McGuiness wrote:So have OWL build a fabber, have the lorry take it into orbit, and send it off to an asteroid. There it can use whatever TF tech is required to build additional fabbers that can create something powerful enough to take out the OBS. Then do it!
Do it YESTERDAY. That fabber bootstrapping is an exponential growth curve, and exponential curves start out slow.
There are three _known_ high-tech systems for use by the bad guys: the OBS, the Key, and whatever allows the Archangels to return. How many more relics are waiting? What's the TF-tech equivalent of an unexploded artillery round? People are still finding dangerous weapons on WW I battlefields. Are there abandoned and forgotten AIs, stable or otherwise?
Not even knowing the order of battle, Merlin should not be content with the scraps that the Alexandrites were able to hide. Let's keep perspective -- Merlin is, face it, an expensive toy. Against whatever is under the Temple, against whatever is in orbit and so stealthed he hasn't found it, he'd better be accumulating materiel.
Meanwhile, if they just knew it, the Safeholders are using electricity every time they do something chemical. Wait until they find out that a fire is equivalent to a shorted-out fuel cell.
EDIT: Will Clyntahn write himself a dispensation if he finds out that electricity can be used to torture people?