Pendulum of Fate - Part 2: Book 15 of Painting the Mists by Patrick Laplante

Author:Patrick Laplante [Laplante, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Patrick G. Laplante
Published: 2022-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter sixteen

Nine Palace Formation

Having experienced his first territorial battle before he was even a year old, Huxian was intimately familiar with the concept and therefore had no trouble applying it to the alien world of void space. It was a game, and like any game, you could boil down the basics into a few short rules.

Try to maximize gains. Don’t show weakness. Minimize losses. It wasn’t necessary to kill your opponent, or even physically defeat your opponent—territory was all that mattered. When you had territory, you got resources, and when you had resources, you won.

The upcoming battle was fairly simple despite the spread-out battlefield. Huxian’s territory consisted of sixty-three void nodes centered around an artificial eight-node hub, and the goal was to build a sixty-fourth node to complete his formation.

His territory was surrounded by the Collegium on all sides. That being said, most of the Collegium’s forces were located near three nodes in his network that were difficult to reinforce should he mount an attack on any of his three targets.

His goal was obvious, and his enemy’s goal equally obvious. Both sides were operating with limited resources and were confident in their strategy. Huxian was playing with his entire bankroll while the Collegium was using around ten percent of theirs, putting him at a big disadvantage.

Huxian had a single shot at making this happen. The Collegium wouldn’t give him a second chance. Each side had their advantages. The Collegium had a vast network with superior resources, and Huxian and his allies, the void specters, had a higher quality network that allowed for greater mobility. This meant that it was much easier for him to reinforce his own territory should the Collegium mount an attack than the other way around, which was why the Collegium was on the defensive in the first place.

“It’s open intrigue,” the void specter general beside him said. The transparent, gender-neutral figure wore plates of crystalline armor much like Huxian did, which took away much of their creepiness but made them a frightening opponent on any void battlefield. “They know what you’re doing, and they don’t even want to stop you, because they’ll use the opportunity to attack you. Two out of three locations are too well defended, and the third is likely bait.”

Huxian had come to the same conclusion, which was why they definitely couldn’t attack the third location, or even the second-most-fortified location. They needed to go big or go home.

“We have the defensive advantage,” Huxian said. “Which means that we control the initiative.” Huxian’s void network increased their mobility in the void, and it was very difficult to pierce the protective membrane that surrounded it. An apt comparison would be a city’s void defense network.

Now that he had void specters patrolling it, the void network was completely free of spatial dust or turbulence. Their own troops would be able to defend the network without using much energy, while anyone attacking the network would not only need to pierce their defenses but would need to do so while withstanding the void’s corrosion.

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