9: Great Cave Offensive

The S'pht'Kr tell me that the Renegades are able to bulk up their army with "biological synthesis" -- in other words, cloning. Not brainwashing, like I had hoped. This would explain the many Pfhor soldiers that fight along their side. They hijack data saved into the many pattern buffers they have around their garrisons, and manipulate it with their machines. The S'pht'Kr aren't too clear on how it works -- obviously, otherwise they'd be using it too. The long and short of it is that the Renegades can essentially endlessly reinforce themselves with their machines. I have no idea where their biological synthesizers are, so we can't strike them at the source, either.

No doubt you can see where I'm going with this. I want you to find a way to disrupt their mining functionality. It seems like that would be easier than disrupting their refinery. After all, they can build another refinery, but if this is the only mining site, they may be severely disrupted. Hopefully we can extract some of the mineral for studying later -- but we've got bigger issues than research now. You'll have to find a way into the caves. The mining is undoubtedly done automatically by some big drilling machine, which would be in the caves. You'll have to find another security card to breach the doors. Once you find the machinery, I can probably send you an update with further instructions. It can't be that complicated though, really. And one last thing. You will remember how the Renegades extract biological imprints from pattern buffers? It seems likely that they will attempt to do so with any of my soldiers that have used them. Do not hesitate to kill any "humans" firing on you. Perhaps they'll try to clone you, next.

The problem is that we simply have no knowledge about these Renegades whatsoever. We know nothing about the size of their forces, the location of their primary bases, or the extent of their capabilities. Their AI, Karma, makes threats of destruction, but we don't know if he can follow through on that. We don't even know the extent to which Karma operates and interacts with the Renegades as a whole aside from some general command position. You must be prepared for a full attack on the Renegades. The Pfhor Empire maintains a large presence on the planet's surface, and it appears that the two forces are in nearly constant combat with one another. Thus, we can attack while the bulk of their army is tangled with the slavers and get much further. I have scanned the planet's surface again, and it seems that the Renegades maintain a large and heavily-defended fortress in the northern regions of this continent. It doesn't appear to be their command center, however; the standing presence there is not large enough. It must be protecting something else.