AI invaders press the attack
Well folks that was quite the amazing sight, especially from my position embedded in the Coalition military command at Cinq Port as a supporting radio operator, who knew my days in galactic radio would ever have been so useful.
At the start the situation was looking pretty grim, there was a big display screen that was visible from where I was sitting while I was coordinating ships and I may be no military genius but it had a lot more red dots than the green and blue ones.
Fortunately the Admirals at the Coalition knew what they were doing; there have been quite a few major skirmishes with the AI up until now as well as hundreds of tons of their ship parts examined by R&D teams across the six galaxies.
It turns out that the AI tends to mainly use swarm tactics in large scale combat situations, overwhelming ships one by one and destroying them, so the Admirals did their best to keep their distance and harass the AI fleets with long range attacks and keeping plenty of fighter and flak support to defend against their smaller more manoeuvrable ships that tried to close the distance.
Unfortunately this meant giving a lot of ground to the unfolding AI fleets and several planets directly in their path had to be evacuated, fortunately there was already evacuation plans on many of these worlds for just such an event and most of the civilian inhabitants were able to escape to the safety of the systems jumpgate, most, not all. The Coalition defenders were gradually pushed back to the jumpgates of many of these systems, ordered to prepare a final stand to prevent the AI gaining access to the jumpgate network.
It was still looking pretty grim, with us outnumbered at least five to one, but it seems my transmission as well as others got through, the Coalition forces were joined by freelancers, mercenaries and bounty hunters of all stripes, who were quickly organised into squadrons depending on their ships and load outs, easily doubling the size of the defending human fleet.
Some of the personnel here almost fell over when pirate fleets also began emerging from several jump gates in the contested systems, that was until they messaged us with an offer to parlay and temporarily side with us against the AI in return for salvage rights, apparently on order of their leader, the mysterious and enigmatic pirate queen. There was a brief discussion but command was in no position to turn down their offer, I have to tell you it’s nice to see those hulking pirate RAID’s and base ships fighting on our side for once.
There was even an offer of assistance from the Naristro, they apparently see a common enemy in the AI and their request to enter human space was quickly granted, they only sent a small fleet but boy did it make a difference, their ships ran rings around pretty much anything the AI had and those heavy plasma cannons punch way above their weight, at one point I saw one fire into an AI carrier, the shot punched straight through and took out the ship behind!
The war wasn’t just going on in space though, while that was happening there was a whole other war happening around me to combat the Termite Virus and maintain functions aboard out ships, fortunately we did a lot better on that front, we got a finalised version of the adaptive Anti-Virus software from Galaxy Inc and managed to distribute it across the majority of our ships before fighting really started, the rest of the battle was mostly hacking or jamming AI signals and maintaining coordination amongst the fleets.
It was a long and tough battle lasting hours, but eventually the Coalition forces obliterated the majority of the AI fleet and forced the rest to retreat into the nebulae and the planets they had already taken and fortified. The pirates took whatever they could grab from the wreckage and scarpered, the Naristro likewise withdrew into their own space. We may have won, but not without cost, while AI ship casualties easily outnumbered ours ten to one, we did have casualties, dozens of ships were crippled or lost during the fighting and the Sovereign Star, flagship of Verecian Admiral Vizel Sul, went down with all hands after they sacrificed themselves to protect a retreating civilian convoy. There was also the loss of nine planets across even systems, including the recently recaptured Spiritus.
With the battle report over its time for me to get to what you might already have noticed, your ships HUD has changed somewhat, Galaxy Inc have been distributing the Galaxy 3 operating system as a free upgrade to all existing Galaxy 2 users which should keep your ships computer safe and free from AI viruses. The head of Galaxy Inc has asked me to remind you though that you can upgrade to Galaxy 3 Pro with just a 50 credit purchase from your local software retailer.
The Galactic Planetary Locator Service has been restored as well, though some of its functionality may have been altered, it was rebuilt using a mixture of backup archived data and new surveys conducted by science vessels in those areas. There may be some holes until all the bugs are ironed out and it’s likely the images used will be completely different from the ones you remember, it has also received an upgrade with adaptive AI antivirus software as have key points of digital infrastructure across the sphere, I understand the Coalition is looking to make this technology standard across all their computer equipment.
Well, it’s been a long day folks, and it’s certainly cost us, but I think this just goes to show. The AI is not undefeatable, they can be beaten if we work together, I just hope that message is one we don’t forget, this is Gus Givens, signing off.
ISN News
Gus Givens
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