The
United Alliance was the government of Earth and its eventual
colonies. Earthlings, or humans, are a young civilization best
characterized by curiosity, imagination, and ambition. Historically
fractious and warlike, their homeworld played host to hundreds of
cultures before a single Earthling ever set foot on another world. It
took two cataclysmic World Wars to bring humanity together in the
most nominal of alliances, and even that was almost immediately
undermined by a Cold War. Despite (or perhaps because of) their
violent history, Earthlings aspiring to peace and enlightenment among
the stars has long been a common theme in art and culture.
In
the early 21st century, the relative peace of the post-Cold War era
gave way to rapidly escalating tensions that came to a head in the
South Pacific Panic of 2031. Though nuclear war was narrowly averted,
the long-deteriorating United Nations collapsed in the wake of this
crisis, giving way to a network of regional alliances that
immediately began maneuvering in what soon became known as the
Greater Cold War. With a third World War seeming inevitable, a vast
shift of Earth's civilian culture occurred throughout developed and
undeveloped nations alike: progress, improvement, and the next
generation began to seem less important than immediate gratification
as the saber-rattling of the great alliances ramped up.
Despite
these tensions, work on the Second International Space Station
continued. As many governmental space agencies saw drastic budget cuts
in favor of military spending, civilian space agencies took up the
slack. These organizations started to naturally attract huge numbers
of new recruits who were resisting the nihilism and malaise spreading
over the globe, and several smaller countries with no previous outer
space presence established token agencies to join the program in a
show of support for the last bright spot of global cooperation. This
coalition named itself the Alliance of Galactic Exploration.
The
ISS2 was formally declared complete in November of 2049. Mere months
later, the Arctic Crisis of 2050 brought the world back to the brink
of nuclear war. As desperate diplomatic efforts failed one after
another, the AGE stepped forward with a remarkable intervention: they
revealed the station to be a fully functioning spacecraft, issuing a
challenge to the great alliances to follow as they fled to the moon
with hundreds of humanity's finest minds aboard.
It
is unclear precisely what the AGE's expectations were. Some records
indicate they were simply trying to preserve the best of humanity
while the rest of the world blew themselves to pieces. Others suggest
the ploy was more psychological in nature, intended to accomplish
precisely what actually occurred. Either way, what followed was a
series of remarkable coups. Inspired by science fiction suddenly
coming to life before their eyes—and, quietly, no small measure of
prompting from agents of the AGE still on Earth—dozens of
revolutions broke out across the globe, gathering support both from
newly inspired civilians and large portions of the military who had
no interest in bringing about the end of the world. This period,
known as the Wars of Awakening, resulted in many of the world's
foremost powers becoming ruled behind the scenes by the AGE itself.
As
the world recovered from the precipice a second time, the great
alliances were gradually consolidated into a single United Alliance
with the AGE's ruling council at its head. Recognizing that people
would need a new focus to unite them, the UA immediately set an ambitious goal: the first colonization of an extrasolar planet, Proxima
Centauri, by the end of the century. In an explicit rebuke to the great space powers for their
leading roles in the Greater Cold War, this project would be
spearheaded by those who had made a point of remaining neutral during the
conflict: leadership bids were ultimately accepted from Brazil,
India, and the newly unified Korea. Russia, China, and the United
States were given responsibility for colonizing the moon, both to
develop and test the technology the new Project Frontier would
require, and to prove themselves capable of working together after
half a century of belligerence and escalation.
The
AES Frontier
departed
Earth in 2092, reaching Proxima Centauri in 2097 and marking the
official arrival of humanity as an interstellar civilization.
However, exploration remained slow and difficult until analysis of
small deep space anomalies led to the discovery of planar phasing in
2106. This led to the discovery of hyperspace, an alternate plane
permitting faster-than-light travel. In 2115, the first prototype
hyperdrive was created, and in 2118 the first standardized model led
to a new explosion of exploration and colonization. This increased
range was also acknowledged to bring possible new dangers; plans for
a defensive warship were commissioned in 2117. Humanity's first
interstellar combat vessel, the ADS
Shield
of Sol,
launched in 2120.
Humanity's
official first contact with an intelligent alien race came in 2131.
Explorer vessels were sent to a star designated HD 40307, long
considered a prime candidate to host life-supporting planets. They
encountered an insectoid race called the Malitsis living in vast
subterranean colonies. The Malitsis were a young civilization with
little interest in creativity or exploration; they found humans far
less interesting than humans found them. An exchange of ambassadors
occurred, but otherwise the system, now known by its local name of
Chiraklise, was largely off-limits to humanity for the next hundred
years. Many humans considered this a disappointing start, though the
next aliens they encountered would make the Malitsis look much more
attractive.
In
2142, explorer vessels beyond the Atlantis Sector began to vanish.
