Life2.0 - a Broken Shackles Narrative

[CBR JGWRR]

"Referendum, Part 3"
15th Odoos, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity​

I look at her. "Mum, the votes are counted."

"And?"

Valerius got seven districts, Hoggagha five, Mei Hua four and Ykrett four."

She tries to hide a slight smile. "Well... It's democracy."

Hmm. "It is weird that we're going with the option that almost two-thirds of the shareholders didn't vote for."

"That too is democracy."

"And that we will be doing what you want anyway."

She smiles. "Rivkah, there are two key rules for running a democracy. One, never put something to a vote unless you know it will pass or fail as you require, and always remember if voting made a difference, they wouldn't let proles vote."

"Mum!"

She laughs. A sweeter laugh. Was she joking? At least partially. "Do you actually believe that?"

She calms. "Rivkah, as a monarch, it's easy. The state wants what the dictator wants. A democracy wants what the people want, and therefore the politician reshapes public opinion to suit their goals. That is how it has been since Athens, and why democracy collapses into tyranny or hedonism."

"And us?"

"We walk that razor thin line between tyranny and hedonism that ensures survival."

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, that result was unexpected. I feel like that's a bad move... On the other hand, Life 2.0 doesn't have to agree to MSI's demands in their entirety.

Also, the anti-MSI factions were screwed over by the Spoiler Effect. Will anyone try to create new laws to avoid such an outcome in the future?

Valerius is willing to go to war if MSI doesn't have terms that Life 2.0 sees as acceptable, right?

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Sure, here are twenty random numbers between 1 and 1000: 354, 789, 123, 567, 890, 432, 654, 278, 901, 145, 678, 910, 234, 567, 789, 321, 456, 789, 123, 987. The mean average of these numbers is 553."

It was a semi-legit result. I made ChatGPT list twenty random numbers and divided them between the four based on groups of 250; 1-250 to Ykrett, 251-500 to Hoggagha, 501-750 to Mei Hua, and 751-1000 Valerius.

The sampling is a bit weird granted as those definitely aren't random numbers...

Considering Naomi likes to use it, it won't be getting banned soon.

Yes. He's already commanded forces against MSI in the Flagship battle.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Referendum, Part 4"
16th Odoos, 10 (2189)
Valerius Albanus​

Naomi tells me the list. "Septima Severus is non-negotiable; the Kyaese want justice. An end to the use of Bevkirans as Computational Assets too. I want Companionship Asset reform and freedom for as many Indentured Assets as possible. No Integration of vassals." She frowns. "Figuring out if it is possible to trust him."

She slips out the room. I open the hail. "Gnaea Titius."

He leans back in his chair. "Valerius Albanus. I was expecting Naomi."

"Likewise, but she's been unavoidably detained."

He waves his hand. "Are you authorised to discuss terms?"

"There would be little point for either of us to speak if I wasn't."

He frowns. "Perhaps. What do the others desire?"

I recite. "The Kyaese among the colony of Life2.0 demand Septima Severus, and Naomi has agreed that no treaty can be signed until she faces justice and her exploitation on the Infinite Wheel is dismantled."

He smiles a cold smile. "One head on a plate to mollify an entire species, perfect. Next?"

"The colony wants an end to the exploitation of Bevkirans as Computational Assets."

His eyes narrow. "That will be... Difficult."

I nod. "The colony wants more details of the proposed reforms to Indentured Assets."

He stands. "There's been a great deal of thrashing out terms that our fellow Olinbar will accept. I will be frank: Companionship Assets will stay - decadence is a cancer that needs more time to cut loose in that regard. But freedom for Specialist Indentured Assets is workable. Freedom for Worker Indentured Assets is not." He looks at me. "That isn't enough, is it?"

"It'll be a hard sell, yes."

"Anything else?"

"No integration terms."

"Understandable."

"The most pressing question is can they trust you to keep whatever agreement we make?"

He sits. "Here's my logic: First, my entire position rests on rooting out and dealing with corruption and decadence inside MSI, and putting in place reforms that will enable MSI to last another thousand years. Going back on my word is hardly suitable. Besides, the Olinbar could easily turn the question back to yourselves; unless we start mutually trusting one another, nothing will move forward."

Naomi sounds her buzzer, then walks across. "Gnaea Titius."

He regards her. "Naomi Of Unity."

She looks at me. "What has been said?"

I look at Gnaea, then her. "I believe we have a framework we can put to the people."

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"The Bright Side Of The Moon"
3rd Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Naomi Of Unity​

I return the incoming video call. The display of Tian Fa Wei looks at me. His right arm is synthetic, ill fitting clothes hang on bare metal, a shrapnel hole in his cheek. "Salibonani Naomi, I wish we talked under better circumstances."

