Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The Peacekeepers

The Peacekeepers has become a novel. Check it out here.

Introduction

In 2004, Earth was heading towards a global meltdown. Forces released by the superpower nations had burst out of control and the earth was heading towards total war. Many humans were dimly aware of this, but were unable to take action.

Had the premier nation on Earth, The United States of America, processed a leader who was either a firm believer in the need to be friendly to other nations or was an evil Machiavellian power broker, it was commonly agreed that the crises of 2003-04, which was interrupted by the alien invasion, would not have occurred. However, George Bush Jr. was neither of those and therefore was unable, despite the considerable amount of power that he had amassed, to avert the crisis.

The damage to the fabric of America (and most of the western world) by the September 11^th terrorist attack had both obvious and subtle effects. One of them was a US attack on Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. Furthermore, the US had managed to annoy almost every other nation on Earth.

Meanwhile, the integrity of the political leaders of almost every nation was being severely questioned by the public. In America, accusations of corruption and graft were common. In Britain, the Blair government’s failure to keep its promises led to a general disillusionment with government and the beginnings of a strong anti-government movement. The EU failure to define itself properly meant that the citizens of almost every nation that had joined it had good reason to believe that other parts of the EU were getting a better deal. The falling out between France and America only increased that problem.

There were many powers, therefore, that hated America. Russia hated its descent from world power to being dependent on the US. China hated the US for its interference in what it regarded as its exclusive sphere, particularly Taiwan, to whom the US had sold advanced military equipment. France hated the fact that world power, for France, was only a pipe dream and saw opportunity in the collapse of US power. Iran and the other Arab nations hated the US for its support of Israel and the Israelis hated the US for not supporting them when they needed it, or for supporting them while mouthing pious phases of regret. To the practical Israelis and Arabs, who both had a ‘backs to the wall’ mentality, such hypocritical rhetoric was disgusting.

Therefore, in early 2004, the US was being pressured on all sides. Constant attacks on US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had drained US combat strength, while the lack of public enthusiasm for military adventures of their government made it impossible to easily replace such losses. Furthermore, federal governmental control of parts of America had slipped alarmingly. While there was never a real chance of civil war, the real power had passed from Washington to local bodies, which were disinclined to co-operate with Washington.

Similar events had happened in Britain and the EU. The death of Tony Blair at the hands of a widow, who had lost her husband in the war in Iraq and then had been told by the social security that there was no help for her and her six children, had forced a general election, which had placed the government into the liberal democratic camp. However, the existence of the ultraconservative association, composed of the independent MPs, forced them to withdraw from the EU and ignore its directives. Slowly, Britain inched towards what could best be called a very right-wing democratic situation.

However, another force, from outside the solar system, saw the decline of earth’s civilisation as a chance to add another star system to what was their empire in all, but name. It was in this clement of mounting tension that the UAS decided to intervene.

The Union of Advanced Species

There is no need here for a proper history of the Union of Advanced Species, but the basic facts are well known. A Galactic accident put six technologically advanced and ten un-advanced species into relatively close proximity to each other. The advanced species had, as a general rule, attempted not to become involved with the primitive ones, but private adventurers had contacted several leaders of the primitives and slowly created a dependency (as well as vast wealth for themselves) for the primitives on the advanced technology that they supplied.

When the leaders of the six races discovered this, they were appalled, but a few bribes created the Colonising and Civilising Office (CCO), which effectively legitimised trading and exploitation of the primitives. The invasion of UAS space by the Insects, a primitive race that had stolen Hyperdrive Technology from another advanced race, added another mission to the CCO – keeping the primitives down.

This required a definition of ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’. The original idea was to grade species by achievement in the practical sense. Type A were stone age, Type B were medieval, Type C were Steam/Oil/Industrial and Type D were atomic. Advanced species, Type X, were originally defined as ones that had invented the Hyperdrive. The coming of the Insects, however, forced a radical shift in the thinking of the CCO.

