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The Lost Cradle: A Space Opera

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Beyogi said:
Nice. So basically the destruction of Earth was the base of human empire building in the universe. I just wonder what happened to colonisation efforts close to earth before the catastrophe.
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For all intents and purposes, yes. The exceptions are the Dominion and several colonies now part of the USPS.

If you look at the map, you'll see a white border around the Sol system. That was the extent of Earth colonization, which I will go into deeper detail into during the Terran Wars updates. There's also the United Nations colonial mission, but their situation is a bit different.
 
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Bug Stompin' (Part 1)​


    From the history enthusiast's Stellarnet domain checkeredhistory.sn.int, [1] posted on June 9, 2380 AFD.
    Thread: What If—No Bug War?

    GrelkyStrelky said:
    So I'm new to this domain and the alternate history subforum in particular, and I'd like to sort of test the waters a bit. I've been taking a class on comparative politics at my university (UHorizon, if anyone's curious). My professor just completed a unit on the Sagittarian Republic, and a big part of what he focused on was the Scutum War, which everybody still refers to as the Bug War. My question, as you can probably tell by the thread title, is, "What would have happened had the Caedhewe/Bugs decided to expand coreward instead of rimward?" How would it affect the later Sagittarian Republic? My professor posits that the War pushed the worlds that would become the Republic towards militarism, so maybe there would be a less warlike state that emerged afterwards?
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    DukhachevskysBeard said:
    Welcome to the domain! :) The complimentary gift bag and paper copy of Whitaker's A History of the Human Galaxy are on their way as we speak by courier. [2]

    Just kidding. Seriously, though, welcome, but I must make the point that the "No Bug War" point of divergence has, like the "more powerful Confederation" idea or Operation Morzh, become something of a trope in our little corner of CH.sn for one reason—it's unrealistic in the immediate time period for several reasons. First, the Caedhewe were expanding coreward—they were expanding in all directions from the Cutum Arm. They just ran into the Sagittarians first, and they would have done that anyway. People tend to forget that the Bugs were fighting the Hellenic Alliance, the Anglyskiyans, and the UN as well as the Sagittarians.

    As for stopping the Caehewe's aggression, well… You can't, at least at the time. They needed to expand, and that's the biggest issue. Their core worlds were so polluted and overpopulated that they'd have made Marx Prime look like an agri-world. A lot of it is due to their biology, with their high birthrate, and on top of that their society encouraged having children—they originally evolved as a prey species.
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    KléineGrüneRén said:
    I hate to agree with anything that feeds human supremacists, but DB is right. You'd need a point of divergence that goes way back before the Caedhewe even jumped off their planet, and that's not the context most people are interested in when this premise is brought up. It's almost a question of biology and the specific areas of the galaxy that made sure that these events occurred as they did. That's the last time you'll hear me agreeing with DB, though. :p
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    DukhachevskysBeard said:
    You know you love me, you alien commie. ;)

    I hope we didn't scare you off with our criticism, GrelkyStrelky, and we understand that you're new here. It's just that this one particular topic tends to get the alternate history subforum jumping if anyone brings it up.
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    GrelkyStrelky said:
    No worries. I guess I have a lot to learn here.
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    Cosmonaut said:
    Hey, at least you're coherent—that's more that can be said for me wen I joined up. For what it's worth, though, there are a few things that would definitely happen in this scenario. Don't want your question to go unanswered ;)

    First off, there wouldn't even be a Sagittarian Republic. The Scutum War was more than just an invasion and then a counter-extermination, but it was also what brought the Sagittarian Arm together and bade them rise up against the Bugs. Without it, the Arm would look more like the Independent Zone looks today—a bunch of little states bound together by a loose customs union.

    Secondly, the Terran Wars as we know them wouldn't occur—the Republic's role in them was far too crucial. Even if Terralust still took root in the Mandate and the Anglyskiyan Federation, there would still be no serious competition, at least not enough to spark the terrible war that brought down the first Anglyskiyan democracy and led to billions of deaths.

    Thirdly, no Confederation of Perseus. In a way, the Sagittarian Republic was to the Confederation what the Bugs were to them. The Confederates united because they were constantly being harassed by both the Republic and the Organization of Galactic States that preceded it.

    There are, of course, other examples, but those are the three biggest ones.
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    __

    In some ways, the Sagittarian Arm's biggest catastrophe would be its most powerful motivation. Most historians will say that the Scutum War, more commonly referred to by laymen as the Bug War, was the most destructive single conflict until the First Terran War. It was bad for the Sagittarius Arm, especially in the opening year of war, but it was even worse for the Caedhewe—the eponymous Bugs.

    Interestingly, the Caedhewe were not actually insectoids or arachnids—they were instead a very unique form of "mammal." It was their appearance that earned them the nickname of "Bugs," thanks mostly to the strange set of four bulging eyes that domed out from above a set of toothy mandibles. They were also naturally armored, despite having an endoskeleton—chitinous plates interlocked over a lithe, strong frame. They had a strong pack mentality, thanks in part to their young being born in "litters" rather than with single births. This also led to a higher birthrate than the galactic average, not enough to be overwhelming but enough to instill their species with a frantic desire for lebensraum before their overpopulation problems became severe.

    They originated from Planet Taucanorg in the Caccia System, a large, dense world with heavy gravity that gave the "Bugs" considerable strength for their short stature. Caccia was located deep in the Scutum arm of the galaxy, and the Caedhewe government—a tribally-based union known as the United Clans of the Caedhewe (UCC, but referred to by humans as the Great Hive).

    By the beginning of the 1st millennium BFD, the Caedhewe had colonized several systems, but overpopulation was becoming more and more serious of a problem. Food supplies were dwindling as the amount of available arable land on their homeworld shrank, causing starvation issues. The clans fought time and financial issues to spread as much of their population as they could into space, but some of the colonies resisted the arrival of more and more people to their planets. Between 1100 BFD and 900 BFD, the problem escalated into a crisis.

    As the Caedhewe population grew despite efforts from the UCC to curtail it, an age of expansion began that would take the Caedhewe on a direct collision course with the Sagittarian Arm—a collision that would ignite seven decades of war and strife.

    First contact was made in 927 BFD, as a trade ship from the Achebe system ran into an exploration vessel of the Upa clan. The contact was cordial, if lacking the excitement of the Liisii contact several centuries earlier. The Caedhewe would establish with the United Nations Colonial Mission, the Anglyskiyan Federation, and the Hellenic Alliance within a decade, and established trade relations with its neighbors within three. For the rest of the 900s and the early 800s, the UCC maintained peaceful relations, but all that began to change as the Bug expansion began to rub against the borders of the human powers.

    On the borders of the Sagittarian Arm, the human and Liisii colonies were underpopulated and many were privately run. While most had "sponsor" nations that acted as their protectors, they were still insignificant on the galactic scale, so protest was relatively minor when the Caedhewe began to occupy and colonize the most remote human colonies in the mid-800s. Proxy wars flared up as independent human corporations fought for supremacy with the "Hive" in the border regions. Tensions steadily grew, drawing the disparate OGS closer together.

    In 873 BFD, the opening shots of the Bug War were fired in the Zeta Sigma system. The hot-blooded Commodore Mitra Gadhavi, commander of the 29th Guard Squadron, had been dispatched by the government of the Hindustani Republic [3] as a deterrent to the Caedhewe. With a string of small, private human colonies being devoured by the ever-expanding "Hive," the Hindustanis wanted to protect their own outer colonies from any possible Bug ambitions.

    On March 8, a probing fleet of the Nalagina clan's colonization program jumped into the Zeta Sigma system. Consisting of a four destroyer escorts and a science frigate, the force was not unduly threatening, but it was still a group of warships that was very obviously scouting out a system for possible colonization. Commodore Gadhavi, in accordance with her instructions from HR command, hailed the Bug ships and ordered them to leave the system immediately. Despite immediate acquiescence from the Nalagina commander, Bhole Murakha, something went utterly, disastrously wrong with the systems on one of the Caedhewe destroyers.

    Without warning, the spinal mass driver of the destroyer Naysa powered up and went into firing mode. Historians still debate whether it was a case of organic or mechanical error, but whatever the case, the result was disastrous. Commodore Gadhavi, when her heavy cruiser's sensors detected the weapons powering up, panicked and ordered the defense fleet to commence fire. The human ships opened up with a barrage of railgun fire, torpedoes, and tungsten projectiles. The shocked Caedhewe tried to make a fighting retreat, but there wasn't even enough time to raise particle shields—the engagement was within a megameter of distance, practically knife-fight range. The Nalagina ships only managed to get a few return shots off—eliminating the destroyer Lūṭērā in the process—before Gadhavi's first and second volleys shredded them. All that Murakha could do was send out a panicked distress call to the nearest Caedhewe comm relay.