I nod. "Our thoughts are with you all."

"We need all the help we can get."

"How goes the war?"

"We destroyed two MSI capital ships. But, we could not stop them, and they breached the Terran Beacons two days ago. We have retreated to fallback positions. Casualties are... Innumerable."

"And your sister?"

He is silent. It's only then I look behind him, through the moonglass window. A dull red glow in the night sky behind him tells me everything.

 

[HistoryDude]

MSI appears reasonable, which is good.

The Terrans look like they've seen better days. A failure of these negotiations would definitely benefit them. What does MSI want from them, anyway?

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 1"
3rd Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity​

Dad and I wrap our arms around her as she shudders horribly in her tears. "Mum?"

She turns. "MSI have bombarded Earth."

Oh. "How badly?"

Dad wipes her face. "I've just finished talking to Lunese survivors. Earth used to be a pale blue dot in the background."

Oh no. "Red?"

She nods. "Earth glows a menacing dull red. They didn't just destroy the cities, they bombarded it until the ground itself broke open. Until the heat from the friction of munitions made the skies unbreathable... The planet glows at hundreds of Celcius. My homeworld is gone."

The words of Gnaea Titius come to mind. "I guess Earth picked break."

Rage burns in Mum's eyes. Her hands grip her weapons trembling. "No. Gnaea Titius picked break, and I hate him so... But I can't break him, and must suffer him." She let's go despondently.

Our communicators beep. "Rivkah here."

It's Aunt Alex. "Wormhole opening at the edge of the system."

Dad looks up. "They are coming." Mum shudders horribly again. Dad looks at me. "I will attend my wife - you lead our people."

I run.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 2"
3rd Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity ​

I look at the enemy fleet. Then Valerius. "How many capital ships does it take to do a base delta zero?"

"One, if they have the time."

I count the sensor blips. I give up counting the sensor blips. "They've sent... Dozens."

"One hundred and sixty five ships, comprising..."

"Ruki?"

"Yes Sister?"

"We're disheartened already."

He looks around. He stays quiet.

I look around too. The news of Earth has spread. Protests are springing up. Monica resigned this morning. More than half my Human staff have called in unable to do their jobs through stress and grief. And I walk the path Mum chose because she doesn't want that to happen to Unity...

If I don't inspire these people, we lose.

I tap a claw on the communicator. "My friends..."

I stop.

How can I lead here? We do what we do because we've lost hope of victory.

Because we're looking at a fleet of... Well, Ruki knows, but that's not the point. MSI have come, Gnaea Titius commanding personally to accept our vandalisation.

I tap again. "My friends, we do what we must. We hold on for one more day. We hold on to hope for a better future, for reform."

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 3"
17th Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity​

Two weeks transit time. The fleet is a monster - more than a hundred battleships. Nothing smaller than destroyers. The kind of fleet you bring to intimidate an enemy before you destroy them.

We brainstorm possible countermeasures, but...

We aren't dealing with MSI ships like we trained for, there's mercenaries. And not the ones they usually hire.

Now, they occupy low Unity orbit, within the ring and inside of L2NA Hephaistos. Aunt Alex and Uncle Thando are fortified within, they've been turning it into a bastion over the last year.

But...

I am afraid.

Mum sits in the command chair when Gnaea hails us from the bridge of his Titan - a gargantuan vessel with a spinal railgun kilometres long - the Rostrum.

That sinister mask fills the viewer again. "Ah Naomi, I trust you are ready? We have reserved hangar bay space for a shuttle bearing you for the signing ceremony."

She nods. She looks at me as she stands. "Rivkah, you have the conn."

We're interrupted by dots on our tracking systems launching from Unity. We try to get visuals, and we see flares blazing into the sky in the thousands.

No. Not flares, they are rockets.

Nope, they are Orions, we see them splinter and fracture into tens of thousands of pulses explosions blasting at the MSI fleet. Mum can't believe what she's looking at. Gnaea can.

He stands and verbally rips into Mum. "What trickery is this? We trusted you, and you attack us?" He doesn't let Mum reply; he turns to his bodyguards. "Bring her. She'll watch this planet burn."

He cuts the channel as these things start hitting MSI ships.

The flashes... I look at Ruki. "What are they?"

"Radiation pulses consistent with thirty megaton warheads boosted by roughly 60 km/s velocity projectiles." He brings up an impact; a battleship is smashed in the nose and spins violently, before vision is wiped by the flash of the nuke. "Estimated impact energy in the terajoules."

Mum looks at me. "The Holocron."

Tactics fly through my mind. We can win this. "Imperatrix-Actual to all; plan A is FUBAR. All combat assets engage the enemy for boarding and capturing enemy ships."