The Insects were a primitive species that had managed to enslave an advanced species and use their technology to cross the stars. This led to Hiveships (large atmosphere capable ships that disgorged troops) being shipped to virgin planets and disgorging a complete hive of the Insects on the planet. Given their strength and power, the Insects were almost certain to manage to overrun the planet, despite resistance. However, once the UAS had overcome its panic, they discovered that the Hiveships did not make very good warships and UAS battlecruisers were able to destroy them in space. While over twenty-two UAS systems had been infested and required nuking, none of them – apart from one – was inhabited by an advanced specie. That specie, the Tarn, had had large colonies on other worlds and was in no real danger of extinction, but they held a large bloc in the UAS council and were able to ensure a high degree of military readiness and encouraged revenge – every world infested was anti-matter bombed from orbit. Seven of those worlds had held primitive species, but the Tarn were unconcerned, and this is where the UAS unconcern for the ‘primitives’ came from.

Therefore, the definition of ‘advanced’ was altered to indicate that any species that had the scientific knowledge to master the Hyperdrive (and therefore offer the possibility of effective resistance to CCO ‘pacification’ fleets) would be counted as ‘advanced’. Anyone else had to have their development taken in hand by the CCO and subtly hampered so that they could not reach ‘advanced’ levels.

It is a common human mistake to consider the UAS to be an organisation on a similar structure to the Human United Nations (1945-2004). In reality, the UAS reassembles the United States of America, at least in the political and racial aspects. The average UAS citizen, who might be a Tarn, would not dream of conspiring against another, who might be a Beck, merely because of the racial difference. It would be like an average Texan conspiring against a New Englander.

While the analogy can hold true for individuals, the UAS ‘states’, each planet that has more than a million citizens of the Advanced Races, do often have differences. However, it is a central tenant of the UAS that there must never be a civil war, although there are often violent disputes, a civil war could never occur. The UAS claims, perhaps with some degree of truth, that ‘truly’ advanced species would not settle their differences with violence, but there is a more subtle truth; a civil war in the UAS would offer opportunity for the slave races to revolt.

The position of the slave races within the UAS is difficult to generalise. The races that had been most advanced were mainly trapped on their home worlds and enclaves on other worlds. Some few lucky ones managed to obtain spacecraft and act as independent traders, while others were able to join the navy or work for some of the industrial combines. Mostly, however, the races under the UAS’s yoke were reverted back towards an agricultural status, with as little high tech as possible. The races that had been Stone Age were encouraged to think of the UAS and its people as ‘star-gods’, who had provided them with rules and guidelines that prohibited the development of more than basic technology. The exception to this is the ‘god-gifts’ provided by the UAS traders, which assist the development of a dependent culture and provide covert surveillance of the natives.

As a result of its structure, the UAS is deeply conservative, in ways that no human nation could possibly equal. There are strong laws against inter-species breeding (which is impossible anyway), genetic engineering and the deliberate development of artificial intelligences and new species. There are strong taboos against enhancing beings with cyborg implants (waived for the Marines) and several other fields of development. There have been suggestions to change many of the laws, but the courts are still considering the matter – and have been doing so for the last thousand years.”

The UAS is convinced that the Insects, with whom the UAS waged the first interstellar war, were a natural evolution. However, insects are unable to develop to the elephant-size of a full-grown Insect, nor do they have the known ability to develop intellect, even the hive-mind mentality displayed by the Insects. The most logical solution is that the entire Insect race was bioengineered.

The UAS has shied away from this conclusion. Quite apart from the fact that the UAS has strong laws against such actions, the conclusion suggests a degree of technological sophistication which, at least in the biological field, is centuries ahead of the UAS’s. Furthermore, this implies the existence of a powerful organisation that hates the UAS and has the means and willingness to launch a powerful assault. The absence of any controlling race in any of the hiveships does suggest that the organisation either designed the weapon and let it go, or that the Insects attacked the organisation as well. In the absence of further information, no proper conclusion can be drawn.

The discovery of Earth in AU 34253 (Earth Year 1970) caused surprise. While Earth was technically a Type D civilisation, its scientists had mastered the advanced math and physics needed to build a Hyperdrive. It was clear that Earth was on the brink of advanced status. However, the political ferment and the high birth rate (relative to the advanced species) meant that Human expansion into the galaxy would give humanity a large share bloc on the UAS senate and soon possibly dominate it. Without particular remorse, the CCO ordered a pacification mission to be launched for earth.

