Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Terran Expansions

The next five days went by uneventfully, at least for the Imperials. Gradually, as Diego Secondary was completely conquered by the Imperium, shipments of food and fresh water started to arrive at Diego Nine. At the same time, new mining equipment was brought in as well, and the Imperials wasted no time in putting the local civilians back to work. 

For the officers and troopers of the 329th Infantry Division, their days could only be described as boring. There were no enemies on the planet, and despite being greater in numbers, the local miners had neither the courage nor the ability to fight back. This caused many men to grow complacent. Of course, everyone knew boring was a good thing in the Imperial Army. Many would rather be posted on this remote mining world than be tossed into one of the most heated battlefields of this campaign.

After the visit to Starport Cinder, Athena reported what she saw back to Colonel Gavin. The colonel said he would bring this up to General Pierre and see what the general wished to do about it. Anything that followed was irrelevant to Athena. 

Unknown to the Imperials, their boring days would soon be over. While they were resting inside their city, the terran base, located over 60 miles away from Prosperity, was growing at a speed so quickly it would terrify most military commanders.

The first terran command center finished its construction in 6 hours. It took longer than the zerg hatchery, but then again the zerg were known for expanding extremely quickly. 

The fully constructed command center was three stories tall. It was covered with sturdy armored platings designed to protect it from attacks. Each command center could hold a dozen SCVs and protect them from threats. Command centers were also capable of lifting off and relocating to new areas if necessary, although their speed was rather disappointing.

Inside the command center was a mechanical adjutant. A terran AI advisor that could help Athena control terran structures. In addition, like zerg queens, terran adjutants could coordinate terran units and perform administrative duties. For example, if Athena wanted the terran base to expand by itself, the adjutant could allocate resources between building new SCVs, constructing command centers, and building combat units as it saw fit.

If Athena was to leave the planet, she could give the adjutant a strategic objective and have the adjutant lead the terran faction. Of course, as an AI, the adjutant could never be as creative as a human commander. Ideally, the adjutant should serve as an assistant rather than the one issuing all the orders. 

This got Athena thinking for a moment. Perhaps at one point she could recruit talented military commanders to her cause and give them command over her terran units? There were clearly risks with this, but if she could combine the talent and ingenuity of human commanders and the skills and technology of terran units…the possibilities were endless. 

As soon as the command center was finished, the 6 SCVs started harvesting minerals from the local mineral clusters and returning them to the command center.

Ever since leaving Morgo IV, this was the first time Athena received a new stream of mineral income, and she welcomed it. Knowing her priority was to expand using the limited time she had, Athena immediately started spending minerals on producing new SCVs using the command center. As soon as they were produced, the new SCVs were sent to mine more minerals, continuing this cycle of compounding growth.

From time to time, a supply depot would be placed down to maintain the terran units. 

Now that she had a relatively safe terran base, Athena spent some time examining the mechanics of the terran units. Namely, the SCVs. As far as she could tell, the SCVs were similar to the zerg units. They obeyed her orders perfectly and had little emotions, self-preservation, or desires of their own. They could still think and speak, but only when it was necessary. This supported what Nova told her about the source of these units. These weren’t real people. 

Athena also tried to get the SCV pilot to get out of the vehicle. Somewhat to her surprise, it worked. The pilot drove the SCV into a command center before walking out. He was a middle-aged man with a blank expression on his face. On the surface, he seemed just like a normal human, but deep down he was anything but that. 

After some exploring, Athena discovered that other SCV pilots had different faces and bodies but wore the same blank expression. This was a welcomed change from within the game where all units of the same type had identical faces. If the Imperium or the Republic discovered all the terran units were identical clones, things could get quite weird. 

Each SCV took a mere 2 minutes to produce, and Athena was making them nonstop. A few hours in, she also decided to produce 2 more command centers in the valley, planting them closer to selected clusters of resources to make harvesting more efficient. 

