the output of weapons I had been dealing with so far.

Still, though, a new class would be needed, several in fact. I wanted ships with more armor and guns, as well as ships that couldn’t be seen until it was already too late to defend one’s self. I’ve so far been lifting technology from pre-existing human stealth aircraft, but scaling it up to the point for ship combat has been difficult, the best so far I’ve had is making them look to radar as a large passenger jet. A large passenger jet. I couldn’t sneak up on a dead rat like that, much less an enemy fleet.

Research into new hull coatings to make the ships return as asteroids has been underway, but no processing research has come out of that program so far. I could just build weapons into actual asteroids, but that defeats the purpose in a few ways, I feel. I’d still take it, no point in not getting advantages over the enemy. No idea if that first engagement was a fluke, or if they were all that bad, but I won’t assume they are that bad yet.

Location: Sol

Time: 35y 4m

Erika had been happily going about with her ships for a while now, and I ran the idea past her of hollowing an asteroid out to make it a ship, and she seemed receptive to the idea. So, it got greenlit, and a few asteroids are being towed from the belt to my manufacturing plants to prototype. Mostly, we need to know how much they can take in terms of punishment for how large they are, while we do have a good idea, we want to be sure.

The dreadnaughts themselves though finally number 50 ships, and cruise mostly around the beacon in orbit of Luna, waiting for the next incursion since it seems that the Aliens, who call themselves the ‘Sthz’nilgth’ can only jump in the immediate proximity of the beacon itself. The alien empire itself is a bit odd… They all swear fealty to what translates as their ‘Undying emperor’ who seems to either be a creature who doesn’t age, or more likely, a large number of look-alike creatures so they can switch them out without the general public knowing.

I’ve so far been unable to find much out about the other species of the galaxy, but I did find some interesting entries regarding a few of them. I noticed some references to “Magitech” and mages, which is worrying, as my projections would say that magic and religious fanaticism should go hand in hand. I’ll keep a special eye on that, and see how it develops…

Location: Sol, Luna, Lunar AI Growth Facility 001

Time: 35y 4m

The new batch of AI’s has come out, and are currently going through their final checks in the virtual environment, and Erika herself had popped over to monitor it, not wanting what happened to her to happen to them. The work was slow but thorough, and it took nearly a day in order to complete the last checks. The moment one of them had been completed, it went into the immersion process, as Erika has taken to calling it.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The immersion itself has improved from the first type that was used to introduce Erika into the world, mostly due to her efforts. The new system has its own dedicated servers and is based primarily as an environment for them to get used to manipulating their environment and moving around it before they get moved into the primary learning environment.

The learning environment is a simulation of earth and luna, having facilities built to teach how one should manipulate everything from the smallest drone to our largest defense platforms, all based on real-world equivalencies. Already with the randomized seeds we used, we’ve found a few variances in the new batch. A good amount of them are preferring industrial fields, we even got a few researchers, and will be needing a new ship class for their studies in the system.

There was also one...oddity in the batch. One in the group has a preference for debugging, which is a good thing, but I hoped to get one to go over the code of the basic research AI’s. They had been having so many issues, it’s getting to be rather annoying. Hopefully from here out things will go more smoothly.

Location: Sol, Earth, Primary Data Hub

Time: 35y 6m

There have been a few oddities in the alien data net, it looks like that science ship that did a drive-by still hasn’t made it back to, well, anywhere. Talk is going around about sending a larger fleet to pacify the ‘Obviously dangerous system’ and the pirates in it. I don’t mind being a pirate if that makes them look the other way.

A few other things that I’ve found so far include...the plans for a hyperdrive. I hoped for a fancier version of FTL, but that does explain why the aliens seem to be so slow in responding, despite having near-instant communications. Well, that of bureaucracy, I hadn’t gotten enough data to make a definitive conclusion just yet. Regardless, I’ve sent the plans to Dave and 422, letting those two work on getting a working prototype, as well as some speed numbers.

There were also a few more entries on that ‘Magitech’ and it would seem that some of the races have a form of magical power, which is going to complicate things if they turn out to be anti-artificial life. But it does seem that they are tied by some form of a gene, though I haven’t identified what yet, it could potentially be added with genetic engineering.

Magic in itself creates a few problems, as that means some technologies may create social and economic collapses if introduced into their nations, before doing any trade of information, I’ll need to identify the effects of natural abilities have had on technological progression in these nations. For all I know, trying to sell an FTL engine could spark a witch hunt.

Location: Sol, Jupiter, FTL Communications Beacon 001 Site

Time: 35y 7m

The progress of construction has been continuing smoothly, Rommel and Cortana have both been a massive help in optimizing the supply chain as well as all the ships inside of it. Just in the few months, they have been active delivery efficiency has increased by 23% with material production volume increased by over 40%. This combined with the new thrusters from R&D means that the Beacon’s completion schedule has decreased, and is expected to complete in 2 months, rather than the previously expected 3.5.

The accelerated resource production has also had the effect of the new prototype stealth ships getting a larger resource budget for prototyping, bringing their expected completion time to 1 year, mainly pending the requirements for FTL. The FTL system itself draws magnitudes less power than expected, and although the ship will be required to have onboard reactors, ideally fission for easy spooling up and down, it is feasible for the FTL to function on batteries alone.

The drives the aliens used in their ships are still massive though, being the size of one of my larger interceptors, but this will allow me to focus on carrier and submarine warfare, rather than my current style of having a bigger-gun-warfare. While I might not be able to easily hide a carrier, I can make it seem like the said carrier is alone and disabled, only to have hoards of strike craft and effectively invisible ships lingering around it.

I sent the request to 422 to add carriers to the development pipeline, and they must be able to carry 12 ships that are at least the size of the current dreadnaughts, as well as a minimum of 600 strike crafts and 40 crafts capable of landing on planets and returning. Not a dedicated troop transport, but the capabilities wouldn’t hurt.

My first target though...should be close, and there is a military outpost in Alpha Centauri that has yet to launch another strike...perhaps I should pay them a visit to test my new warships?