Industrial Commander

15

The Batarian War Front

—

I had besieged most planets belonging to the Batarians. Excluding any Batarian Colonies that I don't actually know about. I was making progress on all fronts. Khar'shan being the easiest, surprisingly. The decapitation of leadership had left the Batarians completely headless, and there were requests for reinforcements across the board to Khar'shan. My attacks also started a few slave riots, as they realized the detonation collars that they had, just were not working. I was removing bomb collars by the thousands. As well as taking a ton of POWs.

The Batarians Hegemony and Religious Caste were a real pain though. The higher ups of the Batarian Hegemony were just not giving up. I'm not talking just on Khar'Shan either. Everyone higher up were causing problems. They weren't even indoctrinated yet! They were just assholes! The Reaper corpse was still in the Dis system, where I pretty much killed anything that had visited the site, including the STG Agents and Researchers. I'm almost completely certain that no one has actually realized that the system has gone completely dark as I'm moving the Reaper in a secure hauler, with radioactive lasers evaporating any contaminants that originate from the reaper.

Now then. Technically, I won the war after just a few hours. Achieved completely spacial supremacy, cut off supplies to every Batarian planet, and decapitated the heads of their government from giving out orders. The Relays were impounding traffic into them by the hundreds. I've been capturing many agents from various empires. Politely of course. Much to their displeasure as I confiscated many hidden communication devices. I actually had a Humanitarian Aid Group arrive?! The hell are they doing here? How did they get past the Citadel Patrols?!?!

I can't deal with that right now, letting the side of my mind deal in politics deal with the politics of that. I was deploying Hunter Drones en masse to save hostages taken by the Batarian... patriots? Technically they are patriots? Suicidal slaving patriots, but still patriots none the less. Regardless, things were starting to cool down outside of the combat zones. I was exporting my new citizens by the billions back into my space. I was basically kidnapping an entire race and leaving the Batarian Planets behind for the Citadel to scavenge. I had a City Planet already plotted out and in construction, and better yet. It could support both Dextro and Levo based life. It was technically an Ecumenopolis. It could house the entirety of the population that I was kidnapping.

So, I was basically transporting a bunch of people kept in stasis for safety purposes to a world where I could take care of them as bio-trophies... That sounded bad out loud. Regardless, after they gain true citizenship I'll let them go exploring and do other things. I wonder if I'll get any geniuses from this? Heh, I'd like it if I did. Definitely going to have to promote mandatory schooling. Ah, I need to remind the Civilian Industries part of my mind to learn how to specialize learning for each race. We got to figure out how different they are in terms of learning potential.

[SPOILER="CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDAL "]

— Batarian Oligarch

Three of my eyes had been blinded. I suspect it is a punishment from my ancestors for failing them. The damned machine had practically conquered our worlds in a few hours. I didn't even know we were under attack until it was far too late. We were getting drowned in pure numbers. The Prophet died in the first attack, destroyed by a crashed machine ship. What was even more humiliating... was that our slaves were being stolen right underneath us!

Hmm... at least the Batarian race would survive I suppose. Almost everyone in the ruling caste were still fighting. Slaves long gone. It was a hopeless fight. They would soon run out of thermal clips. I looked at my pistol. Decision made. I wouldn't let myself get locked into this body. I addressed my advisor.

"Store my head somewhere the machine won't find it." I put the pistol to the side of my head...

—

[/SPOILER]

I wasn't really holding back in my attack. I preserved a couple of lives. But I wasn't hesitating to put people who fought back down. Especially after I already asked them to surrender. I had finally managed to make it deep into Khar'Shans main palace though. They had fought hard against my army. But they were dead, and I was marching my forces to the Oligarch's last safe room. Opening the door revealed two corpses. A quick search through my database revealed that this was the Advisor and the Oligarchs body. I wonder what they did with the head?

What did they think I was going to disrespect their traditions and cut his eyes out? ... I wouldn't be surprised if I did that honestly. I have had most of my emotions of anger and guilt completely shut off when I started this war. I really wanted to use the Oligarch as a tool to help remove the culture of pervasive slavery from my new citizens. Was also going to get him to force the other colonies to surrender faster. I put most of my efforts into conquering Khar'shan first in order to take the ruling class and use them to force the others to bend.

Eh, oh well. At most this will cause the war to continue for a few more days as I clean up the remnants. I'll start researching their brainwashing methods in the meantime, and figure out how to reverse that. Out of the roughly sixteen billion residents of Batarian territories, around sixteen billion survived. Yeah, I only killed around sixteen million people. Still a large amount. But, most of the population was actually slaves or lower castes which I was able to conquer pretty easily without a lot of bloodshed.

Only six hundred thousand of them were alien races. Talk about a disproportionate success gap. It also explains a bit on why the Citadel were so against enforcing Citadel law on the Batarians. Most of the time, the Batarians were enslaving their own. It was extremely rare for one of the races on the Citadel to have their colonies actually attacked. The only exception to this were humans.