1260 The Sky Is Falling
The blaring of the emergency alarm the next morning woke Max from a deep slumber. Something had been detected on long-range scanners by the Alliance, and it had panicked them enough that they were calling every single Commander and military leader into a mass conference call. They were so concerned about something that they hadn't even sent details directly to the communicators. This level of security was usually reserved for the most important of military announcements, but they shouldn't be sent on such a wide scale that Max could tell that thousands of dignitaries aboard Absolution had received them.
The meeting began only a single minute after the message was sent, a testament to the urgency that that Alliance leaders felt when they were communicating it.
[Attention everyone, thank you for coming. We have an Existential Threat level report. Massive spatial fluctuations have been detected in the void around the Alliance territory. The patterns are identical to the preparations for the last round of assaults, but the signals are a hundred times more intense, with an area that cannot be discerned by our scans.
From what our experts can discern, the Great Enemy is intending to send an attack fleet to every single star system in the Alliance, all at once.
There is nothing that we can do to block this, and even with the help of the Arisen and the Knife Ears, there is an uncertain chance that any of our civilizations will survive the first wave of attacks. As for the second wave and the consolidation, the odds appear to be even worse.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})The time to arrival should be less than one day, so we are requesting that all troops and armed vessels return to their home systems and prepare for planetary defence. May your deity of choice be with you all.]
Max immediately sent a message to Terminus, who wouldn't have received the message, and sent them further into the uninhabited spaces, looking for signs of lost civilizations. Their expedition plan was only a third of the way through, but Max framed the message as a hot lead in an extremely remote region that didn't currently support life.
Even if the Great Enemy was looking for hidden human colonies, they wouldn't find Terminus there, with its million tourists and residents. They came from a wide enough variety of species that the Colony Ship could again serve its original purpose if necessary, and then Max turned his attention to defence.
They had the finest of military vessels in the universe right here, and they were making more as fast as they could, so there was a real possibility that Rae 5 would survive the first wave without issues. With that in mind, the Reaver Council was already sending out vessels to take defensive positions around the various colonies that they had agreements with, and bringing all the planetary guards in the galaxy online for emergency drills.
Likewise, the Alliance was fully mobilizing what they had, though they were actually only in the early stages of planning for their own defence. They had gotten some new equipment, but there was minimal training, little organization or oversight, and almost no tactical coordination.
From what Max's thoughts could tell from the ongoing conversations, there were only about six species that could be fully counted on to be ready, and a few dozen others that had some hidden firepower from their expansion era still tucked away for a rainy day.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})It wasn't encouraging, but at the very least, every populated system in the humans' galaxy had their military on full alert after two hours, with more armed vessels showing up by the second.
Terminus Trading Company had made every one of their design schematics available royalty free for the day, and the humans were stocking up on all the best new goodies, with the Reavers loading entire cargo bays full of Android Piloted Mecha. The Innu were doing the same, while the Valkia had ordered every household with an able-bodied adult to create as many Archangel Exoskeletons as they thought that they could use. It was a huge power drain on every planet in the Alliance, but between the Valkia, the Innu and the Giants, they should at least have some fighting forces that were equipped, even if they didn't have many with experience.
"How is the production of the Demigod Class Mecha coming?" The Innu Envoy asked Nico once the notification came that there was nothing else to be done before the enemy arrived. The Alliance had created as many fighting forces as their power supply could sustain, and they were out of people who knew how to operate the ones that couldn't feasibly be run by AI.
There was no more power for Android creation, unless they cut back on the Mecha and heavy weapons production, but many planets had switched to arming shuttles, pleasure yachts and orbital mining vessels. If it moved in space or in the air, they intended to give it more guns.
"We have a thousand of them now, and the Pilots are inside getting acquainted. That's not enough for every star system in this Galaxy, but it will cover about a quarter. The deployment plan is to have them cover systems that lack the ability to repel a force at the level of the last invasion. We wanted a force that could handle that plus fifty percent, but there simply wasn't enough time." She explained.
"Is there a fallback plan?" The Envoy asked.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})"Yes, it's been sent to all the Reavers. Does the Alliance have an equivalent?" Max asked.
"We do, I'll trade you the data. We're with you for this fight, our vessel has been repurposed for planetary defence at home." The Giant Envoy announced as he walked into the research bays.
"Then we're glad to have you. Pick the department you would like to join, and we will make sure they recognize your authority." Max replied.
[Alert. Spatial Fluctuations have begun in the Rae 5 System. Beginning anti-portal countermeasures. All travel is now restricted.] Felicity announced.
[Preparing to deploy countermeasures.] Sylvie agreed.
Between the two of them, they were confident that they could force the enemy to arrive at the outer reaches of the solar system, where they would be easy targets for the freshly rebuilt defensive weapons.
