This is not a work of fiction.
This is not a work of popular entertainment.
This is not even a work compiled by a fan with too much time on his hands.
What this is, is a compilation of letters, journal entries, and a variety of other historical documents concerning the final years of the Vasari Empire's failed conquest of the Trade Order in general, and the actions of the Vaashti clan, particularly the leadership of the Kamerun family, in particular. Though there are a plentitude of documents available concerning the Trade Order's side of the Vasari invasion, and the subsequent splintering of the Exodus Fleet, this documentation has not been consulted for this work--the author feels that Trader documentation of this invasion has been too heavily examined in recent years, without sufficiently rigorous examination of Vasari documents to present a complete picture of the invasion. This is a historical documentary, and as such, must be taken with a grain of salt for all perspectives--we have changed too much in the past thirty years to do otherwise.
Please post any comments elsewhere--I will try to update as time goes by, but this is a rather big story--it will take some time to complete it, and I wanted to post what I had before I forgot or lost interest. Because of this, I would rather that potential readers do NOT have to sort through others' posts, but can instead immediately find the last chapter they have not read and begin from there, without having to sort through various posts from others.
Forward:
There are a few assumptions I have made here that I feel I should clarify before I proceed too much farther. Most of these regard the size, scale, and relative technological levels of advancement on the part of all three sides, although I have also made some entirely arbitrary assumptions on the part of how the Vasari and the TEC are organized. Most of these assumptions will be covered later on—but if you want to know the logic behind them, or you want to know the governing assumptions ahead of time, read on. Otherwise, skip to the first chapter, and ignore this preface.
First off, I must mention size. The Exodus Fleet has been on the run for some ten millennia, and in that time they have grown. What, if anything, they have learned militarily will be addressed in a moment, but in the meantime, we must contemplate the sheer scope of the likely fleet. Simply put, the Vasari have been building up to face the threat of whatever it is that they originally fled from. If the entire fleet of the largest empire in the galaxy could not stop this threat, one must assume that the Vasari would not have contented themselves to merely aim for the same sized fleet—and they, unlike their ancient empire, have had a long, long time to build said fleet. The Exodus Fleet may not be as technologically advanced as one might expect (after all, the Dark Fleet, when it arrives, does so in the same types of ships and at the same general tech level), but it must be assumed to be very, very large. Additionally, since the Exodus fleet carries the entirety of the known Vasari race, and said race must also be assumed to be getting to be quite numerous, I have chosen to declare them to possess quite a few ships—12 milllion capital ships alone, to be precise. All told, the Vasari arrive in Trader space with nearly 40 million combat vessels over the course of some seven years, carrying something like 135 billion souls (the constant births and deaths that occur even in phase space mean that this number is somewhat variable). This does not count the large numbers of Migrators or Navigators that also arrive in that time period (which add together to give another 40 billion Vasari), nor does it count the vessels which are constructed at a later date. The total number of Vasari who eventually end up in Trader space is almost distressingly small—the numbers given in-game are almost certainly inaccurate, since even the most developed planet, were it to have the population claimed, could not man a single Ravestra class Skirmisher, let alone a Jarrasul Evacuator. For convenience’s sake, I have chosen to accept that the numbers have a fairly close relationship to actual populations, and are not entirely arbitrary. My chosen number, considering Vasari ability to clone, direct reproduction, and so on and so forth, is to assume that for every population given, there are a thousand Vasari on the planet, living primarily in large cities in extreme Low Earth Orbit. The bulk of these colonists are transported in cold sleep, either onboard Migrators or Evacuators, as this would give them a greater ability to colonize worlds.
In other words, when they say that the Trade Order originally didn’t stand a chance, they weren’t kidding. By the time of this story’s beginning, some five years before the game itself, the Vasari Vanguard, consisting of a mere 20,000 capital ships and barely 200,000 lighter vessels, has conquered some 650 worlds in 523 systems, and is closing on what they believe to be the Trade Order’s home system. Bolstered by well over ten millennia of practical experience in interstellar conquest, the Vasari believe that they will soon be in a position to take over the entirety of Trader space…and all this before the main fleet has been called in and notified that it is safe to arrive. Even the Vanguard, itself only a tiny portion of the Exodus fleet, consists of over 20,000 capital ships, and almost 170,000 warships, all of which possess an immense technological advantage in terms of military hardware over the Trade Order. The Trade Order’s fall seems inevitable, even to those of the Central Worlds.
But the Trade Order has some advantages of its own, not least of which is its enormous size. The Trade Order the Vasari believe to have nearly conquered is not even 1% of the real Trade Order’s total size. In point of fact, it is not even 0.1%. To the best of anybody’s knowledge, the Trade Order includes well over 10,000,000 worlds holding something along the lines of 75,000,000,000,000 citizens scattered across nearly 2,000,000 systems (if you’ve been keeping track, this equates to six capital ships, 40 light combat vessels, and something along the lines of 350,000 Vasari citizens per system, assuming the Vasari manage to conquer the whole Trade Order). I say “to the best of anyone’s knowledge” because, even with the Vasari conquest reaching its height, the Trade Order is still expanding faster than can be accurately calculated. The Central Worlds alone, which comprise less than 5% of the total area “controlled” by the Trade Order, each produce more in the way of labor, finished goods, money, and raw materials than all 500+ systems the Vasari have conquered thus far combined. Only now, with the Vasari having penetrated almost two hundred light years already, have the Central Worlds begun to awaken to their peril. Several have banded together to provide the resources, men, and material to make a stand. They have chosen the Alukcev system to be the recipient of this aid, for the simple reason that, being the most developed system in the area, it is the easiest to ship supplies to. Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, despite the almost total lack of unity in the Trade Order, despite even the fact that they hold an almost crushing technological advantage in weapons, armor, shields, and systems, the Vasari really don’t stand a chance—if the TEC can hold together long enough, they will grind the Exodus fleet into dust, and, quite likely, destroy whatever pursues the Exodus Fleet when it, in turn, arrives. During the course of this story, the Vasari will have to confront and respond to this unfortunate fact—and how they respond will dictate the future of their race…assuming, of course, that they have a future.
My second assumption partially stems from the first, and is the best solution I can come up with as to why the Vasari don’t A) start out with inter-stellar phase drive, and simply over-run the Trade Order before anybody can respond. Simply put, both sides already have interstellar phase drive…sort of. Instead of the relatively cheap, simple, and easy-to use universal phase drive developed over the course of the game, all three sides in the game use a much simpler version, one which has been precisely calibrated for travel between a certain, highly limited number of stars, which are pre-programmed into the phase drive itself. With their extensive nanite construction technologies, the Vasari are able to re-calibrate their drives substantially faster than the Trade Order, but have not, yet, had the motivation to begin installing universal phase drives on all their vessels. The Trade Order, while knowing such things to be theoretically possible, had not yet reached a point where the considerable resource cost involved in developing a mass-produced version would have been profitable. The Advent, which will not appear until much later in the story, was not even aware of the possibility until they invaded the former Trade Order and encountered such devices for the first time. Advent research of the universal phase drive is more along the lines of back-engineering than actual development—hence the reason they can develop it so early. What can I say—group minds, awesome as they may be in terms of problem-solving, are fairly limited when it comes to generating new ideas.
The third assumption has to do with relative levels of technology—or, to put it another way, why the Traders can even hope to compete with the invading Exodus fleet. This assumption sort of flows backwards from the first and the second, although not entirely—simply put, if the TEC is so much more vast than the Exodus Fleet (and they would have to be), and if they possess a comparable level of technological understanding of the phase drive, then logically, they must not be too far behind in other areas as well. However, this cannot include weapons—not only does the manual say the TEC is not (no warfare for more than 1,000 years, remember?), but most of the TEC’s tech tree only reinforces this. In order for the TEC to develop weapons capable of inflicting damage to the Vasari vessels, therefore, they must possess some other advantage just as crushing as the Vasari’s weapons tech.
It is in the Cielo command cruiser (and the Akkan battlecruiser) that I have found my answer. Simply put, the Vasari are, flat out, not as advanced as the TEC in any non-military area of endeavor. Because of their reliance on slave labor, they are not as advanced in terms of economics, in areas of industry and production, or in general education (remember, they don’t WANT slaves to be educated—educated slaves might rebel, after all). While they do have a slight edge in terms of medical ability, the TEC is almost as good, and in terms of diagnostics and treatment without nanites, Trade Order doctors are, in point of fact, substantially better than Vasari chirugeons. Nor are areas such as mathematics or computing left unaffected—even at the beginning, the Trade Order’s larger base of highly educated citizens means that they have the ability to create codes that are, quite simply, impossible for Vasari cryptanalysts to crack, while the Trade Order, veterans of a millennium of electronic corporate espionage, have found it simplicity in itself to crack Vasari codes. Part of this discrepancy in levels of advancement is reflected in the currencies used by both sides—the Vasari use the Vasari Mark, a currency whose value is defined in terms of precious metals, while the Trade Order uses credits, a currency whose value is defined in terms of labor and energy. Because they are trapped in a mercantilist, slave-holding economy, the vast majority of the Vasari have no more ability to innovate on a large scale than you or I have of jumping from the Earth to the Moon. In short, the Trade Order can make ships and computers better, faster, and cheaper than can the Vasari—but, sadly, a lack of knowledge of warfare and weapons means that the ships will have real difficulty acting as warships.
My final assumption is not quite related to the other three, but it does seem to fit the circumstances of each side. Simply put, the issue is how the Trade Order (and later the TEC) and the Vasari are organized. The Trade Order, it is made clear from background material, are organized in terms of corporations, and for this reason, I have made the basic unit of organization just that—corporations. Each TEC faction played on any map is a separate, limited liability corporation, with larger groupings known as guilds (for obvious reasons). Most of these corporations have already started their own armament program, which is why the first capital ship is free (it’s a sunk cost—that is, the money has already been spent), but expanding said program is neither cheap, nor easy.
The Vasari, in contrast, are organized by ten millennia of flight in terms of capital ship crews and fleets. Simply put, the Vasari are organized into something like 1,000 separate clans, each of which control a varying number of capital ships, around which they base pretty much all of their affairs. Each clan, in turn, is made up of a number of separate families (and every Vasari faction on a map is an individual family), each of which is based around a single capital ship. Theoretically, a clan is supposed to have no less than eight separate families, and no more than sixteen, but the fact of the matter is that this rule is neither hard, nor fast. Many clans have far, far more than sixteen families, and many families actually possess multiple capital ships, as smaller, less prestigious families continue to acknowledge a sole figure as the family patriarch, and many families refuse to split off from their original clan, citing reasons ranging from familial affection to lack of nearby surplus capital ships to even having talents that are too useful to divide. This last is the reason most commonly cited for the exceptional size of the five largest clans, of which the Vaashti are ranked third, with 1171 capital ships and 302 component families.
These clans are all linked together, if that is the proper phrasing, by a single, unified command structure (termed Fleet Command), and by the Genetics Council, a separate body including representatives from every clan which determines which families have deviated far enough from their core clan in terms of genetic variation to warrant splitting them off into a new clan, and which genes have come to the end of their use for the Vasari race. Fleet Command, meanwhile, controls the deployment of all vessels within the Vasari fleet in times of war (which, these days, is pretty much all the time), as well as apportioning conquests to incoming families, maintaining the military academy for the training of officers, and, most importantly, enforcing the decrees of the Genetics Council.
Chapter 1: Glorious Imaginings
(Roughly 5 years before Sins of Solar Empire)
12th January, 9985 EY (Exodus Years)
Excerpt from the diary of Kamerun Jeias Vaashti
Today marks a momentous occasion. In a few short hours, I will be granted one of the most prestigious honors that the remnants of the Vasari Empire can grant—command of one of the Empire’s great capital ships. It is from beginnings such as this that the many heroes of the Exodus, almost without variation, have all begun their ascent to fame and glory. Everything the Vasari are and can ever hope to be stems from these great vessels, each of which has a crew numbering in the thousands.
On a perhaps more important, and more practical, note, it also signifies that the Vasari Genetics council has chosen my genetic legacy as one of the select few (ok, the select many—there are almost twelve million capital ships in the Vasari fleet, after all) which is to be allowed to develop relatively independent of outside supervision and, if it is proven that I can handle it, may even result in the creation of a new family within my clan. This is, realistically, the best I can probably hope to achieve—the addition of a second family name to append to my given name, signifying my significance within the clan, but I feel that it will be enough of an achievement to make my name known for posterity, even if the name ultimately spreads no farther than my own clan. Of course, greater things are possible—but it is best, I think, not to dwell upon those until they begin to seem a little more within my grasp.
A notice has just appeared upon my viewscreen—the ceremony begins in less than 2.5 standard units. The student dorm in which I dwell is located upon a different vessel than the ceremonial hall, so I will have to hurry if I am to arrive on time. I shall resume this diary when I return.
.
..
…
….
The ceremony was everything I had imagined and more. The soaring great hall, the ancient banners, faithfully preserved from before we began our exodus by nanites specifically programmed for the task, even the vast number of new recruits, all combined to impress upon myself and all the other graduates both the age and the might of our empire, and to remind us all not only of how great the Vasari people are and have always been, but of how far we have come as a people in spite of the hardships and the turmoils that have accompanied nearly ten millennia of exile as a nomadic race of conquerers.
As for myself, I am both happy and proud to be among a handful chosen to lead the vanguard of our people into battle, crushing those who oppose us and scattering their ashes along our path. My orders—ah, my orders, my lovely, crisp, orders, printed on the paper so long forgotten that it has nearly vanished from our culture—my orders are to report to the system of Prauk, where I am to “assume command of the newly commissioned vessel Kausr and proceed at all speed for the Lusitar system.” Once there, I am to join with the fleet of Vasari warships assembling in-system, and place myself under the command of His Excellency, Lord Vasseto. Though I was most diligent in my studies of the current Vasari command structure, I must confess to being baffled by this name—though I am aware that the Vasseto family are members of the Kruppianur clan, His Excellency is a title normally used for commanders who have attained the fifth rank of command or higher, and are commonly listed as Hacu at the very least. Yet despite this knowledge, I can find no reference to any Vasseto having attained the rank of Hacu. The records available to students, of course, are naturally incomplete, the intent being to force us to find alternate ways of developing information and resources, but as of yet, the official records are all I have had a chance to consult.
My gene-mother may know more of this—I will have to consult with her, and my gene-father, at the earliest opportunity. Ah, well; I promised them tonight that I would write often anyway, and this seems to be as fitting a topic as any.
