[Nova Wars] Chapter 178

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Bullets have to travel from point of manufacture to the military’s weapons before they can be used to kill the enemy.

Those nations who cannot perform this simple task will lose the war. – From: A History of Logistics, Pre-Glassing, TerraSol Press

General (Four Star) Talkik<klik>nak ducked slightly as he moved through the door. His size was slightly too large, his coloration was solid green gradients with no accents or highlights, his skull looked strong, and he had barbs here and there to protect his limbs. His pheromones had a sharp, aggressive tang to them even when he merely gave others greetings. He was large, imposing, and seen as aggressive in posture and scent.

Other Treana’ad often mumbled behind his back that he was a throwback. His genetic expression from an otherwise excellent line was obviously from thousands of years ago.

But since Smokey Cone’s War Matrons had assigned him to TerraSol two months ago he had found that he was among his people. The other Treana’ad were built like him, had the same pheromone tangs that were considered impolite in modern Treana’ad society, and had the same markers and body language as he did.

General Talkik<klik>nak had visited the P’Thok Mobile Infantry Center, had gone to see a few other places.

It was awe inspiring to walk the same sands of Fort Earnurwin that P’Thok once had.

Now he was moving into a room that was largely quiet. The conversations were often muted by local subsonic baffling.

The first thing he noticed was that there was no privacy screens, the holotanks were all set to allow everyone to see the contents rather than set to privacy and they had the ‘real’ look of high consistency holograms that probably felt like firm jelly.

From low level enlisted clustered around a holotank showing long rows of data to high ranking Admirals, Marshalls, and Generals looking at star charts.

The second thing his eyes caught on was Talkik<klik>nak noted the dress top folded and draped over a chair. The members of the Solarian military had the choice of wearing only six awards that they believed were the most important, a full salad, or four rows.

The General had six, all of them Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems Marine Corps, which was startling to anyone who viewed the Marines solely as heavily muscles supermen who could chew up nails and shit barbed wire.

General Talkik<klik>nak’s implant helpfully ID’d all six.

They were all campaign ribbons.

Hammerhead Nebula Campaign. Telkan Liberation Campaign. Mithril Nebula Campaign. First Mar-gite War Campaign. Unified Council/Precursor Autonomous War Machine Campaign (First Wave).

Clownface Nebula.

General Talkik<klik>nak could appreciate those ribbons, even though they were forty thousand years ago to him. To have fought in such legendary campaigns made General Talkik<klik>nak faintly feel as if the human in possession of such a top should be in possession of a lantern jaw, the kind of physique that made maidens and matrons alike swoon, and bring about awe and appreciation from even moomoos.

Wandering around the room was a slightly portly general in his dress pants and shined dress shoes. His tunic and formal undershirt were removed, leaving only the undershirt present to cover the slight belly. He had weak looking faintly watery blue eyes and close cropped black hair. In one hand he had a large twisted and solid pretzel and in the other an actual ceramic mug of thick ale.

Assassins and strike teams would ignore him, unaware that the greatest chance to win any war he participated in would be to kill him, General Talkik<klik>nak thought to himself as the General set down the mug, dipped the pretzel in the mustard, and waved General Talkik<klik>nak over next to him before running the forearm of the empty hand down the forearm of the hand holding the pretzel.

General Talkik<klik>nak was slightly surprised to see a human emulate the movement for “I am available for your full attention” so smoothly.

When General Talkik<klik>nak moved up next to the Terran the portly general looked up.

“The rest of the Confederacy lacks a simple item to help them fight this war when they most desperately need it,” the other General, one Imak Takilikakik AKA General Tik-Tak, said in a friendly voice. “I believe, with just the resources we pre-staged for The Bag opening, that the Solarion Iron Dominion can change the metrics of the war quickly and substantially.”

General Talkik<klik>nak nodded.

“Now, the problem is obvious with just a fast cursory reading of the cover sheets of the precis that the various Confederate military analysis boards are starting to put together, which also reveals your other problem,” the portly general turned to face General Talkik<klik>nak. “And why you will lose if your peers keep trying to fight a war they lost over a century ago.”

