COLONY 12
The Twelfth Planet Colonized by Earth
The Planet
Colony 12 is an Earth-like planet, with Earth gravity, Earth year length [roughly, there are a few distinctions with respect to leap years], and Earth-like atmosphere. This is entirely due to the amazing terraforming process that the ancient humans performed. What was once a lifeless, cold stone is now a flourishing planet, and will be indefinitely [barring unforseen circumstances, like the sun blowing up, which won’t be for many many many years]. It has one moon, roughly the size of our moon. Legends describe that it was pulled from one of the gas giants nearby, though this seems very unlikely. It was probably there from the start, and provides for tidal influences on the large bodies of water on the planet.
Originally, there were three major land-masses on the planet, referred to as the North, South and West continents, respectively. After the second Catastrophe, the lower portions of the continents were submerged, and the world is now one of many islands and archipelagos. The South continent has probably the most contiguous land, but not by much.
The climate of the planet itself is very hospitable, with truly frigid temperatures only at the North and South poles, and only over a small area. Warm currents keep most of the oceans and the surrounding islands quite comfortable, though it still can get quite cold in the North.
Colony 12 History
From The Catastrophe to the Present Day
[2268-2510]
[Note: this contains a number of historical inaccuracies from the timeline it exists in. History texts are only as good as the research material and the historian employed. It becomes more accurate in the second and later parts. Do not be over-critical regarding his works, he did the best he could with what he had, and you would be hard pressed to do better. Despite the biases and errors, it is the best historical text that Colony 12 produced of this time period. All others contain too much speculative thought, fictitious events designed to appeal to the rulers at the time they were written and shoddy research.]
[Another Note: As with all historians, this reviewer carries the biases of his culture with him. I am unwilling to either edit his prose to remove this, nor will I add editorial commentary throughout the text itself. This work is presented “as is”]
Part I: Pre Catastrophe
“We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government.”
-James Madison
During the cold war, the "high ground" theory proposed that whoever controlled the space surrounding earth would in fact control earth. The race to control space ended with the bankrupting of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which was preceded [and perhaps precipitated] by the creation of a lunar base under the auspices of NATO and the United States. Slow development of space followed this end, until one hundred years later and the development of safe fusion and the creation of a unified field theory that allowed for terraforming and faster than light travel.
What followed was a period of rapid colonization. Colonization was regarded as a suitable method to reduce overcrowding and to supply Earth with materials for industry. By mining on asteroids and distant planets, less damage would be wrought on Earth's ecosystem. Terraforming was used to create planets suitable for habitation, where people would live and work.
It almost never happened. Entertainment technology advanced, humans became much more comfortable in their homes and lands. Soon, many felt that they needed no more exploration, that things had progressed far enough, even though many still lived in abject poverty.
Computers became fantastical machines, machines that could walk and talk, cook and clean, work and play, but lacked the spark that makes something alive. Humanity failed as a creator- no matter how they tried, the scientists could not make a computer that was truly sentient. A few researchers persisted, but the majority turned their considerable skills into making the durable computers and robots needed for the colonization efforts. Devices were a mix of the biological and the mechanical. In many ways, things were grown rather than built. While final assembly of construction materials was conducted in a fairly traditional manner, the structures themselves were often grown from seed.
Colonization persisted only because of the will of a few strong leaders, and also due to the large investments that three major corporations had made into the terraforming and colonization processes. It ceased when the costs became too high for the benefits and when those leaders were replaced. Part of this was due to new inventions that were better at utilizing and recycling resources. An amazing new device was developed that had the potential to turn Earth into a paradise with only what was on the planet, and needed nothing from the colonies. At the same time, the increased off-world population put pressure on the colonial infrastructure, forcing expensive improvements. Even as resource prices crashed, the upkeep costs rose dramatically, leading to increasingly higher taxation rates.