Maha Kamerun Nirini Vaashti
Strana System, Planet M
14th January, 9985 EY
Dear Mother,
After the ceremony and a day of “celebration,” I am scheduled to depart on the next available vessel for the Prauk system (where I am to take command of the Kausr)—a Ravastra class skirmisher, as it happens—and should be leaving sometime within the next few hours. Exactly when is uncertain, since the ship’s commanding officer, a Azat Templatis, has yet to finish rounding up his crew from the planet’s admittedly luscious drinking halls and dens of vice and iniquity. Rumor has it that the good azat is to be assigned as one of the Kausr’s escorts, something which I find hard to credit, unless he has married into one of the Vaashti clan’s admittedly fairly numerous family groups. Not unexpected if he has, but I do not think that he has—his vessel, for all its stark beauty, lacks the characteristic fanged prow so beloved of the vessels commonly used by the Vaashti families, something which would almost certainly have been present had his wife’s family supplied the vessel as is customary.
Incidentally, thank you for the graduation gift of fifty gold marks. It is a princely sum indeed, and I have already put some of it to good use, purchasing the data-slate upon which I am currently writing this letter, a half-dozer additional local power packs (for which I paid slightly less than half of what I would normally pay for a single Vasari power-pack), several packets of sulfur tablets for long phase-space transitions*, and, oddly enough, a pair of young male slaves who were going for far too much money at the local auction. In accordance to Vaashti clan-law, I have freed both of them, and I will be sending them on to you. Supposedly they will be boarding a Migrator headed your way before I depart, but just in case they do not, I have arranged for them to have a place to stay within the local Vaashti compound until and unless you can pick them up. Both of them are supposedly students of a rather obscure branch of mathematical enterprise called ekonomix, which apparently has something to do with resource distribution. I seem to remember Father was recently appointed governor of an asteroid mining colony—perhaps he could use some help in getting up to full production.
I have spoken to numerous veterans of the overall conquest in the past day and a half, and discovered that, far from being contemptuous of yet another native race desperately striving to hold back the inevitable expansion of the Vasari Empire, many of these veterans seem to hold a grudging respect, if not outright admiration, for the courage and tenacity of these creatures. Though the veterans’ replies were guarded, and often such feelings seemed almost hidden in a wealth of anecdotes concerning the locals’ almost total incompetence at war, the impression was inescapable, and most disturbing. Some have even hinted that local courage and native technology have been sufficient to outright destroy several Vasari warships, something of which I had not heard before. Surely the local sentients, who seem to be armed with nothing more than lasers and primitive ballistic weapons, would be unable to harm Vasari vessels of any kind? But apparently not—the veterans would not surrender any details, but simply shook their heads and went back to their beer.
I am afraid that this will have to be all I can write for now, for I see Azat Templatis approaching at the head of what looks to be the last members of his crew still on-station, and it may be some time before I can get a message on board a vessel headed back to you. Give Father my love, and keep some for yourself.
Your loving Son,
Jeias
*Author’s note: Sulfur tablets serve roughly the same purpose for Vasari metabolisms as aspirin does for humans. Because most Vasari, like most humans, find long voyages through phase space mildly uncomfortable, it is customary for those who can afford them to take a couple of sulfur tablets upon exiting phase space.
Nawab Kamerun Vitale Vaashti
Strana System, Asteroid Extractor V
18th January, 9985 EY
Dearest Husband,
It is with great pleasure and no little trepidation that I am forwarding a copy of our son’s first letter to you—pleasure, for he did indeed remember his promise to write (that’s 15 silver Vasari kroner you owe me, by the way), and trepidation because passing on his letters to one who does not have military clearance is technically illegal. I have used a local print-caster to transfer the letter to hard-copy, because usage of the local hardware is not yet being tracked by Central Command. You will have to destroy the copy once you are finished with it. Still, the implications of just a few casual sentences within the letter are too dangerous to deny, let alone pass along to those most likely to be asked to make up any shortfalls or overlooked elements in Central Command’s strategy.
To sum up the disturbing sentences, it seems our son has bought and manumitted (that means freed) a pair of young slaves from a market in the Dussel system. Both of these slaves seem to have been students of some sort, something which probably indicates a fair degree of wealth on the part of their families, and a certain degree of intelligence on the part of the students. Both are declared to have primarily studied mathematics, with which we are familiar, but the branch our son was told they had studied is one that has no equivalent name in the Vasari tongue (at least, not that the slaver was aware), and which appears to lack any kind of analogous field of endeavor in the portion of the Vasari technical database to which I have access. I am hopeful that you will be familiar with a similar field of endeavor in Vasari space, for if you are not, we may well find that our foe is fully as advanced as ourselves, and that our successes to date have been largely a result of our comparatively united command structure and overwhelming initial numbers. If our enemies have access to extensive branches of mathematical and scientific knowledge which we lack, or, worse, of which we are not even aware, we could be facing a frustratingly effective foe with frightening levels of endurance. It is even entirely possible that the dominant local species may never be entirely suppressed, but engage in an ongoing guerilla war which saps our resources throughout the course of our occupation. This is quite obviously unacceptable, as our requirements for expansion have
I have sent one of the natives to you—I would send both, for you are in truth more qualified to evaluate the locals’ knowledge on what this ekonomix is supposed to entail than I, but the other is both badly out of shape, and apparently prone to space-sickness. As to why a supposedly sentient race would not take the first opportunity to remove such tendencies from their genome, I cannot say. You will probably have to use a hypno-system to give him the language, but take care to do this yourself, if possible, as most technicians are trained to use the hypo-teacher to erase any “inconvenient” memories along with teaching the language.
I eagerly await your reply, and look forward to hearing from you again.
Your loving wife,
Nirini
Szlekt Kamerun Jeias Vaashti,
VIV Kausr, Prauk system
19th January, 9985 EY
Dear Son,
It is with great relief that I read your letter that you are on your way to join your command. I had half-feared that you would do something foolish and manage to get yourself barred from ever holding command rank, but thankfully you have managed to avoid that temptation. Two of your classmates, however, did not—Szlekt Jurilus Kuchak was stripped of all rank and titles for malicious impersonation of a goat, and Maldyve Dunsi Iscangr was demoted to an unspecified rank for some unspecified (but presumably quite horrible) crime.
Out of curiosity, I have attempted to discover further details concerning the Kausr, including which family originally built it, what class of vessel it is, and any number of other tidbits that might or might not be useful to know, but have been unable to do so. The Kausr is simply not listed or mentioned anywhere in the Vanguard’s database, not even in the restricted sections of the Fleet archives. The conclusion, though odd, is inescapable—the Kausr is a new construction, a vessel either built within the last six months and not yet officially completed (probably because the central computer circuits have not yet set into their final positions), or a vessel that is at present merely a design in some shipyard database. Both of these possibilities are so astonishing, I am inclined to dismiss them out of hand—the Vanguard generally lacks the resources to spend any kind of serious time building new capital ships, and we most definitely lack the manpower to assign even a newly graduated szlacht the task of supervising its construction. For you to be receiving a brand new capital ship, either way, is either an unprecedented honor, or a deliberate slap in the face for the Vaashti clan. Neither option sounds like something Central Command would countenance.
As for the humans you sent with your letter, they both arrived more or less safely, although the fat one seems to have problems with space-sickness—something which could be a problem were he sent to join your father, and which has necessitated that he remain here with me. Although I am often doubtful of local sentients and their supposed abilities, I must admit that this native has been most useful to me, and although I cannot allow him to see any details concerning most of my work, his insights into that which he can be permitted to see are most valuable. I have currently assigned him a tutor in Vasari language and systems, in hopes of educating him in the superiority of our culture—with sufficient indoctrination, he may yet prove to be a valuable aid in our quest to find a way to halt the enemy which even now pursues us. More importantly, once he learns our language, I hope to be able to extract from him a much clearer explanation of this ekonomix that you mentioned—the one you provided, while concise and possibly even accurate, appears to be the limit of what we can get until we can understand him.
Be careful, and work hard and long to advance the greater glory of the Vasari and of your clan.
Your loving mother,
23rd January, 9985 EY
I have arrived in the Prauk system, and was ushered aboard my new command less than an hour ago. Unfortunately, the command itself is quite shocking—I have been given command over what appears to be a updated Skirantra class fleet tender, a vessel that verged on the obsolescent even before the Exile began, and the last of which was officially broken down for scrap metal over four thousand years ago. Worse, this appears to be an entirely new construction--it has, as I said, been heavily updated, and if it is an older vessel, has been refitted with modern weapons, modern armor, a slightly more modern hull design, and substantially more modern shield generators. In my considered opinion, it would have been easier to just rebuild the ship entirely than updating an old vessel, even assuming they had one. As to why a Skirantra would be built for the first time in over eight thousand years, that I cannot tell you, save that Central Command must have felt that there was an urgent and pressing need for its huge nanite bays after all. As to what that use may be, I cannot even guess—I have scheduled dinner with my immediate subordinate officers tonight, and plan to work out a program of intensive drills in what I believe to have been the traditional duties of Skirantra vessels when I meet with said officers this evening.
So far the crew itself appears to be performing quite acceptably, especially given the unsettlingly wide variety of families and even clans present. So far I have counted the distinctive features of almost 16 major clans, with at least glimpses of a number of much smaller minor clans present as well. Some of these smaller clans are so poorly represented among the Vanguard units that I had not initially been aware that they were part of the lead fleet elements at all; their presence onboard a major capital ship must surely constitute the bulk of their uncommitted manpower. It is a heady responsibility, knowing that the loss of this ship will not only bring disgrace upon one’s own clan, but also military and political disaster for several others. Despite this additional responsibility, however, I am puzzled—keeping a capital ship’s core crew, at the very least, as a single-clan unit is one of the fundamental rules of Vasari fleet construction. Without a core complement made entirely of a single clan, there is no way of knowing whether or not the training standards within the crew are uniform, or even if the methods of operation are sufficiently alike to enable a unified chain of command. I fear that, should something go disastrously wrong in my upcoming assignment, no force known to the Empire could prevent a mutiny, or, even more dangerous, a civil war from breaking out within the confines of the ship. This is, I suspect, something to be expected on a vessel as large as a Skirantra, especially on one with as little chance for glory as a fleet tender. Still, I am glad for this opportunity, as there is little doubt in my mind that I would not have gotten an equivalent chance for glory otherwise.
Give my love to Father, and keep some for yourself. I eagerly await your expected reply.
Your Loving Son,
24th January, 9985
Dearest Nirini,
I thank you for your consideration in sending the local sentient on to me, and I would like to personally assure you that the package of delicacies you included was most well received (although I urge you to be more cautious with such packages in the future—while Central Command’s Suppression Service may be less than totally effective at monitoring internal correspondence between Vasari citizens, there is no reason to take chances if we do not have to).
The local sentient you sent to me has arrived safely, and, in lieu of automatic hypno-teaching of our language, has been assigned to one of my mine supervisors, named Bi’lessi Garmun, who has somehow managed to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of the local language. So far, the knowledge gained is limited to a very few useful pieces of information—primarily the name of the two locals our son acquired (the one who gets space-sick is called Frank, and the one sent on to me is named Adam), and the fact that the locals seem to use something called a base-ten counting system in place of what they call a base-eight system, like the one that we use. As to what this means, I cannot yet say, but this Adam, while apparently quite capable of learning at least the rudiments of our alphabet and numerical system, has so far refused to use either of them, instead claiming his native alphabet and numerical system to be significantly superior to our own. While I have yet to have any opportunity to test the truth of this claim, the supervisor with which I have saddled Adam has claimed that he is already capable of performing astonishing feats of calculation—something which would be to be expected if he is, in fact, a student of advanced mathematical study.
Incidentally, I would like to caution you to be very, very careful with this Frank you have chosen to keep with you for the time being—the local language seems to be infectious at best, and I suspect that, even assuming we take no locals with us in our flight onwards, certain local terms and expressions will continue to spread like the plague. I have already received reports from Bi’lessi that he has had to discipline several of his technicians and security troops for using the term okay to signify assent or understanding instead of one of the more traditional salutes and statements of acknowledgement.
Please send our son my regards when next you write to him.
Your Loving Husband,
Vitale
26th January, 9985
I know you have probably not gotten my previous letter yet, but I felt it imperative to request clarification as soon as possible—this is an issue that I do not feel safe in making a decision on my own, as it touches far more upon your specialty than it does upon my own. The local sentient sent to me, the one named Adam, has requested permission to communicate with his fellow sentient under your care, under the pretense of both consultation on subjects with which he is less than completely certain, and, most probably, of assuaging loneliness.
Please respond as soon as possible—I told Adam that I would get a response for him at the first opportunity, and to one his age, I suspect that it will be hard enough to wait the seven days needed to get the letter to you and back again as is, even without any further delay on our part.
Maha Kamerun Virini Vashti
January 29th, 9985 EY
I have arrived at the Lusitar system, and, as ordered, made contact with Lord Vasseto. He is, it appears, recently promoted, most probably to avoid the otherwise inevitable clan squabbles that would surely erupt with a fury in a fleet this size. Mother, there are over eighty capital ships in this system alone! By my count, there are at least seventy Kortul Devastators, four Antorak Marauders, three Vulkoras Desolators, and a few ships whose class the computer could not identify (perhaps the rumors of new construction were more accurate than I believed). All of this, as nearly as I can determine, is made up of a little over sixteen clans (only nine of which have deployed capital ships), ranging from the Vaashti, with a single capital vessel present, to the Jarsek clan, with a full complement of sixteen capital ships present. It is, as I said earlier, quite astonishing, and I think that I can safely say that I have never seen a similar gathering of vessels in all my born days. In fact, I don’t seem to recall a fleet of similar size ever being assembled in Vasari history—or at least, in as much history as I managed to learn at the Academy. Our foe must be mighty indeed to warrant such a force, even in his home system, where the defenses are usually the strongest.
I am due to report aboard Lord Vasseto’s vessel within the hour—I will write more when I return.
It turns out that one of the vessels the computer database could not identify is a Jarrasul Evacuator, brought here to deploy occupation forces on any newly occupied planets. The other two are both newly constructed capital ships, the Pharadei and the Pyrolis, a Marauder and a Desolator, respectively. Like myself, they are commanded by recent Academy graduates, but neither seems to have the mixed-clan makeup of my own crew. I have continued drilling my crew, and will hopefully have them fully up to spec within the next few days. I will have to, for we are to leave for the Alucai system four days from now. It seems that the enemy has established a series of perimeter bases around their home system, and that we will have to eliminate these bases before we can advance on the home system. Since this is a fairly un-prepared race of sentients, it seems unlikely that there will be much conquest involved beyond the preparation—I seem to have been given my commission just in time, for otherwise I would have to wait a good twenty years or more to take part in the conquest of a new people.