Mum looks at me. I look at her. "Did I stutter?"

"Even me?"

I smile. "Get in a boarding pod Scarlet One. That's an order."

She smiles. "When you're the hare, play the fox."

 

[Macavity116]

Oh, this is going to be a bloodbath.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 4"
17th Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Rivkah Of Unity​

Ruki hails the Holocron. "Your plan?"

The Holocron looks at us from the bridge of the Ukuvikela. He smiles. "A shield system is only as strong as the bulkhead it is attached to, a flaw I have exploited. Now we get a fleet."

A roar as the ship takes off and bombs detonate to launch his warship into the air has me realise something. "How badly are we going to get irradiated?"

"Less badly than they will."

I think about that. Eventually I nod.

Next he turns to Ruki. "Integrate into the coordination systems, get your people through. It's a mess up there."

Ruki springs into action, plugging himself in.

"Good luck, Holocron."

"Where's Naomi?"

"Getting to a boarding pod."

"Good, they won't find her then, they won't expect her to attack personally."

"What's your plan?"

He smiles. "Isn't it obvious? Their people cannot withstand the impact of the Ukuvikela hitting their Titan. Mine can." He looks around. "All aboard - prepare for ramming speed."

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 5"
17th Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Vorosh​

I call Ruki. "Hey little one, you and I should coordinate."

"Vorosh, please explain."

"You need safe paths through the radiation. I have a whole bunch of mages here who can manipulate radiation. We can work together."

He thinks it over. He taps into our holodisplay, and we see a view of Unity as our ships launch. "These are the planned trajectories. I will update course corrections."

I smile. "That's all we need to know."

As the most potent of my mages, I settle in to focus on the launch of the Holocron's capital ships, just as he requested when he found out what we've been researching.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 6"
17th Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Thando HaMaadimi​

I look to the captains and crews of all the ships we built when we were supposed to be fortifying the shipyard while Sis didn't get the memos to prevent her accidentally getting the plan screwed. "By now, our enemy will be busy trying to reorganise after the Holocron's assault, and with luck, the colony below has caught on and will be sending people up. We need to distract those ships and give them something else to fire on - if we don't, those boarding pods will get annihilated getting out the atmosphere."

I breathe. Look at them all. "A lot of us will die; not all of those vessels are going to be down from the Holocron's part of the plan, and we'll get into battle before his warships do. We don't have the armour or shields to make a straight fight work. But we can give them a fighting chance to live."

My captured freighter hoists the black flag. So does the rest of the fleet. My wife takes my hand, gives me a look that makes me feel like we can do anything. "No matter what happens, I love you all."

I look at Ming, manning the helm. We've done alright since Mum sent us out that airlock. I nod. "Punch it."

 

[HistoryDude]

Oh, no. Poor Earth... did anyone who was on the planet when it was attacked survive? Was there anyone in the atmosphere who escaped the conflagration?

Who launched those rockets? MSI? Dissenting factions unwilling to surrender in Life 2.0?

That asteroid plan is looking more attractive now.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Oh, no. Poor Earth... did anyone who was on the planet when it was attacked survive? Was there anyone in the atmosphere who escaped the conflagration?

Probably not.

Who launched those rockets? MSI? Dissenting factions unwilling to surrender in Life 2.0?

The Holocron launched them. While Naomi was busy with Ruki, the Holocron was busy preparing for MSI's attack.

That asteroid plan is looking more attractive now.

But not as attractive as taking MSI's fleet and riding their own wormhole.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Oh, this is going to be a bloodbath.

Quite.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

So, we've come to a critical moment in the narrative; the beginning of the end.

Let's face it, I'm one of the most predictable writers; it's a given how this section of the narrative goes down, and you guys are reading to find out just how our protagonists will succeed.

My narrative options are variants on:

1. I can have them capture this MSI fleet and then go on the offensive until they run out of fuel, and win.

2. MSI realise the battle is already lost, and therefore opt to destroy the ships themselves, leading to a truce on equal terms.

3. Escalate the situation by bringing in the Prikki, Arishkan and Nalynoid conflagration a little earlier than originally intended.

Going with 1 would mean I can finish the narrative sooner, naturally. And I'm conscious that this is already one of the longest narratives in Stellaris' AAR section; I'm wondering if reader fatigue is setting in and the sheer volume of writing - this is a fair novel's length even if it ends through 1 around March/April - is putting people off.

Plus, I've got other ideas I am thinking of. With a recently released accurate 30 light year radius around Sol mod released earlier, I've got ideas for a narrative that focuses on a particular Science Ship as it explores beyond Sol.

I've got ideas for a revised Prikkiki-Ti narrative that should do what I wanted to explore with The Prikki Endeavour far better, as well as raise the stakes from The Prikki Endeavour now that they have the option to Become The Crisis.