Within twelve hours, the mineral reserve close to the surface was gone. 23,000 units of minerals were harvested by Athena’s SCVs, with many of them turned into new SCVs. Interestingly, this was much quicker than the zerg collected minerals on Morgo IV. After all, minerals couldn’t fight back. The zerg on Morgo IV had to build combat units to kill their prey. The terrans here only had to build SCVs. Athena also only spent a few hours on Morgo IV. She had no idea how much the zerg base on the planet had expanded by now. 

As the first mineral clusters were gone, the terran base continued expanding. Two of the command centers lifted up and relocated to new locations that still had unharvested minerals. Swarms of SCVs followed, quickly stripping the new mineral clusters down with terrifying efficiency and adding them to Athena’s mineral reserve. 

Within 24 hours, Athena already had over 2,000 SCVs and 5 command centers. It was at this point that she decided to halt the SCV production and start building combat units.  

Up until now, the terran bases were able to build and expand undetected, but Athena knew this wouldn’t last long. In two days, maybe less, a trio of satellites would be deployed in the planet’s orbit. She didn't know the details of how they would be used, but these satellites were advanced enough to constantly keep an eye on a third of the planet, maybe more. She could try to move her command centers to the other side of the planet or try to hide them in valleys and corners, but none of that would be able to reliably conceal them from the Imperial eyes in orbit.

Once they were discovered, war would no doubt follow. 

Athena was perfectly fine with war. She needed Imperial casualties to give her vespene gas and Imperial technologies to analyze and unlock terran technologies. The only issue was how this war would go and, more importantly, how it would start. 

From everything Athena had seen, terran units were generally stronger than their Imperial counterparts. A terran marine with a combat shield and stimpack should easily beat an infantryman in the Imperial Army. However, at this point, she had only unlocked terran infantry units and some light vehicles. It would be difficult for her to challenge the heavy armor and air support of the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy. 

This was what prompted her to set her eyes on Starport Cinder. Starport Cinder held squadrons of Imperial fighters, gunships, and bombers, along with a number of Republic S60 starfighters. If her SCVs could dissect the aircrafts within, they stood a decent chance of unlocking the terran starport, giving her access to powerful terran fighters, transports, and gunships. 

From what she saw during the visit, Starport Cinder was a relatively easy target. The defenders have grown complacent, believing there were no threats on the planet to worry about. The fortifications were yet to be repaired. A careful strike could kill two birds with one stone. Unlock the terran starport and wipe out the air wing attached to the 329th Infantry. 

Of course, Athena considered waiting longer and spending more time expanding her bases before striking. After the assault on Starport Cinder, the terran bases would inevitably be noticed by the Imperials. After some discussion with Nova, she changed her mind. 

If the terran base was discovered by accident, then Starport Cinder would no longer be the easy target it currently was, and things could get quite difficult after the Imperials get some time to prepare. Sure, Athena could gamble on the idea that the base wouldn’t be noticed, but it was never a good idea to rely on luck. 

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She had to use the element of surprise when she still had it. In addition, it would be something of a waste to only go after Starport Cinder. With the proper plans and units, Athena could achieve a lot more than unlocking the terran starport. 

Athena spent quite a while discussing her plan with Nova in the Game. After she exited the game, the first thing she did was send a number of SCVs to the other corners of the planet to establish mining bases there. She didn't have the resources to start saturating those bases with SCVs, but if her main terran base was destroyed, those bases could act as backups. 

Before she started producing units, Athena examined the resources she had available at the moment.

Minerals: 8,942

Vespene Gas: 54,208

The vespene gas was 3,758 when Athena was in Fort Samsa. After so many days, days that included events such as the siege of Prosperity and the Hour of Triumph, the vespene gas count reached a peak of 54,208, suggesting that over 2,000 people died within 500 meters of Athena between then and now. Athena was also present during the public execution of all the prisoners, something that likely helped with her current resource count. 

The mineral count used to be 4,942. Now, after producing so many command centers, SCVs, and supply depots, it was still at almost 9,000 thanks to the constant SCV mining.  

