Turn 4: 2380-2389Previous turn:
2370-2379Player Turns:
Lyran Commonwealth: Budget $93B.Free Worlds League: Budget $104B.Draconis Combine: Budget $111B.Federated Suns: Budget $98B.Capellan Confederation: Budget $89B.Marian Hegemony: Budget $12B.NPC Turns:
Terran Hegemony: Budget $765B.United Hindu Collective: Budget $23B.Rim Worlds Republic: Budget $24B.Taurian Concordat: Budget $12B.2380:The Terran Hegemony's proposal for jointly-owned worlds has been debated at some length by the councils of the great lords of the outer realms, and their overall reception has generally been positive.
In the Draconis Combine, Nihongi Kurita's response to the proposal was as abrupt as his response to any other form of business that his courtiers raise to his attention - "Sure, that sounds fine. Find them a few good planets, and make sure to reserve some nice fields for the Coordinator's stables."
In the Federated Suns, Paul Davion immediately vetoed the idea. "The Terrans already have far more economic muscle than we do, and now they want us to give them even more, and to pay for the privilege? Not a chance! Oh my, you'd better send for my doctor - I feel faint."
In the Capellan Confederation, Franco Liao was initially uncertain of the idea. However, after consultation with his ministers, especially the head of the navy, the decision was eventually made to proceed with the proposal. "I hope this doesn't create a situation that my heirs will regret, but we live between Scylla and Charybdis. We cannot afford to wait for them to devour us - we must take our chances and build for the future."
In the Free Worlds League, the Parliament met to discuss the issue at great length. The Minister of Foreign Affairs took no official stance on the issue, and MPs debated several proposed amendments for a potential counter-offer to the Hegemony. However, when it became clear that the Hegemony was not interested in negotiations, a rather tentative compromise plan of giving them a small number of of worlds near the border was debated. The vote looked to be very slightly in favour, though a speech in support of the plan from the Minister of Defense was enough to guarantee its success.
In the Lyran Commonwealth, Robert Marsden's original response was quite tentative. While he was not generally a man who waffled on important decisions, he spent many days mulling over the decision. Eventually, he resorted to calling an aged Jaqueline Angler out of retirement for a discussion. Echoing their earlier discussion of "making the Archons see reason", Angler again discussed her materialistic theory of naval warfare, and made a strong case for acceptance of the treaty. In the end, a chance comment that led to a discussion of making them true "Commonwealth worlds" was what tipped the scales - unhappy with the factional warfare of the past few years, Marsden agreed to establishing several jointly-owned worlds, but only those within a single jump of at least two of the old pre-Lyran realms, to encourage a more diverse pool of settlers.
2381Continued aid from the Marian Hegemony to conquered Lothian worlds was resulting in the Lothian populace continuing to slowly warm up to the Marian government. While the rural miners remained irascible, the youth had never known any other government, and the bulk of society was starting to accept O'Reilly rule. The decision in 2381 to give the formerly Lotharian planets full representation in the Marian Senate was a strong signal of goodwill that the Lothian populace responded well to. Malicious compliance effectively stopped, and a new Army regiment was successfully raised entirely from Lothian volunteers.
2382Margaret Cameron had been diagnosed with cancer in 2380, and by 2382 it had become very serious. While she was expected to survive for a while longer, her energy levels and ability to cope with the stresses of office had fallen too low for her to continue as Director-General in good conscience. As such, she resigned and nominated her eldest son Raymond as her successor, to which the Terran High Council readily agreed.
2383: Raymond Cameron's foreign policy proved much more aggressive than his mother's. A minor trade dispute that had been brewing with the Federated Suns, combined with them being the only nation to refuse participation in the Terran terraforming projects, turned to saber-rattling in 2383. After a Federated Suns customs inspector refused to allow a Terran DropShip to land at Kentares, the Terrans dispatched the Eighth Fleet under Admiral Avasarala to escort a Kentares-bound convoy and guarantee that it could land without interference.