    As soon as news of the Zeta Sigma Affair reached the Caccia system, the Great Hive sprung into action. The large Caedhewe military, already partially mobilized in its expansion crisis, was already moving to retaliate even before the UCC's leaders had even declared war or expelled the diplomats of the various Sagittarian states. The government made the erroneous judgement that the Zeta Sigma affair had been a human conspiracy rather than an accident, and reacted accordingly. Frantic preparations were for naught in the early years of war, as the disunited members of the fragile Organization of Galactic States buckled before the onslaught. Twelve systems fell within months, and although the initial blitz slowed down, there was no stopping the Bug advance initially. Caedhewe numbers were shocking at first, able to deploy more soldiers in their initial campaign than the Tehran system had people. The defender's advantage, coupled with the Caedhewe reliance on overwhelming numbers rather than superior firepower, meant heavy casualties for the invaders, but those losses were sustainable as the UCC mobilized onto a total war footing.

    There were brief and isolated victories for the forces of the Sagittarian Arm, but few were significant. The coreward worlds of the Sagittarian arm burned as the Bugs advanced. By 862 BFD, over a hundred million humans and ten million Liisii had been killed. Three dozen systems were under Bug control, with those conquered humans living in poor conditions as their new overlords were unprepared for the difficulties of a military occupation.

    On September 9 of that year, the various states of the beleaguered OGS sent new, more competent representatives to an emergency meeting of the Sagittarian Congress. Their purpose? To hammer out a closer, more effective alliance that could undo the destruction wrought by the Caedhewe and win the war.

    [1]: .sn.int stands for Stellarnet—Interstellar, denoting that this domain can be viewed across all Stellarnet servers.
    [2]: Courier ships are small, speedy cargo vessels employed by the Dominion's central government to deliver "snail mail." Impractical as it is, there is still no other way to transport solid packages.
    [3]: The HR covered the systems of Shiva, Vishnu, and Ganesha, as well as the smaller systems associated with them.
     
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    • Also, as a bonus:



    The basic parade dress uniform of a Oberschhōngwèi (Lt. Col.) in the Red Army of the Union of Socialist Planetary Systems. Decorations and unit insignia have been omitted. USPS uniforms are purposefully very plain, in line with the Red Army's image as a "people's military."

    I took inspiration from the modern German Bundeswehr, Starfleet, and of course the Imperial Navy from Star Wars.
     
    So basically one Race Maltusian catastrophe spreads to set a whole arm of the galaxy in flames.
     
    Beyogi said:
    So basically one Race Maltusian catastrophe spreads to set a whole arm of the galaxy in flames.
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    Sort of. Like WWI, it was somewhat inevitable due to the circumstances (part of what the future forumgoers were discussing), and the Zeta Sigma affair was only the spark that set off a powder keg. If it hadn't been that, it'd have been another spark a few years down the line.
     
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Years of Hell
    (862 BFD—858 BFD)         ​
    When the twenty delegates met on New Kinshasa for the emergency session of the OGS Congress, there was a palpable air of desperation. It was easy to see why; this meeting was at a critical time, when it looked like the war would be a catastrophic defeat for the humans. The disunited human states had universally fallen back across a broad front, abandoning thirty-six systems and 3/4ths of a billion humans to the "tender mercies" of the Caedhewe. Ten percent of the combined Sagittarian fleets had been destroyed in the early battles, and the number would have been higher had the humans not been actively trying to conserve ships at the expense of smaller colonies.

    The situation was, undoubtedly, very grim. The Caedhewe had achieved a wide foothold across the entire arm, occupying dozens of minor systems and several major ones. The frontlines were only 200 light-years away from the valuable Sagittarian core worlds, and Bug commerce raiders had been encountered by several unfortunate trade vessels within direct comms range of New Kinshasa. While the united human and Liisii forces had fully mobilized for total war by this point, logistical problems had prevented more than a few counteroffensives.

    Admiral Jacob Chilolo, commander of New Kinshasa's 7th Fleet, had scraped a brief victory from the jaws of defeat in the Mwanza system. Outnumbered, his fleet exploited the weak flanks of one particular Caedhewe salient and came very close to cutting the enemy supply lines. The offensive culminated in the Battle of Mwanza II, when the 7th Fleet was pitted against the Nutak clan's 2nd Fleet. Caught by surprise, the 2nd Fleet was unable to mount an effective defense and took heavy casualties. Mwanza was a vital Caedhewe logistics hub, and was a prosperous human colony before the war. Its brief recapture was a significant morale-boosting victory for the Sagittarian arm, even if Chilolo was forced to retreat to prevent his own encirclement and destruction.

    Commodore Mehdi Bazargan, commander of the Tehrani defense fleet at Bushehr Station, had similar, if limited, success. Bushehr Station was a vital comms hub that tied three border systems into the network centered in the Tehran system, and it also housed a vital nexus for the Tehrani navy's highly centralized chain of command. Bushehr Station, like all military space stations, was equipped with its own FTL drive, but the larger mass of the station made it difficult to maintain a Chomsky field [1] around it. The buildup of Cherenkov radiation that comes from such a field must be discharged periodically as a result, as opposed to the much more efficient in-transit dispersal of a conventional starship. As such, FTL travel aboard a station is much slower and more energy-consuming.

    If the Caedhewe could catch up to and destroy Bushehr Station before it was withdrawn to a safer distance, the Tehrani defensive network would be thrown into disarray. Bazargan knew this, as did his Bug enemies. Bazargan, despite being outnumbered significantly, decided to stand and fight. As the Station fled its home in the Tabriz system, Bazargan's small defense fleet mined the system and set up static defenses to buy time. The ensuing battle was desperate and long, with Bazargan's ships making emergency in-system FTL jumps around the attacking fleet to avoid the enemy guns. Before their retreat, Bazargan's forces bought Bushehr Station enough time to flee to a safer system, thereby preventing the collapse of the entire Tehrani defensive line.

    Despite these acts of heroism and strategic brilliance on land and in space, the situation was still very bad. As stated by Hindustani Congress representative Suman Chaudhri, "If we do nothing, then we will be presiding over nothing but empty vacuum."

    The meetings opened on February 6, 862 BFD, presided over by New Kinshasa's representative Shukuru Kawambwa. Little progress was made in the first few days, as each representative was convinced that their nation needed the most help. Tehran itself was under threat, New Kinshasa's comm relay could pick up the faint military chatter of the frontlines, and the Liisii home defense fleet had already fired a shot in anger for the first time in its history.

    It was obvious that a military alliance was necessary, and nobody disputed that; however, the arguments were over sovereignty issues. Some Sagittarian nations and systems were entirely untouched by the war as of yet, and as such were loath to send more troops into the meat grinder than was necessary to defend the Arm. For those nations that had taken the brunt of the fighting, this was a betrayal of the worst sort, and for about three weeks talks broke down as the representatives for the Tehranis, Hindustanis, and Burmese walked out in protest. There was even a group of OGS nations on the "rimward" side of the Sagittarian Arm seriously considering cutting the coreward nations off as lost causes.

    By 859, little progress had been made on the diplomatic front, either on New Kinshasa or in halfhearted peace talks with the Caedhewe, who were feeling none too merciful. Foreign dignitaries from the Anglyskiyan Federation, its allies in the Svoboda Prime Pact, and even the UNCM and the Hellenics had abandoned their embassies in several besieged nations. However, on April 20th, a ray of hope shined through the gloom of the time—the Battle of Mogadishu.

    Before the War, Mogadishu was a relatively quiet system. Part of the Union of African Republics (the polity that New Kinshasa was the capital of), its only claim to fame was a large antimatter scouring facility in orbit around the second planet. The star Mogadishu itself was unusual, emitting high amounts of antiparticles due to abnormal reactions near its surface. Unfortunately, this made the Mogadishu system more hostile than most Genesis-tier systems [2]. The main planet, Mogadishu IV or Khama, was a sun-scorched desert world with hardy wildlife and hardier human inhabitants, with life outside the cities difficult, lonely, and adventurous. Barely a hundred million people lived in the system permanently.

