The Galactics Union

New Saharia wrote:

Honey, I’m Home!!! || A Perfect Neighborhood

On the massive bridge of the NWS "Tranquillion", a Paradise-class Dreadnought assigned to the 21st Armada, Major-Admiral Neil Stepford looked through gold-rimmed glasses. The ancient officer had commanded numberless elements of the Neighborhood Watch Navy since the days of the incursion into Vulpine (VIXXEN International) space. That continued for centuries in the simulation's extra-galactic affairs. He was a commander with rich combat experience, and not the kind of veteran that Saharian intelligence would have expected to be commanding the vanguard of the posthuman assault. He was trusted with the 19th, 20th, and 21st Armadas, and delegated command of the 30th to his immediate subordinate, Admiral Carl Flourish- an intellectual tactician yet someone who had a lot to prove in the realm of raw combat experience.

The numerous Saharian probes disclosed at least that vital information which undoubtedly would have come as a shock to Ellecon and his staff.

The positioning of the Neighborhood Watch's assets, and its military brass, immediately disclosed its prerogatives. An experienced admiral like Stepford should have been tasked with the battle for the Athoni system, yet he delegated it to an officer who had no pre-exodus information at all. Then, Neil's objective became realized like a foreboding revelation. His plan was to throw everything at the 8th Armada to cripple humanity's morale, using the momentum to steamroll past them directly into the Saharian Republic's space in a cruel intermezzo that would suck any and all resources away from the Athoni and their contemporaries. This plan to out-pace the Republic's fleets was already seriously concerning, but what would truly give Grand Admiral Martz a sleepless night would be what the Saharian probes revealed.

Three armadas, over 325,000 ships, converging on the 8th alone. Martz' decision to draw the 11th away from the frontal assault would be put under a trial of fire. Meanwhile, the Neighborhood's 30th Armada- only slightly outnumbered the combined Saharian-Athoni defenders (but consisting of much higher-quality and larger vessels) and was poised for a more conventional and protracted siege. This strategy-- allegedly coined by the Republic's Navy as "Stepford's Gambit" -- would be put into full motion.

As Major Admiral Neil Stepford evaluated the bridge full of green uniforms and perfect people, a sly smirk spreads on his uncharacteristically aged face. Neighbors never had wrinkles, unless they were centuries old, like he was. As soon as the 8th came on his radars, he clears his throat.

"It is so. We meet again-- and it seems our primitive cousins make their stand."

The 19th, 20th, and 21st continue full steam ahead. Armadas A and B form the vanguard, with Armada C towing behind. Glimmering-class missile battleships and Immaculate-class Support Battleships slow down behind the three Armadas, turning on their sides with fleet tenders and frigates accompanying them. Forming a rear-guard, Stepford presents BVR artillery support very early in his advance, hoping for a rolling barrage effect that will get his ships as close to Saharian forces as possible.

This is done from the Glimmering-class, utilizing hydrogen bombs attached to warheads to detonate in space ahead of the Saharian fleets, accomplishing a two-in-one purpose of forcing them to stop and clearing the skies of strike craft and corvettes that would harass the vanguard, well ahead of the Neighborhood Watch's actual arrival. The Glimmering-class, once this "beachhead" of sorts is established, would be ordered to switch to conventional AP, HE, Ion (anti-shield), and cluster warheads to function as conventional artillery, keeping its remaining nuclear warheads in stockpile for potential targeting of enemy capital ships.

Meanwhile, the Immaculate-class support battleship-- glorified BVR snipers, would fire their main guns as soon as the scouting elements got within range to provide coordinates of enemy capitals to Stepford's fleets. All while the main element (or at least A and B armadas) hurdled itself relentlessly at the Republic's ships in a full frontal assault.

-

Meanwhile, in the backlines, anti-probe operations would commence, though their effectiveness is spotty. Any probe that is recovered is destroyed, but the intent of these minesweep operations isn't to clear large swaths of space, but establish covert supply lines for future reinforcements to use, to avoid wasting precious vessels or creating additional vulnerabilities. Basically, to poke holes (or for our purposes, thin webs) in Saharian intelligence.

-

As for the 30th, or Armada D, their arrival on the outskirts of Athoni would follow a similar playbook. Artillery and BVR ships form the rear-guard, and then employ nuclear warheads as a form of area-denial to provide time and space for the main element to establish themselves, and the first shots to be fired. Armada D is split up into two waves, and the first wave merely exists to guarantee time for the second, which its consistency is currently unknown to the Republic.

