(A Virtual Room in NERV HQ)
“Damn, I’m going to need a cigarette after that battle.”
Morgan looked over to Isaac, who had just leaned back in his chair as they finished watching the battle from the perspective of those aboard the Shinokage. “Virtual cigs don’t cause cancer, but if you get one of the nasty-smelling ones, I’m going to be pissed.”
“Fine, fine. Anyways, it looks like our boy’s out of action for a little while, at least. His forces have been beat up pretty badly.”
“Yeah, what do you think he’s going to do while he rebuilds?”
“At a guess? He’s going to consider some way to take on the big suckers without relying on surprise attacks. If you look at his stuff back at Dimiya, they already have a couple new ship types going up for their Marines. Probably so they can split those two companies up if they need to, and deploy them at different places.”
“Yeah, I was looking at that. The marine troop ship is obvious, basically a Black Star redesign of the Thunderfury, but what is that little thing? It looks like a miniature Starlight Raven, but there’s no way that thing could be a freighter.”
“Not sure. Listed crew compliment is seven, and there’s just barely room for that many berths. There’s some cargo space, but it is mostly dedicated to ‘Task-Specific Load’. Not sure about that. What I do know is that these things are fast, stealthy, and armed to the teeth. They’re almost like a cross between those ‘Raptor’ fighters and the Raven-class freighters.”
“Wonder what he’s planning on doing with them?”
Isaac shrugged. “Probably nothing good, at least as far as his enemies are concerned, but beyond that, who knows? I’m more curious about what he’s going to be doing while his fleet is being fixed up.”
“Won’t he be overseeing the repairs, and probably sleeping with half the planet?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll get around to the ladies, but overseeing the repairs doesn’t really appear to be his kind of thing.”
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“Hey boss, what about that big carrier his Marines captured?”
Isaac slapped his forehead as he nodded to the tech that spoke up. “Damn, I’d forgotten. That was the big new thing for the X’thari. They’ve never done carriers before, so the carrier and its fighters were all new. It was something they started working on after the last set of wars, when some of the Alliance pilots really made them pay for not having fighter screens during a couple key battles.”
Morgan frowned. “So what kind of tech will that give him access to?”
“Well, there’s the X’thari technorganic stuff. No clue how he might fit that into his current designs, since some of it really doesn’t work well with traditional tech. You’ve got some cool weapons for fighters, but the way it looks they’d probably have to trade any missile/torpedo abilities for the weapons, due to size. So that’d make any fighters he modified from X’thari designed pure short-range threats, since they’d need to be within the beam range. The X’thari sublight drives are more efficient and slightly faster, but cause a deformation in shields which is why the battle wasn’t a lot costlier for him. Probably could fix that, but it’d take R&D time for sure. Their Anchor drives are known, but now he has access to one, so he could probably make copies. Problem is that doing this will draw the wrath of any X’thari ship that detects it, which would be a problem.”
“And what of the X’thari? Are there going to be more hunts?”
“Eventually, sure. But with he utter spanking they got in this fight, there’s no way they do more than sending scouts and setting up Sentinels to report in and watch the system. The system is too ‘heavy’ for them right now, and they know it. Of course, that means they’ll try and make raids, both to get new tech, and to try and draw off defenders. So I expect the other major powers will be getting ‘guests’ before long for small hit and run raids, targeting shipping.”
Morgan nodded. “Good. So it will quiet down for a bit, though players and NPCs traveling between stars or at the edge of systems are more likely to run into X’thari raiders, making them a more visible threat from now on. That’ll be a good way of helping to spin this for the rest of the player base. Speaking of spin, have we found where Deus and his minions set up shop?”
“Yeah, we have several systems that they’ve established ‘respawning dungeons’ in. Some are on populated planets, or used to be populated stations. Some are in places that used to be uninhabited.”
“Can we pick one of the ones in a populated area that isn’t too close to the Empire or Confederacy to leak the location of? Let the players know that there’s more in the works than just what our guy is up to?”
“Ah, the old shiny keys to distract the baby trick? Yeah, there’s one just inside Ihm space where a ‘crash landing’ happened. That’ll give people in the Imperium a feeling like we haven’t forgotten them. I’ll run it by the game AI, but I think we can work that with just a minor tweak, having a couple NPCs go out to investigate the site. It is pretty far from the nearest city, so ‘salvage rights’ could work as a motivation for the NPCs to get out there, maybe on behalf of whoever is important in the area.”
“Excellent. That’ll be great. So when can you get it done?”
Isaac considered for a moment, and then said, “If you want it quick, dirty, and obvious that we brute forced it? Now. If you want it done right, so that people who know what to look for can see a subtle GM push, without actively stepping in to control anyone’s characters, then I’d say a week or so for the first reports to get to the characters on that planet. No clue how fast it’ll spread after that, but it should be quick once a Nomad hears of it, since they’ve been begging for dungeons for months now, IRL.”
“I want this done right. No sense botching it, like with the Deus stuff.”
“Fine, I’ll get with he AI and my guys, and we’ll have a plan to run by you before the end of the day. Sound good?”
“Great.”
“Excellent. So, where do you want to go to dinner tonight? I think I’m in the mood for a bit of splurging after watching that battle. Some kick ass footage there.”
“Oh you!”