    During the War, however, Mogadishu was suddenly important. The antimatter facility was vital for the Union of African Republics' war machine, as antimatter was an essential ingredient for much of both sides' ordnance arsenals and was the main fuel for the Chomsky drives of the era. As a result, it was designated a vital system by New Kinshasa, and its defense from any Caedhewe attacks was declared vital. In the early years of the war, this had not been a problem; the frontlines were well away from the encroaching Bugs. However, by 859, the mid-February Battle of the Mswati Cluster—widely regarded as the most crushing defeat for OGS forces in the Bug War—caused the frontlines to temporarily collapse into a disorganized retreat. The front re-stabilized less than a dozen light-years from Mogadishu, prompting the Africans, Tehranis, Hindustanis, and Liisii—all of whom received at least some of the system's exports—to rush a large reserve fleet into the system to organize defenses. They would later be joined by a force of Burmese cruisers and destroyers.

    As luck would have it, this multinational fleet was commanded by Admiral Baleka Mbete, a brilliant tactician and one of the most successful commanders of the war so far. She was given orders to defend Mogadishu at all costs, and was given more resources than most commanders for the task.

    Mbete, before she joined the African navy, had been an experienced "spacer," one of the intrepid explorers and merchants who had been born in space, grew up in space, and lived in space. She had experience with many galactic anomalies, and she used that to her advantage in combat, making her frighteningly effective. She had been wounded multiple times in the prior years of the war due to damaged consoles and debris after the ships she'd commanded had taken hits, leaving her with a prosthetic left arm and right eye.

    Her opposite was Fleetmaster [3] Knaurs of the Uamnyrdie clan, who was similarly brilliant but far less experienced. The twentieth son of a prominent Archon (one of the elders of the clan), he was, like many children of elders, encouraged to join the United Clans military. He had combat experience against human forces, and was one of the architects behind the Mswati Cluster victory, but he was still relatively young and had rarely fought in battles without numerical or fire superiority. He commanded a fleet composed of ships from various clans, similar to Mbete's multinational flotilla. Unlike Mbete's fleet, however, Knaurs's force was hampered by clan rivalries—specifically between two Senior Shipmasters, Iniguar of his own clan and Gresites, from Uga. The two hated each other, and were constantly accusing each other of undermining the common goal and of factionalism. Knaurs had requested, time and again, that they be removed, but both had connections that dwarfed even the son of an Archon.

    Prior to the battle, Mbete spent much of March and early April laying defenses. An extensive minefield was laid outside the system's asteroid belt, along with a complex network of orbital and deep space defense stations armed with MAHEM systems, torpedoes, railguns, and pulse cannons. Defensive emplacements were erected on the surface of Khama, and the citizens of the planet had armed themselves with whatever weapons they could find and prepared for the worst. Some organized themselves into an impromptu militia, to supplement the millions of regular soldiers from the various OGS systems pouring into Mogadishu.

    Mbete also used the star itself to her advantage; using the minefield, she created several "funnels" that would force enemy forces approaching from a certain vector to squeeze into a tight formation only a few megameters across and allow her to hide a large portion of her fleet's heat signatures in the unusual radiation of the star. There were three of these "weaknesses," and Mbete expected that if the Caedhewe commander was smart, he or she wouldn't take the most obvious one, so she went to great lengths to make one of the funnels a painfully obvious trap. There were two other corridors, but they would be difficult to open without dedicated minesweepers. Mogadishu's unusual radiation also played havoc with sensors at long range, contributing to Mbete's plan to pull the Caedhewe into the snare.

    On April 20, the main Caedhewe fleet jumped into the Mogadishu system with orders to capture the system at all costs. Almost immediately, the minefield was activated by proximity sensors scattered throughout space, and thousands of small antimatter warheads shed their heat shields and activated the small gravity drives in their bases. Fleetmaster Knaurs was expecting the minefield, of course—it was practically a staple doctrine of the constantly-defensive Sagittarians—and so his fleet was supplemented by specialized minesweepers and "flak boats," small vessels that were, for all intents and purposes, armed with nothing but point defenses. They were far from a hundred percent effective, and their rapid-fire lasers consumed heat sinks rapidly, but they prevented Knaurs's fleet from taking more than light casualties in the opening phases of battle. The minesweepers then began to search methodically for a relatively mine-free corridor of advance for the fleet. They found several, although one was seen as too obvious. Knaurs, in possibly the most destructive mistake of his career, took the one that was closest to his planned approach vector—right where hus human adversary wanted him.

    Aboard the dreadnought Aradu, hidden with a large portion of her fleet in the sun's radiation, Admiral Mbete gave the order for the next phase of the defense plan to go into action. The "distraction" fleet, led by Rear Admiral Mehdi Bazargan (who had been promoted after Bushehr Station), powered up in the orbit of Mogadishu VI, a large gas giant that hadn't quite acquired enough mass to become a brown dwarf. Working in concert with the defense network now powering up across the system, Bazargan's fleet harassed the Caedhewe for several hours, targeting ships on the outside of the tight formation and retreating at FTL before the more cumbersome enemy fleet could respond. This strategy was meant to herd the Bug fleet into the desired position—under the guns of Mogadishu IV's orbital defense grid. However, Knaurs was no fool. He expected this, and initially, all these attacks did was cause unnecessary casualties for Bazargan.

    However, it did have one side effect that was entirely unexpected—it divided Knaurs's two most hated commanders even further. Senior Shipmaster Gresites, by a stroke of bad luck, was on the receiving end of the majority of Bazargan's fire. He broke radio silence to angrily accuse Knaurs and Iniguar of using his fleet as a meat shield, and reacted irrationally when Iniguar berated him for it. Against orders, he broke his squadron off from the main formation as the Caedhewe passed through he main asteroid belt to furiously pursue Bazargan.

    Mbete, sensing an opportunity, ordered Bazargan to fall back towards the orbit of Khama, into which Burmese Vice Admiral Sao Shwe Thein was to jump with his reserve fleet of battleships, cruisers, and their screens. Gresites blundered blindly into the trap, leading to his squadron (over thirty percent of the total Caedhewe force) being annihilated by the OGS pincers.

    At this point, as Knaurs's fleet had been crippled by the loss of Gresites's group, Mbete took advantage of the confusion and sprung her trap. Jumping at slow FTL out of the interference range of the star, the bulk of the human forces hit the weakened Bugs hard. With numerical parity achieved thanks to Bazargan and Thein, the final engagement was long and brutal. However, when Knaurs's dreadnought was destroyed after an hour of combat, the Caedhewe fleet fell into disarray. Mbete pressed the advantage, hounding the disorganized enemy remnant out of the system in a full-on rout.


    A map of the battle. The yellow and black region is the minefield.
    ​

    The Battle of Mogadishu was the biggest OGS victory to date. In exchange for the loss of eighty ships, including four battlewagons, Mbete destroyed or crippled 207 enemy vessels and sent the remainder fleeing in disarray. For her actions, she was promoted to Fleet Admiral, and the Mogadishu system was declared secure after other OGS fleets exploited the victory and pushed the Bugs back a good fifty light-years. Even more potent, however, was the boost to morale it gave. The beleaguered coreward systems had shown the rest of the Arm that they could fight, and as a result they pledged their unconditional support to the defeat and destruction of the Bug menace. On January 9, 858 BFD, the Organization of Galactic States was converted into a full military and political alliance, with one express purpose—turning the tide.

    [1]: The Chomsky and Fujiwara drives work by generating a "Chomsky field," which essentially "warps" space around it to allow FTL.
    [2]: I will go into more detail in a later update, but star systems and, in a smaller scale, planets are classified on a straightforward tier system of six distinct sections. The highest is "Genesis," already supporting complex animal life prior to colonization.
    [3]: Approximately an admiral. Senior Shipmasters, as seen later, are equivalent to commodores.

    Author's Note:
    My apologies for taking so long with this update, but I was trying to get a summer job and working for the local garden, so I had precious little time to work. Hope this update is up to expectations. :smile:
     
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    • the fuck. The yellow and black zone is the minefield?! How does that even work? The pure space is mindbogglingly huge.
     
    Beyogi said:
    the fuck. The yellow and black zone is the minefield?! How does that even work? The pure space is mindbogglingly huge.
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    Mines are extremely far apart. They're not mines in the traditional sense, but they're more like guided torpedoes that are encased in a shell to mask heat emissions and equipped with small FTL drives. When they detect a vessel within 1 AU or so, they shed the casing and make quick FTL jumps to their targets. Point defenses make short work of them usually, but when you've got dozens of them jumping out of FTL around you at the same time...
     