Dispatching the defense fleet to investigate led to Earth's first
contact with the Drule Supremacy: using an unmanned scout ship as
bait, the fleet disabled and captured a raider ship belonging to the
Fourth Kingdom. Drule reinforcements arrived in the form of a
dreadnought, making peaceful contact in broken English and
apologizing for their actions; diplomacy began over the course of the
next month. Most of the missing explorer ships were returned intact,
but their crews were physically and mentally scarred from Drule
interrogation, and pleaded with the Director-General and the United
Assembly not to trust the Supremacy's overtures.
Opting
for an approach of "trust, but verify," the Assembly
quietly ordered increased warship production while seeking to
establish peace. When the Fourth Kingdom suggested an exchange of
ambassadors, the UA opted to use the administrative hub on Atlantis
as their embassy rather than bringing the Drule ambassador to Earth.
This proved both wise and wholly insufficient. In early 2143, a
Fourth Kingdom invasion fleet appeared over Atlantis and conquered
it. Few of the new warships had been completed by the time of the
invasion, and it rapidly became clear that humanity's efforts at
combat vessels were unsuited to face such powerful foes.
Contemporary
reports make it clear that the Drules expected immediate capitulation
from yet another young society, but the Earthlings were having no
part of that. The UA immediately pulled all available resources to
implement a three-pronged strategy: transport resources were set to
evacuating the colonies near Atlantis, scientific research was
redirected wholesale towards weapons technology, and manufacturing
was ramped up to build anything that could stall the invaders until
the needed breakthroughs were made.
The
Drule invasion did not move so quickly. Though scout and raider ships
rampaged through the Atlantis Sector, they spent nearly a year
reinforcing their positions on Atlantis before launching a second
wave of conquest. By the time they arrived on the nearest colonies,
all civilians had been evacuated, leaving them to face hardened military outposts that fought back to the last soldier.
During this wave it was discovered that nuclear weapons were fairly
effective against Drule ships. Using such weapons in space would
expose human crews to massive radiation or worse, but there was no
shortage of volunteers for hunting missions. Repurposed cargo
spaceplanes soon became more fearsome weapons than all Earth's
ill-fated warships. These attacks were met with more aggressive
raiding by the Drules, who began to seek and destroy more distant
evacuation convoys.
As
the invaders spread through the Atlantis Sector, the war became
something of a deadly cat-and-mouse game: humans on harassing
missions hunting Drule dreadnoughts, while Drules searched for human
space stations and supply convoys. Indeed, the Fourth Kingdom seems
to have treated the situation precisely
as
a game. A scouting vessel discovered Earth in 2146, but the expected
invasion of the heart of humanity never materialized. (Later
intelligence would reveal that the Fourth lost significant face among
the Supremacy when they started losing dreadnoughts to nuclear
kamikaze cargo vessels. Attacking Earth as a 'shortcut,' rather than
waiting for their normal pace of conquest to reach it, would have
been seen as compounding that weakness.)
2146
also saw the UA's research efforts finally pay off, not in weapons,
but in shielding. A coalition of African scientists developed a
refractive panel that could not only disperse and neutralize the
high-powered laser weaponry the Drules favored, it could route some
of that energy into a battery for later use. It took much more time
for this technology to be standardized and a warship to be built
around it, but in 2050, the ADS Avenger
of Atlantis
was
launched. It quickly proved an equal match for smaller Drule
warships, though dreadnoughts remained an insurmountable foe in
conventional combat.
By
2151, the conflict had begun to spill into the neighboring Centauri
and Pacifica Sectors. Earthling stubbornness and defiance had not
quite been matched by common sense; many of the evacuated Atlantis
colonies had had their people relocated to border worlds in the other
sectors, and High Command was briefly stunned that arbitrary lines
had not contained the conflict. When a raiding fleet struck the
Centauri world of Chiron, a second evacuation of the refugees there
was in progress and wholly vulnerable.
As
desperate defense forces attempted to distract the Drules from the
evacuation, a second flotilla of unknown alien warships appeared in
the system. Their arrival turned what had looked like a doomed
skirmish into the two-day Battle of Chiron: Drule reinforcements
rushed to the system, prompting more alien vessels, and the Avenger
of Atlantis
reached
the planet in time to participate with distinction. When the
proverbial dust settled, human forces found themselves holding the
system with the battered alien fleet.
Through
the most rudimentary of communications, the rescuers were able to
introduce themselves as the Alliance of Five Powers: a coalition
formed to resist Fourth Kingdom aggression, shadowing and harassing
the Drule forces wherever possible. Most of its members were heavily
militarized civilizations—the only ones capable of fighting the
Supremacy's forces to a standstill.
While
fielding powerful warships, elite soldiers, and advanced weapons
technology, the AFP was hampered by its lack of territory and
resources, not to mention the inefficiency and internal squabbling of
so many warlike races who placed minimal value on administration or
diplomacy. The UA, on the other hand, had a sizeable network of
colonies it could not hope to defend, a well-tuned bureaucracy, and a
century of successful experience in peacekeeping and mediation
between different cultures. Each side seemed to be the answer to the
other's problems.
(This
report will be continued in part 2: Alliance of Five Powers and part 3: Galaxy Alliance.)
No comments:
Post a Comment