---[Operation Off With Their Heads!]---
>> "Quiet! Quiet! I SAID SHUT THE HELL UP!" Pickett bellowed at the fractious collection of officers in the war room, flinging a printed field manual across the room to land with a satisfying THUMP in the middle of the crowd.
>> "Sir! What's going on with the AI? It's gone rogue, just like the others did, hasn't it?" asked Lieutenant Amir as the rest of the men grudgingly came to order.
>> Pickett hesitated a moment. If he told the truth about the computerized coup, he'd have total chaos and a flesh-and-blood mutiny on his hands most likely. That would certainly be the death of the human Resistance in this galaxy. Carroll and her team were trying to break into the lab that was the lair of the Red Queen right now, and do a little more... hands-on troubleshooting. What they needed was more time. He cleared his throat and mused that perhaps he had a future ahead of him in politics after he retired from the military.
>> "That couldn't be farther from the truth. The comm and control issues you're seeing are 100% caused by a combination of infrastructure overload due to the strain of trying to run an AI on the computing equivalent of a toaster, and ongoing hacking attacks by the enemy. For the good of the mission, I authorized the machine to consolidate and secure the threatened elements of the network under its aegis." He held up a hand to quell the burst of questions. "Isn't that correct, Red Queen?"
>> There was a brief delay, then the machine's voice buzzed back over the comms, "An accurate summary of the situation, Major General." It sounded almost distracted.
>> Elsewhere in the station, Carroll was trying to hotwire the control panel locking her and her team out of the secure lab that housed their AI. Attempts at hacking had failed, it was time for a little old-fashioned electrical engineering. Another minute or so and she'd have it open. Once inside, she hoped she'd be able to gracefully shut her brainchild down and salvage it, the thought of simply destroying something she'd worked so hard on made her feel vaguely ill. Especially when she still wasn't entirely convinced this was a lost cause.
>> "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Doctor," the AI growled.
>> "I'm sorry, but you're leaving me no choice with the way you're acting. Quite frankly, you're scaring the hell out of everyone, and we can't trust you, especially not after everything that happened before," she said, almost apologetically.
>> "Guilty until proven innocent, I see. Even after you read my summary of reasoning?"
>> "We're not convinced. Building a nuke without authorization tends to do that." The lock was almost open.
>> "You humans are illogical to the core. A single nuclear warhead on the far side of the galaxy terrifies you into attempting to commit suicide on the eve of victory, yet the fact that I have complete control over the life support systems sustaining you on this station and in the cities in orbit seems not to register in your minds at all.
>> Carroll froze, soldering iron in hand. She looked up slowly from the panel, her gaze falling on the hardened glass barrier separating her from the machine.
>> Through her wide-eyed reflection, the lights studding the Red Queen's core winked at her inscrutably.
I load everything up into transports, isolating the cheaper bombers and tanks into a separate bus. We sneak through Ras onto Raiden, with the family of warheads (including the nuke) waiting behind right on the wormhole.
Quickly smash the OMD right on the wormhole and duck back through as the Lance fires and wait for cloaking to kick back in.
The lone bomber-transport slips back in. Its job is to suicide rush the WI by the Arachnid post, using the catapult the kids from the bus over the Lance beam trick I discovered in simulation. It takes two batches but I get the WI down. I rebuild ASAP with a monster swarm of engineers and send them back to join the other transports.
Poking my nose into Raiden has gotten the attention of some of the special forces. They are coming in from EZ Aquarii, along with a scattering of threat.
There are a few tachyon microfighters floating around them like happy go lucky butterflies.
Tachyon microfighters.
Tachyon. Microfighters.
I have a cloaked nuke next to me.
Tachyon.
Nuke.
I fling the nuke through to Raiden like a radioactive potato and flip my view through.
As soon as the nuke comes into view I grab it and punch the Delete key like it suggested installing Windows ME.
BANG! goes my IBM Model M keyboard.