Short Scenes

Rutted rocks towered over a screen of timber, spiraling far and above the forests, lakes, and its few yet spacious clearings. A massive tabletop mountain, Mha Irimas, whose peak has seen no life. The Usanine's eyes scanned the horizon, as he leaned over the edge. A breeze carrying the smell of rain surrounded the Usanine, and he looked down, at mighty staircases, carved of the winds.

Small figures dotted a clearing below, just beneath the shadow of an immense lodge, carved of wood and stone. The one upon the mountain watched them, though he couldn't make them out, they were only specks from up here. The lone sound of a whooping creature carried itself through the scudding clouds above, similar to a loon. Horns sounded shortly after, the Usanines below forming into a monochrome blob. He would descend the sandstone escarpment, entering jungle and mist below.

It was alive here, filled with all sorts of noise. Animals seeking, others dying in silence, the sounds of leaves rustling and twigs snapping. The Usanine descended further and further into this wilderness. Rushing water crashed into rock and shore, and the Usanine moved from above the treeline, over this hidden river. He continued on, for several more hours.

-

The Usanines arrayed themselves in staggered formation, each one holding their firearms upside down, and like a club or spear. These were not simple firearms, but not terribly complex either. Similar to muskets in shape and make, but having magazines and scopes. Some of the guns were carved upon their stocks, shaped into stars or tusks. They all remained still, each one's eyes slowly roaming to the steps of the immense lodge before them. A figure stood at its landing, a Usanine clad in black and wood green furs. Their skin a pale black, with eyes of ringed blue.

The black Usanine held a carved spike club in both hands, close to its body. Their legs were slightly taught, stanced. If one looked closely, beyond the furs of their figure, they would see the uniform beneath, modern in its make. It was a military one, and they wore their own cut-tail upon their belt, tied to the front like a loincloth. The Usanine spoke to the crowd gathered below, in their own tongue, and they all listened.

“We have played games of war for years and years.” The Usanine spoke in its language, a harsh one, like one never heard on earth, yet somewhat familiar in its tones. “Now we must face another, a real war, not amongst ourselves, but beyond this world, and beyond Kinmoon.” They paced from one side to the other, and continued. “It is of my knowledge that those abroad are complacent, weaklings all!” His grip on the club tightened. “And it is of my knowledge that they have forgotten what it is like to fear a Usanine.” They stopped at the center of the landing, and peered down to the crowd. “We must fix that.”

-

Wind whistled through the logged structure, through endless trackless leagues of boreal forest. Shaking the hanging decor and frame of the cabin. The structure groaned, and a Usanine within stirred, hidden beneath piles of fluffy pelts. They rose, as if they never laid, large and of typical stark white coloration. Most seen Usanines as death, skeletal things, not because of their frame, but because of their most common color. White. The Usanine stood still, moving with measured, almost choreographed movements.

He proceeded through the cabin, arriving in the bath. The Usanine slowly angled his head, turning to a mirror, and stared at himself. He curled his lips back several times, watching himself, his expressions, examining every feature of his being. The Usanine suddenly retracted quickly, his large tail swinging and knocking over several random items. Back into the living quarters, and towards the windows, watching a darkened sky and a land of glittering howling white and bark.

It was hard to start a civilization by yourself. Especially when you were sent to conquer worlds. Haion was a sort of Usanine, inspired by the Awithan tradition of Indagators, lone scouts made to take worlds. Even empty ones. Before Quilla's reign, he inhabited this unconquered world. He has managed a meager existence, ever since then. This world though, it is habitable, and it was probably terraformed. Somebody has inhabited before him, and Haion will soon discover who…

New Saharia wrote:

Delegation to Saharia || Korravan

What could have been a much longer monologue the Saharian lead diplomat chooses to pause for the moment. Honesty, true transparency, carries immense weight. Now, they can only wait and gauge the reaction to the revelation.

Yozere slowly nodded, quietly digesting the words shared by Mr. Lee before responding, "If this suggestion was made to us even five years ago, I would have been stormed out of Heohiri and relegated to some minor duties and blacklisted from promotion for even allowing the idea to be on the table Mr. Lee."

She smiled kindly and continued, "But this is not five years ago, and while there are those that would still might balk at the idea, there are very few in our government who are not realists and see just how active our region of space has gotten as of late...the fact of the matter is that the Commonwealth wants to stay a secure, sovereign nation, and is willing to go to great lengths to obtain that.