The Invasion

Before considering the early stages of the invasion of earth, it is necessary to study the UAS ground combat forces in some detail. Basically, the UAS ground troopers were divided into two sections. There was the army, which consisted of troops recruited from the ‘primitive’ races, which was about seven million strong, and the Marines, the Special Forces, which were very well equipped with advanced weapons. The army troops had more advanced equipment than a human soldier, but were roughly the equivalent of a fully-equipped human, if one on one. The Marines, which were really meant for enforcement actions against the ‘primitives’ when they got ‘uppity’, had equipment that made a single trooper a match for an entire US armoured division: powered armour, phaser rifles, long-range sensors and limited local flight capability. They were also bio-enhanced to the limits of the UAS legal status and had extensive operations to enhance their physics as well. A single unit (one thousand strong) could take and hold an advanced planet, which had been done several times, while small units had been deployed as ‘stiffeners’ with army forces.

The UAS navy had not anticipated serious space combat around Earth. There were no known hostile powers nearby and Earth had very limited space capability. The Navy had noted the presence of a number of ASAT satellites and knew precisely how much threat they posed to the UAS – None. While the Earth had the capability to build and use small spacecraft, the lack of any shielding would make them easy targets for the Navy. Therefore, the navy deployed a small task force, consisting of thirty destroyers, ten cruisers, five carriers and five battlecruisers. There were also fifty troop transports, which carried one million troops between then, and two hundred landing craft. The UAS council would later claim that the navy had not taken its task seriously, but no one had considered the possibility of a space battle and Earth’s remoteness made it unlikely that any pirates or rebel ships would come out so far.

The UAS fleet drooped out of hyper near Jupiter and sent the destroyers, under cloak, to survey the Sol System and Earth. The destroyers reported no unexpected events and the fleet command gave the go ahead to attack. The destroyers decloaked and opened fire on the Earth’s satellites. The ASAT systems offered no resistance at all and it was later discovered that they were old USSR satellites and had been worn out. The destruction of fifty years of space endeavour was completed in just one hour. The US and Russia launched ICBMs at the Starships, but the ICBMs were primitive and slow compared to the missiles the UAS was prepared to face and the destroyers point defences had no problem destroying the ICBMs.

The remainder of the fleet soon arrived in Earth orbit and used a radio transmission to inform the earth governments of what was happening. They informed earth that they were now a ‘protectorate’ and demanded that all military bases were handed over to them at once. The earth governments refused.

The Starships dropped kinetic weapons on many of the military bases that they would not need for themselves and then dropped troops into the atmosphere. The Battle of Cheyenne Mountain, the first battle between humans and UAS forces, saw UAS Marines attack several well-dug in US divisions and defeat them in open combat. However, the US forces killed about seventy of the Marines, not through penetrating the armour, but by kinetic impact. The Marines were able, however, to penetrate blast doors intended to resist nuclear strikes and capture the interior.

There were many other battles in the first weeks. There were many brave and heroic actions when the world’s air forces fought UAS fighters and troop transports, intercepting and destroying about 20% of the transports. The advanced technology of the UAS, ironically, contributed to many of the human successes. Their force shields, designed to prevent directed energy fire, were unable to completely block missiles and guns. While the missiles did hit the shields and detonate, the blast (which existed on many frequencies at once) was able to pass through the shield and hit the hull. Two or three hits in quick succession were able to bring down the shields entirely, exposing the hull to gunfire and other missiles.

However, the superior technology of the UAS soon gained the upper hand. Their fighters were much faster and far more manoverable than the human fighters and they did not need to refuel. Furthermore, the bombardment from orbit of any obvious airfield meant that the human air forces were running out of bases, supplies and support. The use of an airport near Breman (Germany) for military operations caused the destruction of the airport and very heavy civilian casualties, which led to the local authorities defying their government and refusing the use of their facilities to the military. This trend would soon appear in other western nations. Nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea had no problem with machine-gunning the occasional protester – which provided propaganda material for the UAS.

The west had other problems besides a full-scale invasion. The loss of the satellites had crippled companies that depended on them being intact and the run on the banks in the aftermath of the opening blows had caused a depression. As the knock-on effect progressed, companies are forced to lay off people, which in turn forces out other companies. There are serious riots in many western cities. The UAS, which had predicted a similar outcome, broadcast propaganda to take advantage of the situation, however, most people realised that the UAS was directly responsible for the crash and blamed them.

