1201 1201 Castles
Max sensed the deep amusement of the Myceloid God as he began to understand the larger picture of the planetary situation.
There were currently three major military clusters, with fifty smaller clusters from each faction spread about the world in a vaguely familiar pattern.
They were well spaced, and matched in their dispersion, which finally gave away the intention of the deployment. This was a Castles board, a three-dimensional board game that had been popular in his past life. It was a strategy game, in that you had to preserve your outlying forces so that you had the might to overcome your enemies, but you couldn't move your Castle. If you lost the Castle, you lost the game, and if you lost your outlying forces, you were essentially helpless. Now, in the board game you could only move a single piece per turn, or return one lost piece to play at your Castle. They had to appear at your Castle, so if you were being surrounded, it limited your options, and once you were fully surrounded by enemies, even if they were from multiple other teams, you lost. This chapter was first shared on the Ñøv€lß1n platform.
Max worked to get in contact with the outlying teams as quickly as he could and get them patched into the overall command situation and informed of enemy locations so that they didn't lose allies before they could even learn the situation.
That was simple with the Reavers, they had been pulled from battle without their motherships, so they were on the ground with a conventional military force that was mostly made of Androids with a few mortal leaders among them.
The Alliance forces were a bit more difficult to get on board with accepting his authority, but once the fighting started, and they could use his targeting data, they changed their minds fairly quickly.
Unlike his force, which was creating their own troops as quickly as they could, the other two Castles both had an open portal at them, but it was a one-way option. They could only bring in more troops, not send them back.
It looked like the Great Enemy had realized that they had to win to leave here alive, and the Myceloids were clearly in on the plan from the start because they had already started making strategic moves, presumably at their God's direction.
"What have you learned?" Sylvie asked as Max whistled in appreciation for the trouble the Myceloid God had gone to in setting up this battlefield.
"The creature that set up this battle designed our starting positions to resemble a Castles board. All three sides have the ability to refresh their troops as well. We will do it with drones and Androids, while the others have rapidly growing life forms and a Portal to bring in more troops to their main base.
We are the only one who certainly got World Ships, but the Cathedral Ships got a massive fortress of some sort that might be a World Ship equivalent if it is space capable. I assume the game is in your records, it is from your era." Max explained.
"Yes, I know it." Sylvie agreed. How Max knew it was a mystery to her, but the game must still be played in some fashion if he recognized it so quickly. She hadn't thought to analyze the situation based on strategy games, but given that they were brought here deliberately, it made a lot of sense.
"What is our next move?" She asked.
"Eliminate the nearby enemy units, consolidate the region around our castle, and start sending out reinforcements for those outlying units spread around the world who are going to need firepower after their first engagement."
Sylvie hummed happily as she contacted Felicity and began to make plans. The other AI was keeping the board of directors updated on everything that was going on, while trying to keep the people of Absolution from panicking. There were over ten million people on board at the moment, and many of them had only come to purchase new vessels from the production facilities.
Those vessels didn't do them much good right now, as they were above the power limits allowed by the Myceloid God, but most of the visitors were Reavers and all had recent combat experience, making them suitable to lead the freshly produced Regiments of Mecha and assorted attack craft.