Eighth Fleet consisted of 2 Dreadnoughts, 8 Black Lions, 4 Essexes, and 4 Bonaventures, and was intended to be somewhat less threatening than the massive Second Fleet out of Terra Firma. However, the 52 WarShips of Second Fleet were sent on a "scheduled logistics exercise" to Tigress, to allow them to provide support if needed without being too obviously imposing. Word of the Terran fleet preceded them somewhat, and when Paul Davion heard of the Terran move, he was outraged by Raymond Cameron's belligerence. While he knew as well as any the dangers of tangling with a nation as gigantic as the Terran Hegemony, he was not willing to allow them to simply send a fleet into his space unopposed. Word went out to the fleet commanders across the Suns - a fight might be brewing in Kentares, and they needed to bring all possible strength to the front immediately. While true command circuit routes had not been set up across the whole nation, the reserve fleet at Delevan set out immediately, and the covering forces on the Terran border had already begun concentration in anticipation of a conflict. Fortunately, the fleet facing the Capellan front was based far enough north to reach the battle in time, though most of the units on the Draconis front would take nearly three months to arrive from Fairfax. Additional reinforcements of fighters and DropShips were brought by civilian transport as well, substantially increasing the Davion fighter force.
The confrontation started out small, as these things go. The Terrans arrived in-system and began burning towards Kentares IV, deployed in a shell surrounding the civilian craft. When challenged by the commander of the local recharge station, Admiral Avasarala informed him that the Terran ships would be permitted to land and trade freely, as was the right of all nations, though she agreed to take the Davion protest "under advisement". Additional challenges were regularly issued daily, and were just as regularly dismissed or ignored. When the fleet was a day from the planet, civilian leadership stopped issuing the challenges, and an aged Admiral Hasek started issuing them instead. While this caused some consternation among the Terrans, as they had seen no sign of military presence in system, they ignored it just as routinely. However, to cover their bases, they sent one Bonaventure ahead, accelerating instead of decelerating, to gather intelligence on what might be lurking in planetary orbit.
When the Bonaventure neared the planet, ten hours later, it became obvious that the Federated Suns had been busy. A majority of the fleet was in orbit - one Crucis, two Galahads, two Robinsons, and six Albions were assembled to face the eighteen Terran units. On paper, this arrangement appeared to favour the Terrans. Their fleet out-massed the Davions by over half, and had substantially more damage potential. However, the Suns ships were far more heavily armoured, all save the Crucis were more mobile than their Terran foes, and because of a quirk of the Terran fleet composition, their support craft strength was grossly inferior to their enemies. The Terran fleet did not have even a single DropShip(aside from the civilian craft they were escorting), and only possessed four squadrons of fighters, one of which was engaged in a high-speed flyby of the planet. The Federated Suns were known to have emphasized smaller craft, conversely, and were estimated to carry twenty squadrons of fighters in their ships alone, plus over two dozen DropShips. While the Bonaventure could not tell what sort of DropShips were in use, or what defences might be based on the planet, it was clear that this was a substantial force.
However, the Terrans were committed to seeing their mission through. Admiral Avasarala was not one to fall apart under pressure, and she intended to carry out her mission regardless of opposition. Her fleet was probably superior to the opposition overall, and intelligence analysis had estimated that the Suns were more likely to bluster than to actually risk war with the Hegemony. However, their intelligence was in error - Hasek was as much of a fighter as she, and Paul Davion's orders had been clear. He was only to let them land if he was certain that fighting them successfully was impossible. And so, when six hundred fighters entered space laden with missiles, and forty DropShips spread out in advance of the fleet as a screen, the move was no bluff. A final challenge was issued, ignored as the previous twelve had been, and the fight began.
Analyst's reports had told the Terran fleet what a modern missile salvo looked like, but the reaction on seventeen bridges when over a thousand missiles were launched at the Terran fleet was still shock. Terran ECM proved effective and drew some of the missiles away, and the massed dual-purpose point defence cannons of the Black Lions killed scores more. But while Hasek's previous fights had been against nations with massive point defence installations, the Terran point defence was intended to be a final layer after the screening DropShips and fighters had cleared most of the missiles away, and
their fleet had no such screen. Over eight hundred missiles successfully completed their attack run, and the result was instant carnage. The missiles had been targeted at four of the Black Lions, and the lack of defence meant that this was far too tight a targeting spread - the ships were so thoroughly blown apart that over three hundred of the missiles wound up attacking no more than expanding clouds of debris. To add insult to injury, a turret from the
THS Gargoyle was blown clear and flew straight into the Bonaventure-class
THS Cochran, causing tremendous damage to the light ship and blinding its primary sensor array.