    While I'm still up, here's something I whipped together:


    "Bridge dress" of the Sagittarian Republic Navy, worn here by a Commander.

    Kudos to anyone who can name the three inspirations for this particular look.
     
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    amazing story so far , maybe some kind of Federation will be born after the war with the Bugs . Cant hardly wait for the next part .
     
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Turning the Tide
    (858 BFD—853 BFD)    ​

    Mogadishu was a turning point, and an important victory, but there was a hell of a lot more war to fight. The Caedhewe were still on the advance in several areas, and something needed to be done to bring the disorganized navies of the Sagittarian powers into an effective agreement. The first step, as outlined by the militaries, was simple—halt the enemy advance. In the past few years, the Bugs had been slowed to a crawl by ferocious OGS resistance, but they hadn't been stopped. The Caedhewe hadn't fully achieved their starting objectives by this point—the capture of the various capitals of the Sagittarian Arm's rimward side had never been accomplished—and while their manpower situation remained decent, their logistical viability was degrading fast.

    On June 9, 858 BFD, the disparate OGS militaries agreed to be subsumed into a single unified structure—Allied Strategic Command, or ASCOM. Headquartered in the Vishnu system, well beyond the fighting, ASCOM was dominated by a triumvirate of influential OGS military leaders—Grand Admiral Akinyi Manyenyeni (Union of African Republics), Grand Admiral Bogyoke Thu Ya (Burma), and Grand Admiral Joginder Dhillon (Hindustani Republic). [1] Each one brought tactical brilliance, and the years they spent proving it, to the table. The various militaries were gradually reorganized into a more cohesive force under their command, beginning with a more widespread logistical command.

    ASCOM Logistics was placed under the jurisdiction of Liisii Sector Admiral Oetop Votterb, who had been given a monumental task: the reallocation of resources to the places where they were needed most. Votterb was a good choice to head up this initiative; she had started her long career as a supply officer aboard a battleship, and had gained a reputation as a logistics wizard throughout the Bug War. She was also well-versed in AI technology, an essential skill for someone organizing supply chains for a unified military measured in the billions of personnel. She threw herself into the new role with fervor, using the new influx of supplies from OGS nations that had recently joined the war to bolster ailing defensive lines. This came not a moment too soon.

    August of 857 began with a renewed Caedhewe offensive in the general direction of Tehran, a particularly ferocious thrust that in past years would have done much more damage. Instead, ASCOM was able to rush emergency reserves compiled from the new allies into the fray, halting the enemy advance before it could cause significant damage. Votterb was able to quickly redirect supplies from other, more quiet fronts to the region, ensuring that ASCOM forces maintained fire superiority in many of the battles and in the campaign overall. The Caedhewe accomplished little in this offensive. There were several isolated victories—Isfahan, Pradesh, Kermanshah—but the overall campaign was clearly in ASCOM's favor.

    At the Battle of Hamadan III on June 20, 856, Admiral Babatunde Fashola of the Lagos system defeated an equally-sized fleet of Bug ships, breaking the enemy "sword" mid-swing and sending the Caedhewe reeling. A quick exploitation of this victory led to several more in rapid succession—Zanjan, Varamin, and Pakdasht were the most notable—that eliminated the few gains the Caedhewe had made in their offensive the previous year and poised ASCOM to launch its own counteroffensive. By February 855, the Sagittarian armies had carved a deep salient into Bug lines that stretched deep into Caedhewe-occupied territory. It began at the starting lines of the original Caedhewe offensive two years previously and stretched to the Birjand system. It was a monumental triumph; some of the worlds liberated by this counterattack had been under Bug occupation for almost a decade.

    The Caedhewe were shocked by this "second wind" of Sagittarian resistance. Until this point, they'd been making gains, even if they were sporadic and tenuous. This was the first major campaign-wide defeat they'd experienced, and they did not like it. In May, Caedhewe Grand Fleetmaster Agos of Clan Marwe submitted a plan to the council of Archons overseeing the Birjand salient: Initiative Kilekari, or "Bulwark" in the Caedhewe lingua franca. Kilekari involved three different fleet groups—Caccia, Scutia, and Gatia—with thousands of various warships drawn from reserve forces all over Caedhewe-occupied territory. Fleet Group Caccia would act as a "clamp" that would tie down a large number of human-Liisii units in the salient, whilst Scutia and Gatia would attempt to "pinch off" the bulge at its base. From there, they would be able to, at the very least, create a pocket of human forces, cut vital supply lines, and make breakout difficult.

    Kilekari was a massive undertaking that required huge amounts of preparation time, time that was precious for keeping the OGS off balance. It also required a thinning of Bug lines along the front, as hundreds of ships and millions of personnel were sucked slowly out of more quiet theaters and towards the operational area for the offensive. The buildup was not invisible, even in the vast blackness of space; recon frigates of the ASCOM navies on routine patrol missions would find large concentrations of ships in border systems, as well as extensive orbital infrastructure. They also noted the lack of forces elsewhere along the front; enemy attacks had petered off on some of the fronts near the salient, which was suspicious in and of itself. ASCOM was capable of putting two and two together, so they deduced that if the enemy was to attack, it would be at the Birjand salient.

    ASCOM itself was experiencing problems of its own, however. The slog of the previous two years had led to a shortage of modern cruisers and destroyers, weakening the backbone of the combined navies. In addition, the new co-belligerents in the unaffected OGS states had military technology at least a generation behind their more experienced allies. Their production capabilities were unaffected by the conflict, but what they could produce was of inferior quality. That said, there were several exceptions; missile boats, as they were not frontline combatants, had generally weathered the conflict this far unscathed; modern ones were also relatively cheap and easy to produce. The various capital ships of the combatant nations, like the sturdy, dependable Tembo-class battleship or the feared Garaja-class dreadnoughts, were also important; well-built, powerful, and sturdy, they were often more than a match for their smaller, less formidable Bug counterparts. The ASCOM forces were forced to reorganize around this situation; in a plan sponsored by Admiral Votterb and Fleet Admiral Ya, the ASCOM navies were slowly reorganized into a more cohesive unit built around powerful capital ships and missile boats, backed up by large numbers of cheap, easy-to-produce cruisers and screens. Older ships could be built more rapidly, and while their combat effectiveness was reduced, their large numbers more than made up for it.

    As ASCOM headquarters determined that the Birjand salient would be the most likely axis of a major enemy offensive, the experienced High Admiral Andre Boteti was dispatched to take command of the human-Liisii forces occupying the salient. His plan revolved around interstellar-level defense in depth to counter Bug tactics; a series of three "defensive belts," each well-armed with mines and defensive satellites in the important systems, would whittle down the numbers of the attackers and make a counteroffensive easier. Boteti divided his force into three "fronts;" the Sabahi Front, under Sector Admiral Mohammad Ghalibaf, would hold the eastern face of the salient, while Baleka Mbete's Valdar Front would defend the west. The Central Front under Sector Admiral Stefan Bonyongwa would be in reserve.

    ASCOM's new fleet, and Boteti's defensive tactics, would receive its first test during Initiative Kilekari, known more commonly as the Battle of Birjand. The Archons, desperate for a propaganda victory to counteract the embarrassment of 857-855, ordered the attack to go ahead in mid-June of 853, before the cautious Fleetmaster Agos felt that the three fleet groups were adequately prepared for the offensive. On June 17, forward elements of Fleet Group Caccia attacked along a wide front around the Birjand system. Caccia was led by the Ama clan's Senior Fleetmaster Mhabvia, a veteran of several battles and a favorite of the military Archons. Senior Fleetmaster Kromik of Eor's Gatia group committed several fleets to the initial attack of the "eastern" pincer, launching a full-scale invasion of the Sarayan system. Meanwhile, the "western" Scutia group, under the command of Kodit of Vilhi, invested the Najafabad system. Their goal was to meet up at Pakdasht (the site of a crushing ASCOM victory several years previously) and cut the defenders' supply lines, before closing a "fist" around the resulting pocket and destroying a large part of the ASCOM fleet.

