Starbound

Taking to the Stars

East Wind, after becoming secure in its settlement in the mid-2600s, began to build its own spaceships instead of relying on the old country. Naturally, the young civilisation looked to do the only natural thing that comes with growing maturity: expand. Homeplace was adequate in metals but poor otherwise: the winters were long and harsh while the soil poor. The quest to expand became a requirement as the population boomed.

In 2674, Parliament authorised the creation of the Navy for the Republic. Within a decade, the engineers had created the first space ships and surveys began of nearby systems. The surveys focused eastwards, not a nostalgia induced impulse, but one borne of the habitable planets seen eastwards. While the Republic did charter colonial attempts to the east, these were not the main events of the next century.

A Nearby System

An orange dwarf lay eleven light years west of Homeplace. Catalogued as K2. Telescope observations yielded little to remark at but probes vanished in the system. The system, it seemed, would destroy any attempt to observe it closely. Emissions from the system were similarly non-existent. It remained a puzzle. Any attempt to hail the system from the outside with the typical mathematical sequences demonstrating intelligence returned nothing.

What could be observed was that the system had a large green-brown planet with multiple moons that were oddly cratered and carved into, as if deliberate. Even stranger, the planet observably had a dense collection of objects in orbit that would not have been explained by ice fields and planetary disks. The planet was called K-2-4, being the fourth planet from the star.

The Republic Navy did what it thought was reasonable given the failure of probes: send a manned expedition to observe for itself.

The survey vessel, Eyeglass, was dispatched in 2703 under Captain Cask. The expectation was not that they would encounter life, as the lack of radio emissions seemed to confirm its absence. Consequently, the ship was packed with observation systems ranging from thermal imagers, telescopes, and gravity sensors. The first reports, sent within a day of entering the system, reported that K-2-4, the anomaly of the system, appeared to have life and its moons appeared to be colonised.

A Hostile Race of Intrastellar Beings

Eyeglass made the several week-long approach to K-2 and approached one of its outer moons. In that time, a report was sent: multiple small ships were approaching. The next report was a distress call. Eyeglass, not having anything but the most rudimentary weaponry to make room for observation equipment, did not stand a chance. It was swarmed, boarded by the enemy, and its crew killed. The ship was brought back to K-2-4 and reverse engineered. There was life in the system and they were hostile. As of yet, they had no name, and were simply called "K2s".

A second ship was sent the next year, much more strongly armed, to cautiously make contact and retreat if contact proved fruitless. Sling, the ship, entered in 2704 and made repeated radio emissions to communicate, all of which were ignored. As before, many small vessels immediately approached armed with missiles and attempted to board. Sling did not stay and, when the radar and gravity sensors informed it of incoming missiles, quickly left the system. After this incident, K-2 was declared closed and all travel to it made illegal.

As of yet, the K2s were still unknown. What form of life they were, what they looked like, and how they behaved were a mystery, as was their extreme aggression.

A War Without Peace

The Republic, two years later, sent a larger expedition of heavily armed ships to gather more information. The ships, as before, entered without issue but came under attack immediately. The many smaller ships overwhelmed a few of the military vessels but the expedition did succeed, if at cost. Several enemy ships were captured, a few dead specimens, and one living specimen that was trapped in the hold during a boarding attempt.

The haul, when brought back, was studied and finally shed some light on the situation in K-2. The K2s were an insectoid race. They existed as a hive mind and, it seemed, communicated telepathically. The intelligence of individuals appeared to be greatly limited from observation of the living specimen but together, as evidenced from their attacks, they could function as part of a greater whole. Their technology was advanced but not yet interstellar, at least for now. Their ship designs, being small, fast, and manoeuvrable with doors allowing each other to embark onto their own ships, implied rather strongly that their strategy was to fire a missile from the swarms of ships they send and then force a boarding while the crew was overwhelmed.

