Many things, few of which will interest him. Life on the planets in this system doesn't seem to have been changed by the presence of the invading ships at all. The ship can get close enough and the sensors are acute enough to follow single individuals as they go about their day. And because we're monitoring all of it, I can just leave that on in one corner of my screen while I work through the rest of the data.
"The main inhabited world is suburban."
So... Villages. Small towns... A pastoral lifestyle? Is this the Reach equivalent of an
Agri-world?
"And?"
"Different forms of land use occur at different levels of technology. Large settlements can't form until transportation and farming increase to a certain level-."
...Or perhaps the people are choosing to live a
simpler life.With an empire as large and as seemingly decadent, surely a quite, pastoral lifestyle might appeal to some. Like the Reach equivalent of Amish...
"Spare me."
"They don't have cities. Technically. There are some industrial zones that cover a significant area of land, but there aren't many residential buildings in those areas."
So
advanced, but distributed by choice.
"No single targets to attack, but the people are too spread out to be properly defended."
Not how I'd put it.
You two think in different ways. He looks to the military application, you look to the logistical.
"I imagine that their strategy for defending a world is the same as their strategy for defending their empire. Their forces are so mobile that they don't see any advantage to keeping their population in smaller areas."
"They could build stronger shelters-." He cuts himself off. "Of course."
...Or they simply don't
care about losing a few colonists.
"Of course?"
"They're not a martial people. Not any longer. They can fight, but they fight with the intellect, not with the spirit. They have weighed and measured and found that this is the most resource-efficient way to organise things."
And that sums up so
much of the Reach, doesn't it? Resource-efficient and specialised...
"Isn't that what you did?"
He frowns, his eye briefly returning to me.
Ooh, he didn't like that comparison.
"Of course not. If people in my outer colonies knew that I wouldn't defend them because it 'wasn't efficient', then no one would have settled those worlds. I'm not talking about the policy of their government, I'm talking about their people."
Ah.
Something Drusa is not as good with, compared to raw data.
"The fact that people live in settlements laid out like this means that they know what their chances are, and they aren't doing anything about it. They're not trying to moderate the effect of the policy on… The chance of them living. They just accept it."
He leans slightly closer to the monitor.
But
why do they accept it? Cultural indoctrination? Lack of concern?
"The question is whether it's indolence or fatalism. I would assume indolence had I not born witness to the skill of their fleets and Scarab Warriors. But perhaps there is some internal divide that only the Reach are aware of. Some worlds allowed to grow lazy while others provide tithe of warriors."
"Genetic analysis of recovered remains suggests that's not the case."
So it's engineered, then. They modified their citizens. Entirely as I'd expect.
I can see him trying to understand. He's not stupid by any means, but-.
"I read what the Illustres wrote on the subject, and what little the Controllers have been willing to share with the rest of us. All creatures need to have certain impulses in order for their species to live long enough to attain intelligence. One of those things is a desire to live, to fight to protect themselves and those close to you. I have it, you-."
In other words, the Reach
plebian caste... Are conditioned to not worry about it, their 'betters' will protect them.
He looks mildly disappointed.
"Have part of it. It may have different strength in different people, but a creature lacking it entirely indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with them."
Heh. Subtle
burn there, Zartok.
"What about artificial int-?"
Oh.
If you're advanced enough to create sufficiently developed synthetic minds, you can easily decide what goes into their makeup.
"Yes. Only creatures that were designed can be different. An artificial intelligent needs no ancestors. It does not need to inherit their passion to live. It can be told to do things that would see a creature in the wild killed and it will do so without complain because it lacks spirit."
"You think that they bio-engineered themselves."
Almost certainly. Any advanced race will make adjustments to their genome, of course. Removing genetic flaws and weaknesses. But evidently the Reach took it to an extreme at some point...
"When they used to make war on their neighbours, before the fight with the Green Lantern Corps, they cleared the worlds they conquered using guns. Such widespread death would normally cause an adverse psychological response in their soldiers. The level of hatred that is required for such methods take time to create, but it's hardly unheard of. Then the war, and before the ink is even dry on the treaty with the Guardians they begin subverting their neighbours."
...You think they had the subversion method ready and waiting for when force of arms failed?
"You think they already had the technology. They just didn't use it on other species."
"Or perhaps they did? If any public health records survive from those worlds then the Reach are the only ones who have them. A plague might be noticed by their neighbours, but anything more subtle might pass unnoticed."
Like the already-subtle methods the Reach use to subvert planets now.
"And the neighbours would have bigger problems, like their new neighbour."
"Yes."
Misdirection and sleight-of-hand.
"We'd need to get access to their medical databases to find out for certain."
He grunts. "Does it matter?"
"If they've edited their genome too much then it might mean that they're more susceptible to biological weapons."
Pfft. Any race advanced enough to modify themselves like that probably have solutions for that attack route.
"You might get a single world. Their command of biological science means that they would detect it too easily for a delayed attack, and they would be able to neutralise it without much difficulty. In ship to ship combat it would be less effective than an explosive even if they weren't wearing sealed suits. It might be possible to make something that could be used on a civilian population to secure compliance in exchange for palliatives, but we already know that they don't value their own lives."
And a biological attack can always
mutate, and then you get killer super-virii.
Oh.
"Don't look so surprised, Drusa. I built an empire. I'm not a fool."
Just because he
prefers conquest by strength of arms, doesn't mean he's
ignorant of other ways.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Be wiser. What else does them not having cities mean?"
Lady still has much to learn.
"Planning and terraforming. New colonies might have the technology to function spread out, but that technology still needs infrastructure. Most species build a relatively dense settlement with farms surrounding it when they first colonise a planet. As far as I can tell, the Reach didn't."
"Did they use a slave species to do it for them?"
And then wiped them out afterwards? Inefficient.
"Not here, not as far as I can tell."
"And they do not make much use of automata. Then they planned everything in advance. Most likely their buildings were pre-fabricated and transported here in great cargo transports to be assembled on the planet."
A literal Pre-fab colony complex...
I nod. "Or build using material from local asteroids, fabricated in space and then landed for construction."
"And they all accepted the plan. Have you found anything resembling a civil enforcer station?"
Ah, now that's a good angle. A population basically brainwashed into loyalty won't need much in the way of policing...
I perform a quick check. Some things don't look the same in different cultures, but there are some things that police usually do or have…
"No."
Telling.
"Then their rulers are certain that the populace are obedient and will remain so, even if they are attacked."
"Where are you going with this, Lantern Zartok?"
Good question. Are you going to attack them or something?
"The Illustres has said that the worlds that the Reach took from species which still exist will be returned to them after the war. All other worlds will be up for grabs. I see no reason for slaughtering their entire species."
"You want to take over?"
"A system like this would be a perfect place to start again. But on this occasion, I want to deny the Reach whatever is on that ship."
Planning for the future, but willing to put it off till later. Very good work.
