“I had the same thought,” Davis agreed.
“Yet the Hadarak also have their superior units to counter the threat of Essence, but only in a mitigating fashion. They persist by accepting massive losses to bleed the Essence reserves of the enemy dry. It is unlikely that we will be able to surpass the Founders in terms of Essence production, so we must counter the Hadarak in another way.”
“We can spam smarter units than they can,” the Viceroy said with a note of pride. “The Paladin can match them with even starting resources if Essence is not a factor.”
“We do not have even starting resources,” Grand Admiral Lucin reminded them. “We must fight uphill at all times unless we find another hill that they are not on.”
“Meaning what?” Davis asked.
“Meaning that if we do not change our tactics,” Kirritimin answered, “we will face a never-ending war of attrition that we will lose with a single lapse. We must change the game in order to win it.”
“Not necessarily,” Esna said, not liking the tone of surrender that whispered of. “Our primary problem isn’t the minions on the ground. We can handle them there pretty well, and they don’t start out with a resource advantage when they’re invading our territory. The problem is their ability to get to ground, because the mass of the Wardens can break through planetary shields. If we have conventional shields capable of stopping that…”
“No,” Tennisonne said flatly. “We can’t generate that much power everywhere, and if the Hadarak are smart enough to just kamikaze one ahead of the other, there is no way we can generate enough power to stop a single attack at sufficient speed.”
“Even with dampeners?” Esna asked.
“Can they stop you from doing the same with a Seda if you wished it?”
“I would think so.”
“Even at interstellar velocities coming off the star?”
Esna frowned. “Then the only way to protect planets is to prevent the Wardens from getting to them. Can we sabotage the jump points somehow to prevent the stellar jumps?”
“Not across the entire jumpline,” Davis added.
“Then can we divert a jump in progress?”
“Mass again,” Tennisonne said dismissively.
“Which is vulnerable during coast phase,” Kirritimin noted.
“Perhaps not the Wardens then,” the Viceroy said quizzically.
Serren raised an eyebrow. “Peel off the free minions somehow so only the Wardens can pass.”
“Then what?” Tennisonne asked. “It’s not the minions that take down planetary shields with a single strike.”
“No,” Davis said, seeing the inkling of a plan. “But it is what prevents us from dealing with the Wardens much of the time. And shooting them dead after they jump doesn’t prevent the collision. We have to move them…”
“Spaceball?” Lord Daegan said offhand.
The Director nodded. “It was our solution to Mach’nel that we couldn’t destroy as well. If we can’t beat our enemy, we neutralize them.”
“Essence weaponry is far simpler,” the Mastertech argued.
“What about the replicator version?” Daegan continued. “It requires far less resources and can be delivered with a collision of our own.”
“Mach’nel don’t have grapple fields,” Tennisonne said with a shake of his head. “To engineer in dampeners means a limited window of engagement. You can’t simply contain them, you’d have to kill them somehow before the power drain expired and the Warden destroyed the technology…not to mention they have tentacles to do that, and there’s no way to stop that much ‘muscle’ mass from tipping over and poking holes in it. Only a large Spaceball that the Warden cannot reach is feasible.”
“So why aren’t we using those?”
“The minions have to be removed first,” Serren explained. “And the Warden has to be more or less still, otherwise you’ll slam into whatever destination it was moving towards.”
“But if we could neutralize the movement of the Wardens across the space lanes, what threat would we face?” Esna asked.
“Considerably less,” the Viceroy said as he rubbed his scaly chin with one of his fingers. “The warships are not armored well enough to penetrate our lines, and their carry volume is limited. It is the Wardens that move the bulk of their forces, and provide the footholds to grow more on site.”
“Then with the Hadarak, we shouldn’t be focusing on the Essence units, we should be focusing on the transport capability. Disrupt that, and their spamming ability diminishes greatly.”
“Spaceball designs won’t be enough,” Tennisonne said. “I wish they were, but they’re too damn large to mass produce and too hard to implement outside of special conditions.”
“Then why not put slip’n’slides on every spacelane into a high priority systems and let momentum do the damage for us?” the Golden Knight asked.
Those who were familiar with Hadarak naval warfare glanced at him in unison.
“If they collide with sufficient force in the right location,” Davis answered, “it can trigger a Nova that will do far greater damage than the Hadarak.”
“What about the smaller Hadarak?”
“Depending on their velocity, they can still survive ramming the star. It will damage them, but not always kill them. We could implement some in certain situations…”
“And a black hole?”
Davis tilted his head to the side as he thought. “I don’t think we’ve ever tried one, have we?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Tennisonne said. “I don’t see how a Warden could survive the impact, and the mass difference is so great it wouldn’t…well, I can’t say for sure since you won’t let me throw moons in to see what happens.”
Davis smiled, remembering that conversation millennia ago. “We’re still talking special circumstances tactics. We need something more broad-based.”
“A trap,” the Viceroy said suddenly. “We need to trap the Hadarak before they reach