The final battle of the invasion was fought around and inside Washington DC. The US president had declared his intention to fight to the last in the capital city. The US military had dug in as best as it could, although the space interdiction made it difficult for any forces, apart from what had been nearby anyway, to reach the city. The UAS commander seriously considered the use of a nuke, but was talked into allowing the marines to seize the city. The US forces did not give up easily and managed to kill over seventy of the marine force. This may seem a small number, but it was the greatest loss the marines had taken since their foundation, 2000 years ago.

Despite the brave human action, Washington was doomed. The UAS deployed its forces in a gigantic ring around the city, used kinetic weapons on any obvious US targets in the city and then marched in from all sides. The Marines advantages in firepower gave them the advantage, as did their command of the air and perfect, untappable communication. The UAS forces intercepted human transmission and were able to read most of them without problems. There were many attempts by US helicopters to attack flying marines, but most of them failed; the marines being too hard to hit. Washington fell in three days of fighting.

The other nations were also hit hard, although the amount of ground forces was often different. Europe was devastated from space and then bases were established, while Russia, China and India fell apart into ethnic strife. The UK was practically ignored, aside from the destruction of the RAF bases, while Australia had a UAS base established in the middle of the continent. There was only one time when a human nation used nuclear weapons. Israel, attacked on all sides, used a nuke against a UAS troop transport-landing site, which destroyed several precious ships. The UAS retaliated by destroying Tel Aviv. The UAS landing in Mecca, the centre of the Muslim faith, provoked outrage and savage fighting throughout the Muslim world. However, resistance was never able to defeat alien forces, particularly when the UAS started targeting radio transmitters and all the military bases it could find.

Two weeks saw the establishment of UAS bases across the globe. Offering protection, the UAS managed to recruit thousands of humans who would work for the UAS. Instead of fighting, most of those humans were sent to work on new farms; formally desert parts of the world, including Texas, the Sahara and Iran/Iraq, were transformed by the UAS technology into productive lands and those humans were allowed to farm them. Some other humans were trained to serve the UAS, although many of them deserted when facing human resistance forces.

Despite smouldering resentment, it seemed at the end of 2004 humanity would be transformed into another crushed protectorate race. However, forces were already at work to resist the alien invaders.

Resistance

The human militaries reacted in different ways to the conquest. The seriously damaged US ordered the remaining ground forces to go undercover and broke out the armouries for the National Guard. The US police were still charged with keeping order, but they were also tasked with intelligence collecting and distribution. The US army went into the wilds and made camp there. The US president – formally vice-president – had managed to reach the back-up national command centre and used it to co-ordinate resistance. However, in the first two months, resistance was random and uncoordinated – the US was still discovering what it had left after the invasion.

If there was a real US hero of those years (US hero’s being thin on the ground) it was Chester Ambrose of the NSA. Seeing that the Aliens had clearly captured the capital city and intended to take the NSA building, Ambrose dug up all the encryption codes for the Internet that NSA had built over the years, as well as all the data that NSA had collected on the UAS – and sent them over the Internet. The US Internet was mainly wire-based and practically indestructible. Soon, those encryption codes, which were a quantum leap ahead of the commercial codes, were being used by everyone. The volume of encrypted emails made it difficult for the UAS intelligence to detect the vital ones – even through their quantum computers made easy meat out of any human code. Soon, global resistance could be organised.

The western nation that was the most intact was Britain. The aliens, being space-based and not used to the concept of small islands being important, had assumed that Britain was a tribulty of the EU. While Britain’s military bases had been destroyed, large parts of the British industry had survived. The British PM was able to build-up British forces and develop the Internet infrastructure. Furthermore, British bases were used as a centre-point for submarines from across the world, which allowed them to share information and rebuild the destroyed undersea cables. Soon, Britain was the hub of global resistance.

Ironically enough, the first serious uprising against the UAS was in Russia. The US was still licking its wounds and rebuilding what it could (the UAS bombing much of the high-tech industry, while encouraging farming and other low-tech activities) and therefore was in no state to launch an uprising. The Russian people, starving and desperate, attacked the UAS regular army across the nation. Despite Russian claims, there was no real coordination: the uprisings started in the farms and spread from there.