Give my love to father, and keep some for yourself.
Dearest Loved One,
I see no purpose in preventing such a communication—indeed, it may yet aid us. However, I would warn you—be very, very careful about the timing of such letters. The Suppression Corps may not monitor our mail very carefully, but it does monitor the mail of any local sentients, and they have been known to take offence at…odd things. Additionally, rumor has it that somebody highly placed within the Suppression Corps is “concerned” at the Vaashti’s continuing refusal to entrust those whose loyalty to us has yet to be proven with any kind of sensitive information or around our person for extended periods of time. It seems that, once again, the old rumor of Vaashti “softness” for conquered species has reared its ugly head, possibly with the aid of somebody from a rival clan. I don’t think that the Suppression Corps can break private Vaashti ciphers easily—but I would also not call any communications we make entirely secure. Fortunately, the Kamerun family is fairly minor in Vaashti politics, so I doubt that they will come after us directly, but watch your back, and what this Adam writes anyway—the last thing we need is a full SC audit just as the final conquest of the local races is being completed. Though innocent, it could take us years to prove it, and in the meantime, the Vaashti could lose any number of valuable opportunities simply because we do not have the resources to exploit them.
On a side note, it is good to hear that you have found one of your workers who can manage reasonable communication with this Adam. I myself have had problems finding a tutor, and I do not trust the hypno-system. Fortunately, I have the populace of an entire planet to draw upon—that will help my search immensely. The fact that Adam has not yet been able to grasp the subtle beauty, or the inherent superiority of the Vasari alphabet and numeric system is disturbing—it mirrors quite closely something that I had observed on the planet, and not given any notice—namely that instead of using the appropriate picto-grams, the locals are using what appear to be crude phonetic approximations of Vasari speech when making signs for the Vasari-fluent. When I do find that tutor, I may have to have him teach me the local speech and numeral system, just so I can find my way around.
Your Loving Wife,
Febuary 1st, 9985 EY
From the diary of Kamerun Jeias Vaashti
Although I would never admit it to my mother, let alone before my peers, I am still as yet unsure as to what is going on here. The Vasari are a very old race, well-used to conquests of other races, and on the surface, this latest race seems to be nothing more than yet another unprepared, decentralized race that has just recently unraveled the secret of phase space. Certainly the vessels we destroyed in the early stages of the invasion bore this out; un-shielded, under-gunned, and almost totally unprepared for the speed, size, and sophistication of Vasari fleets, they were almost without exception totally destroyed. But apparently they managed to transmit data back to the worlds where they were constructed, for those vessels are long gone now. While the latest incarnation of their fast attack frigates may be only slightly more powerful than their first in terms of raw firepower, they are smaller, faster, tougher, and, most disturbing of all, now seem to mount shields—a technology which, to the best of our knowledge, was at best not widely used, and more likely not even known to our enemies when we first arrived. Their technology may not have advanced to the point where it can match ours, as yet, but they have nonetheless managed an astonishing level of sophistication already—I have no doubt that, had they the ability to make this war last for another five or ten years, that they could have stopped our advance, and perhaps even hurled us back. This level of sophistication has, however, done them little good, and it is for this reason that the Vanguard exists—to send an expendable force of vessels of all sizes to test prospective enemy defenses, and to determine just how much force and how much return will need to be involved to make the occupation profitable for the Vasari Empire. Had the enemy been prepared, I have little doubt that the Vanguard would have been…expended, and the Dark Fleet would have looked elsewhere for its prey. Like so many other space-going races, however, the local sentients were not prepared, and within a few months their most industrialized worlds will have fallen to the Vasari people. A few fringe settlements may yet remain unconquered—but only if they choose to hide instead of choosing to fight. My Academy instructors were most emphatic on this, for we have been undertaking this task for much more than ten thousand years, and by now the variations are all well-known and planned for well in advance. My glory, I fear, will have to wait, if it ever comes. Ah, well—I shall persevere, and even a fleet tender in Vaashti hands is one more capital ship than we possessed before.
This conquest should be easy, yet…I cannot forget the tales of those veterans back in the bar. Logic suggests that they were merely trying to frighten a newly commissioned officer, but I have found the feeling that this was not what was actually happening hard to suppress. Most likely, though, this is nothing more than anxiety. Tomorrow, we shall enter phase space, and once there, we shall take part in what will be my first major battle. It would be understandable indeed if I were to be frightened, but…
Febuary 2nd, 9985 EY
While the battle is not yet completed, I may now rest assured. I have taken part in combat, and if it seems unlikely that I shall do so again, I have nonetheless acquitted myself with honor. The enemy was, as our scouts informed us, still in the process of fortifying this system, and had not yet completed the chains of defensive works that were still under construction. While individual portions of the system were heavily fortified, the enemy did not possess sufficient capital ships, or lighter vessels, to inflict serious damage upon our fleet. We still have yet to locate the final two enemy capital ships in this system, however, and it will take several days to make the minor repairs required by prolonged combat operations. This, plus the time required to re-tune our phase space drives, should give my crew close to two weeks with nothing to do…which is a problem. Skirantra class fleet tenders were apparently heavily over-crewed, and the upgrading of the design, while it did improve the hardware, also decreased the number of crew required to run the ship. At this point in time, nearly half of my crew is not needed to operate this vessel. I have already had fights break out between bored crewmen, and discipline is breaking down quickly—if I cannot find something for the surplus crew to attend to, I may well have a mutiny on my hands.
On a side note, I saw for the first time the enemy’s short-range warships today. Though ineffective, they are nonetheless…interesting. My instructors told me that these vessels are one of the only holdovers from before our arrival—that before we arrived, these vessels are believed to have been responsible for the bulk of all enforcement and defense throughout the enemy systems. Though largely ineffective, they have an undeniable elegance, almost an air of romance about them that makes it easy to see why the enemy has persisted in their use despite the fact that they have yet to destroy a single Vasari vessel. The danger, of course, is that this romance and elegance could persuade their crew that they are worthy investments of time and skill—something that, without substantially heavier firepower, they most definitely are not.
Maha Kamerun Nirini Vaashti,
Febuary 5th, 9985 EY
As you suspected, the Kausr is indeed a brand-new vessel, and, also as you suspected, the nanite systems have still not yet completely stabilized. This is not entirely unexpected—the Kausr is a Skirantra, after all, and they do take some time to fully stabilize. In point of fact, the Kausr is probably taking longer than normal, due to the simple fact that, because no Skirantra has been used for more than four millennia, nobody is really familiar with all the systems aboard the vessel, let alone used them in combat before a few days ago. Just as an example, I have (so far) located no less than six fully functional reactor cores, any one of which would be more than enough to power the vessel and all systems aboard, and all of which are built to share the load across the entire vessel. Relics of a design dating from the days when no one reactor could possibly hope to power an entire ship the size of the Kausr, I guess. And keep in mind that I still have crewman tracing all the power leads—we don’t yet know for sure just how many reactors this vessel has (although I get the feeling it’s just six—at least, once we disconnected four of them from the main grid, the power surges began decreasing in frequency). Additionally, the flattened hull and the angular prow spike are most definitely major design flaws by today’s newer, more modern standards—the flattened hull means that most of the pressure from impacts originating above and below the ship is transmitted to the sides, and the angle where the prow spike is vulnerable as well, again transmitting all the stress of any impacts landing at that point to the superstructure of the ship at that one particular point. Still, it is a worthy vessel, or at least it will be by the time I am through with it—I have, I think, stumbled upon a solution, or at least part of one.
Two days ago, a particularly unlucky (or stupid, I cannot decide which) crewmember on board the Kausr managed to dump half a thousand kilograms of combat-grade repair nanites into space while doing a routine combat training. While replacing these nanites did require dipping significantly into the ship’s antimatter reserves, it also had an interesting effect—namely, the nanites in question, obedient to the laws of motion, spread out in a wide cloud, covering several nearby starships with large numbers of active nanites which then attempted to repair the vessel in question. Since no damage had yet been taken, they were unsuccessful…but it does raise an interesting possibility, and I have ordered the Kausr’s nanite factories modified accordingly, something which I believe will eventually give us an advantage when the conquest is over and Fleet Command tries to decommission the Kausr.
Hopefully, I will have the time to write to you again soon. In the meantime, give my love to Father, and keep some for yourself.
A most interesting proposal came to me today from one of my crew. It seems that this crewman has been among those who have not been given something useful to do onboard the ship. Instead of sitting on his hands, however, he has chosen to find something useful to do—and he has indeed found something to do. Whether or not it is useful, I do not know.
It seems that this crewman, one Hsasi Bhroos Jandali, has been watching the combat footage taken by the Kausr’s bridge crew, and showing it to some of the other under worked crew members. They have gotten together, and had an idea. It seems that some among them feel that they can…build such a craft by modifying the standard shuttle template every Vasari capital ship comes equipped to build. More, they feel that they have the ability to make such a craft a viable combat force. I truly doubt this, but…it is a claim worth investigating, and they have clearly put some thought into this—they have the figures to back their claims, and, as Hsasi Bhroos has pointed out, all of them are expendable. If this attempt is not successful, then the ship has not lost anything. If it is successful, then the ship has gained much.
I have instructed Hsasi Bhroos to carry out the experiment, and given him all the backing I feel to be practical. Atmospheric-capable shuttles are notoriously hard to hit, and the ultra-light warships the enemy has been using have been even more so. If they can be armed heavily enough to cause noticeable damage to enemy warships, then the Skirantra, with its immense manufacturing bays and massive storage and launch facilities, may be worth re-introducing to the fleet for a third time after all. I hope so—the Skirantra, for all its obsolescence, is a beautiful class, and even if not what we first think of when we talk about a warship, is still an undeniable symbol of both our past glory, and of how far we have come since then.
Febuary 7th, 9985
Hsasi Bhroos has displayed an impressive ability to organize and lead a number of Vasari sailors from a wide variety of clans and families. If his project succeeds as well as it looks like it will, I will recommend him for a much higher position in the Vasari Empire—how the Genetics Council missed this one, I will never fully understand, but I am glad they did.
Although he started largely from scratch, he has already been able to generate a wide variety of potential designs for these ultra-light warships, each tailored to a specific task, from the interdiction of escaping civilian vessels, to the destruction of heavy capital ships, and everything in between. These designs have included everything from manufacturing details to proposed doctrines of use, and I have authorized a full eight hours of run-time on the ship’s computers for the purpose of test simulations. My staff is going over the final details of these programs as I write this, and though discrepancies have appeared several times (an indication that not only were these proposals created by different times, but that they were created more or less simultaneously), so far only one design test has had to be thrown out—the inclusion of a command variant, while doubtlessly effective, cannot be tested due to the simple fact that the number of variables exceeds the onboard computers’ ability to complete any reasonable simulation within the allotted time. We will investigate the possibility of using more advanced deployment doctrines at some point in the future if these basic doctrines and concepts prove to have some merit to begin with—eight hours, though potentially sub-par, will probably be enough to give us enough basic data to complete more thorough projections.
Febuary 9th, 9985 EY
The simulations are complete. Though unable to complete the runs for all three designs, the results from the first run are moderately satisfactory. Combining a scaled-down pulse gun with a pair of phase missiles, the result displays a consistent ability to deal damage to enemy vessels and defensive structures and avoid the bulk of expected return fire, while at the same time allowing the transporting ship to remain at the outer edges of any local gravity well. Though the process does take time, this means that even the heaviest of enemy positions and fortifications can potentially be reduced by a single Skirantra class vessel. Due to the more angled armor and heavier firepower and shields, no simulation could be run as to the new ultra-light’s effectiveness against capital ships—something that disturbs me greatly, but not enough to deny production of a new and potentially useful weapons system. Hsasi Bhroos reports that he believes that the ship has enough on-board storage capacity to support five of the new ultra-lights and still leave sufficient space for the necessary supporting crews. I have ordered additional pilots trained for these vessels, despite being assured that there are enough and more than enough in Hsasi’s group of enthusiasts to fly all five ultra-lights. Mistakes happen, and this is a new and untested system—I want replacements should the worst happen.
Febuary 13th, 9985 EY
Production of the first five strike vessels (as I have decided to call them) is now complete, and the pilots and support crews have been assigned, all from the original project group, as Hsasi Bhroos requested. While I remain dubious as to their real effectiveness in battle, I do not doubt that to design and manufacture what has the potential to be a totally new weapon of war is a major accomplishment, whatever the outcome. To also train crews in at least the rudimentary tactics of their deployment is even more remarkable, especially when this is down while developing and maintaining a close working relationship with the ship’s already existing command staff, and is something I intend to record in the official log before we depart the day after tomorrow.
Tomorrow the real-time flight training in expected tactics and deployment will commence. So far, the best deployment we’ve yet seen of the enemy’s strike vessels has been ineffectual at best—only the unusually heavy armament of the converted colony ships combined with the recent deployment of the enemy’s new Gauss platforms have given them the chance to even slow us down so far. Within a day at most, the drives of every ship in the fleet should be tuned for the trip from Alucai to Alukcev, and we are to make the phase jump within twenty-four hours of the final readiness signal. Hsasi Bhoos’s warm-up and drills on the deployment patterns he and my executive officer have developed over the past week will, unfortunately, be all too short—but the strike vessels themselves should be substantially more effective than the enemy’s, even despite the larger numbers the enemy is expected to deploy. The benefits of a higher level of overall technology, not to mention substantially more experience both as a race and as individuals in the arts of war cannot be denied, after all, and are often surprisingly pervasive.
Febuary 14th, 9985 EY
The last ship has just reported that its crew has finished the rather arduous process of tuning the engines for the phase-space jump to the Alukcev system. We are to set out for the system tomorrow, jumping in staggered waves so as to provide the maximum phase space disturbance in order to prevent anybody from departing the system for at least two days after the last ships arrive. By that point in time, projections on the expected resources available to the enemy fleet and the numbers of ships we know we have destroyed indicates that we should have completed the conquest of the majority of the system’s population, with the rest to capitulate within sixteen standard units. Barring any unpleasant surprises, we should be able to deploy to our peace-time post-conquest positions within the next two weeks, and begin the final conquest of any remaining enemy colonial possessions soon after that. Based on what I’ve seen as the level of resistance and the time it has taken us to get to this point, I estimate our final list of newly conquered worlds to consist of somewhere between 576 and 640 worlds—a vast empire, and one that, with only a few generations, we could easily expand to rival the old Empire. If these worlds are even half as productive as they are numerous, the combined surplus could, with very little luck necessary, give us sufficient resources to make our stand and defeat the Silence within my lifetime!