    Mhabvia's initial assaults only made minor headway before they were beaten back with minor losses. Later attempts to breach the first defensive line at Birjand itself had more success, forcing Boteti to redistribute forces from the Central Front to plug the holes in his line. By August, two minor systems had been recaptured by the Caedhewe, but both the Sabahi Front and the Valdar Front were holding steady on the first and second defensive lines. This was not much of a setback in the eyes of the

    Gatia group had more success, breaking through relatively quickly at the Battle of Sarayan and accomplishing all of their initial goals for the early months of the offensive despite pessimistic predictions. Admiral Ghalibaf was forced to make a fighting withdrawal to the second line, abandoning three recently liberated planets to the Bugs yet again. The ASCOM forces regrouped and rearmed, preparing for further combat. Bonyongwa rushed a pair of fleets into the fray to bolster the Sabahi Front, replacing some of the losses suffered at Sarayan.

    Scutia group ran into trouble almost from the start. A disastrous failure on the part of Bug intelligence had fed the Caedhewe fleet misinformation—specifically, that the forces of the Valdar Front were undersupplied and armed with outdated vessels dredged up from the rear echelons of the ASCOM militaries. So when the Nak clan's Third and Sixth fleets ran into determined resistance by a force ready and willing to fight for every light-year of space. The initial attacks were unable to penetrate the first defensive line except for a few places, and those breaches were quickly plugged by reinforcements moving in from the center of the salient. The Bugs were finally halted at the Second Battle of Zanjan, without even breaking the first line.

    In January of 854, a second attempt by Fleetmaster Kodit to break Mbete's lines of defense failed just short of its objective at Kerman, where the Valdar Front's second line was reinforced by three fresh dreadnoughts and their dependent fleets. Again proving her tactical mastery, Mbete turned the Battle of Kerman into a tactical and strategic ASCOM victory. The Scutia group never regained the initiative along the "western" face of the salient for the rest of the battle.

    854 also saw decisive action to the east; for the time being, the Gatia group maintained the initiative against Ghalibaf and the Sabahi Front, mostly as a result of their early victory at Sarayan. Ghalibaf's forces had been forced to abandon a wide stretch of space and fall back behind the second defensive line. By this time, High Admiral Boteti knew that Mbete's front was more or less secure without too much assistance, and ordered Admiral Bonyongwa to commit the rest of the Central Front to a counterattack. If it failed, then the Bug forces would be able to breach the third defensive line and act with impunity in the ASCOM rear.

    Ghalibaf was given overall command of the forces in the region, and he chose to launch his counterattack against the recently-taken Ardabil system. Its recapture was important due to an abundance of resources on its two inhabitable planets, as well as being in a strategic location for launching further attacks and establishing secure supply lines. It would be vital in order to turn the tide in the east. This strategic vitality was not lost on the Caedhewe either, leading Senior Fleetmaster Kromik to transfer a significant force into the system in order to hold the line.

    The opposing forces were different from normal; on paper, the Caedhewe fielded five fleets—Eighth, Sixteenth, Twenty-First, Thirtieth, and Forty-Ninth, all from the Yek and Gom clans. Fleetmaster Gorok, a veteran of almost ten years of war against the humans, was given command of this defense force. The ASCOM assault would be made by the newly organized Task Force III (Valdar Front), under Burmese Sector Admiral Bogyoke Nu Kyin, and supplemented by System Admiral Mazoud Kazemi's smaller Task Force IV (Central Front). In total, the two sides would bring a total of sixty dreadnoughts into play, along with an astronomical amount of smaller battlewagons, cruisers, and screens. The Battle of Ardabil was unprecedented—never before had so many titans clashed like this, and it would be centuries before another clash like it happened again.

    The attack was preceded between the 3rd of July and mid-August by a counterattack against surrounding systems, setting up an optimal springboard for an assault. This came at the cost of some systems nearby, but Ghalibaf and his subordinates deemed it a necessary setback for eventual victory in the sector. Finally, on the 1st of September, the attack began with Nu Kyin's signal of "San, san, san!" (Iron, Iron, Iron!) Task Force III jumped into the Ardabil System, guns blazing, with Nu Kyin herself leading the charge from the dreadnought Saramati. For the next thirty hours, a pitched battle ensued between the two vast fleets, as both sides rushed more and more reinforcements into the fray.

    Initially, the battle seemed to go in the way of the Caedhewe; despite the humans having local numerical superiority, their forces had taken the time to set up defenses in an emulation of Mbete's tactics during the Battle of Mogadishu. The result was heavy casualties for Nu Kyin's forces thanks to mines and orbital gun emplacements. The numerous but weak human cruisers also took heavy casualties, even if the ASCOM battlewagons fared better in general. Eventually, however, pure weight of numbers began to overwhelm the Caedhewe. Nu Kyin and Kazemi simply brought more dreadnoughts and smaller ships (especially vital missile boats) to the fray than their foes did, and the battle ended with a relatively orderly Caedhewe withdrawal. For the second time in less than two years, Ardabil was in the hands of ASCOM again.


    A rough diagram of the Battle of Birjand.    ​

    The Battle of Ardabil cost Gatia Group the initiative in the sector; after it, Boteti committed the rest of the Central Group reserves to a full counterattack against the tired and depleted Bug forces. The enemy lines outside of the Birjand salient shattered, expanding the bulge and threatening to envelop a large amount of Caedhewe troops in the contested region of Sagittarian space. What became known as the Battle of Birjand would be seen as the turning point of the Bug War by most historians afterwards. Between December 854 and May 853, ASCOM capitalized on this victory, launching a massive offensive against the enemy in several strategic locations along the frontlines. The so-called "Bulge Offensive" would prove to be influential in more ways than one. Most immediately, it cost the Caedhewe some 35% of the territory they still held in Sagittarian space. It also switched the overall initiative of the war into the hands of the Sagittarian nations; Birjand would, for all intents and purposes, be the last major offensive that the Caedhewe launched against human territory. And most importantly, the other powers in the region, like the Anglyskiyan Federation, the Hellenic Alliance, and the UNCM, began to sit up and take notice…

    [1]: Unlike contemporary Earth militaries, the rank of fleet admiral is the highest. In the vastness of space, and considering the colossal size of the fleets involved, there are several more flag ranks with varying equivalents in the human militaries; Star Admiral/System Admiral (self-explanatory), Sector Admiral (In charge of a sector or fleet group), High Admiral (In charge of a theater of war), Grand Admiral (Highest rank).
     
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Liberation?
    (852 BFD—847 BFD)    ​


    The flag of ASCOM, adopted in 850 BFD and still used to this day. [1]    ​

    "Would you like to know more?"
    — [2] A common line in propaganda vids created by ASCOM Public Communications Division, usually following recruitment advertisements.

    852 opened with the human forces having liberated the largest amount of territory in the war so far. Many of these worlds had been under Caedhewe occupation and colonization for over a decade, and an entire generation of children (both human/Liisii and Caedhewe) knowing noting but Bug rule. For both groups, it was difficult—civil strife made life difficult in the years after the liberation, especially for those who had collaborated with the invaders. Brutal reprisals against collaborators led to thousands of deaths across multiple worlds, and it became difficult to re-establish any semblance of a civilian government.
    It was even worse for the Caedhewe colonists. Millions had already moved in by the time the Battle of Birjand and the subsequent offensive were over, but they hadn't had enough time to truly colonize their conquered worlds. As a result, these Caedhewe were, so to speak, up the creek without a paddle. Vengeful human civilians and soldiers took out their frustrations on huge amounts of Bug civilians, and the ASCOM military government rarely offered any kind of protection to these unfortunates. Those that were lucky enough to survive lived under harsh military laws, fighting starvation, looters, and, in many cases, other Caedhewe. These patterns would continue to repeat themselves in the years to come as more and more worlds were liberated by ASCOM forces.

    Meanwhile, on the frontlines of the war, the Bugs were in full retreat. A huge amount of operational strength had been poured into the attack on the Birjand salient, and the defeat there had sent the enemy reeling. Casualties had been heavy, with a large portion of the Bug center badly mauled in failed attacks on the salient. The subsequent human counterattacks had made the situation more dire, and resource/logistical problems were starting to whittle down the Caedhewe war machine. To make matters worse, all of the human states had fully transferred onto a war footing by this point, including those unaffected by the conflict directly; conscription had brought ASCOM numbers to the point where they surpassed the active Caedhewe troops—not by much, but it still eliminated the biggest strategic advantage the Caedhewe had held early in the war.