The solution was to divest the Earth of its colonies. The colonies were no longer given tax support, and the smaller ones were assisted in shutting down operations and moving their colonists to the larger colonies. After five years, colonial ships were forbidden access to Sol, to prevent colonists from returning to the new paradise of Earth and overpopulating it. Records do not show whether this move was a reaction, or a merely chauvinistic act.
Ten years later, in 2268, the catastrophe occurred.
Part II: The Early Post Catastrophe Period
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
--Louis D. Brandeis
On the morning of April 23rd, 2268, a coded warning was secretly transmitted to the government of the twelfth colony, more commonly known as "Colony 12". The warning was transmitted by someone sympathetic to the colonial needs, or perhaps by a colonial spy on Earth. Whoever sent it, it was received by the colony government, who swiftly set about taking countermeasures. Had they discounted this warning, or delayed, the situation would have been far more grave, and many would have surely perished in the coming chaos. Given the normally glacial pace of decisions carried out at the time, there is some suspicion that this event was expected, and that only this last, desperate message caused the government to act even in a limited fashion.
According to the secret warning, an attack was due from Earth. It would be directed against electronic devices and would disrupt communications and computing devices across the entire colonial front. Even very hardened devices would likely be vulnerable. The methods of the attack were not detailed, or the details have been lost to history. The attack, it was later learned, was carried out by rogue elements in the terran government [the overall government was believed to be a loose association of nation-states. The rogue elements were certain nation states who felt that the colonies were receiving benefits at their expense], who felt that the danger of the colonies' populations' return would be too great if measures were not undertaken. There were also some members whose motivations are still wholly unknown, and perhaps never will be. These rogue groups acted in secrecy until the point where it was impossible to stop their actions, as Earth had eliminated its long distance space-fleets to save unnecessary expenses. With no colonies, the fleet was obsolete.
With the attack only a few hours out, the Colony 12 government set about warning nearby colonies and taking measures to ensure that a pair of shuttles would be protected from the attack. It is unknown whether the other colonies acted upon this information, or whether it was received or not before the terrible strike.
Colony 12 had a moonbase where a large population conducted mining and research. The moonbase could in the event of an emergency be self-sufficient for short periods of time, but there were still certain items that needed to be brought from Colony 12 in order for the inhabitants to survive. As a result, the protection of these shuttles was accorded a very high priority. One shuttle was placed in the emergency asteroid shelter. The second was placed in the partially collapsed iron mine near the city of High Station. The mine had been abandoned for around six years. The shuttle was placed roughly a mile down, and was secured against EMP.
Two hours before the attack, the government of Colony 12 decided to issue a general warning to the populace. All tall buildings were evacuated, and measures were taken to secure all computing systems. Refrigeration systems were turned [if possible] to "auto-on", and were left to run continuously. The small colonial militia [ten thousand part-time, five thousand full-time] began mobilization. All spaceships in the region were ordered to land on Colony 12, or the orbiting space station. After landing on the station, shuttles would transfer the passengers and any vital cargo to the surface.
The actions of two unknown factory managers during this chaotic period were instrumental in providing a secure food supply for the near term. Recognizing that the refridgeration systems of the colony would not continue to work in the event of an EMP attack, they prepared insulated portions of their factories and filled them with ice. It is a testament to the skill of their workers that the task was completed in the space of one hour, and done so in five factories. After the first Catastrophe, these ice houses were used to preserve valuable medicines and foodstuffs over the summer months.
Obviously, two hours was not enough to truly prepare for an attack of this magnitude. On the evening of April 23rd, 2268, at 9:58pm Republic Standard Time [though referred to as Zone 3 standard during that historical period], a foreign object entered the Colony 12 star system and detonated. It had been approached by a pair of patrol craft that were disabled before they could identify what it was. Immediately following, it detonated, but the patrol craft were fortunately undamaged. Details of the device itself are very cloudy, the reasons for which will be explained below.