For a time, it seemed that the Russians could defeat the alien forces. The weather made it difficult for them to use their space advantage and many parts of the regular forces were unenthusiastic about fighting to hold yet another planet. However, the coming of spring meant that the weather cleared and the UAS were able to rush other forces from around the globe to Russia, including nearly 500 of the dreaded Marines. Using ruthless tactics, the UAS crushed the uprising, leaving nearly five million Russians dead. The humans who had joined the UAS incentives were shaken in their allegiance to their alien overlords, while the growing Internet based resistance, centred in Britain, took carefully note of the UAS success and developed tactics to cover the aliens weaknesses.

As previously noted, Earth is in a very undeveloped region of the galaxy. It was over 3000 light-years from the nearest Advanced species planet and any UAS trade support base and was therefore isolated from Galactic trade. The CCO believed that the UAS needed a base near Earth for Starships and therefore put out tenders for construction of a full base. A prime UAS Company responded and sent several construction ships (large city-sized ships that were mobile industry plants) to earth. These started construction of a moon base and robot orbiting industry fabricators. However, there was a slight lack of UAS citizens willing to come 3000 light-years from civilisation and therefore the company began to recruit from Earth. Quite understandably, they recruited several hundred Britons and Americans with close ties to the resistance. Soon, the resistance was better-informed about orbital activity than the UAS earth governing body. Soon, they had developed a plan.

The main resistance leader – Scott Fletcher – had a warped sense of humour. He decided to launch the battle for earth on the American Independence Day. When asked about why, he just smiled and claimed it was a good omen. There were three parts to the plan; one was to capture or destroy the UAS ships in the solar system, two was to take over the orbital manufactories and three was to wipe out the UAS forces on the surface. Parts one and two had to succeed, otherwise the success or failure of part three would become superfluous.

The first part of the plan went well. The resistance forces, knowing that their mission was probably suicidal, managed to take over on of the foundry ships, stuffed it with antimatter and broadcast a distress call. When the UAS occupation fleet responded, as they were obliged to do to any distress call, the resistance people demanded their surrender. The fleet’s commander did not believe them and ordered the fleet to open fire, at which point there was a massive explosion and the fleet was wrecked or damaged beyond immediate repair. The few ships that had been at the orbit station were taken over in the general occupation, their crews transferred to earth to wait out the war. Many of the ‘protectorate’ species crew members volunteered to assist earth and their help proved invaluable.

The second part went even better. The orbital manufactories were mainly robotic and so the humans were simply able to insert their own commands into the system and take over. Ruthlessly, they ordered the computers to pump out the air, killing the technicians that were not human. There was no margin for error.

The third part was a confused mish-mash. Co-ordinated uprisings had begun with the massive explosion, with the resistance trying to seize spaceports and weapon emplacements and the UAS forces trying to use them against the occupied orbital stations. After several days of fighting, it was clear that the humans had won the orbital fight and could drop kinetic weapons onto the remaining alien bases, so the resistance offered – and most of the UAS forces accepted – terms of surrender. The marines held out in their base in the Balkans and had to be blasted out from orbit.

If Earth had been near a UAS fleet base, the rebellion would have had no chance of success. Instead, the closest UAS base was 300lys away (three months travel) and, while a ship had escaped towards the fleet base, it made the mistake of warning several frontier fleet task forces before heading to the main base. Meanwhile, with what they expected to be six months grace, the humans worked at establishing their forces and contacting the human colonies that the UAS had transplanted to nearby star systems. Most of those colonies had no real defence force and could be taken with ease, even by the few ships that the humans had. One colony, however, had most of its human concentrated and was able to blast the human enclave before any resistance could be offered. This brought a new degree of ruthlessness to the war.

The hatred for their UAS masters that many of the races that were UAS ‘protectorates’ shared was a vital part of what happened next. When they learnt about the rebellion, many of the frontier fleet ships overthrew their captains and headed for Earth. They were warmly welcomed by the humans. However, there was no chance that the humans could fight a conventional war against the might of the UAS.