The Republic concluded that any attempt to communicate with them would be futile and was content to keep the system quarantined. The K2s, now called Formicas owing to their resemblance to ants, did not seem to collectively think the same, if the concept of thinking could apply to them. They reverse engineered the captured technology the Republic had left behind alarmingly quickly and created their own hyperdrives within a decade.

Severe Setbacks

The first appearance of a Formica vessel in 2715 in Homeplace shocked and surprised East Wind. The Navy quickly destroyed the vessel and collected the salvage for observation but panic had set in. Examination of the salvage confirmed two things: this was a Formica vessel and it definitely had a hyperdrive system which, while rudimentary, was functionally similar to the ones the Republic uses. More incursions proceeded over the next several years, in increasing numbers. One ship became two, which became four, which grew steadily. The Republic was on edge.

In 2723, the Republic, after the first Navy vessel was destroyed by the Formicas, mobilised for a war. The strategic objectives were to inflict enough damage on the Formicas to convince them, on the basis that they must have some instinct of self-preservation, that any incursion into East Wind would be disastrous. The mission accomplished the opposite. The Navy squadron was overrun and only two vessels of the 10 ships in the squadron returned. The Formicas, it seemed, had greatly accelerated their military capabilities. Acquiring more salvage from East Wind had only helped.

The Republic, now firmly in the grips of panic, mobilised all resources for war. Ships were made at speed and scale, mostly smaller fighters and carrier ships, to counter the Formica tactics. The Formicas on the other hand had increased their incursions, appearing quickly and attacking anything nearby. The constant attacks succeeded in rendering the space on the outer western reaches of Homeplace dangerous. The inner reaches still remained safe, for now.

The Invasion of East Wind

In 2756, the Formicas launched an invasion of Homeplace.

The onslaught was devastating for both sides. In a year of combat, they had pushed from the outer reaches of the system to the outermost planet. Convoys of tugs hauled space stations and equipment away from danger. What could not be evacuated was blown up.

A war of attrition had set in. And the war did not bode well for East Wind. The Formicas, owing to their nature, threw themselves with suicidal ferocity against the defences, which were slowly pushed further and further backwards, from the outer most planet orbit rings slowly towards the centre planet rings, almost putting Homeplace, the planet itself, within range.

To turn the tide East Wind turned to what it would later call the "abominable solution". East Wind, being the descendant of the Ardagan Compendium, inherited its absolute revulsion at genetically engineered intelligent life. The thought of it was comparable to the disgust they had for cannibalism: it was a crime against civilisation. But opinions change in times of crisis and the losing war and risk of total extermination from an enemy that could not be negotiated with left the Republic with the choice of turning towards it to try and turn the tide. The vote to turn to engineered humans was passed by the Parliament, by just a one vote majority, in 2759.

The programme began quickly. The Navy, with no shortage of resources, funded it liberally. The result was the "Metas" as they were colloquially called, or Homo sapiens magna as their scientific term. They had green skin, similar to that of plants, to photosynthesise food where unavailable and to recycle some of their waste CO2. Their reflexes far surpassed any humans. Their muscles much more efficient and powerful. Their pain threshold eliminated. Fear was not an emotion they could have. The downsides, or upsides as some thought, were their genetic instability: they died of cancer at alarmingly high rates, rarely surviving to their 30s. They did, however, mature quickly: within a year the first adolescent Metas were ready for combat. In 2760, these juveniles, already much more capable than a normal adult human, were thrown into the fighters after a whirlwind training programme and sent off to defend the Republic.

The Tide Turns

The sixth ring of Homeplace fell in 2759. It was retaken in 2772. And the tide continued to turn.

The Metas, while still physically squishy and much weaker on an individual level than an individual Formica, were a match for them. Meta fighters could pull manoeuvres much more intense than anything a normal human could, and could react with much more confidence and speed. The Formicas, usually relying on firing a missile or two and swarming their target in numbers to board, struggled to accomplish much against the Metas. Where a Meta fighter was disabled and being boarded, they simply detonated their ship, guaranteeing their own demise and that of the intruders. If ammunition ran out and there was no hope of returning, suicidal collisions with enemy craft were carried out.