The effects of the detonation were immediate and catastrophic. A massive, carefully targeted electromagnetic pulse, combined with some effect now not wholly understood rushed through the system. The mining facilities near Foruth [the second gas giant in the system] were the first to feel the effects. All electronic devices failed instantly. The miners were left helpless and adrift. Even the emergency backups and self-repair mechanisms were rendered inoperative.
The wave continued, until it reached Colony 12. Everything shut down. The link to the space station and the moonbase went dead; seconds later, the wave hit Colony 12. From the smallest watch to the largest milling device, nothing was left unscathed. Most back-up controls routed via electronics, and they failed as well. In a matter of seconds, Colony 12 was reduced to an Iron Age level of sophistication. The militia's weaponry was useless, the farmer's ploughs failed, the factories' machines died. The attack was very targeted, and through some force still not understood, it aimed directly at the asteroid shelter, destroying the electronics of the shuttle stored there. A number of buildings were immediately declared uninhabitable, as the self-repairing structure inside them had been critically damaged. Many people who used cyborg systems to provide mobility or restore functions became cripples anew. All the support robots collapsed, now totally useless.
After those terrible moments of destruction, the population of Colony 12 emerged to find one small glimmer of hope: the shuttle hidden within the abandoned, collapsed iron mine had survived with its electronics and systems intact. With it, the colony government hoped to rescue at least some of the space station's population, and hopefully begin re-supply of the moonbase. Though it was not known at the time, many other devices had survived with varying levels of damage, but were immediately inoperable. In the following years, they were made operational, but for the time being, the means to repair them were out of the reach of the colonists.
Roughly four hours after the attack, a very large spacecraft landed on the surface of the planet. It was an automated ship that had rescued the miners around Foruth. Originally a passenger transport, it had been much modified for what would be its final mission. After disgorging its passengers, it rose off silently and docked with the space station, pulling the ten thousand aboard it off in three separate trips. It then departed, presumably for the moon base.
Taking a tremendous risk, the Colony 12 government brought an emergency transmitter/receiver from the hidden shuttle up to the surface and attempted to contact the moon base. A reply was received- the moon base had managed to protect some of their electronic devices- a environmental planning system with atmospheric sensors, a plant care system and a partially damaged transmitter/receiver had survived the Catastrophe. The moon base personnel were informed of the incoming ship.
The moon, orbiting Colony 12 had a population of around one hundred thousand at the time [versus the one hundred million living planetside]. A furious argument ensued, with the lunar government refusing to commence evacuation procedures. When the robot ship docked, the lunar residents refused to board it. After two hours of waiting, the ship departed. It returned to the colony the next day with the stranded crews of disabled ships, bringing them to the planet surface. It left again, only to return in the next week, carrying all sorts of real paper books and old tools and devices from museums [presumably from earth], or replicated from them.
The colony government quickly set about implementing a strict rationing system to preserve the food supply, and then began planning for the future, as no help from Earth was expected. Universities were enlisted in determining how to use the texts supplied to them. The books provided information on devices, governance and medicine up to the middle 1950s, but some later books had slipped in. Most information on sophisticated electronics was redacted from the books, although some reference was made to the advanced computing machines of the day, like UNIVAC and the specialist British codebreaking devices. A good deal of books were found with propagandistic overtones regarding the supremacy of the pastoral and agrarian world and the systems and structures of governance found there.
Through a lot of hard work, and some luck, the colony made it through the first winter with no losses to hunger or disease. The sole surviving shuttle was used periodically to re-supply the moon colony with items it could not create on its own. The moon colony benefited from the sturdy construction that made it up, allowing it to survive without self-repair facilities. It would be a generation later when an acceptable spacesuit was created to conduct repairs on the outside of the moon base. Made of copper, leather and other primitive items [including a complex water flow system to help protect against heating, cooling and radiation], it did not last long before needing replacement, but did last long enough to allow the lunar base to continue operations. The lack of space suits stored aboard the shuttle was regarded as an unfortunate oversight, but thanks to ingenuity was not a fatal one.