Of course, whether or not they will prove to be sufficiently productive is, as yet, impossible to tell—we will have to await the defense of their home system* to be able to determine just how industrious they could be if united. This, in turn, should give us some idea of how productive we can expect them to be once conquered. This is their home system, their last bastion of safety, and the one system that they would put the full measure of their effort into defending. It has inconceivable to almost every race we have encountered thus far that their home system is, ultimately, expendable (the Beetlegeusians and the Mindalorians proved to be the exceptions, but neither possessed a high enough level of technology to be able to drive us from their systems before we were ready to depart). For most races, the bulk of their heavy industry and technological development lie within their home system—for these races, evacuation simply does not seem to occur to them as a viable alternative. Although this particular race has proven to be remarkably willing to allow a dispersal of heavy industry, commerce, and technical development, all indications lead to the Alukcev system as their heart—without this system in their possession, our conquest is assured, and they must know this.
All in all, I believe that we stand poised on the brink of the pivotal battle for what appears to be a rather prosperous alien race that is in the midst of its second or third wave of settlement and expansion.
Civilizations in this period of expansion generally possess something like two hundred major colony vessels in various stages of repair. Intel databases I have access to have accounted for 167 of these vessels either destroyed or damaged so severely that the crew was forced to abandon ship. While the number 200 is probably not precisely accurate, Vasari experience has held consistent that races without major militaries in this period of expansion tend to turn first to their colony ships to provide warship hulls, due to their durability, redundant systems, and high degrees of internal compartmentalization. If this is an especially productive and astute race, we should soon be seeing converted merchant vessels as well as converted colony ships and the armed private space vessels that seem to comprise the bulk of the enemy fleet (as is expected at this stage of their militarization)—we may even see one or two of these converted merchantmen in the initial stages of the conquest of the locals’ home system.
We depart tomorrow. Intelligence has assured us that the conquest will be, if not quick and easy, then at least quick and glorious. I hope to bring glory and fame to my people, my family, and, most of all, to my clan. Give my love to Father, and keep some for yourself.
Your son,
Author’s Note: No, the Alukcev system is not the Trade Order’s home system. The Vasari, for all the effort they have put into the conquest thus far, do not really understand just how vast an extent of territory is encompassed within the Trade Order’s domain, and have mistaken the first majorly developed world for the Trade Order’s home system. It is this lack of comprehension that allows the TEC time to form, to learn how to most effectively employ its vast resources, and to deploy an increasingly effective defense of Trade Order systems.
Chapter 2:
The Fall of The Alukceyev Dynasty
Frank Richardson
In the Employ of Maha Kamerun Nirini Vaashti
11-16 N. Mountside Avenue
Farsino, 55115-8789945-17
Febuary 15th, 9985 EY
Hey Frank!
Sorry to take so long to get in touch with you, but I’m afraid I’ve been rather busy getting settled in here. They’ve put me to work learning the language for now—I guess they’re going to ask me to maintain the books for them, because that’s what they’re using for a primer. Well, what there is of the books, anyway. It seems our conquerors have never heard of double-entry book-keeping, because their method of keeping track of expenses and profits is archaic at best, and fiendishly complex. I’m afraid I’ve taken to keeping a separate copy of the books of the supervisor I’ve been assigned to, just so I can use a logical system to try and make sense out of the morass of claims and counter-claims. This is sad, because I am not, as you well know, inclined towards the accounting end of economics, and the effort of untangling one from another has been painful, at best. Needless to say, I have decided not to continue using the Vasari numeric system and alphabet that they have been trying to teach me—it is too complex, and, while important to know, to clumsy to use effectively.
Speaking of which, I need a PDA, preferably of Trader origin so I can write my own programs if I have to. I have been permitted to make use of the mine supervisor’s PDA for the time being, but his PDA is somewhat…less capable that I would prefer. The sheer inflexibility of its programming alone has reduced me to attempting to maintain my personal copy of the books by hand. Needless to say, unless I can find some way to get a more personalized PDA, I hold little hope for being able to perform any kind of more complex tasks than simple book-keeping.
I know it strikes you as distasteful to work for those who have treated us as the Vasari have, but I urge you not to lose sight of the greater reality—the Trade Order’s resources are effectively limitless, and sooner or later the Central Worlds will awaken to the danger posed by these Vasari, and turn their economic and productive energies toward expelling them. And, as you well know, if the Central Worlds as a whole turn their attention to our plight, the rest of the Trade Order will have to follow. In the meantime, we owe to our families and to our friends to learn, to survive, and to prosper as much as possible. I intend to make a very good profit off of the Vasari before they are forced to flee, and I must hope that you will do so too.
In point of fact, I have a favor to ask of you relating to this. As you already know (I know that you know this, because you passed the Early Post-Colonization Development test just like I did), a young colony’s heavy industry usually gets its initial raw materials from nearby asteroids. Since the Vasari have more or less shut down all local use of the orbital asteroid mines, I expect that the planet-side populace is beginning to suffer from some acute shortages. The Vasari throw out a lot of really useful ores and metals--so I might be able to get my hands on these ores for planet-side use...if you can find an interested buyer, of course.
Sincerely,
Adam Tanyers
Maha Kamerun Virini Vaashti
Febuary 15th, 9985
Dearest Wife,
Adam continues his study of Vasari language apace, but it has already become clear to me that he and his people have as much to teach us as we have to teach them.
As I have mentioned before, I have assigned Adam (the name gets easier and easier to write...I suspect that habit will prove to be both catching and enduring) to one of my supervisors who happened to have some familiarity with the tongue. I have very carefully not inquired as to how this familiarity was obtained, but perhaps I should have.
Part of Adam's training has included instruction in the Vasari script and alphabet, the basis of which was taken from the books of the mine said supervisor was in charge of. Though only the most basic familiarity has been obtained, I have noticed a dramatic improvement in the timeliness and clarity of the reports from that mine. Discreet inquiries have revealed that Adam has been maintaining his own set of the mine's books...books which appear to be more compact and easier to read than our own methods.
This suggests a much higher level of organization and, potentially, productiveness than any race the Vasari have encountered thus far. It also suggests a mindset for the local race of sentients that is...well, terrifying, both in its methodical approach, and in its ability to transform chaos into order. Were we not in such a desperate position in terms of resources and needed downtime for our vessels, I would strongly suggest that Fleet Command simply eradicate all native sentients in this area. Since we really don’t have the resources to be able to afford to do that at this time, I will most probably make only a token recommendation, before proposing a much fuller level of integration than is normally the case, possibly even taking those of the local sentients who prove to be both loyal and trustworthy, and sufficiently capable in the use of Vasari technology, with us when we depart from this region some twenty years hence. It would be a shame, after all, if we were to go through all the effort involved in ruling this race for nearly a generation, only to lose them to the Silence.
Febuary 16th, 9985
The cold-bloodedness of the local sentients is astonishing, as is their level of productivity. Even races with no central governing authority are rarely capable of this degree of callousness, for the locals have simply abandoned half their worlds to our invasion, simply to buy time to fortify their home system. Though I cannot be sure, I would estimate that roughly 2/3 of the total production of those portions of their empire which still remain under their control have gone into the defenses here, and the fact that heavy losses among their colony fleet will soon force them to start cannibalizing the very merchant vessels that have made this level of fortification possible is of little consolation.
To date, despite almost 36 standard units of fighting, we have yet to establish a firm foothold beyond the solar gravity well—and even there, the enemy has shown a disturbing degree of ability to move their vessels in and out of the system. At a guess, I would say that we control no more than 70% of the solar gravity well’s outer edges, and our control of even that much of the gravity well is tenuous at best. Lord Vasseto has stated for the record that he intends to request urgent re-enforcements at the earliest opportunity, but personally, I doubt that they will arrive in time to do any good if we cannot secure a firm planetary foothold to resupply our rapidly dwindling supply of raw materials for shipboard repairs and phase missile assembly, among many other things.
Surprisingly (and perhaps fortunately), the enemy has deployed a previously unsuspected weapons system, one most probably modeled after our own phase missiles, and this new, primitive missile variant has caused considerable havoc among (and no small amount of damage to) the fleet’s lighter vessels. Though we have yet to witness this system deployed onboard anything but the enemy’s ultra-light squadrons, those squadrons which are so equipped have been able to perpetrate daring strikes with relative ease while still evading our fairly clumsy return fire. These, combined with the relatively large size of their home vessels and the sheer durability of the enemy’s gauss platforms, have proven to be a tough and resilient foe.
I believe that the slowly diminishing number of these missile-armed craft is a measure of their scarcity. The weapons system itself is most likely fairly new, and its successful deployment on board combat vessels must still be something of an experiment for the enemy tacticians. Unfortunately, the slow decline of missile-armed vessels has meant a corresponding increase in the original variant, which is still armed with the twin auto-cannons of before. While Hsasi Bhroos’s vessels have proven admirably effective against the newer variant, his vessels seem to lack the maneuverability to engage in effective combat with the older models. Despite Hsasi’s assertions that this lack is merely a lack of skill, I have quietly ordered the replacement of the small pulse cannon with an additional pair of phase missile launchers on the ultra-light scale as his remaining vessels return to the ship to re-arm their missile launchers. Hopefully, this will help make up for the lack of numbers and bridge the gap in maneuvering capability with increased accuracy and firepower. Hopefully.
Situation Report: Alukcev System Offensive
Fleet Command, M’geddon System, Planet R
Hacu Vasseto (temporary)
Febuary 16th, 9985 EY
Honor to the Emperor, whose glory we will bring forth anew.
My Lords and Ladies,
I beg to inform you that the enemy is far more heavily fortified than we had initially anticipated, and has managed to combine fortifications of unusual density with a new weapons system to stall our offensive against their home system in the local solar gravity well. To date, they have refused to advance beyond the capability of their fortifications to provide covering fire without an overwhelming numerical advantage, and the unexpectedly short range of our Skirmishers’ pulse guns has resulted in heavy casualties among the lighter vessels attached to my fleet. Traditional hit-and-run tactics have so far failed to gain any decisive advantage in return for the cost in men and morale, and I may soon find myself forced to resort to shock tactics if I cannot be resupplied, and resupplied soon. I am particularly in need of Desolaters outfitted for planetary assault and additional Marauders, as these vessels have so far proven by far the most effective vessels under my command. Without Marauder support in particular, I have found my Kortul class vessels to be distressingly unsuited for the hit-and-run tactics our race is accustomed to once the enemy’s ultra-light vessels enter combat in any kind of numbers, and several Kortul Devastators have been severely damaged when their captains underestimated the ability of the enemy ultra-light warships to close and effectively engage.
I wish to recommend Szlektas Kamerun Jeias Vaashti and Gasavi Hannis Olau, commanding the Kausr and the Isonis respectively, for their skill and bravery in combat, as well as for tactical adroitness. The Isonis in particular has been subjected to heavy attacks almost throughout the course of this operation (operating, I suppose, on the principle that if your enemy fields anything the size of an Evacuator and you don’t know what it is, then you are ill-advised to wait and find out when that ship’s function is fulfilled), and has repeatedly suffered what should have been crippling damage to her drives, small boat bays, communications systems, and various weapons batteries. It is only through truly heroic efforts on the part of the Isonis’s crew and that of the Kausr that the Isonis has yet to be rendered completely incapable of combat operations. During the course of these repairs and repeated attacks, the two vessels and their escorts have managed to destroy three enemy battle-cruisers outright, drive a fourth back into the system, and I have confirmed reports that the two vessels and their escorts have destroyed over seventy-two additional lighter vessels between them, including nearly 16 frigates*.
Having done and redone the math, I cannot fault my analysts’ assessment of the situation. Unless the local resources that we have not yet conquered were vastly under-estimated, these fortifications must have been prepared over the course of several years. The nature of war and its disruptions to a peaceful society are such that there simply would have been no time to gather the resources, design the fortifications, and deploy the platforms in time to make a difference otherwise. In lieu of any orders to the contrary, I have decided to contact the Kamerun family of Clan Vaashti in an effort to determine the validity of our basic assumptions. I have sent both recordings and samples of what little salvage we have been able to obtain to the Strana System, where the bulk of the Kamerun facilities are currently located, along with additional recordings and samples to both Fleet Intelligence and Fleet Supply. Although the Vaashti are not supposed to take part in current combat analysis, and have been barred from active military intelligence work, I felt this necessary—the enemy has clearly discovered a method of penetrating the armor of our combat vessels, even though my assigned intelligence staff still maintains that this is clearly impossible. Given that the Kamerun family was created within the Vaashti clan specifically to study and analyze native technology and scientific learning, I felt it wise to enlist their aid in answering a question (or series of questions) in an area that is unquestionably their area of expertise.
I have ordered the Desolators assigned to this operation be refitted into a planetary assault configuration, and I will deploy the bulk of my capital ships to form an assault force—I anticipate acquiring a permanent planetary foothold within the system within twenty-four standard units.
I await your response, and am your loyal officer:
Hacu Vassetos Adlbor Kruppianer
*=Author’s Note: Vasari tend to think in terms of four or eight, instead of five or ten like we do. The reason for this is quite simple if you think about it—while we have five fingers per hand, and two hands, the Vasari only have four fingers per hand, and two hands. Thus, Adlbor’s report on the rough numbers of vessels destroyed by the Kausr and Isonis so far is “more than seventy-two lighter vessels,” and “almost sixteen frigates” translate into what we would call “more than seventy lighter vessels,” and “about fifteen frigates.”
Maha Kamerun Virini Vaashti,
Strana System, Planet M,
Dear Madam,
Although I am aware that neither my family nor my clan are on the very best of terms with your clan and your family, I find myself in a dire situation. I have been ordered to besiege and ultimately capture the local sentients’ home system, and having assembled the forces required to do so, have unexpectedly found myself stymied by local weapons technology and defensive fortifications that are markedly superior to what my intelligence staff has asserted to be possible. I do not believe that they are incorrect in this matter, as I have, over the past few years, learned to trust their honesty, if nothing else, but at the same time I am faced with incontrovertible evidence that somebody has misjudged the situation.
