Yin Yang
[WP] We “knew” humans were weak as they avoided every war with diplomacy. We never imagined they’d be this ruthless & how seemingly overnight they went from peaceful beings to a state they call “TOTAL WAR”. War is in their blood & soul. They thrive on it, mostly when the odds are against them.
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“I still remember the look on Ambassador Ford’s (Betelgeusean Republic’s representative to the former Galactic Councils 300 BT – 5 TA) face when I informed him we had declared war on the pathetic Humans of the Terran Federation. His blue blood drained from his face, leaving a dirty yellow visage which had previously shone a healthy green. The only thing he said was ‘What have you done?’ which I thought wwas just due to Betelgeusean fondness for the cowardly pacifistic species. If only we had known the truth…” – Gragtun’iik’iill, Former Krillnean Ambassador to the Galactic Councils 89 BT – 7 BT
Warfare has changed very little since the first slightly complex multicellular organisms began banding together to fight one another over limited resources. The equation generally comes down to who can out produce the other in manpower, supplies, or weapons. For as terrifying and powerful a new weapon system may be, it can still be outclassed by sheer volume.
At the dawn of the Terran Alliance, a heavily modified version of this calculation was in use to determine the general effectiveness of galactic empires. The weapon system of the day, as for most navies throughout history, was the battleship. Advanced civilizations, such as The Betelgeusean Republic, were capable of building, crewing, and launching these behemoths in only 50 cycles.
In 10 BT the rising Krillnean Empire felt that their armada, while small on the galactic scale, would be well equipped to destroy the peace loving, ever negotiating, Terran Federation. Afterall Terra had only 20 battleships in service, and had not completed a new such vessel in over 150 cycles. Krillnea was able to produce a vessel in as few as 80 cycles, and had a standing navy of over 500 ships.
Additionally, due to the sensitive and specialized nature of the systems on board a starship, let alone a warship, a certain level of training and experience was required. This training and practical experience was extremely costly, and could take dozens of cycles for a Human to acquire, but for the long-lived children of the Krillnean Hives, born to carry out specific tasks, it was simple. The game of numbers, it seemed, was decided.
As war commenced, the humans fought bravely to defend their colonies, but the numbers were against them. The Terran Fleet was destroyed in combat around Proxima Centauri, and colonies fell one after another. The Krillnean Armada advanced methodically, but sustained a far higher rate of losses than initially expected, which while concerning, was overshadowed by the rapid advance to the Human’s home system of Sol.
The Battle of Sol (7 BT) was a turning point in the evolution of warfare. Standard practice had been to harvest asteroid, moons, rocky planetoids, and anything available for raw materials to process into Space Ship components. This took time, capital, and abundant resources. With the main Terran shipyards destroyed, and with access to her colonies cut off, the Terran Federation appeared to be teetering on extinction.
What the Krillnean armada encountered upon entering the Sol system was not a scrambling mass of scared civilians, but a star system that had been entirely strip mined, and a brand new, incredibly massive fleet of “Warships” waiting for them.
The Sol system had always been considered somewhat of an anomaly. It had not one but two asteroid belts surrounding it, one of which harbored several larger planetoids. While these raw materials would have been a boon to most industries, the density of the belts in Sol made harvesting these resources a very laborious and risky endeavor. Even then, those resources would need to be refined methodically, and carefully to ensure no errant debris might strike a vessel or colony, and standard practice was to dump the empty husks of these asteroids into the nearest star, where it may safely be consumed.
The Terran Federation had several larger asteroids in stable orbits near their home planet of Earth, most were completely devoid of usable material and were merely awaiting their turn to be sent sunward. For Humanity they became salvation.
Instead of building a warship from scratch, Terran engineers crawled over these husks, fitting them with reactors, weapons systems, thrusters, and crude life support systems. When manpower turned out to be lacking, regular civilians pitched in to help, many of them having never performed a spacewalk or heavy construction previously. In total, over 600 such “vessels” were created over the span of a single cycle. Numerous other smaller asteroids were converted into unguided missiles, whose mass proved so effective at defeating point defense and shield systems that they are still in use today.
The Krillnean armada of 573 ships and 6-8 million souls was entirely obliterated. While not particularly agile or comfortable, the extremely basic nature of the human warships allowed them to survive attacks from the latest weapons systems, usually with little to no adverse effects. In fact, during the Battle of Sol, the total Terran losses were 237,000 personnel across 7 ships destroyed, and 13 damaged.
The Battle of Sol set the stage for the fall of the Galactic Council. As the Terran Federation reestablished control of her colonies and continued the fight towards the Krillnean home worlds, they continued to refine, improve, and produce their new class of vessels. Long since superseded by newer classes of warship, the Nemesis class battleships are still the most decorated vessels in the history of the Terran Alliance.
The Nemesis, first of her class, is still in use today and has the honor of being not only the ship which fired the first shot at the Battle of Sol, but also the vessel which destroyed the last enemy ship during the War of Unification between the Terran Federation and the Galactic Councils.
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THE END