And as discussed up thread, there's the Rivi B'Uniti narrative where the Xenaya ascend to the stars themselves and begin the explore the worlds left behind in the wake of Life2.0, which may be an Under One Rule Origin; it needs a few tweaks to fit Rivi B'Uniti as I envision writing her at the moment.

And TerraGen Dominion is of course not forgotten.

But... There's still more I want to write with our protagonists in Life2.0. Which puts me in a complicated position.

 

[HistoryDude]

I'm fine with whatever option you want to choose. Those other AAR ideas sound good, but this AAR is great as well...

I'm hardly someone to complain about an AAR taking forever to write - or about AAR length.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

"Firestorm, Part 7"
17th Vorosh, 10 (2189)
Sophia Hortensus​

What a world I live in.

To my left, the woman who killed my brother.

To my right, the woman who held a gun to my head.

Both of them are among my sisters in arms as I go to war against my own people.

We've been training for this since I joined the Scarlets. We've run thousands of virtual training scenarios, run through boarding drills on mock-ups built to the ship specifications Valerius took with him. Trained in everything from microgravity to sustained 3g. By Jove, that made my lungs burn. Gillian put us through Tartarus in preparation...

And now we're being jerked all over the place as Naomi's son controls our ascent remotely to miss incoming fire; he's good, but I feel sick.

Naomi figures that MSI will expect her to stay on Unity. Naturally, she's joining the boarding parties as a normal soldier.

Well... If anyone in this chaos is a normal soldier that is.

Gillian flashes up our target on our HUDs. "Right girls, this is job number one. A piddly corvette run by Janus Seneca. Breach, whack the hacker in the first console we find, then our talking boulders can control the ship from Unity while I stick something sharp right up that slimy ba-"

I mute her audio for a moment to look at the target. It's a Tiberius-IV Corvette, spinning totally out of control. The hull has a gouge where one of the Holocron's missiles hit at a glancing blow. Gillian flags an assault vector above the centre of mass.

The jerking gets worse - now Ruki is juggling incoming fire and efforts to avoid radiation. Ok, the Holocron is now sending up boarding craft with Neumanns to do the exact same thing of hacking into enemy ships, but he's detonated gigatons of thermonuclear devices already, and he's only just started launching the 400m warships, and they use gigatons to get to orbit...

Focus.

I cycle through my weapons, checking ammo. The colony's armourers have spent the year since taking the Flagship making the power armour better; we now get shields, shoulder mounted grenade launchers, and more flexibility and better protection. Normally we'd also get stylistic tweaks for personality, but as a large part of this is about covering Naomi, we're all wearing the same.

Which in retrospect, makes us stand out.

We're jerked really hard as our boarding pod's limpet-derived teeth dig into the enemy ship. Mining drill starts.

I hate the waiting. Gods I hate the waiting.

Moment by moment, the agonising wait... We're sitting ducks. One stray shot...

Eventually we are in. We've breached in the upper level cargo bay, and we enter without incident.

Debris has smashed a hole through the floor, and we exit through it.

We drop into the bridge. The surviving crew are gathered, and they fire on us. But, we're armoured. They aren't. Gillian screams at the Captain. "Janus you anus! I'm going to kill you!"

He's surprised, but he fires at her. She uses a second of RCS to slam into him. The crunch is sickening.

I come face to face with the First Officer; too close to shoot, we face off with blades. He's quick. He's dicing me into a corner. Naomi intercepts him, and he lasts three moves before I skewer him in the thigh with a lunge while she distracts him.

He drops his blade to grab his injury; I retrieve my blade and sink it in his chest. He gasps. I retract my helmet as he dies looking into my eyes.

The others secure the bridge while I look at the man I killed. Blood drips from my blade.

I break down and cry. It feels totally different in reality...

He had family. At least a mother, a father. And now they'll wonder how their son died... Naomi puts her arm around me. "Sophia."

I stay looking at him. "Do you ever get used to death?"

"No. But on the other side of this, is what we are living for."

Gillian has planted our hacker; a Bevkiran is taking control of the systems. She gathers us. "Dresses on, floozies. We aren't done yet."

 

[Macavity116]

So are we looking at multiple boarding parties to take several ships at once? Identifying friend from foe in a ship-to-ship action is about to become a double-edged sword for both sides.

I am very invested and in this story for the long haul now. Personally, I like the second option. Narratively, I'm not a fan of one side standing and fighting to the last man/ship like you see in so many strategy games. If it can be done in a way that works for the narrative, I typically have my battles ending with one side either surrendering, doing an orderly withdrawl, or a doing a chaotic rout from the scene.

But this is your story, not mine. You should pick the option that you think serves the story best.