Restructuring was the name of the game on the ground. The population of the major cities moved out to form farming communities, closely linked by roads and cart systems. Once bred for leisure activities, the horse became a working animal again. A number of draft horses had fortunately been kept, and their descendents were put to good use. Without them, development would have been retarded.
Division
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
--Woodrow Wilson
After the Catastrophe, the colonial government was unable to properly oversee the entire planet, and divided itself into fifteen autonomous districts, based upon the settlement plans made at the start of colonization. One overarching government was constructed to supervise the other districts.
District 3 was in the area now ruled by the Colonial Republic, and mimicked, as best it could, the former Colonial government structure. It quickly ran into difficulties. The Colonial government structure was designed for a highly advanced society, and it was being applied to a new nation that more closely resembled the farthest point in the Roman Empire before the fall.
Many laws were ludicrous, but they still attempted to apply them, in order to keep a sense of normalcy. Building codes, for example, could not possibly be met with the primitive equipment that construction crews now possessed, but were rigorously enforced, leading to housing shortages. It was only until a major change was implement in the codes that this was rectified, but still there were persistent construction difficulties. Environmental regulations, when strictly enforced, led to near starvation for a number of communities. The towns were so busy trying to treat sewage and conduct impact reviews that they were unable to properly farm and build. It was only the flouting of the rules in other towns that allowed them to survive through massive infusions of food and supplies.
Funding was a shambles, as the old computer systems were non-functional. The government tried to hire as many workers as possible to handle taxation, but had to abandon the plan quickly, as they were needed for farming. Income tax was nearly impossible to calculate at any rate, as all currency transactions had been electronic, and there was no substitute until the copper, silver and gold mines became operational. Owing again to environmental standards, this did not occur until the founding of the Colonial Republic, but that is far ahead in our story. In the meantime, paper notes were issued and rapidly counterfeited.
The social welfare system had collapsed as well, as the massive identification database had been lost. With records for every man, woman and child on the planet, it carefully managed all manner of services- schooling, taxation, child-care, business subsidies, driver training, and much more. Every little bit of information about a person was stored, and was used to simplify the operation of government.
The colony had been ruled as a representative democracy, and this was applied to the new districts, but had many shortcomings. During periods of prosperity, the majority of citizens were quite happy with the government structure, and the multitude of political parties were mostly the same, with the same policies and procedures. After the Catastrophe, there was considerable upheaval amongst the regular people. Many were unhappy with being told to go work in the fields, and to be relocated into small towns, as the big cities had become unsustainable. But as unhappy as they were, they had long ago accepted the government as just that, government, and that it should govern them.
Elections were held, and governments changed, but the bureaucracy behind them stayed. The state was run in the fashion of an oligarchy, and soon, nepotism reigned. The mandarins of our own society were in charge, preserving laws that had long since lost any merit or meaning. The armed forces, for example, were highly trained and motivated, with an efficient basing structure. The only problem was that that same basing structure was responsible for the majority of towns to be entirely without protection, save for a token force under the local police office. Weapons were heavily restricted, as in the overly citified world, it was judged that they were harmful in the hands of the regular citizens. “They may harm themselves with them”, the government and many of her citizens said. All of this lead to a government who could not defend a defenseless populace
With the general breakdown in order, roving bands of criminals soon began to prey on the weak and defenseless towns of the sector. Without any reasonable means to protect themselves, the towns suffered mightily, losing both their possessions and their foodstuffs. The army could never arrive quickly enough, as communication in those dark days was limited to runners and a slowly expanding horse population. The army did become very proficient in disaster relief as a result, providing care and assistance to the recently robbed townsfolk.
The next generation was far less accepting of the situation than their fathers, and many began to arm themselves for protection. It was at this time that a scholar, working on a number of old texts, stumbled upon many historical texts. In the past, many nations had armed their citizens in times of trouble, and expected all members of society to pull together and fight for a common good. What was more, the citizens oftentimes were the government itself, and were not ruled by anyone. Another work discovered was Cesare Beccaria’s "On Crimes and Punishment," written in the eighteenth century, on Earth. His words, “…False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it...” sparked great interest amongst many of his colleagues. They searched diligently for works similar to it, and for more information regarding early Terran militia structures.