The analysts assigned to me by Fleet Command have informed me that there should be nothing to worry about—the weapons impacts upon the shields are precisely in line with a race developing ballistics after a two or three hundred year period with no real weapons research,** and they have scaled almost perfectly in accordance with what experience has taught us to expect. I have sent a copy of these recordings, along with my staff’s analysis, for your perusal. I have also contacted Fleet Intelligence, Central Analysis, as well as Fleet Supply, in case the issue is one of improving enemy tactics (unexpected, to be sure, but this would not be the first time) or one of inferior supply.
I realize that this analysis will take time from your regular duties, and that the study itself will be expensive. Nevertheless, my family and my clan would be grateful if you could discover just what, exactly, has been happening.
Please reply as soon as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Bajorai Nemizeez Icis Brifdel
Fleet Intelligence Office, M’geddon System, Planet P
Bajorai,
I am sorry to disturb you, but an unexpected lapse in our analysis of local weapons capabilities has come to my attention. Despite repeated efforts, the analysts attached to my staff have proven unable to pierce to the guts of this mystery, and I must therefore refer it to your offices.
In short, despite repeated assurances and what data that appears to exactly correlate with those assurances, the enemy has proven able to deploy weapons capable of penetrating and destroying Vasari combat hulls, despite armor and hull construction far in advance of anything local sentients have so far proven themselves capable of. I am at a loss to explain why this is so, or why our nanites seem unable to respond to and repair the damage in the rapid manner to which I have long been accustomed, but, I would appreciate any insights you can give me as to how this has been accomplished. As I have said before, the analysts attached to my staff have been unable to pierce this mystery, and I am told that the more extensive laboratories and larger staff of analysts available at the central office for Fleet Intelligence are much more likely to be able to do so. If this is, indeed, true, it would greatly relieve me—without some appreciation for how the enemy has been able to damage the vessels placed under my command, I have no realistic possibility of maneuvering to minimize the potential damage.
I have sent what samples we could find of both enemy weapons and what salvage is left of our own vessels, as well as copies of the ship’s combat logs and whatever additional data could be found. Current efforts at repair revolve largely around the Kausr, an old Skirantra class vessel which was somehow included in the fleet assigned to this task, and we have discovered (at some cost) that a sufficient number of repair nanites will repair the damage over time, but only the Skirantra fleet tender has proven to be capable of producing sufficient nanites to repair other ships in the fleet (the single Jarrasul Evacuator assigned has proven to be capable of producing enough nanites for self-repair processes, but simply lacks the capacity to produce more). I have also sent additional samples and copies to Fleet Supply, as well as the one of the survey facilities of the Kamerun family of the Vaashti clan. While I realize that this was presumptuous of me, I felt that, since this is what the Vaashti Kameruns are supposed to do, we might as well make use of it (or know the reason why).
I have sent additional footage of recordings made in combat which have not been sent to either Fleet Supply or any clan or family in the Exodus Fleet, regarding the enemy’s ultra-light warships in action. It has been made apparent to me in the harshest possible manner that the enemy has badly misused these vessels before now, deploying them in limited numbers to cover their limited number of capital ships while they try to valiantly hold on the face of over-whelming odds. Enemy use of these vessels in the Alukcev system has proven to be both effective and pervasive, and unlike earlier encounters, sufficient numbers have been present thus far to make casualties a certainty. The ultra-light warships have proven to be fast enough to be able to outrun and out-maneuver even our lightest scouts and frigates, small and stealthy enough to be effectively impossible to target using the weapons available to larger vessels, and yet still large enough to be able to withstand both a surprising punishment, and the very best available in terms of the Vasari race’s electronic warfare capability. More disturbingly, many of these vessels have begun to deploy guided missiles which are also equally capable of disarming our electronic defenses. Large numbers of these missiles have been deployed in this fight, and, disturbingly, I have seen very few veer off course, and almost all of those have immediately either looped back around for another attack run, or simply veered off and detonated, presumably so that we would not be able to analyze them ourselves. I have taken heavy casualties, particularly in light frigates, from both these variants of ultra-light warship, and, in light of my fleet’s near total inability to stop these vessels from harassing and even destroying us, I urge you to revisit earlier estimates of these vessels’ combat utility.
On a perhaps related note, the enemy has finally achieved the large-scale deployment of category 4 projectile weapons platforms. As you know, this means that they have successfully deployed weapons capable of using magnetic impulses to propel projectiles. This is almost certainly not new information for Fleet Intelligence. What may be new information is that an additional defense has been deployed which, though less effective, seems to be even cheaper to manufacture in numbers. The Alukcev system is littered with small, semi-permanent platforms apparently intended to launch short-range volleys of their new missile weapon at any nearby foes. Boarding parties have managed to take several of these platforms more or less intact (they appear to be largely automated), and I have sent one of them to Fleet Intelligence on the same special courier that bears both this message and the records and samples regarding enemy weapons effects. The origin of these platforms is uncertain, but, again, they appear to be of short duration only—scouts have reported large vessels deploying additional platforms and recovering expended platforms after most attacks within this system.
I await your response:
Febuary 16th (again) 9985 EY
Interestingly, Hsasi Bhroos has requested the same modification be made as the one I had ordered. He has also stated that it is clear that a major re-design of our ultra-light warship--clearly, the emphasis must be speed and manueverability over durability, with accuracy being the major area of emphasis over sheer, raw damage. It is also clear that at least two variants will be required (many of my officers had hoped that the one would be sufficient), as well as a dedicated pilot training program.
Of the original fifteen pilots procured by Hsasi Bhroos, only two remain--Bhroos himself, and one Kamerun Mynami Vaashti, a member of my own family whom I had quietly detailed to keep an eye on Hsasi Bhroos and try to make sure he stayed alive. The two of them have apparently been able to present a much larger amount of firepower than normal, which I guess makes the enemy reluctant to engage them.
I have authorized twelve standard units’ worth of additional computer run time as soon as we reach a down period, and am hoping that a more capable strike variant of these ultra-light warships can be designed and produced before the next major attack. Lord Vassetos has ordered the Desolators configured for planetary assault—they should be ready within the next four standard units. At that point, all that will be left will be to phase jump to Planet C, and demolish its defenses. I would like to say that it will be easy, but so little has gone according to expectations thus far that I am reluctant to do so.
Bajorai Templatis Ferrus Kruppianer
Fleet Supply Distribution, M'geddon System, Planet C
Sir,
During the most recent conquest assigned to vessels under my command, I have been the recipient of a disturbing number of surprises, the most unsettling of which has been the repeated and consistent failure of our combat vessels' armor to withstand weapons fire which should be completely unable to penetrate said armor. Obviously, this is a rather severe problem, and one which I wish to rectify as soon as is practical.
I have sent samples of the failed armor along with the recorded shield energy expenditures, to Fleet Supply headquarters by way of special courier. As you can see from these figures, this failure is NOT within expected parameters--either we are seeing a monumental failure on the part of our suppliers, or our intelligence is potentially disastrously incorrect. Either case is cause for serious concern, and I would appreciate it if you would investigate, and find out which was the case, I would be most grateful.
Fleet Supply Distribution, M’geddon System, Planet C
Febuary 19th, 9985 EY
Your Most Honored Excellencies,
I have just received a missive from Hacu Vassetos requesting that I look into the question of native weaponry and its ability to affect our vessels. As you are aware, I am unqualified for weapons analysis, but I can comment on the natives' production abilities, and I must warn you that our initial estimates of local productive capacity appear to have been incorrect. Local sentients have repeatedly displayed an incredibly high level of organization in groups of all sizes, and appear to have no problems with the rapid assimilation of incredibly complex systems and knowledge. I also must warn you that, unfortunately, the Kamerun family has yet to pierce the encryption methods securing local databases, technical or otherwise. Nor have we managed to achieve any kind of interface between local computer systems and our own, substantially more advanced systems. So far, all knowledge we have gleaned has had to come from local experts, at least one of which will have to accompany me to any meetings we hold for the simple reason that I do not understand the vast majority of the information he holds within his head. I cannot vouch for his trustworthiness, nor can I vouch for how willing to help us he will be—but, to be honest, he’s the only lead the Kamerun family has to offer. If you do not wish his presence, I do have some insights I will gladly lend to your investigations, but my own personal understanding is not only fragmentary and incomplete, but, as has already been demonstrated to me, frequently incorrect. Whether you choose to avail yourself of my talents or not, I strongly suggest that at least one representative from the Suppression Corps be present, in case local sabotage proves to be the culprit. Local artisans have proven highly skilled in electro-magnetic manipulation, and it is possible that some way of affecting our vessels or their armor from a distance and perhaps even through our vessels’ shields has been discovered. I have sent a copy of what I have found so far to your headquarters by way of special courier, and would appreciate any and all information you can send my way in return.
May the Exodus Perservere,
Kamerun Virini Vaashti
Szlekt Kamerun Jeias Vaashti
VIV Kausr, Solar orbit, Alukcev system
Febuary 18th, 9985
I am sorry to have taken so long to reply to your letter
I must admit to being…disturbed by a great number of things in the letter you wrote to me on January 23rd. First and foremost is the fact that you have been given command of a ship with a very mixed crew. While Fleet Command does have the privilege of both assigning new commands to existing families, and ordering new capital ships constructed, it should not have the authority to assign members of multiple different clans, or even families, to crew the vessel. That is an age-old right of the clans, and I cannot believe that any would so blithely surrender that right for any reason. Not only that, but having a crew of several different clans on board a single vessel like that is inherently dangerous, even with a single educational facility to train potential officers and technicians. It is, I am afraid, simply a fact—Vaashti does not think like Brifdel, and neither of these great clans thinks like Kruppianer, and this lack of coordinated thinking has consistently led to both uprisings, not to mention severe limitations in terms of combat performance.
Additionally, the Vanguard is traditionally barred from new capital ship construction until the main Exodus Fleet arrives. This is an old law, dating back to the formation of the Vanguard itself, and, I think, a good one, as it restricts the clans within the Vanguard from accruing undue influence and power within the Exodus Fleet—and that is a judgment which, sadly, includes our own Vaashti clan as well. The construction of new capital ships by the Vanguard bodes ill for the traditional balance of power within the Exodus Fleet, and we cannot afford the civil strife that will almost certainly result if this imbalance is not corrected and corrected soon.
Finally, I am concerned with the class of vessel itself. I realize that, as your first capital ship, the Kausr undoubtedly holds a special place for you, but…the truth is that the Kausr is almost certainly intended to be a political weapon to be used against both you personally, and against the Vaashti clan in general (not to mention most likely against the Kamerun family). The fact that a design as old and outdated as a Skirantra has been modernized is cold comfort to those who must fight from the confines of her hull, and the very fact of the obsolescence of her design means that she will be unable to compete even with a Marauder or Evacuator in terms of raw firepower. In short, your vessel is not capable of functioning as a ship of battle, nor is it capable of acting as a regular ordinary cruiser…but because the Kausr is a capital ship, and one with almost completely modern systems, we cannot successfully claim either insult or negligence without using up an enormous number of favors, not to mention looking ungrateful in the extreme.
Be careful, son. Somebody has set you up to fail, and to fail ignominiously. If you cannot pull everything you learned at the Academy and more besides into action, you will not only perish with your crew, but you will bring disaster to your family and your clan in so doing.
Your loving Mother,
P.S. My studies into local technology and culture have led me to believe that the locals don’t think the way we do, nor do they act or react in any manner even remotely similar to ours. I don’t know how much it will help, but…question everything, particularly any estimates of local capability that your staff assures you are armor-clad, and if possible, see what you can do about developing some surprises of your own to use against the enemy.
Alukcev System,
Febuary 20th, 9985 EY
Your Excellency,
We have received both the samples, and the combat records you have sent to us by way of special courier, and have returned said courier with our preliminary analysis. To date, after almost forty-eight standard hours of searching, no sign of armor penetration has been found on any of the some 1700 armor and hull fragments you sent to our base for analysis. Heavy thermal scarring is present on almost all pieces, which has obliterated many of the traces we would normally use to look for the cause of unexpected armor failure, particularly on those pieces which would normally be facing an interior portion of the ship. The level of thermal scarring, particularly on pieces believed to come from the more central decks, seems to indicate a spontaneous and catastrophic reactor failure as the main cause for ship destruction, something that would normally only occur in very old ships or ships with some fatal, hidden weakness. As no ship reported lost to enemy action was less than two generations old, and none more than twenty, this failure cannot be attributed to normal reactor fatigue, nor can it be attributed entirely to crew error, as loss rates are far too high above the projected levels for this to be likely.
Beyond that, it would be simpler to tell you what we know it is not, rather than what it must be. It is not any kind of normal projectile fire, as outer hull armor is suffering severe damage levels from sheering between composite layers that simply should not be possible with normal Class 3 projectile fire. Thermal scarring on the outside of external armor indicates the likelihood of heavy laser fire, but, again, the level of damage is out of all proportion to the amount of energy shields are blocking, and the external thermal scarring on interior surfaces has obliterated any trace of what might have gone wrong.
Missile impacts appear to be from simple Armor Piercing concussion warheads, using a standard shaped explosive charge combined with the missile’s kinetic energy when striking to create a focus of intense pressure upon a metallic nose-cone. Said cone then collapses, and is pushed of the front of the missile at high speeds to impact the hull of the target. Here, at least, something unusual has presented itself—judging by the number of impacts, somewhere in excess of forty percent of Estimated Local Industrial/Military Production would have to have been dedicated to missile manufacture in order to generate this many hits. Armor hit by these weapons has, again, indicated severe damage out of all proportion to the actual Predicted Yield of native warheads manufactured using the local level of technology, although in this case it is most likely nothing to be alarmed at, as the enemy is most likely simply using a larger warhead or more powerful conventional explosives than is the norm. At the displayed PY level, it is estimated that local Trader ELI/MP levels will be unable to resupply missile defenses, and that these defenses should run dry shortly.
Again, however, we cannot accurately judge exactly what is happening without a substantially more extensive examination, both of the samples and records we have been sent. Additionally, Bajorai Kruppianer has authorized a team of engineers to return on the same courier you sent to us, in an effort to examine a damaged, but undestroyed vessel. Any co-operation you and said vessel’s crew can extend would be greatly appreciated.
Glory to the Empire,
VIV Kausr, Alukcev System
Febuary 21st, 9985 EY
Szlekt Kamerun,
Fleet Supply has responded to official requests for information as to how such enormous success on the part of the locals has been achieved, and have dispatched an engineering team to examine the damaged vessels. Therefore, you are to immediately set aside a selection of damaged vessels for examination upon their arrival.