However, despite their shocking losses, the Terrans fought on, and they fought well. They were as agile as their opponents when operating as a fleet, and their weapons had a generally longer range, so they attempted to hold the range open slightly to take advantage of their superiority at range. Naval lasers attacked Davion fighters, and the missile tubes of the remaining Black Lions started attempting to pick apart the DropShip screen by sending barrages far too large for any DropShip's point defence to withstand against any of the small ships which dared to close the range. Meanwhile, over a hundred gigantic cannons opened up against the Galahad-class
FSN Percival. The Galahad class was one of the most heavily armoured ships in the known universe - second only to the Crucis beside her - but no armour made by humans could withstand that battering for long. Within two minutes, over a dozen compartments were open to space and three of her heavy turrets had been taken out of the fight. As the gaping wound in her side grew, the
Percival's enemies focused their fire at it, and despite the best efforts of her crew to evade the incoming fire, one shell struck true. The ship's primary missile magazine detonated, and while the
Percival had fired herself mostly dry, there was still more than enough explosive power there to shatter the ship and kill most of her crew.
But the
Percival did not die alone. As she was being reduced, the FSN had been busy. The handful of Cameron fighters had been swatted from the sky contemptuously by the massed fire from Barracuda tubes, and Admiral Hasek was focused destroying the heavy Terran ships, with their massed anti-fighter defences, as quickly as possible. And much as not even the
Percival could survive a whole fleet's firepower focused upon her, the Black Lions and Dreadnoughts, with less than half the armour, were doomed as soon as they fell beneath an enemy's guns. The
Simurgh had died and the
Medusa was a limping wreck by the time the
Percival exploded, and fire was shifting to the
Dreadnought. Meanwhile, the fighters were focusing their fire on the lightly armoured Bonaventures, where their small cannons could still have a chance to breach a WarShip's armour, and the damaged
Cochran was also dispatched rapidly by the swarm of light units.
As the
Dreadnought fell under the Davion guns, the cohesion of the Terran fleet began to falter. Admiral Avasarala was flying her flag on
Dreadnought, and the ship's communication systems suffered especially badly under the fire. Instead of the brutally effective focused fire of the early engagement, the battle turned into an ugly dogfight on the Terran side, as each ship began engaging their own targets. This was something of a mixed blessing - the division of incoming fire meant more FSN ships needed to move evasively, which made their fire somewhat less effective. The Essex-class
Wasp also landed a devastating hit on the
Robinson through a fighter bay that had carelessly been left open, which ruined her flight deck and caused terrible secondary explosions of fighter fuel and cannon ammunition. However, the damage was not accumulating quickly enough to take any substantial number of guns out of the action, and the Davion fleet remained as focused as ever. And as the coordination of the Terran fleet faltered, so too did her tenuous web of anti-fighter and anti-missile defences.
The hull of the Dreadnought was as old as any ship in space, but those years had not weakened it. The ship was rightfully a legend - the first true WarShip, the flagship of Admiral McKenna's fleet which had created the Hegemony, and still a powerful and effective battleship. Her hull proved as strong as her name, withstanding cannon shells and missile barrages as well as any ship that had ever taken fire. But this legend could die just like any other ship. And slowly, but surely, she began to falter. Her turrets were smashed, her jump sail ruined, her fuel bays vented to space, and her sick bay took an especially cruel hit from an armor-piercing missile that killed dozens of wounded crew members. After endless minutes of pounding, she could fight no more. Her fusion engine was losing containment, and her crew rushed to the lifeboats. Most made it, but Admiral Avasarala refused to go until her whole crew was evacuated, and the ship did not have nearly that much time. In a brilliant flash, the reactor finally let go. And in that moment, two legends died.