She tapped on her tablet, highlighting a map of Korravan, and selected a region of the map which zoomed in several times to a particular system. She shared the system image with her counterparts across the table and elaborated, "Hopefully this system is somewhat familiar with you. In the early days of our contact, we arranged for this system to serve as a SEZ, or a Special Economic Zone, from which Saharia was welcomed to dock, trade, visit Korravan through, and establish missions. I believe my higher-ups would be amenable to in or around the SEZ, including expanding it modestly to encompass a Saharian military base.

She waved her hand "But those are details that can be hashed in in more detail in the follow ups. We would be honored to share what we know, and are very interested in hear more about what you'd propose and pursue in our modernization agenda items you've shared your interest in."

The Mystic Resurgence ||| New Saharia

Resilient and Equalizer emerged from the deep, accompanied by forty eight others. A counted measure of souls entering the secret anomalous region. A true expedition into the unknown!

Temperature readings remained stable at 580 Rankine, solar radiation was down to .8mSv/d, from the previously recorded 1.8mSv/d. Background noise sat at 78.3db, up from 21.2db. Atmospheric composition was normal, 34.2% oxygen, 64.6% argon, 0.9% carbon dioxide, and a mix of other atmospheric elements, including the exhaust products of ship engines.

Probes shot out from the fleet across the system. Staying within the system showed largely similar atmospheric composition in all regards besides radiation and noise. The closer they got to the star the louder readings got, maxing out at 190db, which seems the barrier of shockwaves within the fluid. Solar radiation also increased according to the inverse square law, getting gradually stronger as they approached the star, with the inverse of both true as they moved away from the star.

The moon flashed with heat again, a wave of infrared blinding the thermal cameras once more with a reading higher than the last, 3,470,000 Rankine.

And the third planet. A silica desert with a newfound atmosphere. Probe measurements recorded a difference in minimum and maximum surface height to be less than two thousand meters, as well as a piece of debris close to the landing site of unknown make.

When the shuttle touched down, sound measurements measured at only 61.2db with the engines off. Samples of the soil had shown larger pieces of steel, still heavily rounded but greater in size by an order of magnitude. From two millimeters to two centimeters. Other fragments at the two millimeter size were present, and other specks of round steel smaller still.

They showed no signs of obvious anomalous behavior besides their uniform size and smoothness, and being a carbon steel on a planet comprised almost entirely of silica.

Market Seeking: Direct Foreign Investment || FreeAmericanStates

The Dominion Army wasn’t going to beg for anything. But they were still flat broke.

With only a few Coral Worlds allocated to their control, the Army was hardly. The Navy fiercely contested reassignment of any of their facilities or depots with the Missile Command, leaving the Army with not much more than the offices they sat in. For an institution with dreams of international domination, they were not off to a good start. They had carefully hidden this fact from all those they were outsourcing and on foreign exchange with, and they had better think of something before any of them came calling.

There were ways out though. The Thestral Union, or Outer Equissian Federation (transition in progress), to the Dominion’s south was equal parts backwater and subject of great interest to the Dominion Army. The Navy previously had sent its surveys into the region mostly unopposed, reflecting poorly to the Navy’s top brass and dismissing its value as an ally. The Army was less critical. This was as a ripe opportunity for collaboration, which they needed much more than exploitation. Tangible proof of the Army’s developmental power would go a long way to getting their foot in the door internationally.

Just as the Velvetian Crisis passed, a diplomatic and (surprisingly) corporate mission represented by Dominion Army officers approached the TU/OEF. Knowing the ponies were also short of choices and political power, they had a mutually beneficial proposition for them. The Yamato company, a new corporate entity owned by the Dominion Army, sought to develop international agricultural supply chains. And it approached the OEF with a multi-year plan to develop the OEF’s economic influence and power, catalyzed by agricultural export.

Colonel Michiro represented Yamato in legal and business matters. With him, the OEF could send their delegation (or interested listeners, whichever was preferred) to discuss the arrangements that Yamato had planned. Traditional circumstances suggested that Michio was to talk with private businesses rather than government representatives, but he understood that the historically space-based OEF was anything but traditional.

To that end, a meeting was arranged with the TU/OEF’s representatives in government. This would be the first of two meetings, this one simply for information and laying out the scope and terms of the deal without much question taking, for now. That would be covered in the second meeting. The full details of Yamato’s plan were transparently laid out as follows:

To start, Yamato and the OEF would need to collaborate on the startup operations. Yamato wanted to supply a large amount of gold, Impulse Core energy technology (the Dominion’s own brand of Solar Ionization), high energy electroplasma infrastructure, and some of its own space facilities to drive agricultural developments on several ideal candidate worlds in OEF space. The locations were, naturally, completely up to the OEF’s choice.