Koenigikstis Carus Felessas Vaashti
Szabolc System, Planet E
Dear Sir,
I hesitate to write a man of your stature on what surely must seem to be a rather trivial matter, most especially given the long transit times involved in sending a letter from the Vanguard’s current location to the bulk of the Exodus Fleet, but I feel I have no choice—I simply do not have the authority to do what honor requires of me.
Five weeks ago, I was given command of the VIV Kausr, a new Skirantra class vessel with a crew of 12,000, representing almost 28 clans of varying sizes, ranging from the very small to the fairly large. Yes, my Patriarch, you did read correctly—28 clans are represented in the crew of this vessel. Fortunately, keeping discipline among the vessel’s crew, while technically challenging, has not been too strenuous, but part of what has been involved in this has been a serious effort on my part to ensure that none of the other clans feel the Vaashti, or any other clan, to be held in higher regard than any other individual of equivalent rank. Herein lies my problem, for one of these individuals, a member of the Hsasi family of the Jandali clan, has displayed a rare combination of extreme courage, exceptional organizational talent, and what amounts to something very near brilliance in the area of weaponry design. Thanks to his efforts, the Kausr has been able to deploy a potent new weapon that holds the potential to make the Skirantra a viable warship once again, and will prove to be an enormous asset to the Exodus Fleet.
I do not have the authority to reward him as fully as he undoubtedly deserves. He has overcome immense technical and organizational challenges to field this new weapon, and has personally overseen and participated in not only the deployment and initial evaluation of several proto-types, but has led the combat-testing of the weapon while under heavy fire. This weapon has already proven itself several times over as a potent device in some of the heaviest combat seen in almost seventy-two years, and there is no doubt that with further refinement, it will prove to be extremely beneficial to the Exodus Fleet as a whole. There is no question that both he, and those he has persuaded him to lend him their aid in this project deserve rewards, and I have given those whose involvement was minor enough what rewards I could without exceeding my authority, but…again, I do not know what reward I can grant that is both appropriate and within my authority.
Personally, I feel Hsasi Bhroos’s services to be great enough to warrant either induction into clan Vaashti (possibly into one of the more military families, although this would be up to you), or, failing that, a more permanent alliance with the Jandali clan. I foresee a great future for Hsasi Bhroos, and I would not be totally surprised if he managed to do something totally surprising and unexpected. If this is indeed the case, I would very much prefer to be at his side and able to reap the benefits of that future, instead of being an obstacle to his path and being smashed by it. As I have indicated before, Hsasi Bhroos’ innovation has created a weapons system the like of which has never before been seen in the Vasari fleets, and given his drive, organization, and obvious capability, it seems likely that this is only the beginning. I remain uncertain, however, of the best course of action, and would appreciate your advice, and whatever help you can give me.
Your loyal subject,
Kamerun Jeias Vaashti
I have seen my first heavy fighting, and, as the philosopher Lytin Whiidle has said, it is difficult to imagine anything more glorious. The tearing crash of gauss cannons impacting the hull, the rending shriek of lasers, the ringing hammer sound of autocannon fire, and even the rumbling impact of missiles striking upon our hull combine to create a symphony of battle that no training vid can ever really match.
Casualties have been heavy, yet despite this, we have taken our first world within the system--a small Terran-type world we have designated Planet C. Though heavily defended, the natives simply had not had time to deploy sufficiently powerful weapons to bring our offensive to a halt.
Despite this, the natives have managed to inflict heavy damage. Nearly the entire first wave of Skirmisher vessels has been destroyed, and every vessel in the first pack of capital ships has taken heavy damage. Those captains that are not currently busy repairing their vessels are either dead, or were among those fortunate few detailed to stand watch over the outer edges of the planet's gravity well--despite the fortifications, responses to our assault were slow and poorly co-ordinated, and were easily defeated in detail.
The Kausr was not among those vessels, and was instead in the second pack of capital vessels, for whom we were designated to stand as a sort of mobile regeneration bay. While this probably prevent even heavier casualties, I could nonetheless wish for a more active, glorious role in today's battle--but no matter, for the Kausr came under heavy attack from the planet's defenders almost immediately, and the attacks did not cease until the defenders were elminated entirely. We are still undertaking repairs as I write this, but as of now, the repairs are in the hands of what have become well-trained damage control parties, and the process is taking care of itself.
The nanite dumps have proven their worth unequivocably--had we not been capable of this task, we would have taken far heavier casualties. As it is, even with the ability to repair vessels on the battlefield, the sheer density of enemy defenses, combined with the doomed ferocity of the defenders, have cost us dearly--almost two hundred light frigates destroyed in a single clash of arms, and a pair of Kortul Devastators smashed into splinters by heavy gauss cannon fire. Hacu Vassetos has ordered that all surviving, undamaged frigates report for harassment raids into the relatively undefended heart of the system, and the rest of the fleet is to follow as soon as repairs are complete. The Isonis, the sole Evacuator assigned to the fleet, has reported final lockdown of Planet C to be complete, and, as I have already said, repairs of the main fleet are well under way.
Interestingly, it seems our casualties are unusual enough to warrant Fleet Supply sending an engineering team to the system to examine the cause of our heavy casualties, and I have been ordered to have several vessels reporting for repairs set aside and left as they were. I find this a doubtful proposition--our control of the system's solar gravity well is tenuous at best, and the erosion of our control over the solar gravity well is both rapid, and constant. They had better arrive quickly, or we will not be able to guarantee these experts' safe arrival. Still, I have set several vessels aside for these experts’ examination, with varying degrees of damage—some are essentially undamaged, excepting only a very few impacts, and some are so badly damaged that their reactors had to be shut down pending the arrival of the team. These last vessels have been shut down completely, and their crews are currently on leave on the planet below.
So far, we have yet to see any kind of local reaction to our victory--I believe that they have chosen to stay at their initial defensive line, instead of reacting to our maneuver, but at the same time, I believe that they do have some sense of their impending doom. The time to defeat our incursion is past--any chance of doing so should have been taken while we were caught between this world's phase lanes and the orbital gauss platforms. Now, at this point in time, there is no longer a chance to do so. The locals have proven brave...but their efforts betray a failure to understand the fundamental tenets of warfare. With our seizure of World C, we now have the resources to repair our vessels, replace our losses, and, most important of all, feed our soldiers.
In short, the locals have lost both their perimeter, and their only real chance of an initial victory in this battle. Yet, despite this, they still keep on fighting, bringing yet more re-enforcements into the system, seemingly intent on making this battle an all-or-nothing last stand. Scouts report the enormous merchant vessels disgorging enormous amounts of raw materials, huge numbers of ground troops, and, of course, ever more of the ubiquitous strike craft, this being the name I have chosen to give the enemy’s ultra-light warships. It seems a fitting name, anyway, as they are invariably accompanied by another vessel whose sole purpose seems to be to transport them from one place to another, using the ultra-light vessels to strike at their enemy. It seems a good idea, and I have ordered the Kausr refitted to enable us to launch strike craft of our own. So far, our strike craft cannot match the sheer effectiveness of the enemy’s (I loathe to admit this, but the enemy’s superior experience at strike craft design shows clearly), but we are steadily improving, and I hope we will soon be able to I realize that my letters written to you will not yet have arrived, but I do want to assure you that I am in good health, and, it seems, becomingly increasingly important to the continued smooth functioning of this fleet.
Incidentally, I have written the Clan Patriarch of the Vaashti concerning Hsasi Bhroos, concerning a suitable reward for this exemplary individual. His actions have not only enable me to at least temporarily transform an inglorious posting into something substantially more combat-worthy, but they have also given the Exodus fleet what increasingly looks to be an incredibly potent and versatile weapon of war. To be honest, I do not know what to do for him—to give him the reward merited for such an enormous achievement is well beyond my authority, or that of the Hacu, but I must do something, as the stability of my crew in large part depends upon a belief that I will not regard my family or clan as being better in any way than those who are not.
Anyway, I suspect that I have bored you long enough. Tomorrow, we are to resume offensive operations deeper into the system. The few Navigators assigned to the fleet report that even the planets and gravity wells much deeper in the system are heavily defended, so I must prepare for these operations carefully. Give my love to Father, and keep some for yourself.
Your befuddled son,
Adam Tanyers,
In the employ of Nawab Kamerun Vitale Vaashti
Dear Adam,
Sorry I took so long getting back to you, but it took a few days to really get people talking to me. Primarily this is because the planet-side populace is facing enormous shortages in almost every aspect of day to day life, and as a result, there are a number of scams and con artists promising the very same thing that I was trying to sell. Plus, as you well know, I have never been a very good businessman, which is part of the reason I wanted to study economics.
Be that as it may, I have found some buyers who are willing to pay up to five hundred credits per ton of ore you can ship, cash on delivery. Mostly, they are small-scale manufacturers who have either exhausted their job load, their existing stock of raw materials, or have seen the latest round of confiscations destroy whatever stock they had left. The global nature of business, and the destructive nature of the “demonstration” strikes on the planet’s surface have combined to ensure that what raw materials can be produced locally, cannot be moved to where they are needed in any kind of timely, cost-effective manner. The tourist trade, incidentally, which was once a staple of many beach towns and minor islands, has all but disappeared, and unless the Vasari relax their control sometime soon, I don’t envision it ever re-appearing short of the invaders packing up and leaving.
Anyway, the buyers I have found so far have requested mostly chromium, palladium, and molybdenum, with small amounts of iron and copper thrown in. These are not the most exotic of metals, obviously, but they are in the shortest supply, since the most easily processed ores tend to form primarily in low-oxygen conditions (except for iron and copper, and that’s just because nobody can move iron and copper around the planet’s surface anymore. Rumor has it that the transportation problems are frustrating the Vasari as well, but nobody can really offer any proof other than the re-activation of the sub-orbital delivery systems. The railroads and the ports are still not open, obviously, but the local mail corp has resumed its activity, so at the very least we should be able to communicate more quickly than before. This seven-day turnaround is for the birds, I tell you—I want something cheap, fast, and reliable, not this “It’ll get there when it gets there” crapola the Vasari have been using.
Oh yes, and one guy has said that he would like any kind of optical micro-crystals you can get your hands on, even if they are still embedded in the ores they’re dug from—apparently the Vasari have been demanding first call on all locally produced materials used in any kind of optical computer, and he wants to start making computers again. I don’t really know why they want the local crystal supplies, when those formed in zero-g are so much better, but apparently they do. He’s promised us both PDAs, and maybe even a personal computer or two if we can get him at least half a ton of mid-grade optical crystals in the next four weeks, so see what you can do.
Anyway, hope this works out for you, but it’s the best prices I could get.
Frank Richards.
Internal Files, Classification: Secret,
Exodus Suppression Corps, Strana Div.
Routine situational report
Native traffic continues to be light, even after inter-planetary communication has been allowed to begin re-establishing itself.
Local armed resistance has dwindled to almost nothing following increased troop deployment levels, which in turn has led to reduced casualties among occupying units. Despite this, however, sporadic attacks continue, and if ineffective in destroying Vasari troops and equipment, have proven to be a slow but steady drain on occupation forces’ morale and discipline. As of yet, only Vaashti and Kruppianer potentates have managed to establish militarily sustainable planetary occupations within the Strana system. It is strongly recommended that corrective measures to reinforce the importance of discipline and restore morale among the rest of the occupying forces in the Strana system be taken immediately, lest we lose planets to native rebellion.
Surveillance of Vaashti-occupied planets has revealed unusually high native activity, and even occasional demonstrations of unrest. While the bulk of this activity remains unmonitored, what unrest has developed has been put down with more than satisfactory severity. On at least two occasions to date, Vaashti governors have called in orbital strikes against “protest marches” staged by distressed natives. Despite this, Vaashti governors have made no effort to suppress the native information exchange networks, although, admittedly, this may not prove to be possible—the Kruppianer have, and have proven no more successful than the Vaashti, who have not.
Efforts to decrypt local messages and databanks have as yet been unsuccessful. Even the most basic databases appear to use mutating encryption schemes, and attempts to simply bypass the circuits involved with these schemes have failed, due primarily to a lack of understanding of local electronic circuit technology. Efforts to determine the cause of such extreme levels of security have thus far proven unsuccessful, and unless we can achieve success with the interface project, we believe that there is no chance of decrypting even the most elementary databases before the Silence forces us to depart. Frequency hopping transmissions and numerous “ghost calls” have made direction-finding on local radios largely useless, and, again, we have little to no hope of finding any kind of useful intelligence using this method. It is strongly recommended that infiltration and psychological warfare be employed to ensure security, as well as increased levels of lockdown for local planets. It is also believed likely that genetic engineering will give us the edge with the more inhospitable worlds in the system.
Pursuant to your orders, I have completed my initial survey of the locals’ technology base*, particularly with a view of integrating local knowledge and technology with our own, and am sending to you the summary of my preliminary report. The full report, consisting of some 300 mega-bytes worth of data, will of course be delivered to the clan archive ships** as soon as possible—I estimate not more than two weeks’ elapsed time between your receipt of this report and the final delivery to the archive ships.
In short, the situation is both heartening, and extremely distressing. The distress comes from the simple fact that I have found no more than two to three dozen devices—out of thousands routinely present in just an average household, mind you—that appear to operate using scientific principles that we know and understand. I have located several hundred more devices that appear to operate upon a vastly refined knowledge of principles we are already aware of, but, unfortunately, I have no idea how long it would take for us to advance our technology to an equivalent level of understanding.
This, you understand, is an average household, and makes no mention of any kind of manufacturing apparatus, vessels, or any other aspect of local industry, transport, or technology. While it would appear that the majority of items we use for every day support are more capable, I would hesitate to call them more advanced, and, honestly, I do not know if the difference in capability is a result of technical limitations, or simply a conscious decision on the part of the locals to make individual household items less capable than our own craftsman make ours.*** Local industry is often similarly baffling. Even more than the local households, the devices used do not appear to make use of any technological principles with which we are familiar (besides the principle that if you get metal hot enough, it will melt sooner or later), and the use of skilled artisans in manufacture of even the simplest devices appears to be almost non-existent. I have found a number of structures, many of which remind me of the great manufactories of the Myelehin people, but which almost universally lack the immense numbers of artisans required to run said manufactories, instead seeming to rely primarily upon the machinery—the tools themselves, in fact—to undertake the bulk of the industrial labor. I have checked and rechecked the archives available to the Kamerun family, and nothing similar has been found in the history of the Vasari Empire.
