Chapter 7003 The Red Two's Decline

"What does she want? No one founds an empire without holding territorial ambitions. It is ridiculous to expend so much resources into building so many war planets, warfleets and transportation vessels."

"Does she seek to conquer our territories?"

"That is… a feasible option to Her Excellency… or should we say Her Imperial Majesty."

"Adopting the latter term means that we accept her illegal claim to Bridgehead One."

"Legality is dead in this day, age and galaxy. Force is the only law that matters, and right now, the Polymath enjoys a 53-year head-start compared to the rest of the competition. As painful as it is to lose ownership of all of our assets and personnel in Bridgehead One, we need to admit to the reality that exists, not the reality that only exists in our fantasies. I recommend that we give up any attempt at contesting Her Imperial Majesty's claim on Bridgehead One."

"Because might makes right."

"Exactly. You sound as if this is a distasteful practice. You are not wrong, yet what of it? Your feelings will not sway anyone, certainly not a Star Designer that commands a force that can single-handedly save red humanity… or collapse the framework of our society."

"Your stance calls for appeasement. That… may be a mistake in itself. We both know what the Polymath attempted to do during the Survivalist conference. She is convinced that red humanity can only thrive under her absolute rule. She has spent 53 years proving her theory in a single central star node alone. From what we have been able to observe, she has truly made the most out of the resources and manpower available to her. This means that she has most certainly strengthened her resolve to expand her governance model to other human territories. Mark my words. The neighboring star systems and subsequently the zones around Bridgehead One will fall under her sway sooner rather than later."

"That is impossible. We will never allow it. They are too populated and industrialized. They were set up to support Bridgehead One and take advantage of its many benefits. Now that the central star node is lost to us, the remaining star systems have become even more important. Losing them translates into losing a large amount of people, industries, resources and more."

"You are a naive if you think the Cybernetic Empire will remain confined to a single star system. Look at how prosperous it has become. Its population has ballooned, but under the fair and optimized administration that Her Imperial Majesty has personally devised and implemented, many inefficiencies have been worked out of people's lives. No one has gone hungry or destitute. Anyone can find work. Those who cannot do so anymore can live out their retirement in relative comfort. Family planning is precisely managed through a combination of incentives and cost increases. Every citizen has great confidence in their empire's ability to resist the alien invasion."

All of this was undoubtedly true. If the people of Bridgehead One thought this way, then it was possible for others who lived in the surrounding star systems to hold the same ideas.

If the populations of the star systems that traditionally maintained strong relations with the central star node requested to join the Cybernetic Empire en masse, it would be difficult to reject their demands.

For one, the Red Two could not offer superior protection to them unless they recalled a god pilot or a dreadnought and sent them to patrol the wavering star systems.

This was an unthinkable decision. The star systems at risk of defection happened to be the rear-most territories of human-occupied space. There was little chance the native aliens would attack these territories in the near future.

Recalling a god pilot or dreadnought also consigned many people at the frontlines to their deaths. Not only would public support for the Red Two plunge even further, but red humanity would lose even more territory in the process.

This directly increased the Cybernetic Empire's importance!

In fact, the Cybernetic Empress had a perverse incentive for red humanity to lose the Red War.

Not completely, though. It would not do for the native aliens to overwhelm the formidable defenses of Bridgehead One and completely destroy human civilization in the Red Ocean.

However, if red humanity managed to cling to a single zone or just a small core territory that included Bridgehead One, then that would turn the Cybernetic Empire into the strongest if not the sole governing entity in the remnant of human space!

Although many people did not think that the Polymath would be cruel and heartless enough to consign trillions of innocent humans to their deaths just to consolidate her grip over red humanity… the possibility still existed.

All of these factors more or less granted her a huge amount of bargaining power. The Cybernetic Empress could dictate terms to the rest of red humanity, and everyone would have little choice to swallow most of her demands.

She won.

What the Polymath failed to do the first time, she succeeded in the second, all because she found an opportunity to cheat.

Who could possibly defeat the machinations of a Star Designer who possessed a 53-year head start?

The Polymath was exactly the kind of Star Designer who thrived on gathering abundant information and taking the time to analyze all of the variables before formulating a long-term plan to stack the deck in her favor.

That was already scary enough.

Giving her all of the time she needed to see her development plan come into fruition?

That was impossible to defeat.

The only reliable ways to defeat such a monstrous opponent was to defeat her with overwhelming force or rely on a variable that she had not been able to foresee or plan around?

The Red Two did have that in some measure.

Superdimensional technology had exploded onto the scene like a supernova during Bridgehead One's absence.