    Furthermore, several more variables entered the fray in the shape of the Scutum Arm's neighbors. The Hellenic Alliance had remained neutral throughout the conflict, even if they professed "brotherly sympathy" with the majority-human OGS. They and their neighbors in the United Nations Colonial Mission had been spared from Caedhewe machinations by the advent of the War, and thus had had ample time to prepare their relatively small militaries and dig in. When the tides of war began to turn in the favor of ASCOM, the two states began to reconsider their neutral stances. The Alliance in particular had designs on the Tarsiss (now Thebes) system, and the UNCM was very interested in the antimatter scouring facilities in the orbit of Scutia III. In March of 852 BFD, the Hellenic Alliance declared an embargo of raw material, antimatter, and manufactured weaponry to the United Clans. The Anglyskiyan Federation, still wary of Caedhewe coreward expansion if they won the War, did the same in June, with the UNCM following in August. As a result, the Caedhewe industries began to slow down in their production of goods for the frontlines, a problem that would prove grave in the coming years.

    The rapid Bug retreat was uneven and relatively disorganized; in particular the Caedhewe left flank—primarily made up of tired, undersupplied troops left over from the Birjand offensive—fell back hard, leaving a golden opportunity for ASCOM when they left a large gap in the frontlines made up of several systems defended by only skeleton forces. In August of 852 BFD, High Admiral Damayanti Kaur, a veteran Hindustani officer, presented an operation to ASCOM's high command. Codenamed Operation Joshi, Kaur's plan would exploit the exposure of the Caedhewe center-left and attempt to drive the enemy back over their own border. The ASCOM troika gave the nod, and Kaur was given overall command of the newly created "Central Theater," a force of several fronts unified under a single objective.

    In terms of fleet strength, its order of battle included 5 fronts: the Tehran Front, under Sector Admiral Bogyoke Nu Kyin; the Vishnu Front, commanded by a newly-promoted Baleka Mbete; Liisii Sector Admiral Doemaet Kuom's Phalodi Front; the Mugebe Front, commanded by SecAdm Marcel Chissano; and the New Rangoon Front, commanded by SecAdm Tobias Nyusi. This massive force was dispersed along a wide stretch of the frontlines, aimed specifically at the juncture between the enemy left flank and the center. The tactics to be utilized had been tailored to the unique structure of ASCOM's fleet, dubbed "Kushambulia Kina" (deep assault) by its pioneer, Andre Boteti. Kushambulia Kina involved achieving breakthroughs by searching for and striking at weak points in the enemy line, thereby opening the opposition's interior for operations. The capture of the systems beyond these breaches would be exploited by ASCOM's powerful capital ships and highly numerous smaller vessels, thereby occupying strategic sectors and destroying enemy reserve formations if they tried to counterattack. The risk involved in Kushambulia Kina was great, and when it failed it often led to heavy losses. However, it achieved great success in the months following the Battle of Birjand, so it was given the green light to be used again.

    The attack was planned for late 852, but logistical snags delayed it for several months. ASCOM high command used this to their advantage, scheduling the assault for March 8, twenty-one years after the Zeta Sigma incident. The propaganda value of the offensive would also be something of a gamble; if the offensive failed at such a crucial time, public opinion would be irrevocably harmed. To pre-empt this, the ASCOM troika greenlighted the creation of the "Public Communications Division," a relatively innocuous name hiding a more sinister purpose: the censorship that would come to define a large part of the later Sagittarian Republic's political scene. There were many arguments about the legality of the Division's activities among the various OGS member states, but the majority of the OGS Congress outvoted the minority due to the general idea that desperate times called for desperate measures. After all, there had been censorship in most nations in wartime before; was this not simply a question of sacrificing sovereignty for efficiency?

    However, the political drama on Vishnu and New Kinshasa mattered little to the soldiers and sailors who were being prepped for Operation Joshi. By mid-January, they had been ordered to report to their bases and ships for final preparations, and Admiral Kaur had fully transferred her mobile headquarters to the command dreadnought Hawaogopi. The stage was set. On March 8, forward elements of the Tehran and Mugebe Fronts initiated battle in the Myethci and Mallaha systems, brushing aside the timid resistance of the Bug defenders. Nyusi's New Rangoon front attacked next, seizing two lightly defended systems rapidly before running into more determine resistance. Reinforcements were poured into the breaches, with high concentrations of battlewagons in the vanguard. They would exploit the gaps in the enemy lines, leading to the encirclement and destruction of large portions of the enemy force.

    In the first few months, four systems fell into ASCOM hands as the Caedhewe tried frantically to bring up forces to compensate. It would take too long, however, and before significant Caedhewe reinforcements could be brought up to cover the retreat of their beaten forces in the area of operations, a significant portion of the local Caedhewe fleet was destroyed. Despite several snags—the New Rangoon front had experienced a serious local defeat at the Battle of Buthra that delayed their advance for weeks—Admiral Kaur's offensive started out rather well. With Operation Joshi's initial objectives met, and with the majority of the order of battle committed, Kaur turned to the next great prize: the system of Gaborone.

    Gaborone had been a massive agricultural exporter prior to the War, producing almost a trillion tons of foodstuffs annually on its three large agri-worlds and on hundreds of orbital habitats. It supplied the Union of African Republics with a large portion of its food supplies, and now it was supplying the Caedhewe war machine. It was also important for another reason—it had the largest mines of hadrium ore in the sector, essential for the creation of vital resolutium [3]. As a result, it had been an early target of the Bugs in the opening years of their invasion. Now, it would be the ultimate prize for Kaur and the Central Theater.

    As the New Rangoon and Phalodi Fronts "pried open" the Caedhewe line (infamously bloodthirsty Sector Admiral Bogyoke Nu Kyin had described it as "holding open the shell to get to the meat") in simultaneous attacks on the enemy far left and the center, the Vishnu and Mugebe fronts pushed into the Caedhewe rear, while the Tehran Front launched its own attack farther towards the Caedhewe extreme left to help create an effective pocket. Still reeling from the previous months' defeats, the Caedhewe brought up their Tassia fleet group to oppose the advance, but the momentum and size of the Central Theater was overwhelming. Tassia was only able to cover the disorganized retreat of several frontline units as the ASCOM fleet closed on Gaborone.

    The first unit to enter the system was the 17th squadron, 9th Fleet, Vishnu Front, under Commodore Zahra Ahmadi, At this point, it became a race for the Caedhewe to retreat before the Tehran and Mugebe Fronts did the same, thereby closing a large pocket and sealing the fate of a large number of ships and soldiers. To their credit, the Caedhewe fought extremely hard. They slowed a portion of the Mugebe Front down to the point where their offensive was at a standstill at the Battle of Chalumna, but the rapid movement of other ASCOM fleets around them forced their withdrawal anyway. The Tassia group was also partially successful in its efforts; against overwhelming odds, the Caedhewe managed to allow the evacuation of eight hundred ships—equivalent to a full sector fleet—from the rapidly closing pocket. However, by the time the Tehran Group reached Gaborone on November 9, several times that number had been trapped.

    Taking the Gaborone system required a lengthy land battle—one of the longest during the War—because of the Caedhewe tendency to build massive defensive emplacements and bunkers around or near vital industries and population/agricultural centers. It was said that the main world, Gaborone Prime, smelled of burning elephant wheat [4] for years afterwards. According to one soldier from the 2,123rd Armored Division, "If there was ever a hell in real life, Gaborone came pretty damn close." A two-year campaign that reduced much of the planet's cities to rubble was waged, between vengeful ASCOM ground forces and desperate Caedhewe soldiers fighting for their very lives and, often, in the case of colonists, their families. The human effort was plagued with issues, including shoddy logistics and a string of incompetent commanders. One of the most egregious examples was the attempt by Star Marshal Kalidas Jayaram to conduct an orbital drop on a contested region—with little to no armored or orbital support. While Jayaram was sacked and demoted after a single battle, the soldiers still fighting were not so lucky. It was considered the worst land battle of the War and was the bloodiest single campaign fought by ASCOM until the Terran Wars.