Their words gained quick acceptance amongst the regular farmers and town-dwellers, who soon began to arm themselves for protection. Spears, axes and bows proliferated, but the police arrested anyone who dared carry them openly, without the proper approvals. The first large-scale resistance occurred in the small town of Windy Point, where four police officers were thrown in jail, and twelve farmers freed. The army was called to quell the rebellion, which melted away as they marched into the town center. They arrested the ringleaders, and confiscated as many weapons as they could find. Turncoats amongst the town’s population told the police where large caches had been hidden.
The next week, a pirate raid on the down devastated it. Looting and pillaging, they left it ablaze. Defenseless, the townsfolk were fortunate to escape alive. The prisoners in the local jail were only spared by chance; the wood of the prison did not catch, and the pirates were busy elsewhere. In a twisted sort of justice, the turncoats of the previous week lost the most property, as they had been very wealthy compared to the other townsfolk.
Outrage swept the land. The government was unsure of what to do in order to stop the pirate raids, but they continued their policies regarding civilian arms and civilian self-governance. The sub-governor, Joseph Pollen, stated “…Yes, we face grave danger and difficulties, but we must not throw away all the great gifts that thousands of years of peaceful civilization has bestowed upon us. We restrict the act of defensive violence to the state, because the state is the only actor with the force of law and the safety of rationality behind it. Only the state can be trusted with arms, if we allow them to be distributed widely amongst the public, then the whole of society shall collapse, and become pirates themselves.”
His words were not well received in the numerous small towns. They were not well received in the cities. In fact, they were only well received amongst the government and its various organs. The pirates continued their raids, and the police continued their confiscation, while the government slipped deeper into debt and corruption. Their all-encompassing power had been mitigated somewhat in the earlier years by elections and oversight, but now the leaders were treating rule as their hereditary right. They stated that elections would only cause confusion, and as such, they should be postponed until the end of the current crisis.
The Starlight Rebellion
“…the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
Starlight had risen again, and was a city of twenty thousand, with a bustling merchant sector. It had become a very important trading hub, and served many small towns. It was ten years since the Windy Point disaster, and the population had been secretly manufacturing arms again. Some were discovered, but Starlight had many craftsmen who could make axes and bows, so the arms industry largely went unknown and unaffected. Weaponcraft and the skills associated with it were passed on by a secret group known as the “Brotherhood of Iron and Wood”. They also passed on what they could of military organization for defense, and on the concepts of democracy and liberty.
Wealth attracts the unsavory folk. With only twenty police for the entire city, it was most vulnerable. A massive band of raiders from the north had gathered, some five hundred warriors, ferried by sturdy river rafts and armed with spear and axe. They attacked at night, but had miscalculated the moon’s phase, so they marched under the light of the full moon.
They were quickly spotted, the light gleaming from their evil weapons. There was little time to prepare, but the townspeople made due. Starlight had a partial wall constructed. Construction had been slow, as the government needed to pay for social programs that either didn’t work in the modern context, or were just duplication of services provided by the charities and families of the region. They also had to pay for the bureaucracy that supported it. There was little left for defense as a result.
The raiders were met outside the gates of the city by fully two hundred armed men. They were inexperienced, yes, but then again, so were the raiders. Not at raiding defenseless towns, they had much experience with that. They never had met a resolute force determined to stand to. After wavering for a moment, they charged the smaller force of defenders, who were driven back almost to the gates of the city.
Fresh men poured forth, offering respite for their friends, and no quarter to their foes. The raiders were driven from the gates, but re-formed, again pushing the citizens back. A portion broke off from the main camp, and attempted to circle behind the defenders. They were quickly spotted, and in support, the police marched to stop them. Armed only with truncheons and poles, they suffered grievously, but stopped the encirclement, allowing the main force of defenders to retreat to the city gates safely. The chief of Police, Neal Ranier fell in front of the gates, standing alone against the might of the foe, holding them until the forces of the city regrouped. It was here that great torches had been lit, and the archers, standing atop the huts of the city did great harm to the raiders, shooting both barbed and flaming arrows into their ranks.
