Chapter 5659 ARCHIE
5659 ARCHIE
As time passed by, the Red Ocean became increasingly more engulfed in war.
The Red Cabal continued to expand its power and dominance over the other native races in the dwarf galaxy.
No matter whether the races were strong or weak, each of them had to contribute to the war effort one way or another!
The dramatic defeat of numerous ancient phase whales and the destruction of several so-called Tide Station had enraged the alien leadership to the point where they wanted to wipe out humanity at all cost!
However, despite the fact that human space only occupied a relatively small corner of the Red Ocean, the Red Cabal understood quite well that acting on their emotions and launching an all-out offensive was not a good idea.
The eight god pilots of red humanity persistently showed up along the border regions and other key star systems.
At least one of them was permanently stationed in Bridgehead One at all times, but the remainder regularly patrolled the periphery of human space and struck fear in the hearts of every alien force.
Though the god pilots did not always bother to take action, they were not opposed to lending a hand to endangered border fortifications or a mech force that had bitten off more than they could chew!
The quantity of the god pilots was not enough, but they still exerted a powerful form of deterrence towards the Red Cabal.
Any attempted assault by a group of phase lords or phase whales was bound to end in a one-sided massacre for the native aliens!
Even the ancient phase whales did not dare to cross the border into human space. Operation Night Jazz had broken their illusion of invincibility and struck fear into their old hearts for the first time in many years.
Human space might be fairly small and poor in resources, but that also meant that the eight god pilots could defend the territories a lot easier.
Instead of launching a hasty and ill-prepared assault that would end with catastrophic losses on the side of the native aliens, the Red Cabal instead decided to be a little more patient.
They were smart enough to understand that their greatest advantage was their superior numbers. They could completely afford to drag the myriad of forces into a war of attrition.
For every alien warship that fell in battle, there were easily thousands more that could take her space.
Sure, many of those warships were relatively weak and poorly equipped, but their immense scale relative to human mechs always enabled them to inflict casualties before they got defeated.
The native aliens who got forcibly drafted in the war before being sent out to human space were not really expected to return alive.
Their main goal was to inflict as much damage to human infrastructure and human troop readiness as possible!
The more time passed by, the more the relatively slow and outdated warp drives finally delivered the hodgepodge of alien warships to a war theater.
The Red Cabal did not even bother to upgrade the vessels. The leading aliens only assigned caretakers to wrangle the arriving warships into launching an attack on human space.
The damage and loss of life had reached a scary proportion!
The brave mech pilots who resisted the constant incursions had to face the barrel of the formidable gun batteries of enemy warships in every battle.
So many human lives got snuffed out in an instant from the moment their mechs suffered a direct hit against the powerful arsenal that aliens took for granted.
More and more human forces started to lodge objections towards the taboo against warships.
The shocking announcement produced a lot of ripple effects across human space.
Now that the need for secrecy had passed, more and more resources flowed into various shipyards owned by the Red Fleet as well as many cooperating second-class and third-class states. More second-class and third-class warships started to show up here and there as a result.
Organized into so-called auxiliary fleets and crewed by a combination of 'unqualified' fleeters and space peasants, the haphazard auxiliary warships initially performed shakingly in battle.
Neither the fleeters nor the space peasants were accustomed to working together.
The former benefited from a rich amount of naval heritage, but they were unable to handle the culture clashes and the many restrictions imposed by inferior warships.
It did not help that each of them had failed to keep up with their more successful peers and had been assigned to babysit a bunch of ignorant and stupid space peasants.
The latter possessed plenty of enthusiasm, but they hated the arrogant fleeters riding over their heads.
They also had to learn how to do their jobs on the spot as most of humanity had lost the institutional knowledge on how to run a warship!
Still, despite all of the growing pains, the auxiliary fleets quickly started to shape up as the spacers earnestly tried to work together.
The Red Fleet relied on an important tool to quickly stifle dysfunction within the ranks and force everyone to act professionally with each other.
"Who is ARCHIE and why is he flooding my vision with tables and numbers all of the time?"
"It. ARCHIE is not a real person. I don't fully understand it either, but ARCHIE is basically a fusion between a monitoring system, an evaluation system, a reward system, a punishment system, an emergency command system and more that I don't even know about. It is all automated and all run by super AIs, though I heard that they are constantly watched by human supervisors to make sure they are doing their jobs as intended."
"So that is why this ARCHIE knows so much about me! It has been observing my performance and evaluating me in the background all this time! No wonder it is able to spit out a detailed list of textbooks that I have to read in order to become eligible for a promotion. Wait, is ARCHIE in charge of deciding whether I can be promoted in rank?"
"Oh, yes. I forgot to add to my description. ARCHIE is far more objective and impartial than human officers. If the latter gets to make this decision, then the chances are high that they will just promote their own buddies even if they are not as competent. The ones that get to climb quickly usually tend to be the best sycophants. They know more about quid quo pro than leading a warfleet into battle. That is a thing of the past now. If not for the ongoing war, the Red Fleet should have entered into a golden age of its own by this time!"
"By the way, what does ARCHIE stand for? It is an acronym, correct?"
"It stands for Advanced Rational Calculated Heuristic Independent Evaluation."
"That... sounds like its makers tried to come up with any words that they could mash together to form this specific name."
"You are probably right. Its name is not important. The only thing you need to care about is that it is always watching us and constantly judging us. Taking too long to eat your lunch? You will lose a point. Complete an assignment a few minutes faster than expected? You will earn a point. Forgot to complete your daily study session? You will lose a point. If you want to make it far in our service, you better fix up your behavior and imitate the fleeters as much as possible."
"Wow. I heard that serving in the RF can be intense, but this is something else! How come the fleeters are putting so much trust into ARCHIE?"
"That is because they are already used to being supervised by AIs. ARCHIE is the successor of the Independent Evaluation System, or IES. The newer system is supposedly a lot smarter and more attentive, though I can't explain why that is the case."
"That sounds... really disconcerting."
"Don't be. ARCHIE is not your friend or your enemy. It is a system, just like the system that runs the life support systems of our warship. I suggest you get comfortable with being watched over by AIs and enjoy the benefits of being taken care of by an objective system. If you perform well, ARCHIE will reward you. If you perform poorly, you will have no one else to blame but yourself if ARCHIE hands you a demerit."
"Is there truly enough human supervision that can control whether it is working properly?"
"Sure. The captain has the right to check and override the decisions made by ARCHIE, or at least its local instance."
"Doesn't the captain have to answer to ARCHIE as well?"
"Yes. Who else can keep him in check?"
"..."