What I can tell you for certain is that the locals routinely manage to achieve levels of efficiency that are unheard of among the Vasari people. Enormous effort is dedicated to the design of these buildings or devices, rather less to the construction of the initial buildings, and then no more than two to four people are required to handle the bulk of the locals’ production needs—and this from a society that seems wealthy and materialistic in the extreme. In slightly less time than it takes to train a single master craftsman, almost triple the resources are expended, and the resulting production is almost thirty times greater than even a master craftsman could achieve. What is even more interesting is that the locals often complain that their resource and population base is not sufficiently large to allow truly efficient use of local resources and time to take place. As to what is meant by this, I must confess to having been unable to pierce this mystery, and know no more now than I did before.
On a related note, the native populace is not only highly educated, but has created an almost dizzying array of peculiar scientific and engineering disciplines, which range from the proper distribution of resources to a search for the most universally balanced application of local laws, even to the most effective way of using the local language to avoid confusion and yet swiftly convey the message. Enormous amounts of time are spent by this race doing nothing truly productive, and the locals’ lives seem to be dictated by chance and random chaos, yet they have unquestionably achieved great feats--judging by the territory already conquered, the locals have settled a greater number of worlds than any empire previously encountered in the history of the Vasari race, and on almost every single one of these worlds, vast networks of transportation, information distribution, and personal communication are clearly visible (and, in many cases, almost indestructible). In many cases, the local information databases are protected by an extremely complex array of ciphers, codes, and intricately crafted security barriers, and despite having ordered the main computer systems of both archive ships available to the Kamerun family to be concentrated on decrypting the locals’ computer systems, we have yet to make the smallest bit of headway. The local population may not be the proud warrior-race that we have always been, but it would, I think, be a mistake to treat them as we have always treated subject races before. I believe this race to have a great deal of potential, both in terms of capability, and in terms of what they might teach us to achieve. I strongly suggest looking into the possibility of taking as many as possible with us when we depart the area—their knowledge could prove invaluable, and their productive ability could prove to be immensely strengthening for the Exodus Fleet.
Your Humble Servant,
*Author’s Note: The Kamerun family’s primary duty within the Vaashti clan is to conduct an initial survey of the local technical capabilities, and find what, if any, local technology or techniques can be adapted to efficiently fill the Exodus Fleet’s needs. This information is made available to the entire Exodus Fleet as soon as the survey is complete, but many still grumble over the Vaashti clan’s decision to arbitrarily ram the Kamerun family’s inclusion in the Vanguard through Fleet Command’s standing rules of selection, and many seem to feel that the Vaashti are still holding out even with the final report (they are, but since the Vaashti are paying for this, nobody’s called them on it yet).
**Author’s Second Note: The archive ships are a type of vessel unique to the Vaashti, and they are present at the ratio of two for every family, no matter how minor. They range in size from slightly larger than an Enforcer heavy cruiser to the two models used by the Kamerun family, which are almost exactly halfway between the Enforcer and the Marauder in size. These enormous, completely unarmed vessels contain digital records of very nearly everything that the Exodus fleet has learned over the years, as well as a wide selection of the very best computers the Vasari are capable of building. The two archive ships available to the Kamerun family, in particular, quite easily represent the greatest concentration of computational power in the Exodus fleet, and the cumulative total of the Vaashti’s archive ships comprises nearly six percent of the Exodus Fleet’s total computer capability.
***Author’s Third Note (this is getting absurd): As you may have guessed, the Vasari have adapted an industrial model very similar to pre-WWII Japan, complete with “cottage” industries and craftsmen producing the bulk of the race’s finished goods. This is primarily in reaction to nanite-based technology, which allows a single individual to make a literally endless array of high-quality goods out of nothing more than the raw base materials. In contrast, the Trade Order uses something much closer to a hyper-advanced assembly-line technique, and specializes in the economical mass production of extremely high quality goods. However, the inherent lag between discovery, dissemination, design time, and tool production means that Trade Order production will lag slightly behind what Vasari craftsmen can produce in the initial few months after new capabilities are either imagined or discovered. Add this to the conscious decision to focus on ease of production, rather than flexibility of use, that most frontier worlds make, and it is easy to see why the Trade Order products available in Vasari-occupied space so far are inferior in capability to Vasari products.
You should write a book or something. that is amazing writing and it is probably very close to the devs untold story of how the vasari were pushed back. but one little thing i disagree with is at the begining you assumed that the vasari were less advanced on the non military side. I think they would be far superior to the TEC in non military and military. the nanites that the vasari have give them a massive advantage and are the vasaris most valuable resource. the vasari empire has been around for thousands of years and even if every 100 years they had a few bright scientists that invented something usefull for their empire they would have supeior non military techs. just saying that i definately agree that the TEC would have far greater economics and production capacity because of their numbers.
so i guess it depens how you look at it if the vasari and the TEC had equal planets the Vasari would emerge victorius for their nonmilitary prowress becasue they mine resources better and they have the phase gates and all of the nanites which would make them have a faster prodution ability planet per planet to the TEC. but they don't have equal planets so you are probably right the TEC have superior Non military production.
Other than that everything else is great!
I like how you added a story for how some of the vasari ships and abilities were created. keep up the good work
This is some good stuff man. The way you describe the situation in SoaSE was beyond my expectations. I like how you made the Trade Order control 2,000,000 worlds but still have each system controled by independent corporations. It's all very inspired and deserves more attention than 2 measly replies.
Wow, a great read. I'm really eager to know what happens to Adam and Frank now.
When are we going to get more?
Very very very very GOOD!! But you probably already know that. You should seriously consider sending your writing off to a publisher. I mean it is that good, and there are people of course that would buy your BOOK. Not everyone can write this well, and your descriptions are very very nice. Lots of clear cut scenes, action and nice drama.
-Teal
Looks good! Can't wait to see the next update.
This is great please keep it going! I am excited for the next installment!
hey whindlisa, no offense intended, but the TEC will not have an equal understanding of the phase drive with the Vasari. the Vasari are specialists in phase technology - their superior weapons (although a kol Battleship and a Kortul Devastator are pretty evenly matched, as are the other ship equivalents) are only due to the age of the race itself. and the position that the Vasari are in is actually a very good position for technological improvement - always encountering other races, whom they have to counter, which makes their tactics very flexible; and scientists will be pressured to come up with technological improvements. as you said yourself, they are essentially constantly at war, and war is definitely a good environment for scientific breakthroughs. when have the major breakthroughs occured in human history? atom bomb - arguably the biggest breakthrough - occured during the middle of WWII. atomic sciences lead to major medical breakthroughs - including MRIs. the nuclear missile - Cold war. this lead to the refinement of Nuclear reactors, which will eventually lead to nuclear powered spacecraft. various explosives breakthroughs - the grenade, C4, shaped charges, etc. - lead to stronger and safer demolitions material. advances in ship and military structure architecture lead to stronger, bigger, and safer buildings. airplanes would not be in common use, if not for war-time advances in aviation technology. Wartime advances in metal alloys lead to safer and stronger cars. well over half of the inventions have wartime origins. and wars are not that often.
"Wars are not that often"? What type of a rock have you been living under for the past few decades? Now, if you're refering to all out wars between major powers, which does tend to lead to innovation in different areas of research, then perhaps. But on the whole, there's always a war going on somewhere. That said, plenty of innovation occurs outside of war (the internet, the space race, genetic breakthroughs, etc) although military and government funding is critical for opening up new fields. War time for major powers just means that every project with a half a chance of showing results has money shoved at it, which tends to get results (usually).
As for the understanding of phase space, from what I recall the TEC's understanding is way behind the Vasari, who have ships that can MAKE phase lanes. But, I don't recall seeing anything in the story about the TEC being that close to the Vasari in terms of understanding of phase space. Also, the Vasari are essentially refugees. As a result, it's very difficult to settle down long enough to put any real long term R&D programs into place and get new breakthroughs. Refinements of exising technology is another matter though.
Plus, in the story the Vasari are more like artisans than manufacturers. The TEC can crank stuff out in large quantities, but take months to gear up production of new products. The Vasari can make just about anything at a higher quality than the TEC and take far less time to create new items, but have trouble scaling up production and making new breakthroughs.
yeah - by wars I did mean wars between those who actually have the capacity to make modern war (no, iraq and afganistan do not count) and the space race was tied to the cold war. I did admit the TEC's manufacturing advantage, as they are the "trade" race, but in general, Vasari ships are more powerful, like you said. besides, you don't need a planet to make breakthroughs in space. and what else are they going to do with all that time in phase? i don't mean the actual experiments, but they can design things and experiments, as conducting them in phase qould probably differ from non phase.
Seriously, you need to contact Stardock and make them sign a contract, I'd swear this was the hidden story but I seriously doubt even they thought it out this well. Your idea of the Vasari having an artisan based economy that is effective but does not scale well as compared to the TEC manufacturing methods is genius in explainging the balance, and using the name of the Silence is also brilliant. The political insights are extremely interesting and logical for their scant detail (as can be expected, this is not an overal political history but a general overview of a more contemporary period) and explaining the failures in the pictographic language and archaic numerical system of the Vasari also shows why they suffer at the hands of the TEC. The espionage issues and the lack of understanding on the part of the Vasari of the base2 system used in human computers also helps explain the Vasari's confusion. As for the claims of constant warfare leading to research and development for technological superiority, the Vasari have been fighting on and off against fledgling empires for the last 10 millenia. The TEC is far larger and uses commercial systems completely unknown to the Vasari, who are used to relying on their technical superiority to quickly overwhelm their targets and then strip the system of its resources before moving on. The TEC has planets and resources to burn, so the losses will not hurt them overall and their response will be far greater than anything the Vasari expects. As a result the Vasari are unprepared and are suddenly forced to greatly innovate on their 10000 year old doctrines. The Vasari can win against the current defenders, but at a much greater cost, and the TEC reinforments from the core worlds will bugger them horribly. If the Vasari were able to contemplate just how titanic the TEC empire is (for all of its lower level technology) they would probably stop their invasion and either request diplomatic relations in order to forge an alliance to turn against the Silence, or request asylum/safe passage through TEC space. How the TEC would react after the Vasari vanguard raped 600 planets and then suddenly stopped to ask for help fighting the boogeyman is uncertain but so is the Vasari's survival, so they may well risk it when they learn just what they are up against. Or option three, the Vasari concquer enough worlds and learn enough about TEC production to rebuild their empire inside TEC space and tehn turn back to face the Silence before going back to reclaim their old empire, followed by every other culture they've ever met before going back for round 2 with the TEC.
All in all, you are awesome and you need to get published. I would pay good money for the full back story of the wars, and if you plan to do more, I can't wait to see what you do with the Advent. All my royalties are belong to you! WOOT!
Note: good money means $5-$10 for every hundred pages of awesomeness you write (per book of course, you will probably sell a copy to every SoaSE player in the universe!)
I hate to say it, but while Iraq may not have had a world class military, it was considered a major regional power and possessed one of the stronger armies in that region of the world. Additionally, while not the best trained, Saddam's army was battle tested, and were by no means cowards or complete morons (though the quality of their units and their weapons/training varied widely, as is common in armies from that region for reasons completely unrelated to this dissusion). That said, the US military was at a completely different level of capability, training, and equipment, and tore through the russian made armor like a hot knife through butter as a result.
Despite all that, it's difficult to judge just what it takes to engage in modern war, as most conflicts don't take place between the nations capable of running a modern war due to the sheer resulting destruction that would occur (don't fight a war you can't win, especially if anything either side stands to gain is more likely to end up in tiny pieces than cranking out new shiny toys for the victor). The result is either a series of inconclusive massacres (such as what you see in the third world nations fighting each-other or themselves) or completely lopsided victories, such as the US in Iraq and Afghanistan (during the conventional stages as well as, to a dramatic extent, the guerilla warfare stages) or Russia invading Georgia.
Regarding "not needing a planet" to make breakthroughs, its true you could argue that in Sins it is not needed, given their space capabilities, but the cost of doing everything from growing food to conducting high energy physics experiments onboard stations in space would be prohibitive in the extreme. While some research could and should be conducted in space, doing everything without a planet would be a massive undertaking, requiring far more resources than if you had a couple planets lying around. Plus, building in space leaves you very, very exposed. It wouldnt take much for something to go horribly wrong even without 2 enemy races hellbent on killing your entire race.
And as for conducting experiments in phase space, while it would certainly be important and a major research focus, how many cargo vessels, luxury liners, or military vessels are going to be eager to conduct any sort of research, wasting valuable space, energy, and time they could put to far better use in their particular area of speciality. Plus, even wet navy vessels have a great deal of stuff to do while at sea if they want the ship to keep running. As a result, the only design of experiments and/or simulations going on will be done in the crew's rather limited free time. So the only ships doing breakthrough research, or even significant research in less revolutionary fields, will probably be military test ships or dedicated science vessels, just like the way things go today.
At any rate, I tend to agree with the story's portrayal of Sins. The TEC is huge, but has little more than a few patrol boats and whatever they manage to convert over or cook up based on centuries old designs. The Vasari start with a huge fleet advantage but no idea what they are up against, and thus how to deploy it during the crucial opening phase of the war. It actual reminds me of WWII, with the Axis powers having a huge starting advantage in military size and technology, and the Allies having either isolation or space to trade for time to build up and play catch up with the other side. Like in WWII, if the war drags on long enough, the tide will shift towards the TEC as the technology gap decreases, they convert to wartime production, and R&D starts cranking out new ship designs. The Vasari, on the other hand, have to set up an entire industrial base while worrying about keeping enough in reserve to fight off the fleet following them if they can't make it through TEC space in time, which limits their long term military capacity. If they can't obtain near complete military dominance quickly, the TEC will literally swamp them with so many ships they won't be able to keep up, similar to the Allies in WWII and the US in the Cold War.