Star Wars

Before discussing the space battles that established Earth’s independence, it is necessary to discuss space combat, as practiced by the UAS. The UAS disposed of approximately 200’000 Starships in total as part of the navy, although they were never able to bring more than a fraction of that force to bear against Earth. Those ships were categorised into four fleets: Battle Fleet, Survey Fleet, Border Fleet and Home Forces. Battle Fleet was entirely crewed by advanced species and was the main fighting arm of the UAS. Survey fleet was intended to survey unexplored space. Border Fleet was composed of small task forces that patrolled the borders of the UAS and the Home Forces were the defence forces of each individual planet. While generalities should be avoided, the primitive planets were defended by ships crewed by people from other primitive planets (the UAS sensibly refusing to have ships guard their own homeworlds) and the Border and Survey Fleets had the top officers from ‘advanced’ races and the lower decks from the primitive worlds.

Space combat was fairly simple. Ships were armed with beam weapons, missile launchers and force shields. The ships would close to missile range and exchange fire until one side lost its shields and exploded. The UAS battle fleet, while very powerful, was basically very cautious and rarely used its advantages in high FTL speed to surprise its foes, instead preferring to return to normal space away from the hostile forces and close to combat range in normal space. Since they were the only force to deploy Violence-class super-dreadnaughts (indeed, they were the only force to deploy super-dreadnaughts at all), they were reasonably certain of success against a normal foe. Unfortunately for them, the humans were not normal foes and they had studied the UAS’s few fleet actions with care and discovered their weaknesses.

The human forces had spent the past year building feverishly and developing their tactics. There was no way they could possibly hope to build up a solid core of super-dreadnaughts of their own – even through the designers had come up with the vastly improved Enterprise-class Super-dreadnaught – therefore limited resources could not be wasted on ships that were going to be severely outgunned. Instead, the human forces concentrated on two main classes of ships: the Hurricane-class space fighter and the Invincible-class battlecruisers. These two designs were intended to take advantage of serious flaws in the battle tactics of the UAS. The humans had also devised the ‘ship-killer’ missile, which held a large load of antimatter, but would be an easy target for UAS point defence. However, if launched from point-blank range by a fighter, they could hit the target without said ship having time to retarget its point defence.

The UAS, as noted above, had no taste for hypering into a battle at close range. Therefore, they would drop out of hyper some distance away from Earth and advance towards Earth, brushing aside whatever opposition presented itself. However, the humans did not intend to allow them unopposed occupation. When the ships crossed the orbit of mars, over a thousand human fighters dropped out of hyper at point-blank range and launched missiles at the super-dreadnaughts. Seven of them were destroyed in the first exchange, while the UAS’s counter-fire was completely ineffective. The humans had scored the most one-sided victory in the history of the UAS.

Any sane admiral would have dropped back into hyper at this point. However, the UAS admiral was stunned and disbelieving. He was also, if his surviving records are any indication, convinced that he had been betrayed instead of outfought. He therefore continued the advance on earth. Sadly for him, the humans had not run out of fighters and new ones launched more missiles at the super-dreadnaughts, while the first wave, having launched their big missiles, took turns to harass the UAS fleet. The fleet was almost in a state of panic; they were forced to fire madly at every fighter as it appeared, just in case it carried a ship-killer. While they did score some hits, they were unable to make a significant dent in the human numbers. The admiral’s ship was finally destroyed and the remaining five super-dreadnaughts (out of thirty) surrendered, apart from one, which managed to escape into hyper.

Battle Report: Wing Commander Falcon

We received formal launch warning from the EWSats at 1100hrs. We therefore proceeded to the fighter bays and prepared our fighters for launch. We were ready by 1130hrs and were launched as part of the first wave at 1200hrs.

We launched from the lunar base and assembled into formation. A flight wing has 72 planes, divided into 6 squadrons of 12 planes each. I took the lead of Squad 1 and engaged a base velocity of 0.2C (20% light speed). The scanners soon picked up the UAS fleet, which was making no attempt to stealth itself and consisted of 35 Super-Dreadnaughts and 70 Destroyers. Once we had an accurate reading on the hostile fleet, command assigned us our targets and we prepared to engage hyper.

The battlecruisers open fire with what the UAS must have thought was a pitiful fire. Human missile could only make 0.6C (UAS missiles could make 0.8C) and were also larger and easier to hit than the UAS models. The UAS commander must have already been considering the battle finished. However, we had a surprise in store.