From what Athena saw, the minerals a single SCV could mine in a minute depended on how easily the minerals could be accessed. In some rare cases where the minerals were exposed, a single SCV could mine 10 minerals a minute on average. If the minerals were underground, which should be most of the mineral reserve on the planet, that number could drop to 1 mineral per minute or even lower.  

The 23,000 units of minerals that were first discovered were easily harvested, but most of the minerals underground would take a lot of effort to find and harvest. For the moment, with many exposed mineral clusters, the 2,000 SCVs were bringing in around 5,000 minerals a minute, but there was no telling how long this could last. 

Plus, at this rate, soon Athena’s most limited resource would be vespene gas. 

Without vespene gas, the only terran unit she could build were marines, and even ten thousand marines wouldn’t matter much when getting hit by bombers and missiles. 

Athena also suspected the minerals required to build air units and even capital ships could get quite ridiculous. It was unlikely, at any point, she would be worrying about not being able to spend her money. 

“How long does it take to produce each terran unit that I currently have?” She inquired to Nova. 

“It takes 5 minutes to produce marines and reapers. 8 minutes to produce widow mines. 10 minutes to produce marauders and hellions.”

Athena nodded before clicking on the tech lab attached to the barracks. There were three upgrades there. stimpack. Concussive Shell. Combat Shield. 

“Nova, how much will each research increase the price of the units?” Athena knew what these upgrades did, but she also remembered that unlike in the game, research and upgrades here would increase the cost of the units impacted. Even after making the research, she could specifically produce units without the improvements at the original price, but usually, the improvement was well worth the cost. 

“Stimpack would increase the cost of marines by 20 minerals. Combat shields would increase the cost of marines by 30 minerals. A marine with both upgrades will cost 100 minerals. Stimpack would increase the cost of marauders 25 minerals and 15 vespene gas. Concussive shell would increase the cost of marauders by 25 minerals and 10 vespene gas. A marauder with both upgrades costs 150 minerals and 50 vespene gas.” 

Athena nodded slightly before clicking on the icon for all three pieces of research. Marines with stimpack and combat shields were much more dangerous than marines without the two. This was a lesson she learned the hard way in countless SC2 games. Doubling the mineral cost was a decent price to pay. Marauders with concussive shells could also do wonders in terms of hunting down fleeing enemies and knocking them off their feet. 

With the research complete, Athena placed down 10 barracks and 5 factories and started producing various units under her instructions. 

The default armor color for terran units was blue, but Athena, after some messing around with the game console, realized she could change the color of her newly produced units as she wished. Already produced units could also change the color of their armor after visiting supply depots. This ability seemed a little trivial at first, but it could come in handy in certain scenarios. For the moment Athena decided to set the unit color as grey.

As the hours went on, marines, reapers, and marauders in gray power armor started walking out of the barracks and forming lines in front of the terran base in the valley. These terran infantry units might be human beings lore-wise, and they might be able to talk and eat and drink like normal people, but the fact was they were constructs of Athena’s game. Without an order from Athena, they simply stood there, waiting. The only movement from them was a few occasional twitches and turns built into Starcraft units to make them seem more realistic. 

Next to the terran infantry units, hellions and widow mines made their way out of the factories. It didn't take long before a sizeable group was present. There were some widow mines, but most of the units that left the factories were hellions that only cost Athena minerals. 

As of an hour ago, none of these units existed. With sufficient resources, all it took was a single hour for Athena to find herself with a small army ready to obey any of her commands without fear or self-preservation. An army infinitely loyal to her and composed of troops who were masters at their craft.  

Perhaps this was Athena’s greatest asset. An Imperial or Republic soldier required at least 17 years before they were old enough to be conscripted. They had to go through at least months of weapons drilling. Even with the most efficient production lines, the rifles they carried and the power armor they wore took days, if not weeks, before they went from raw materials to combat equipment. This wasn’t even taking into consideration the resources it took to ship an army to the frontline and handle the logistics needed to support such an army. 

As long as Athena could establish a foothold on a planet and avoid being crushed by overwhelming force, no one could beat her in a war of attrition.

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