Without their fearless admiral, and without many of their strongest ships, the Terran fleet did not feel able to continue the fight. Rear Admiral Forbes, in command of the Essex division, was the first to surrender, but within mere moments the rest of the fleet had followed. Negotiations over the fallout from the battle continued for months - the Terrans shocked by their horrible defeat but determined to maintain their trading rights, and the Suns elated by their victory but terrified of what would happen if the whole Terran fleet were to descend upon them.
In the end a compromise was reached, and one which might have satisfied both sides even before the twisted wreckage of Kentares taught them the risks of gunboat diplomacy. The Suns returned the ships and crews intact(save the crippled
Medusa, whose damage was so severe that it was impractical to repair) and opened their nation to more commerce from foreign nations, while the Hegemony acknowledged the sovereignty of Federated Suns systems and disclaimed any right to reparations from the battle. Both sides issued statements regretting the excesses of their respective admirals(though neither was happy to be pinning the blame on their best-respected fleet commanders), and both promised to go forward in a spirit of peace and brotherhood. And, within three or four years, most of the respective fleets had even moved back from the shared border to their pre-Kentares dispositions.
Losses:
Terran Hegemony: 6x Black Lion, 1x Dreadnought, 1x Bonaventure, 18x fighter, moderate damage to fleet totalling $4B.
Federated Suns: 1x Galahad, 6x DropShip, 131x fighter, serious damage to fleet totalling $12B.2384A decade after the Skye declaration of independence, the wounds in the Lyran Commonwealth were slowly starting to heal. The healing was uneven - Marsden's native Donegal region and the urban middle classes were fairly fond of his regime, as it had resulted in an explosion of trade within the realm and brought them substantial prosperity. Conversely, the old Tamar regions were still bitter about several key planets being starved into submission, along with what was seen as mistreatment of Margaret Tamar. Despite their sullen resentment towards Marsden's rule, however, they were at least enjoying their profits from the newly improved trade situation.
2385Raymond Cameron, Director-General of the Terran Hegemony, received the happy news that his new wife, Katherine McQuiston, was pregnant in late 2385. Unfortunately, Raymond Cameron was sterile. A nasty fight ensued in the Director-General's residence, which got even nastier when he realized that the father was none other than his own brother Brian. Despite the best efforts of his advisors to calm him down, he eventually arrested his own brother, and was talking of demanding a trial on charges of treason. Meeting with the High Council, he was apoplectic and refused any potential compromises or clemency, and worked himself into an outrageous fury. He eventually stalked off to a side room during this debate, but never returned - he was found dead, apparently of a heart attack brought on by his tremendous rage and frustration, and the government of the Hegemony paused to reflect on this extraordinary chain of coincidences.
Raymond left no obvious successor. The principle of dynastic descent was taken as the norm by this point, and his only close relative was in jail expecting treason charges. The President of the Terran Congress managed to name her son, Mitchell Dukirl, as Director-General Pro Tempore, but it was not to last. While Brian Cameron's lack of respect for marriage was no virtue, he was a known quantity, generally respected, and commanded the Cameron name(and, of course, he had already proven his ability to sire an heir). Within two months, Brian was installed as the new Director-General. Disinclined to continue his brother's aggressive policies, he worked instead to strengthen Terran defences and maintain his nation's economic power.
2386The Draconis Combine had mostly digested the Rasalhaguers by the mid-2380s, and they began looking outward once again. The situation in Tamar seemed especially appealing to the Draconis generals. They expected that the Lyran Army would resist, but they also expected to have some support among the populace if they came to remove Marsden's crushing control of their worlds. In order to test the waters, a probing attack was planned targeting the world of Utrecht, which had been one of the worlds Marsden had starved into submission, and which was experiencing substantial anti-Lyran terrorist activity. Officially acting to assist "the rightful government of the planet", three Draconis regiments landed on the world, and scored major initial successes against the garrison. One battalion surrendered without even firing a shot when they found themselves surrounded by a reinforced regiment.