The Red Association had transformed the Invictus into the first superdimensional god mech.

The machine had not only become the most effective ancient phase whale killer in the dwarf galaxy, but could also defeat damn near anything else.

This meant that the Fist of Defiance served as a good deterrence against the Cybernetic Empire's overreach!

If the situation became dire enough that it was more important to recall the god pilot from the frontlines, then the mechers may actually go through with it, if only to stabilize their rear.

Yet this was an extreme option. The Red Association could not afford to realize this threat too easily, so that gave the Polymath a lot of wiggle room.

So long as her acts to subvert the old order remained subtle enough, there was a high likelihood that her victims would grit their teeth and endure the bleeding.

This was what was frustrating about the new status quo. The mechers and the fleeters did not doubt that the Cybernetic Empress would resort to such measures.

After all, if the mechers and the fleeters could think about this development strategy, then the Polymath definitely considered it many years ago!

The apparent reality that the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact declared their sovereignty on the same day of Bridgehead One's reappearance was not a coincidence either.

The Red Two had completely overlooked this possibility, but the more intelligence they gathered, the more they obtained clues that indicated that the Cybernetic Empire had been in contact with the two first-rate colonial superstates for at least three months but likely more!

This was an increasingly plausible theory.

After all, if the Polymath managed to reverse the properties of the greater spacetime bubble to her advantage, then she should also be able to poke a hole in it and establish a restricted form of communication with the outside universe.

That meant that they were all in cahoots with each other.

Perhaps the Terrans and the Rubarthans may still be wary towards the Polymath and her ambition to expand her rule to all red humans.

It was not a good idea to completely surrender all of the initiative to the Polymath.

Although it was definitely short in many aspects, the Cybernetic Empire could already be classified as a first-rate colonial superstate in its own right!

So long as more and more people adopted this interpretation, they would grant a lot of soft power to the newly emerged empire.

Perhaps that was the point of naming it in such a grandiose way. Calling the polity a dukedom or a principality simply did not produce the same level of impact.

What this meant was that the Polymath's personal fief may not fit the traditional definition of an empire at this time, but it could actually become so long as everyone agreed to her version of the truth.

It would not be difficult for her to make this happen.

"What are her goals? Does she seek to conquer our entire civilization, or is she merely aspiring to establish the Cybernetic Empire as a major power? Will she tolerate the continued existence of the Red Two? What is her stance towards the Red Collective, and how eager will her enormous population adopt systematic cultivation?"

"We need more information to obtain the answers to those questions. The upcoming negotiations centered around territorial recognition, military assistance and technology sharing will be critical. The ease in which the Polymath dispatched her armed forces to the frontlines and barter a fraction of her amazing new technologies to us will serve as important indicators. The more concessions she demands for her services, the less optimistic our situation becomes."

"...If the Polymath sees no reason to allow the Red Association and the Red Fleet to exist in their current forms, then we may have no future left. We have already started to fall from grace. When we combine that with the serious setbacks that we have suffered in a single day, I cannot see how we can maintain the glory that the Big Two have maintained for over four centuries."

"This turn of events cannot be stopped anymore. We can either adapt or we allow the rising power to push us into obsolescence. My suggestion is to give up on imposing our rules to the states that are unwilling to accept us and work with what we have left. The majority of the states and organizations based in the Red Ocean Union are still under our sway. We should stem the bleeding and engage in damage control by reinforcing our support base in the only colonial alliance that still looks up to us for protection and guidance rather than the Terrans or the Rubarthans."

"Ah, perhaps we can also exploit the emerging voribug crisis to our advantage! I do not know where they came from and how they have mutated into such an aggressive and rapidly expanding species, but this threat is most likely a variable that the Polymath has not been able to predict or plan around in advance!"

"You are correct, but… do not mistake our voribugs as allies. Unlike the Polymath and her Cybers, there is no possibility of negotiating with these insectiles. We can use their indiscriminate invasions as pressure points, but that should be the limit. We should not allow hundreds of populated star systems to become devoured by the voribugs solely because we want to preserve as much of our old glory as possible."

"You are making a humanist argument."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It is becoming more and more difficult to stay human in this increasingly dangerous galaxy. We are beset by too many threats. The native aliens have been pressing down on us for years. The Terrans and the Rubarthans have slipped our leash at the worst possible time. The Cybernetic Empire has just arrived but not only hoards a large amount of future generation technologies, but also possesses the largest reserve of uncommitted warfleets out of all of us. Then our race is also being targeted by increasingly more numerous swarms of mutated voribugs. Can any human solve all of these threats at the same time?"

"..."

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