That made General Talkik<klik>nak lift his antenna in surprise. He had heard, from the official study board’s preliminary evidence finding precis, that the Confederacy should be able to hold back the Mar-gite long enough for a planned secondary wave to then stop them completely. That second wave would provide enough time to mobilize a third wave that would then eliminate the Mar-gite.

The initial findings were that the war would last only two or three centuries.

Talkik<klik>nak used his implant to summon a chair and waited until it scooted between his legs and under his abdomen until he relaxed onto it.

“How did we lose this a century ago?” Talkik<klik>nak asked.

The other General, Takilikakik (Which roughly translated to ‘soft laughing whirlwind’ in Old Treana’ad), snapped his fingers and pointed, causing a hologram tank to appear.

“Two thousand years after the cessation of the Second Precursor War the still existing members of the Confederacy reclassified ship hulls, eliminating the goliath, jotun, and colossus classes of ship hulls,” the portly general stated. He twitched his hand, adding more data to the hologram.

“Ship types became less heavily armed as weapon technology advanced, lighter on the armor as armor methods advanced, and less crew members as automation technologies increased,” General Tiktak said. “Now, during this time the Confederacy started going with fast and light ships, lightly armed and armored, but far outclassing everyone else. The C+ cannon was determined to be good enough and the Singularity Field appeared to be the ultimate in fire deflection and attenuation systems.”

“Yes. Even another race’s near lightspeed weapons, including missiles, and even some energy weapons, were easily destroyed or deflected by modern weapon systems,” Talkik<klik>nak stated.

“Our Office of Game & Theory countered every single Confederate defensive system in less than twelve hours,” Takilikakik countered, his voice cold. “You sat on those advances for over thirty thousand years. You are lucky beyond belief that you didn’t hit someone beyond the Ornislarp Noocracy.”

Talkik<klik>nak wanted to protest and even open his mouth to defend decisions made by the Confederate military.

“Then weapon effectiveness was lowered by many nations in the name of cutting costs. Telkan held out the longest, although the Akltak and the Hamaroosan and Tnvaru have, in different ways each, kept up the building types and weapons as best as they could,” Takilikakik said.

The porty general dipped his pretzel and took a bite as Talkik<klik>nak looked at the hologram.

He’d never seen the data presented in just raw numbers without analysis to ‘make sense’ of the data.

Here it had just been put in columns that were then labeled.

Minimalist.

Brutal.

General Takilikakik just took a swig of his brew to wash down the bite of the pretzel and tapped the hologram, making the whole thing wobble.

“Missile production slowed, as well as other weapon production,” the portly general said, dipping his pretzel again. “Hyperdrive engines for C+ and C++ cannon shot was deemed too expensive and attempts were made to replace the hyperdrive with jump drives. Eventually it was accomplished, but at increasing the weight and size of the round by 30% and 75% respectively.”

He took another bite, bringing up more data.

Talkik<klik>nak was starting to feel dread staring at the weapon data.

Again, the portly general just swallowed, took another drink, then shifted, snapping his fingers and pointing out the borders of another holographic field.

“The last of the major heavy ship hull construction by the Confederacy stopped approximately three thousand years ago when the Confederate Office of Shipbuilding reorganized the tonnage classifications, removing the top three ship hulls,” General Takilikakik stated. “In less than one hundreds years all facilities, with the exception of the Lanaktallan facilities, were first mothballed and then dismantled for parts. The Lanaktallan facilities were put in storage mode with a skeleton crew. The fact that the Lanaktallan militaries offered exclusive sash badges and personal icon accents ensured that while the post was considered a hardship duty they still had volunteers.”

The data fields in the holotank were brutal.

The portly general ate another bite of pretzel and washed it down before sizing another holographic field and putting data up.

“Additionally, advanced in robotics and social pogroms led to a sharp decline in birth rates. Some nations used cloning creches to offset that, but even that stopped,” Tik-Tak did the bite-chew-swallow-drink circle again as Talkik<klik>nak looked over the data.

“Which means, as of a hundred years ago, the Treana’ad Great Hive of the War of Human Aggression could completely conquer the complete Confederacy in less than five years, just based on their weapons, armor, size and strength of their War Hordes,” Tik-Tak finished.