Unfortunately, the operation turned sour as soon as the orders to coordinate with the locals took hold - no less than four different groups were known to be operating on the planet, and most of them hated each other. One had even made a point of raiding the other three for weapons, as they were less capable of self-defence than the official Lyran armories. An initial Cabinet was set up, with heavy Draconis pressure on all involved to behave properly and work together, but within two days there had been three angry resignations and two assassination attempts on Cabinet ministers. And naturally, all four of the groups were all trying to position themselves as the victims of the others' betrayal. A week later, it was revealed that one of the assassination attempts had been a fake organized by the "victim", who was promptly arrested, and the Lyran relief force arrived. Spontaneous public demonstrations erupted against the fiasco that the new government had devolved into, and when a mob broke into the legislative building during a Cabinet meeting, the President's security forces were convinced it was yet another ploy and wound up shooting the Vice-President for being the supposed ringleader. A bloody fight ensued, and four ministers and thirteen guards died in the fighting. By the time the panicked ministers met the angry mob, it was clear that the "provisional government" could never function properly, and the Draconis forces organized an ignominious retreat, taking a few of the leaders off-world to protect them from "Lyran reprisals" but otherwise abandoning their broken tools to their fates.
2387Richard Calderon was, by this point, far and away the longest-lived serving ruler of any realm. In his fifty-two years of power, he had taken the Taurian Concordat from a forgotten kingdom that was literally off the maps and turned it into a realm which managed to stand up, however briefly, to one of the great houses. But he was an old man, and not in the best of health, and the stress of his office had taken its toll on him. Late one evening, he suffered a massive stroke while reviewing yet more naval reports, and slipped into a coma from which he would not wake. He died four days later, and was succeeded by his son Daniel. Daniel was to drop the emergency powers his father had held since the first clash with the Davions, though his dedication to his realm was as strong as Richard's and he worked hard to protect it against any outside aggression.
2388The the grand Memorial to the Fallen of Andurien was unveiled in downtown Jojoken, capital of the planet of Andurien, in June of 2388. The Capellan Confederation had used its decade and a half of peace to re-build the military, but knitting the nation together and turning it from a desperate wartime alliance into a true nation was proving a harder challenge. The victory at Andurien had been the truest expression of the "Capellan Spirit" that Chancellor Liao was trying to build, and with some government support, monuments to the battle were common even in smaller towns throughout the Confederation. The realm was not truly united, and the wounds of its old internal battles still showed sometimes. The Capellan Commonality resented that their original influence in the realm was waning, the Duchy of Liao was proud of their old Duke's new role but regretted that he seemed to be overly influenced by the other realms, and the merchants of St. Ives wished that the borders were not so heavily barricaded and that they could be freer to trade abroad. However, the populace as a whole was beginning to think of themselves as members of a true nation, who shared a true objective.
As the morale and common spirit of the Capellan populace grew, the wounds were healing. Chancellor Liao only hoped that they would heal rapidly enough for the nation to face its next struggle.
2389 The inner sphere had seen a boom in terraforming projects with the latest Terran push for new worlds to be made useful, and on April 8, 2389, the first of these new "jointly owned" worlds, the planet of Dabih in the Draconis Combine, was deemed sufficiently terraformed to stop major work and allow substantial colonial efforts to take over the world. Many of the initial colonists were members of the terraforming workforce, especially Azamis from North Africa, who had become enamoured of the planet's new climate. Most of the rest of the terraformers moved on to a follow-up project which attempted to turn the planet's principal moon Shakhi into an agricultural settlement.
ResearchDC: $1,568m
FS: $40m
CC: $100m
TH: $4,144m
UHC: $1,114m
RWR: $482m
TC: $58m
TOTAL: $7,506m
The winner is the Rim Worlds Republic, gaining SRMs. All nations can now use NPPCs.
BudgetsCC: $92B
DC: $114B
FS: $100B
FWL: $107B
LC: $99B
MH: $13B
TH: $775B
UHC: $24B
RWR: $26B
TC: $12B, though no longer as a result of emergency spending.