Cautious as ever, the UAS focused its shields and point defence weapons forwards and began blasting the missiles as they neared the fleet. However, the missiles had been loaded with antimatter – while they could do no real damage at that range, they blinded sensors and confused targeting scanners. It was time to reveal the real surprise; us.

As any fool knows, even at hyper, time between stars is a long time. However, at solar system ranges, its seconds. We popped into hyper in formation and appeared at nearly point-blank range to the enemy super-dreadnaughts. At such ranges, they had no time to react, we fired off our ship killers at the closest super-dreadnaught and returned to hyper. While our missiles suffered from the same problems as the other human missiles, they were launched so close that the UAS had no time to react. Seven super-dreadnaughts simply blew apart in the first pass.

We popped back out of hyper at the orbit of Jupiter and reassessed the situation. The second and third waves had also scored big, but the enemy’s point defence was improving and we were ordered to engage with our popguns (phase-pulse cannons) and distract the ships. We carried out our orders and distracted the ships.

I would like to state for the record that fleet command is blameless. While I understand the need to make political capital from what appeared to have been a blunder, command had no choice. We had only a limited supply of ship-killers and could not afford to lose fighters that still carried missiles. Therefore, the missile-less fighters were cannon fodder, which was the correct decision.

Instead of returning to hyper, when we had panicked the UAS commander, he surrendered to us. Luckily, it was just in time. I later found out that the supply of fighter-ship-killers was down to thirty and the UAS was getting better at hitting our fighters. Had a single super-dreadnaught reached firing range of Earth, we would have had to surrender instead.

This concludes the battle report of the First Battle of Earth.

The news of the serious UAS defeat caused mighty cracks to appear across the UAS. Many of the ‘protectorate’ races rose in open revolt, assisted when possible by the human forces, which forced the UAS to divert large forces to stamp out rebellion. While the UAS had made progress towards matching the human innovations, the problems with recalling ships that were desperately needed across the UAS for refitting made assembling a concentrated force difficult. There were several other attempts to break the human perimeter, such as the first battle of Wolf 359, in which a cunning human trick wiped out a large UAS task force, and the second battle, in which the UAS – for once – outsmarted the humans and dealt a severe blow to the human shipyards based there.

Battle Report: Captain Barrett, CO ESS Bannockburn

We had grown overconfident, that much is clear. The serious defeat at the second battle of Wolf 359 indicates that. My ship was the only survivor.

At the beginnings of the battle, the Bannockburn, a Battle-Class destroyer, was on an exit vector following Second Fleet towards Earth, two weeks after 1^st Wolf 359. We had suffered problems with our acceleration compensators and had to slow down to conduct repairs. While we were doing them, the UAS fleet returned to Wolf 359.

The first battle had not really been a battle, it was a slaughter, and the poor devils had had no chance whatsoever. We had deployed thousands of hyperspace mines around the system, which detected the arrival of ships from hyper. When a ship arrived, the mines would jump through hyper themselves and drop out right next to the ship, destroying it utterly. Such a tactic was new to the UAS and caused them to lose over 124 ships, with no losses to humanity.

However, the UAS commander was no fool and clearly deduced how we had destroyed their fleet. They therefore used the closest UAS industry world to construct thousands of hyper-mines of their own, which would make the jump to Wolf 359 on their own and destroy the human mines. They shot thousands of them into the system and cleared most of the minefield.

There’s not much more to say. The withdrawal of Second Fleet left only 20 human ships, none larger than a cruiser, against 72 UAS ships, 27 of which were super-dreadnaughts. They crushed the unprepared human fleet with ease, although the brave actions of the 23^rd fighter wing destroyed four of the super-dreadnaughts.

We had remained unnoticed and were able to complete our repairs and make our escape unmolested.

This concludes our report.

However, the UAS was unable to assemble a force that could break the defences of earth, nor was it able to locate the human foundry ships. Some of those ships had headed into unexplored space, to found new colonies, while others headed into UAS space and acted as mobile bases for raiding parties. As a mark of their success, the UAS was never able to locate one of those ships, although one was lost to natural causes. Consequently, the UAS sued for peace and peace was signed on July 1^st, 2020.