The criminals were contemplating retreat, and a treacherous sneak attack on the defenseless aged and youth of the city when there ushered forth from a nearby wood the better part of one thousand stoutly armed merchants, blacksmiths, artisans and sawyers, trapping the raiders and compelling them to surrender. The citizens had themselves used subterfuge, and moved their forces silently to encircle their foe. It would have gone ill for those brigands had not the mayor stepped in and prevented the enraged citizens from exacting their terrible revenge.
It was some days before the army arrived. They were not aware of the heroism of the cityfolk, but soon discovered it. The citizens refused to let the army enter the city or to disarm the citizens. The army sent for reinforcements and for the government. The government swiftly decided to put down the rebellion. It was bad enough that so many had turned to crime; the average citizen was not to be permitted to drag the sector away from modernity.
Soon, a government official had marched in at the head of an army, announcing that the citizens were to disarm, but that no one would be prosecuted for their illegal possession of arms, or their criminal acts against the raiders. He was pelted with rotten fruits, and was forced to flee to the protection of the army shield-wall.
It would soon have gone ill for the city, had not the countryside been roused. Shortly after the battle, the brotherhood of Iron and Wood had sent messengers, and soon armed men were streaming into the city, until the army put a cordon of iron around it. Their siege became more and more tense, as the woods seemed to come alive with fires at night.
The government became more and more concerned about the situation. Power seemed to be slipping from her grasp. The governor acted swiftly, ordering the army to crush the rebellion and restore peace and order. The army, upon receiving the order, was thrown into turmoil. Half the force deserted, standing with the rebellion. The other half was plagued by supply problems. Farmers were refusing to supply rations, and when they did, they were often filled with filth, or set afire, or just unfit for eating. The government was finding the same thing, and shipments to their headquarters were becoming fewer and fewer.
Pirate raids were being battled all over the country, as the army camped outside Starlight. The citizenry was rising up to defend themselves, and a low-level war crossed the land. The farmers who were camped around and inside Starlight clamored to return home to defend their lands. A small group tried to sneak out, and were discovered by the army. In the confusion, battle began as the cities defenders rushed to assist their compatriots.
The army was highly trained, motivated and disciplined, but it faced a foe strengthened by a new belief in government not by a distant ruler, but by the people themselves. The deserters from the army sided with the citizens, marching against their former friends and compatriots.
But for all their motivation, discipline and training, the army was hemmed in and pushed back. They had not expected that the citizenry could come up with an effective battle plan, but they did. Using a nearby river as a break, they rolled up the armies’ flanks, driving them towards a long strip of forest. At the forest, the line held, the citizen soldiers could not break it. The army faced a new threat, skirmishers in the woods. Men would dash in and out, attacking as they might, then fleeing to the darkness of the trees.
The citizens of Starlight were not without their own difficulties. A large part of their farmer allies used this time to depart, to return to their villages and farms to defend against the pirate incursions. The battle ground to a bloody stalemate, when dawn broke. It was said that the light shining off the nearby mountain range, and how it showed the fearful carnage on the ground, convinced the leaders to call a truce.
It was obvious by now that the rebellion could not be stopped save by bloody repression. The commander at the scene withdrew his troops to a safe distance, and the mayor of Starlight re-grouped his forces. A watchful cease-fire persisted for over a month, until the government was forced to call the army away to help fight the pirate incursions.
The damage for the government was fatal. The army was far too late to be of use, and in hundreds of bloody fights across the sector, the average citizens, some with spear and bow, some with mattock and axe fought off the raiders. It was the Brotherhood of Iron and Wood who stood proudly, their lessons about how to make a weapon and how to use it paid great dividends. After their victory, they ceased to be a secret organization and instead formed the core of the new Armed Safety League, dedicated to teaching the youth of the Republic safe and skillful weapon handling.