The fight remained a slugfest but the Metas slowly turned the tide and, by 2776, Homeplace had been secured once again. The war was not over. An invasion of K-2 was mandatory, but the people of East Wind could at last breathe a sigh of relief.

The Invasion of K2

The Navy spent the next 5 years building an invasion fleet. The new fleet was composed of one battleship, three battlecruisers, eight destroyers, fifteen frigates, and thirty corvettes, and, for the first time in East Wind's history, one dreadnought. The crossing was made in 2781 and remains the largest combat operation in East Wind's history. Metas had, by now, become embedded at every combat unit of the Navy.

Between 2781 and 2795, the Navy fought its invasion of K-2. The fight was, as was to be expected when fighting the enemy on its home territory, far more brutal than the defence of Homeplace. The outer reaches were secured at a cost of hundreds of thousands. The rings were slowly taken next. Space stations were boarded and the dug in defenders exterminated in casualty ratios that, as atrocious as they were, would have been almost unthinkable had it not been the Metas single handedly carrying out the assaults. Any station too well defended was simply nuked from space. The nuclear taboo had only been breached after the horrifying scale of losses was making replacements for the Metas difficult. Moons likewise were captured under withering enemy anti-aircraft fire and horrific ground assaults. Often too, the nuclear weapon was used, with Metas advancing through irradiated and contaminated battlefields to accomplish their missions.

By 2795, K-2-4 had been reached and, three years later, all of K-2 except for K-2-4 had been secured. The cost of the war so far was likely a billion lives, mostly normal humans from the beginning of the war but overwhelmingly Metas towards the end. The population of Metas was, by now, in the tens of millions. The Navy's grand armada was chewed through: only one battlecruiser, six destroyers, five frigates, and ten corvettes remained. The other vessels were either destroyed or decommissioned after K-2-4 had been blockaded to preserve the state of finances. The dreadnought had been destroyed.

The blockade held, despite sorties, and aerial bombardments were routine. Since the Formica burrowed underground, where it was presumed their queens lived, penetrating nuclear weapons were fired across the planet, creating a cratered appearance and seeming to reduce hostile activity. But reduced activity did not mean no activity. The Formica would, if the Navy complacently decided their job was done, no doubt recover and reassert themselves, leaving the Republic to fight all over again. As such, Parliament authorised a ground assault on K-2-4 and the total extermination of the Formica.

The Ground Invasion and Extermination

The first ground assault began in 2801 after six years of orbital bombardment. The number of Formica still extant was unknown and hostile activity on the surface had dropped off enormously. The Metas were the first on the surface to establish a secure foothold and the first to enter the warrens to scout ahead. What they found was a vast underground network complete with booby traps and Formica defenders that could ambush from any direction on a moment's notice.

Slowly, the foothold on the surface grew as did the forces in the warrens. Tunnels were cleared, only to be reinfested within days. It was not unusual for a unit to travel through one tunnel, only to back track and find their exit blocked by fresh earth. Queens, where not vaporised, were blown to pieces by shoulder launched missiles. Bioengineered plagues were seeded underground and left to spread havoc. The Formicas were being erased systematically. Their population dropped quickly, and then ever more slowly as population concentrations became fewer and fewer. It is assumed that the final Formica was killed in 2806, after half a decade of hellish ground combat and more than a decade of apocalyptic orbital nuclear bombardment. From there on, after another five years of exploration, the warrens had been thoroughly collapsed with charges, the whole planet surface falling inwards. No more Formica appeared and the war was declared a victory.

The cost of the war ran into more than a billion people. The Formica, as mysterious and aggressive as when first discovered, left not a trace of written work behind. Their technology, to be sure, was advanced, and they left much of it to be examined. The instructions for their tools and technology, however, were destroyed with them.