Conclusion

The decision to sign a peace treaty and abandon most of the war effort against the UAS remains the most controversial decision in the history of the solar empire. Many people, including the famous Changing The Times alternate history group, believe that if humanity had continued the offensive, while using their innovations to defend earth and retain the innitive, the whole UAS could have been toppled in a few years. However, humanity was scraping the barrel to keep the defences manned and in equipping the Starships. The human missile designs, for example, were not competitive with the UAS missiles until 2019, as they required a degree of fine-precision that Earth’s makeshift industries could not provide.

Furthermore, the UAS was improving and learning from its mistakes. There is evidence that the UAS navy was deploying strike fighters with similar capabilities to the Hurricanes and it was an easy matter for them to build ship-killers of their own. Also, the crises had removed many incompetent commanders from the UAS navy and the newcomers had shown a considerable degree of innovation themselves. The tactic used at 2^nd Wolf 359, the use of expandable missiles to decoy and destroy the hyperspace mines, was a brilliant tactic that the humans in the system had no counter to or contingency plan for coping with such a problem. The arrival of seven super-dreadnaughts completed the destruction of the base.

Finally, over 80% of the UAS industrial base was still intact and in UAS hands, while about 10% had fallen into rebel hands and about 10% had been destroyed. That meant that the UAS, once organised, could overcome its losses and smash humanity by sheer weight of numbers and what would almost certainly be a technological advantage as well. It is the considered opinion of the author that the decision to accept the peace envoys was the best decision that could have been made.

If they had such an advantage through, why did the UAS sue for peace? While records are unclear, it seems that the revolts throughout UAS space had caused such a disruption that the controlling factors, including trade and industry, were ready to concede humanity its independence. Furthermore, the members of the ‘protectorate’ races that were held in effective slavery on the advanced species homeworlds had revolted, often killing their masters, who happened to be in most cases the leaders of that world. This caused them to doubt their former invincibility and encourage peace at almost any cost.

Humanity received more at the peace conference than the disparity in power would have suggested. The independence of Earth and the other colonies which had been founded during the occupation was formally conceded. Human traders would also have full trade rights without restrictions of any kind in the UAS domain. However, humanity had to agree not to support the independence movements within the UAS sphere and to agree to return any UAS ships used to flee to human space. This was treated as a betrayal of their allies and marred Fletcher’s career for the rest of his life.

The ‘protectorates’ that had succeeded in removing the occupation forces were offered the choice between full UAS membership or being destroyed. Most accepted the offer, although it took over thirty years of hard fighting before most of the rebel factions were hunted down. Some human factions had refused to support the truce and used the base at the Waco system to support the resistance movement. Waco was an extremely unusual system, but eventually the UAS discovered it when a starfighter pilot got careless and carried a tracking device back to the base. The UAS offered an truce instead of fighting, but the rebels refused to surrender and forced the UAS to fight the final war of the invasion.

The question that the UAS’s people were asking was simple: Why did the UAS lose? There were a number of reasons, for example, the human weapons, despite being primitive and based on crude force, were often effective against UAS aerospacecraft and ground troops. The reason for that was simple; the UAS had prepared for attacks by rebel forces, which could be expected to be armed with similar weapons, and had therefore left gaps in the defences. In one very important case, the force shields surrounding air-capable craft were designed to cover against directed energy weapons, which projected on one frequency only. As a basic rule of space combat, the fleet was have its weapons spinning through the frequencies so that they would eventually hit the frequency of the shield, whereupon the blast would go through the shields before the target ship could change its shield frequencies. However, while human explosive missiles would hit the shield and detonate on them, the blast would effectively hit all the shield frequencies at once and some of the blast would get through to the ship hull.

Furthermore, the UAS was unprepared for either a full-scale land campaign or a full-scale space war. The navy had grown overconfident and had made little attempt to develop advanced weapons based upon the new technology. Humanity, however, desperate for an edge, was able to use the technology in ways that the UAS had not developed.

Ground wise, things were not much better. The UAS intelligence could intercept every radio message and telephone message sent through the human system. Their use of the ‘inducer’ receiver made it possible to intercept wire communications without a physical connection and the use of the quantum computers made it easy to read the messages, even with the strong encryption that humanity used. However, they were unable to translate many of the human languages or to determine which messages were really important.