The governor resigned in disgrace, and the sub-governor ruled for a mere two months before an armed pirate mob destroyed the government center in Star Center. Anarchy was averted when the army restored order, and a temporary government was established. Considerable thought was given to the form a new government would take. It was decided that the best system was a libertine republic, based on the scholars’ analysis of history. The sector was filled with educated farmers living in small towns. It was very decentralized, and well-suited to a small republican government that put as much freedom into the hands of the populace as possible. A constitution was drafted, and a government structure planned.
The army was disbanded, owing to its loyalty to the previous regime, and its relative lack of use. A new form of army was built to support the citizen soldiers, and its bases were more strategically sited.
Five years later, the Colonial Republic was formed, consisting of all the lands in sector 3. Later, it encompassed sectors 6, 7 and part of 8, which were contiguous before the Second Catastrophe. One of the central tenets of the Republic was the citizen’s responsibility for defense. It served the nation well during the later years of space pirate depredations.
The old system was moribund, and little advancement occurred under it. It was only the introduction of the freer republic that spurred the technological development that allowed the CR to rise and stand tall amongst the nations. But before that could happen, the newly-founded Galactic Republic had to cope with the continued depredations of the raiders.
The Earliest Pirates
No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.
Gen Douglas MacArthur
The raiders were initially composed of not-yet-reformed criminals, escaped from prisons when the Catastrophe destroyed their restraint systems. As time passed, their ranks swelled, added to by captured children of villagers and farmers, and the natural growth of their population. They had no coherent form, and plagued all the sectors. Some sectors were better able to defend themselves than others. Sector Seven proved wholly unable to do so, and descended into anarchy. Later, it was absorbed by the Galactic Republic, who restored order.
The raiders were primarily found using primitive tribal structures, though some better-organized groups resembled early kingdoms. The raid on Starlight was unusual in its large size and organization for that time period. In successive generations, the raiders became far better organized. Three tribes in the North managed to tame horses, and became the bane of the Republic and the nearby Sector 2. An alliance soon was made between the two nations, and they acted collectively to secure their borders.
It soon became obvious that they did not have the forces necessary to do so, and the raiders were slipping through, wreaking havoc in the lightly defended countryside. The two countries then raised the mightiest army that they could, and built as many muskets as their primitive economies would allow. They then marched to face the raiders. It was difficult at first, as they would not give battle, only turn to retreat. The raiders were lightly equipped, and their horses could easily outpace the plodding Galactic Republic cavalry. The situation only became worse when the gallant knights of Sector 2 sortied, and were cut to pieces by a more numerous and well-handled force of raiders.
The skill and strength of these desperate men was shown where-ever the raiders met Republic and Sector 2 forces. Even so, the men of Sector 2 suffered far more than those of the Republic, who had the wild light of liberty in their eyes. They had no illusions about what would happen if they were to fail. Those in Sector 2 were still ruled in the old, tired ways. A new method must be found.
The Republic came up with the solution. They petitioned the Colony government to launch the shuttle on an overflight of the region, to espy the movements of the raiders. This they refused, but they instead offered printed copies of terrain maps. Using these maps, interpreting them to find the most likely points for camps to be sited, Republican soldiers managed to find the enemy camps. Spies confirmed their general locations, and the camps were assaulted with great efficiency. Many slaves were freed in these battles, which frequently turned very violent.
The civilian members of the raider parties were interned, kept in camps deep within the Republic’s territory. Many raiders were destroyed when they rode to their aid. The Republic was further helped by a terribly bitter winter that scattered the raiders. It was many years before they were able to regain their strength and renew their depredations. By this time, the Republic was in a far better position to oppose them. Most farmers were now armed with muskets, and the militia beat back the raiders, causing them great casualties.