    All throughout, however, the PCD took advantage of the debacle for one major reason; Gaborone was an excellent source of propaganda footage. Emaciated human children being liberated by the brave soldiers of the alliance were common images across Sagittarian space, but few ever saw the brutality that the human and Liisii soldiers exerted on Caedhewe prisoners and civilians. PCD propaganda was full of enthusiastic, gung-ho (rear echelon) soldiers, but it never showed the hospitals full of wounded. Censorship got worse, both at home and on the battlefield; communication home was blocked except for certain allotments of time, with all social media or StellarNet use restricted heavily and constantly monitored. Meanwhile, as ASCOM's high command continued to grow closer, they also began to exert more influence over the civilian governments of the OGS. Using the dual tools of the war and the OGS Congress, ASCOM soon had its fingers in almost every pie in the various nations of the Sagittarian Arm. Information concerning the war was censored, with negative news vigorously suppressed. This process had not started with Gaborone, or even with Kaur's offensive, but it came to maturity thanks to the circumstances surrounding it.

    Gaborone finally fell completely approximately two years later on February 27, 848, with nearly two hundred million casualties, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire, killed for supplies by desperate Caedhewe soldiers, or killed as Caedhewe or traitors by the advancing ASCOM armies. However, the Central Theater was not idle throughout the ordeal; Gaborone was a major objective, but it was not the final one. With the pocket closed, a large part of the Caedhewe lefrt was eventually whittled down and annihilated, already making Operation Joshi the biggest single defeat of Caedhewe arms in history, and as a result the entire Caedhewe frontline was vulnerable—the battered center could easily be rolled up by two-pronged attacks. Within months, the Caedhewe center collapsed under the onslaught, as the Central Front attacked in tandem with the main body of ASCOM forces.

    Many of the worlds retaken by Joshi had been under Caedhewe rule since the first defeats after the outbreak of war (almost a quarter of a century), and so the millions of Caedhewe colonists left behind experienced suffering that, in another time, would have been rightfully decried as a war crime. It would be prophetic for the holocaust that was eventually to come…

    [1]: With thanks to alternatehistory.com's Xanthoc for this lovely flag.
    [2]: I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.
    [3]: Resolutium—also known (depending on the nation) as adamantium, supersteel, or devil's iron—is an alloy of iron and the element hadrium, together creating one of the strongest materials in the galaxy for use in vehicle, aircraft, and starship armor.
    [4]: Elephant wheat is an extremely hardy staple crop grown on many Sagittarian worlds. It is not actually related to wheat, showing more traits in common with rice or barley, but it remains the single most-grown agricultural plant in the known galaxy.
     
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Vengeance, Part 1
    (846 BFD—825 BFD)

    The "Battle" of Jutia
    ​
    As Operation Joshi's rapid momentum began to slow down in the early months of 846, the neighboring nations that had slowly but surely aligning themselves with the OGS began to escalate their involvement in the war. The Foreign Minister of the Hellenic Alliance, Prokopis Kapodistrias, made an important state visit to New Kinshasa in order to attend talks. He would be joined by UNCM Secretary for International Affairs Anna Fotgya days later. The Anglyskiyan Federation also sent Ambassador Pavel Minevsky to represent them at this conference. With the positive direction the war was taking at this point, the three dignitaries had come to discuss the possibility of joining the Scutum War on the side of the Sagittarian alliance.

    The Hellenic Alliance was a relatively young nation, with only about two centuries of interstellar travel under their belt. Nevertheless, they'd established themselves well in the Scutum Arm, with a respectable military and a robust economy. The UNCM was similar, even though it was several centuries older—almost as aged as the Anglyskiyan Federation. The Alliance was, of course, descended from the remnants of the Greek state on Earth, whose government had fled during the disaster. The UNCM was slightly more complicated; they were the descendants of many states, sent on an experimental UN colonization program a few decades prior to the Great Disaster. Mostly Eastern Europeans and Southeast Asians, the group homogenized culturally, with a lingua franca—Terran—heavily based on Polish [1] and Vietnamese emerging. As the "Mission" settled their homeworld and the systems surrounding it, they made a point to retain their connections to the idea of a "united Earth."

    On June 7, 845, the Hellenic Alliance officially declared war on the United Clans of the Caedhewe. The United Nations Colonial Mission did the same on July 12, with the Anglyskiyan Federation following suit on the 30th. The Caedhewe leadership, while not overly surprised, probably felt quite a bit of exasperation at this news. Not only were they on the retreat all along the frontlines, but now they were embroiled in a three-front war with very little chance of victory. Peace feelers were rejected outright by a vengeful ASCOM, who were still chipping away at the remaining Caedhewe-held worlds in their territory. The Caedhewe rushed large portions of their dwindling reserves towards the frontlines against their new enemies, especialy with the serious threat of the powerful Federation.

    The addition of the new enemies to the war practically made the conflict's ending a foregone conclusion. The advantage of military numbers the Caedhewe had enjoyed for years was already gone, and now the forces arrayed against them were utterly overwhelming. In addition, the loss of large amounts Sagittarian territory had stripped them of a large portion of their frontline production capabilities. The initial offensives of the three new co-belligerents, therefore, saw success against the underequipped, demoralized rear-echelon Bug troops defending their core systems. The Hellenic Alliance captured upwards of six systems in less than a year, while the UNCM achieved several notable successes in their drive towards the Caedhewe core worlds. The large, plodding Anglyskiyan Federal Navy crushed several smaller Caedhewe fleets, inflicting heavy losses on the defenders. By this point in the war, the Caedhewe had committed all of their reserves to fighting the overwhelming forces arrayed against them. However, there remained one major obstacle for ASCOM that stood in the way of their vendetta.

    Between the Sagittarian and Scutum Arms, there is a wide expanse of "dark space," a sparse region with relatively few star systems and even fewer habitable planets. It is known as the Khali Timahi—the Empty Quarter—by the Sagittarians, and the Gekek Khonsi (Great Emptiness) by the Caedhewe. At top speed, it would take months to cross the Empty Quarter, time that was precious as the Caedhewe fell back to regroup. The only "bridge" across the expanse is the Messier 10 nebula, a globular cluster of stars near the junction between the Scutum, Norma, and 3KPC arms. By the year 840 BFD, ASCOM had all but eliminated the last pockets of Caedhewe spaceborne resistance from their territory—the borders were as they had been before the war. For the Caedhewe, this was a monumental defeat; for ASCOM, it was a new challenge: how to invade Caedewe space with the Khali Timahi in the way. The Caedhewe had done it thanks to the colonies they'd established in the Sagittarian Arm prior to the start of the general war, and even then their logistical issues had played a part in their defeat.

    On February 6, 839, ASCOM launched Operation Typhoon, an ambitious plans to capitalize on the disorderly enemy retreat to seize several strategically vital planets in the Messier 10 nebula, as well as a number of "oasis systems" farther to the "west" in the Empty Quarter. The Messier campaign was a slog, as the Caedhewe were no longer fighting for former enemy territory—they were fighting for their homes. However, the remoteness of the oasis systems, despite their defensibility, meant that they were heavily removed from the Caedhewe defensive plans. Messier 10 was considered a much more likely axis of advance for an ASCOM invasion, leaving other worlds to be neglected by the United Clans military Archons. ASCOM took advantage of this lapse in judgement.

    By December, a series of brief battles with long FTL trips in between had left ASCOM in control of the majority of the Empty Quarter's oases. The Caedhewe realized too late that the Messier nebula was not the ASCOM schwerpunkt, and so redirected forces to defend their few remaining systems in the Empty Quarter. The effort would be too little, too late. ASCOM had achieved its foothold, and it would doggedly defend it from any attacks. Now, the war had truly changed for the Caedhewe; for the first time, the conflict had been brought home—directly to their doorstep.

    Had Operation Typhoon been a failure, it is unlikely that the ASCOM forces would have achieved sufficient range to seize the Caedhewe border worlds and decisively defeat their nemesis. However, with these systems under their control and heavily fortified, ASCOM could strike with impunity at the vulnerable Bug outer colonies. The United Clans was forced to make a several-month-long trip across the great empty expanse, while the OGS fleet could use their stable, sturdy supply chain to bring fresh units up for effective raids and conquests. In land terms, the Bugs were reduced to crossing a vast desert, carrying all their supplies with them—while ASCOM controlled all the watering holes.

    Between 839 and 834, Caedhewe border territory burned as the ASCOM fleets took out their rage and anger on their enemies. Official Sagittarian histories will try to sugarcoat the events that came after the successful conclusion of Typhoon, but most other historical sources will tell gruesome tales of hit-and-run attacks by ASCOM squadrons meant specifically to bombard unprotected colonies and of the unofficial (yet military-sanctioned) "no mercy" policies human/Liisii ground forces used when dealing with Caedhewe partisans. Most historians agree that these years between the Battle of the Empty Quarter and the final fall of the Caedhewe were the true start of what became known as the Great Holocaust.

