When Tachibana came over to Lodos' bridge, he had brought lots of stuff with himself. He rolled open a large piece of paper that had complex schematics on it, and put it on a suitable place on the sensors console. Mei and I were watching him in confusion.
"What's the deal with all these stuff?" I asked.
"We will need the shortly, sir." said Tachibana, trying to straighten another crumpled piece of paper.
"You could've, you know, just transferred data over to us instead of carrying so much stuff."
"I would rather have the whole plan in front of us, large and detailed, instead of having to zoom onto parts on the small screens of Lodos' computer consoles… sir." he replied. Mei and I looked at each other again, sharing our odd feelings.
"There." Tachibana said. "So this is how we win the race to colonize nearby star systems. Sir."
"Stop adding sir to the end of every single sentence, it is getting annoying. Anyway, how exactly do we win this… 'race'?" I asked.
"Look." he said, pointing at the schematic of what I thought to be the AI colony ship. "So I asked both professors for a little bit of help and together, the three of us were able to guess the missing pieces of information about the ship. Oh, and before you argue, it doesn't matter how accurate our guesses are anyway."
"I was just about to argue, but let's continue to the end." I said.
"Great." he said. "Our guesses are not really important, because we already marked the potential targets on places where we have 100% accurate recon data."
"Those red markings?"
"Yes, the red marks indeed." he said. "If we manage to critically damage any of these spots, the AI will be forced to repair the damage, and we can gain some time."
"Okay, so, what are those systems?"
"Here is the electric propulsion system. It is quite a big target to destroy, but very fragile. And here are some navigation related systems. Again, easy to destroy, but those are easy to replace as well so I don't think we would gain much time. And here is-"
"Wait a minute." I said. "Why don't we just destroy the whole ship in one go and just try to cripple it?"
"Firstly, there is no way you are completely destroying a ship of this size without getting attacked by its escorts. Secondly, if we completely destroy this ship, the AI will start producing a new one somewhere else, and we might not be able to find that one in time. It is better if we can just force the AI to repair it."
"I see."
"And here should be the central command block. It too is likely fragile, but it is deep inside the ship, so we are not going to have an easy time damaging that. And finally, here are some databanks which are required for colonization. Those may not be easy to destroy, but probably very hard for the AI to replace. Long story short, it is a mediocre target."
"Which system should we focus on then?" I asked.
"I vote for the electric propulsion system." Tachibana said.
"Mei, any ideas?"
"All of them." she said. "We can fire multiple weapons at once, why not try to take out all of them?"
"Hmm… Anyway, we can discuss more about it on the way." I said. "So, next question Tachibana… How do we close up, attack and run away safely?"
"We will not slow down on approach to target, instead, we will zip by them with some 22 kilometers per second. As a convoy. Each warship will have a very short engagement window, and during that time, they will have to perform super accurate attacks. If the previous ship fails, the next ones should hit the target eventually."
"If we collide with even the smallest projectile at 22 kilometers per second, it could severely damage our ships. How do we know they won't be able to shoot back? After all, they will see our fleet coming from a large distance."
"We will separate the fleet into two groups. The larger group will approach a bit slower, and a bit sooner. While the escorts change their trajectory to intercept the bait group, the smaller group will come in fast and finish it."
"This still doesn't sound very… safe." I said.
"Of course it is not, we are at war." Tachibana said. "If we get shot, we get shot. You can only pray for a painless death."
"Okay, that concludes the assault part." I said. "How about the aftermath? How do we know the AI won't be able to rapidly replace its losses and repair the ship before we can build our own colony ship?"
"That part is relatively more fun." said Tachibana.
"Fun?" Mei asked.
"Fun." Tachibana repeated. "After we cripple the AI's colony ship, we will start a campaign to intercept the logistics craft of the AI hivemind. We will try to ambush its cargo, mining or construction vessels while hiding or running from their escorts… like a tonnage war."
"So as long as the AI can't get the resources to repair the damage…"
"…it will be stuck in Low Earth Orbit, eternally." Tachibana completed my sentence.
"There is a problem." said Mei. "The Earth itself is a good source for the necessary materials. How do we prevent it from getting those materials off Earth when the whole planet is surrounded by enemy warships?"
"Tachibana?"
"Hmm…" he said. "I might have a trick or two."
"What kind of tricks do you have in mind?" I asked.
"Crazy ones, as usual."
"Oh, so you DO agree your plans are crazy." I said. "Good to know, very good."
"My ship will separate from the fleet on approach to Earth and decelerate. I will try to nuke the AI's facilities from orbit, also taking out the cargo ships etc. in the process."
"Tachibana, humans will be living on that planet soon enough, you better not mess things up." I said. "And it is quite possible that some unconverted, rogue, runaway human groups do still live on that planet. We shall not hurt them."
"Rogue human groups, you say…" Tachibana said. "Well, that never crossed my mind – this changes a lot of things. Then I have another idea."
"Whatever you have in mind Tachibana… I already don't like it." said Mei.