But you still must remember that the Vasari are an entire civilization fleeing the enemy, not just a military. they have scientists, most of which will be on either Jarun Migrators or Jarrasul Evacuators. This means that they have much more time as they are not continually maintaining the ship, leaving time to mess with experiments which what's left of the Vasari government would definitely support, as any tech breakthrough could be what is needed to destroy the enemy chasing them. the level playing ground research-wise that each race starts off as in the game is merely an attempt to balance out the races. and, as shown in the game, they do colonize planets anyway. common sense dictates that they would at least leave some form of presence on the planets they attack/take over, and it would likely be research with a military detachment.
and there is quite a difference between WWII and the TEC/Vasari/Advent war - which needs a name - as before WWII, the US had a HUGE military presence already built, especially their navy, which was the strongest in the world. when the war began, Hitler made tons of crucial mistakes as well, without which it would have been a much more even and longer war, the biggest of which was willingly putting himself into a two-front war with Britain and Russia. Britain had a decent headstart over the US in tank tech only because they were the first ot invent one, but German tanks were better, true. all the same, the Allies still had the Sherman and the Firefly, which were the backbone of the Allies land-based military. The US and Britain both had the advantage in aerial tech, as the Spitfire surpassed the Messerschmitt BF 109 and 110 and the Republic was on par with the BF 109. Britain had the HUGELY important radar techonology that allowed them to conserve billions of gallons of aviation fuel and prevented the Wermacht from doing much damage after crossing the channel by allowing for pinpoint defense and a huge advance warning, allowing the British fighter squadrons to meet the bombers much earlier and giving them much more chance to shoot down the He111's and Ju88s long before they reached the island. it also allowed them to much better protect their convoys by halting the Ju87 Stukas well before even reaching the ships. I am a World War II buff.
The TEC only had patrol craft, as they would not need anything more powerful to deal with pirates. and a thousand years of peace will make the government a myriad of councils and parliments and congresses, all told almost never deciding something. the very fact that they were able to rebrand themselves the Trader Emergency Coalition was a huge stroke of luck, as the more people that are involved, the slower decisions will take, and the bigger the empire, when it comes to democracy/trade orders, the more people that are involved. that's just how life works. sick ten people in a room and ask them to design a chair, they will do so in a week, but stick 1000 in a room and ask the same thing, they will take years.
True, but many of those advancements took place after the war had started. The Japanese Zero, although very underarmored, was far superior to anything the US fielded for a good chunck of the war. Likewise, the german U-Boats did incredible damage to Allied shipping, which was ultimately defeated more by sheer numbers of ships and goods than anything else (though in the last year or so the germans were losing a ton of subs thanks to new tactics and technology). The allies were woefully ill prepared for the war at the start. The US lost most of their fleet at Pearl Harbor, forcing them to rely on carriers (which proved so successful they eventually just replaced battleships in modern fleets). The British had no supplies stockpiled to fend off a multiyear siege, and lost most of their heavy equipment in France. The Russian air force was destroyed on the ground and they lost entire armies just bying time.
The axis powers started with a formidable military advantage, most of which was worn down or lost as the allies outproduced them and caught up with their technology. Granted, the gap was far less than that between the TEC and the Vasari, but it is similar. I'd actually compare the Vasari to Japan, as most of their fleet would be difficult to replace without building up their local industrial base, in the short run at least.
That said, it's true the Vasari would have spent a great deal of time working on research, and considering they're in space and traveling in phase lanes most of their time, of course they'll have a big advantage in tech when it comes to phase space. What I'm saying is more that they can't advance as fast as the TEC can, simply because it's hard to set up long term research when you have to pack up and move every few months or years. Plus, the TEC research teams have other advantages. Firstly, they're not as likely to be on the front lines. Second, they've got captured vasari tech to examine. Third, half the problem is figuring out if something can be done. Once that's done, you don't have nearly as much trouble figuring out how to get enough money to research or solve the problem.
So, the TEC is playing catch up, and they're going to lose a heck of a lot of men and ships, but they can afford to trade dozens of ships for every vasari ship lost because they're trading space for time, like Russia back in WWII. Once they have closed the tech gap a bit and trained up their crews, they'll be in war time economic mode and will be able to slow, then stop the Vasari attack and build up for a counterattack.
I agree the Vasari are watered down in game relative to the back story, but you could also argue that they have either lost or been hording their better ships to fight the real enemy, not the low tech small empires they can usually attack and leech off of their industrial base when they encounter them. Simple is better, since it's easier to mass produce, so it would make sense from that standpoint that the Vasari wouldn't throw overwhelming forces with a massive tech advantage against the TEC until they had to simply because the cost of weakening their main fleet would not be worth it. Why use your rare, hard to produce equipment when you've got a bunch of expendable, cheap stuff that does the same thing and lets you conserve your real forces? It's been done in real life as well (the Sepoy's in India during the mid 1800s come to mind, though I don't know much about them, don't quote me on it). The Vasari are trying to avoid the proverbial "Death by a thousand paper cuts" that constantly deploying their best ships would run.
actually, I made sure that I only mentioned technology that was used at the beginning of the war. For example, the M-26 Pershing absolutely killed the panzers, and the P-51 Mustang was vastly superior to the BF 109 and was also superior to the Focke-Wulf. It established Allied air superiority as well as the Supermarine Spitfire MkV and MkIX but those were invented after the war started. The B-17 Flying Fortress was also an Allied plane from before the war that was a great force in bombing campaigns, and the mid-war B-24 Super Fortress was definitive in the bombing war with its defensive capabilities and larger payload. overall, the US and Britain had a good level of technology to combat the germans.
I myself have taken down plenty of Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs from a Republic and even more from a Mustang. (CFS on Ace level, 90% realism - unlimited ammo and fuel were all I had left on) In the Battle over Britain, I have tested the Hurricane against the Messerschmitt and it is pretty even. The Focke-Wulf does surpass the Hurricane, but the Hurricane was mainly an interceptor aircraft and was always accompanied by Spitfires, or as the Germans called them, Spitfuers. I've aso tested the Spitfire MkI against the Messerschmitt and it surpasses the Messerschmitt. Unfortunately, the Germans had a great manufacturing advantage at the beginning of the war, as they had built up already and the Allies hadn't, so they didn't have nearly as much war material.
Good point. The Allies weren't that far behind the Axis powers at the start of the war, though in some cases there were glaring exeptions where one side or the other would have a definite advantage over the other (german U-Boats, Russian T-34s, etc). As you said, the big difference was that the Axis powers were already in a war time economy, but the Allies were not. In this case, there are substantial differences in certain areas of the TEC and Vasari technology.
The Vasari seem to have better weapons, ships, and a much better understanding of phase space, but at the price of increased complexity and longer development time. Also, their military advantage isn't nearly enough to prevent them from taking noticable losses, which are problematic for a race whose infrastructure is based on getting the most out of whatever the subject races on their conquered worlds can make for them before they have to move on. While it's true the Vasari could dig in and start a massive building program, such things take time, and in doing so they risk being hit in the rear by whatever is following them. As such, they little choice but to press forward as fast and often as possible, hoping to do as much damage as they can before the TEC can switch into wartime production mode and swamp them with overwhelming numbers.
That's not to say that they can't make replacement vessels; merely that constructing infrastructure with enough production capacity to reach effective parity with the TEC would take too long and expose them to too much risk. The TEC in the story has potentially thousands of major shipyards, many of which are probably either at less than full capacity or can be easily expanded, or even both. If the Vasari can dig in fast enough and start up a massive shipbuilding program, they have a chance, but doing so goes against thousands of years of instinct to avoid setting down any more roots than possible. By the time they realize they need to put forth such a level of effort, the TEC may already be producing ships fast enough to make even a phyrric victory all but impossible. And don't forget that it's almost always easier and faster to reverse engineer something than to spend the time and effort needed to make the breakthroughs on your own (hence why the US goes out of its way to avoid any parts, equipment, or wreckage from crashed planes, particularly stealth fighters and bombers, fall into other nations hands).
As for WWII, the allies already had the tech and knew how to refit the factories to make war material, so it was a fairly fast transition. their submarines even were about even with the U-boats once the Gato class was comissioned. and they had the nice SJ radar, which U-boats did not. as the early torps were riddled with faults, they were pretty much dead weight, though. the main problem though was a too heavy firing pin and bad depth adjusters (it would go up and down as it went thru the water, so its depth was a wavy line). after that was fixed (around 1943), the Gatos and destroyers pretty much took control of the seas.
while yes, they will take noticeable losses, but only around 5% at most of a force, while they utterly destroy the TEC. that is near First Contact. (thus the phrase, "At first, they were unstoppable.") The Trade Order was slow to react also - they only rebranded themselves as the TEC after the Aluxi Dynasty fell.
but it will take time (years even, with plenty of setbacks when their weapon blows up in their face, destroying the whole building) to design the great warships needed, and even more time and money to retrofit those shipyard to accomodate the massively bigger vessels. and then they have to determine a working training regimen after there are ships built as the crew-in-training would need the ship for exercises and other training. and then they would need to determine viable tactics. all in all, it would take a looooooooong time. just the shipyard refits could take a year or more, and designing the caps and cruisers could take longer. the training regimen could take years to work the kinks out of, and tactics can only be figured out after the ships have been battle-tested and proper fleet composition has been worked out.
As for the Vasari, it is my belief that they have a group of very well protected and secret factory ships at the back of their forces. it just seems wise. besides, nanite construction technology is rather portable; it doesn't necessarily need to be fastened down into a gravity well. they would need to be building ships to accomodate the growing population in flight, so the factory ships would seem to be the only real fix to that problem, if they didn't settle down at each planet for a maddeningly fast build-off and then pack up to leave again.
-sigh-
Alright already, I came here to read a fanfic which in my opinion is at a professional level. Not to read an everlasting debate about a video game trying to be proven by realism and then realism being tried to be proven by a video game (wtf btw?). Orodum you have your own thread with your own story which you can use to project your views on the sins universe using your logic and understanding of historical wartime economics, you dont have to take this up here.
If a debate IS what you want I am sure you will get much better and informed opions along with mine and Shadow's if you move the discussion to the General forum.
Though hopefully with the traffic this story has been getting recently perhaps the OP will take notice and decide to continue, I hope he will.
Just giving a some ideas to make the story more believable
and to be honest, I kind of take offense when someone insults the Vasari by saying they have no chance of winning. It's just that they are my main race, and I've gotten rather attached to them. Heil, Vasari!
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the Vasari defeat was inevitable, merely that with the sheer amount of space the TEC could lose before even beginning to feel the losses affect them, the Vasari would have to move very quickly indeed to secure a good chance at total victory. While it would indeed take years for the TEC to build up (from what i recall, the war had been going on for long enough for the first generation of recruits to have retired by the time things had stabilized, according to the intro video), they have more than enough space to trade for that time. And each system the Vasari take sucks up more and more ships and resources, either through lengthy sieges (the TEC would have no problem building tons of throw away weapons just to bog down the Vasari advance) or in securing the captured systems (occupation of thousands of star systems filled with pirates, mercenaries, angry civilians, and cut off military ships is a great way to soak up entire fleets in areas where they can't actually launch attacks).
The TEC may take quite awhile to completely stop the Vasari advance, but once they get their act together, they can afford to crank out entire fleets of vessels far behind their front lines, train them up, and then send them out to overwhelm the Vasari through sheer numbers. The problem won't necessarily be stopping the Vasari, though retaking the lost space could prove problematic, give the fact that the Vasari likely have spent millenia learning the best way to booby trap systems to slow down pursuit. The real issue will be that when they have convereted the areas far from the front into their military breadbasket, the Advent will show up and start squeezing them from the other direction. The intro movie shows the TEC had battled the Vasari to a near standstill until the Advent arrived, which is where things get interesting.
As for not being able to build the huge military ships without major amounts of work, i doubt that even the biggest military ships would be that much bigger than the largest cargo ships out there. A modern supertanker is 400m long, but even the Nimitz class supercarrier is only about 350m long. Unless there is some reason to believe otherwise, the question wouldnt be whether big enough bearths to create and maintain huge vessels exist, but rather what would have to be done for those bearths to be capable of handling military vessels of that size.
chances are that there aren't that many supertanker shipyards in the TEC empire, but those would be a little quicker to retrofit, but they would still need to be refitted to add much more interior framework, so that the warships aren't just a hollowed out hull.
the main size would be for medium (cruiser) size vessels and smaller. civilian vessels are also much less structurally sound than warships, not being intended to get SHOT. this would also mean a decent refitting of the hull and bulkhead fabricators.
True. I don't know much about shipyards, so I'm not going to argue the point much, but even if they ships they make are initially little more than merchant designed converted to more of a military design, quantity, as they say, has a quality all of its own. Again, the TEC early on is buying time by trading space. They'll take horrendous casualties, but all they need is a few years to convert over to a wartime economy and they'll probably be able to at least be able to force a draw. And that's all they really need. The Vasari have bigger problems than the TEC, or so they think. As such, they'll be reluctant to devote their full strength to the war unless they have to, since they've been hording it for a counterattack and are nearly ready.
Like I said, the Vasari could probably win the war, if they learn where most of the TEC worlds are quickly enough and are willing to dedicate most of their fleet to a blitzkrieg style campaign. But the time they have available to pull off such a campaign is determined by how long it takes the TEC to tool up and respond to their attack. On the other hand, the TEC's problem is that at this point they are still the Trade Order, and haven't had a serious military threat in almost a millenia. Worse yet, they're big enough that they barely notice when a few hundred colonies drop off the map, further slowing their response time. So it all comes down to who realizes the sheer scale of the fight that is about to ensue first, and responds appropriately. Most likely that will be the TEC (owing to the title of the work and the fact that in-game, the TEC was close to halting or even reversing the Vasari assault until the Advent hit them from the other side).
Of course, assuming the Vasari don't have an insurmountable technological advantage, the TEC would almost certainly have an edge over them. If you assume each system has at least one shipyard capable of producing at least a scout or small frigate, even a small portion of the TEC's production capability could produce an astonishing amount of warships. If you assume each system on average cranks out 2 military ships in about a year, with about 10 million planets, or whatever was stated, the TEC would have 20 million new ships each year to throw at the Vasari. And even if the Vasari could match that level of production capability, it's unlikely they could afford to crew all of those vessels, as they are on the run and most likely keep the majority of their race in space, which would limit their numbers substantially compared to the TEC. As such, in a war of attrition, the TEC has a definite edge. After all, would YOU hand entire fleets over to the races living on the planets you just got done conqueroring?
Im gonna bet that whenever the campaign exspansion comes out, Stardock and Ironclad are going to start letting books be piblished in the universe. the stories that witchfire and whlindsa have created have a pretty good chance of becoming published id say. keep coming guys!!
Holy crap man. What the heck did you do to write that. That is amazing. I've never read anything so detailed. I'd pay 20$ for a book combining all 3 races stories. If you've watched the opening cinematic they tell the story from the Tec's point of view. If you could do that except in letter and diary form for all 3 races i'd send you 20$ in the mail for a printed copy. Even if it didn't have a cover. But i bet if you wanted stardock could and would publish it.
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