    On June 17, 834, forces under an aging Bogyoke Nu Kyin (now a High Admiral by this stage of the war) attacked the important Bug system of Jutia. For a human army fighting under normal circumstances, Jutia should have been unremarkable. It had a high population but low industrial density, and its main export was agricultural products tailored specifically for Caedhewe biology. However, these crops were vitally important to feeding and maintaining the increasingly conscript-heavy army of the United Clans. Jutia was only one of many such systems, and so Nu Kyin was given the order to "deny" the strategic value of the system to the Caedhewe. The admiral, in typical Nu Kyin fashion, proceeded to deny away—with copious amounts of nuclear and antimatter warheads, orbital bombardment railguns, and redirected asteroids. Needless to say, it made the Thor impact look like a pebble being dropped into a rain puddle. Before the battle, the Jutia system's two planets had a combined total of one billion, two hundred million Caedhewe living on it. Afterwards, that number was less than one million in total, eking out miserable lives in a bomb-scorched hellscape with the constant fear of ASCOM landing parties.

    The Battle of Jutia was frightening for one major reason—it showed the civilized galaxy the true horror of a galactic total war. Orbital bombardment had been used countless times before, but the sheer death toll of Jutia would serve to shock citizens, soldiers, and politicians all over the Galaxy—except for the OGS, which was the most important exception. For many in ASCOM, this was an act that was an unfortunate but inevitable escalation in the righteous vengeance being exerted upon the foes that had done so much damage. Nu Kyin would keep her job; after all, she technically hadn't violated her orders, and the rules of galactic warfare had not yet been established. [2] And this would not be the last time such an event occurred in this horrible, horrible war. Far from it.

    The next several years, 834-825, were aptly known as the "Great Holocaust." As their allies watched in shock, ASCOM embarked on an orgy of destruction and mass murder across the cosmos. Caedhewe space was set afire with the hatred of human and Liisii servicemembers alike, as the frontlines grew ever closer to the Caedhewe home system of Caccia, and by extension Taucanorg—the very heart of the collapsing Caedhewe empire…

    [1]: I will admit, some small part of me really wanted to make a "polan can into space!" joke, but thankfully I resisted. Oh wait…
    [2]: In fact, it will take the galaxy-wide carnage of the First Terran War to prompt this—but more on the subject later.
     
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    • Well, this doesn't sound good at all. I get the feeling this is going to end with an Exterminatus on the Caedhewe homeworld.
     
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    • Sagittarian Republic: Vengeance, Part 2
    (825 BFD—814 BFD)
    ​

    For several hundred years, the mass murder committed by the OGS during the Great Holocaust would be unmatched in its sheer scale. Entire sectors of space were wiped out from orbit, or bombed so heavily that their ecosystems collapsed. At this juncture, the Caedhewe clans, previously united under the various High Archons on Taucanorg, began to fracture. With the war very obviously lost, some clan leaders decided that the best course of action was to abandon a rapidly sinking ship.

    The remaining Caedhewe-controlled space fell apart in civil war, as clans broke off to immediately surrender to one of the new belligerents—ASCOM had no interest in such mercies, and those who tried met unpleasant fates. When the important Uamnyrdie clan (one of the loyal clans in the rump UCC) was effectively wiped out by a brutal thrust towards the Gakar cluster of systems, the remaining Archons panicked. One of them, Lapaki of Uga, decided that enough was enough. On April 27th, 825 BFD, UCC Land Forces troops under the command of Lapako's underlings seized the Hive Building on Taucanorg [1] and arrested the Archons. She declared herself "First Archon" of the Clans, and set about trying to organize a defense.

    Lapaki inherited a state plagued with civil war and missing much of its territory. Opposition to her rule was constant, with other Archons (both major and minor) raising armies to attempt to overthrow her. She managed to hold her own through trickery and assassination, and within two years, by hook and crook, she had direct control of the remaining core worlds. An industrial reorganization project brought a large amount of Caedhewe heavy industry to the more resolutely defended core worlds, bolstering a failing supply situation for the time being.

    Lapaki was an effective leader for one major reason: she was a genius at delegating responsibility. For all that the Caedhewe are seen as military buffoons in modern day, only fit to be the ineffectual "bad guys" in vids and hologames, their leadership had many intelligent, effective leaders. Lapaki made excellent use of these men and women in the desperate final years of the war. Koplos of Uamnyrdie (one of the few members of that clan's gentry left) was hailed in Caedhewe space prior to the Great Holocaust as an expert logistician and an industrial genius. There was also Kurik, the powerful former Archon who acted as the ambassador to the ailing cans and helped bring several disloyal clans back under Taucanorg's rule. Gakas of Tarsinak expertly reorganized the communications systems to facilitate the creation of a better last-ditch defense, and an aged Senior Fleetmaster Knaurs, still bearing the scars of the Battle of Mogadishu on his reputation and body, was given a slim chance at redemption as the commander of a reorganized UCC Space Forces. Lapaki herself was no slouch; possessing a great talent for oratory (at least among her fellow Caedhewe), the First Archon gave the Caedhewe one thing they had been lacking for the past ten years: hope.

    Had Lapaki been born a century before, she would likely have been labeled one of the greatest Caedhewe leaders in history. However, her efforts were too little, too late. The best she could do was delay the inevitable as a horde of well-to-do-civilians fled the Caccia system in droves, leaving the unfortunate behind in a chilling rehash of the Great Disaster on Terra. As the civilians fled, the military poured in; over three thousand ships in total, nearly a sixth of the remaining Caedhewe fleet strength, were brought in for a last-ditch defense of the system. Ground forces were conserved for other battles, as everyone knew that there would be no point for them one way or the other: ASCOM would show no mercy.

    On February 11, 814 BFD, ships of the Vishnu Front, under the command of High Admiral Mbete, were the first to enter the Caccia system and engage the defenders. The battle was long and brutal, lasting for the entire galactic day and well into the next. The irony was that the two nemeses of Mogadishu, Mbete and Knaurs, were brought together for one final time in the space over the Caedhewe homeworld for their ultimate confrontation. Thousands of warships clashed, each side fighting with equal bravery and brutality. There was little quarter to be given at this stage. Other ASCOM offensives slowed down as the Sagittarians threw more vessels into the fray, ironically saving more Caedhewe overall as the Alliance, the UNCM, and the Federation advanced into enemy territory.

    The Battle of Caccia would also see one of the largest evacuation efforts in galactic history, as Knaurs's fleet bought time for generation ships—built with the continuation of civilization in mind—to flee the system for parts of the galaxy unknown. By the end of the second day, all that could be done was delay the enemy. During the Battle of Mogadishu, Knaurs had barely survived the destruction of his flagship; at Caccia, he would not be so lucky. When his dreadnought's core detonated on the second day, the will to continue the fight slowly drained out of the defenders. By the "morning" of the 13th, ASCOM controlled the system as the wreckage of a thousand ships floated silently through the void.

    For several more days, Taucanorg withstood the vengeful fury of one of the largest single ASCOM force to be deployed in a single system. Methodically and systematically, the Sagittarian fleet scoured Taucanorg of life. Major cities were hit first by precise strikes by nuclear and antimatter warheads, starting with the capital—Hakat. According to Bandmaster [2] Klastra, Lapaki's chief of security and the last surviving Caedhewe to see her alive, the First Archon refused to leave Taucanorg and was last seen on the balcony of the Archon Chambers as the first orbital nukes struck the city. Mbete's fleet then moved on to the rural areas, although they received lighter punishment than the cities.

    The bombing lasted from the 13th through the 15th, leaving behind billions of dead Caedhewe and a devastated Taucanorg. The system would vanish from galactic maps, only being used afterwards as a source of raw materials for pirates and corporations or as a massive dumping ground. There was a small population—barely a hundred thousand—that had managed to save itself in several underground shelters buried deep enough in the crust to prevent total destruction, and their descendants would wander the nuke-blasted wastelands for centuries, picking through the rubble to find the remains of a civilization long gone.

    [1]: So called by the humans. Its unusual design (before its destruction, of course) actually did resemble a giant beehive, with the various segments of the building laid atop each other like the sections of a wedding cake. The great Archon Chambers made up the entire top section.
    [2]: Roughly a land-captain; the "band" was a unit of approximately 130 soldiers.
     
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