This Won't Work

Just a bunch of odds and ends.

Naturally, resources themselves were overflowing thanks to the rewards we'd already collected. So I was running every idle shipyard at full capacity, throwing myself back into the work of rebuilding the fleet.

As for the standard shipyards — as opposed to the capital ones — I'd set aside one dock exclusively for producing ships for the Avalonia Security Fleet.

And while the shipyards were working overtime, our resource mining ships no longer had any urgent repairs left to handle. They were heading out toward nearby resource zones to get back to their original job: mining.

Of course, the transport destroyers meant to support those mining ships still weren't up to proper numbers. Sending the miners out alone would tank efficiency exactly the way I'd warned about before…

"Jessica, the patrol fleets can move around freely now, right?"

"Yes. They've been ranging all over the place with the five forward bases we started building recently as their hubs."

With Avalon's patrol fleets — battleships included — roaming around on their own and handling a kind of security maintenance, I first assigned what transport destroyers we did have. Then, for the resource zones that had nothing but mining ships, I dispatched large, fast battlecruisers to haul the resources back.

It was strictly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠temporary measure, of course. The moment the transport light cruisers currently under construction entered active service, those battlecruisers would go right back to their original duties.

Aside from that… well, it was business as usual. Daily quests here, weekly quests there — just another stretch of thoroughly uneventful days.

But while reality was peaceful and almost pastoral, a full week later the gallery had moved on from the Walpurgis bait I'd seen earlier and lit a completely different fuse. And that fuse just so happened to be about the two Krakens I'd jammed into the spaceport gates as bunkers ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— which made the whole thing especially bizarre.

The cause, of course, was the flood of scribbles depicting the Krakens in thoroughly undignified poses. In the cuteness-starved SF hellscape of the dumpster-fire game that was Astral Lagrange, those doodles were a single ray of pure, concentrated cute.

If it had stopped there, everything would have been fine…

Unfortunately, the Kraken bunker configuration had somehow caught the eye of every deviant with a weird fetish. For a while I was stuck in the semi-forced position of watching — and then deleting — our two Krakens getting violated in every conceivable way.

Anyway, while I was busy slamming fifteen-day full community bans onto the skulls of those Kraken fetishists one by one, gathering resources, rebuilding the fleet, and grinding for the gallery's return to normalcy, I managed to realize one extremely important fact.

This won't work.

Namely: if I wanted to take Tannhauser — my original goal — four times the mercenary fleet simply wasn't going to cut it.

Sure, unlike Avalon, Tannhauser Gate Fortress was a stronghold a full two levels higher. Of course it would have more fleets…

But still — clearing a Level 5 took about fifty thousand ships with the mercenaries, so four times that is two hundred thousand. Shouldn't that be enough?

That had been my fundamental assumption.

…There was a time when I thought that way, too.

The reason I'd suddenly changed course wasn't just idle daydreaming. Two events along the way had exerted considerable influence on the shift.

First, an internal matter… if you could call it that. One piece of news had reached me through Jessica — and it was genuinely unfortunate.

And what was that news, you ask…?

"Commander. Commander."

"…Yeah?"

"The staff officers at the Strategic Tactics Research Institute ran a thorough analysis. They say our current forces are insufficient to assault Tannhauser Gate Fortress."

"What."

That was it.

The NPCs assigned to the newly built Strategic Tactics Research Institute had run simulation after simulation on their supercomputers — and concluded that my grand project of "conquer Tannhauser and live happily ever after" was impossible.