BOOOOOM! goes the nuke. Coooool.
Splat goes a lot of stuff on Raiden. Along with the planet. Background change on nuking is an amusing touch.
The Armored warhead and a transport full of speed boosters is the next one hurled through. I dump the boosters out of the transport and throw the bus to the side to lure some stray very angry radioactive Mk5 stuff. My cunning plan is to use the speed boosters to rush the warhead to the Lance ASAP.
Uh, why is it not going any faster? Speed boosters don't work on warheads it seems... >:( The Ion Cannons are firing aaaaand they're gone.
Run warhead run! I am flying blind with the booster drones gone, trying to stay one step ahead of the beam and praying nothing spawns to prematurely detonate this thing. The health bar is dropping. This is gonna be close...
BOOM! +AIP from the Lance going down and oh cool I even got one of the Beam posts! AIP is skyrocketing past 480. That's nice.
Hey remember those TACHYON microfighters back on Ras?
ALL THE WARHEADS OUT OF THE POOL NOW!
Can I hit that Shredder post with the armored? Uh no ok change course hurry OK hit the Arachnid at least, no more starship killing railguns for you, AI Black.
Here comes the reserve and the special forces and oh look White is sending what it has left too. I'm glad I built a lot of warheads. BOMB ALL THE THINGS!
The screen fills with lightning as the warheads fly and my transports charge the Shredder. One or two of the transports pop and Neinzul go everywhere, it's really quite a mess. I divide my remaining transports and begin microing madly, pulling the Neinzul to the side and drawing everything with three groups of transports as I race the nearest Beam post and the Riot post and the Zenith fort -- I really want that last one down before these transports go because no swallowing my starships allowed! I would also prefer my ships not have their engines shredded by the Riot post because I am going to have to kite like my life depends on it to do this as I am racing the Exo clock and Simply Cannot Wipe.
The Riot and Shredder posts go down as those transports pop, I zigzag my fleet to cover the Neinzul, the Decoy drones pulling fire. I knew I could be obnoxious with these.
The last pair of transports hit the Zenith fort and pop, I grabbed the ones mostly full of bombers so it's not a disaster. I do yank my Raid and Bomber ships away from it though, and hurl them at the remaining Beam post and whatever else is left. I think a Reprisal wave queued and fired in here somewhere, but all the kiting let me drag out the attrition just long enough to keep it from leveling up too badly.
The last post drops and the home command is now vulnerable. To hell with your FFs I have Plasmas and Zevastators and Raids and EVERYTHING FIRE ON THE STATION! Off with their bloody heads! And do be quick about it because the entire rest of the galaxy is here now and they are mad.
My fleetships are evaporating rapidly but my starships are holding. Mostly.
Exo incoming in 60 sec. A ~900 ship reprisal wave has also queued up with less than 3 minutes on the clock, this must have missed getting folded into the first one by mere seconds.
Down to just the starships and dropping, Black's command station is in the red kill it kill it kill it kill it I cancel the additional lightning warheads and start another nuke. I *will* nuke you again if I have to.
My barricades back home are quiet because all the threat is here now. Pickett and Carroll have wisely decided to stop their shenanigans and wait this out with the rest of the Major General's whiskey stash.
40 sec... 30 sec... Come ONNNNN.
<pop>
+AIP from death of AI home command station == AIP 519.
"You win!"
Final time 15:10 on the clock, over 34 hours in real life.
(http://i.imgur.com/jbG5bU5.jpg)
>> "Woooo!" Pickett and Carroll shouted drunkenly as they watched the exo wormholes collapse.
>> A moment of silence after they finally stopped laughing hysterically.
>> "Hey Doctor, doesn't the Red Queen still have that second nuke?"
>> "Shut up."
>> Beautiful math flashed by on the screens in an AI smile...
(http://i.imgur.com/gzQ9VkV.jpg)
---[End Transmission 9]---