Naturally, Yamato also wanted the OEF to be the joint-effort’s science and agricultural doctrine leaders; the various races of the OEF had well developed agricultural methods around a massive variety of plants and animals which were extremely alike – almost indistinguishable – to ancient archival Imperial agriculture. These were of under-spoken cultural significance to any human nation in the galaxy. Alas, because the OEF chronically lacked the ability to put this to use they had reaped nothing from it. Most in the galaxy were unaware this was even a good the ponies had. Not a few of these plants also required the psychic interaction of ponies, their magic, to cultivate and grow. And since this was an unbroachable requirement to any industrial farming operation, the ponies were the best suited to keeping control over their cultural property.

To sweeten the deal, the OEF would also be allowed to contract the Dominion Army for local and state defense. This was a one-way mutual defense treaty. If ever the OEF came under attack, the Dominion Army would mobilize to war. The reverse would not be true if the Dominion came under attack, though they would appreciate it if the OEF came anyway. The Dominion Army had at its disposal the expected ground forces, but also space forces and even capital ships. Present circumstances in the Neighborhood might make this more tenuous, but the Dominion Army had the ability to immediately mobilize its forces to protect pony assets. Of whom would of course be operating under direct OEF commands, deferring all strategic decision making to the OEF while the Dominion Army acted in roles of advisement and operational decision making. If the OEF desired, of course, the Dominion Army could also directly command the OEF’s armed forces in time of crisis, answering to President Nightwatch – Doing so might need them to amend their Constitution though.

In exchange, Yamato was going to be the controlling member of their syndicate. Yamato had great plans for this partnership, and they needed the OEF to follow to the letter. The products created through the Yamato-OEF joint venture were going to be solely owned by them, and Yamato would have exclusive executive power. Even as new members were to be included in the syndicate, Yamato would still be at the top of the board and they reserved the power to deny services from the OEF’s part of the venture at its own discretion. Additionally, the OEF needed to consent to the full extent of the business plan, as follows:

The phase to follow the start up phase would be to bring their initial successes to the attention of the Saharian Republic. Political forces in Saharia had a strong interest in economic diversification, population relocation, colonial expansion, expanding the lower class, and of course a cultural interest for Imperial products. When the Yamato-OEF venture had a successful harvest, Republican delegations as well as private business representations would be invited to inspect and tour the Yamato-OEF operations. The goal of this being multifold: influence Republican political parties to support and hopefully subsidize franchise operations in Saharian space, attract independent Saharian corporations to lease these operations and have Saharian citizens work the farms, employ Saharian contractors for transportation and international logistics both across and within the OEF and Saharia, and retail these specialized foods to Saharian distributors and markets. Doing so would of course mean having to take out large loans from Saharian creditors to create franchises across Republican space, and this was the riskiest part of the whole venture. The OEF had to agree to bear some of this debt, though Yamato would too. By profiting together they would make enough earnings to pay back this debt and attain full profit

If these first two phases of the business plan worked out, there were more phases promised that could expand operations further and widen the profits immensely. If profits and expansion petered out after breaking into the Saharian market, then efforts would focus on this and avoid paths to branch out to the international market. If, however, things proved highly successful, this option would be further explored.

Truthfully, the Dominon Army and Yamato already had plans for when the Yamato-OEF venture succeeded in Saharia anyway, but they will withhold this until later. The ponies would be none the wiser.

The breadth of these plans, concept models for sustainable and eco-friendly agricultural operations, proposed products that could be sold, and choices of payment plans were presented to the OEF’s delegation in painstaking detail.

---

Later, the promised second meeting followed. This was to be much more casual, set on a holodeck simulation of an ancient Imperial countryside chateau: midday, clear sky, between summer and autumn on an M-Class planet, temperate deciduous forest, 80 degree felt weather, and low humidity. In line with pony tradition there was food and wine; pony domestic varieties provided by catering. While the Vorta supped the vintage and pretended their engineered biology could be poisoned by alcohol, they met with ponies who were in attendance from the first meeting and recited when asked Yamato’s business plan with perfect eidetic recollection.

When everyone felt ready, the group moved to a shaded meeting area. This round table session would serve to allow the ponies to discuss, debate, ask for further elaboration, or tactfully demand more compensation for their involvement. Colonel Michiro could of course speak for the entire Yamato side of the room. Now it was up to the OEF to lay out what remained before anything was signed.

Oh, and the catering could continue of course.