The raiders united under one banner, and launched one final attack, en masse against a garrison at Rocky Point. This time, their strategy was foolish indeed, attacking the well-fortified hilltop. Withering fire pored down on them, as they made the treacherous climb up the stone-strewn slopes. Their great chief was killed with a lucky shot from the one cannon laid behind the wooden fence strung for defense. Their attack fell apart, and they regrouped to strike the beleaguered garrison once again, when Republic reinforcements arrived, routing them utterly. The remnants surrendered.
When asked why they attacked, they spoke of a great man who prophesied that if they could take the point, men from the sky would fly down and grant them wings with which to soar over the entire world and make it their kingdom. The one who said this could not be found; it was assumed that he perished in the battle and his body dashed to pieces.
Rebuilding
The first fifty years were dedicated to rebuilding and ensuring that the population had enough to eat. After the urgent work was accomplished, progress was made in science and technology recovery. Even so, the labour intensive farming techniques made it difficult to implement new technologies. For example, aqueducts required many workers to construct, and very few could be spared from farming. New farming techniques were developed slowly, but the food supplies were still critically low, and the testing could only be conducted on a small scale. The research did bear fruit, however, and led to an increase in the available labour pool for more advanced projects. In 2350, construction was completed on the "aqualink" aqueduct system, which linked the five major cities of the Colonial Republic and Sector 2 to various water sources. The year before, a telegraph system had been successfully constructed between all the major cities, with plans to link all the towns in a ten year program. Before this, the telegraph had been regarded as an amusing toy, as there weren't enough free labourers to construct any long distance communication lines. The cities slowly began to repopulate, using concrete from old buildings to construct new dwellings.
At the Starlight fair in 2360, three researchers presented a working steam train that could transport visitors from one pavillion to another on the two kilometer square park that the fair was held on. The limit was the lack of factories to produce steel and the lack of lumber mills to produce railroad ties, along with all the other items needed to create a viable railroad. There was a tremendous debate in the government, between those who thought that Colony 12 should rush into the Industrial Revolution and reach space as quickly as possible and those who favoured a slower, more cautious approach. They argued that it was important that Colony 12 not damage its environment and make the same human mistakes as Earth did during its revolution. The debate led to what looked like a ten-year period where little progress was made in railroads or in any industrial technology. Outside influences rapidly changed this.
On January 16th, 2361, in the early morning, a small spacecraft landed near the small town of Landspit, which was one of ten towns linked by a prototype telegraph system. Twenty armed humans emerged and began looting the granary in the town center. The town was roused by a telegraph operator who had stayed awake to practice his Morse Code by listening to messages passed between the major cities. Arming themselves with their primitive rifles, they challenged the pirates who were raiding their town. The pirates were surprised, moreover, they were also unarmored, having not expected any resistance.
Surrounded, the pirates refused to surrender. Before they could open fire on the townsfolk, sharpshooters hiding on nearby roofs cut down the foe. The few survivors threw down their arms. The spacecraft took off, presumably piloted by some of the pirate's compatriots.
The surviving pirates were interrogated thoroughly by the government. The technology they employed was far in advance of anything Colony 12 had seen since the catastrophe, but their usage of it was primitive at best. It was determined from the pirates that they inhabited a number of "deep space" space stations that had not been disabled by the Earth attack. It was later determined that there were three deep space stations that had survived, one due to failure of the earth attack device, one due to destruction of the attack pod, and one for mysterious reasons. The second base had been equipped with some heavy combat vehicles that had been conducting live fire exercises when the pod emerged. One of the rounds malfunctioned and struck the pod, causing it to launch an attack against the combat craft, which retaliated and destroyed the pod. The combat vehicles were crippled, and the crews were rescued by SAR personnel aboard the station.
It is unknown why the third station was undamaged. It was a deep space manufacturing unit and it was used to construct other deep space structures. The station attempted to contact the planetary colonies, but failed. After a short while, they began SAR operations, rescuing stranded space travelers. With difficulty, the station achieved self-sufficiency.
It is apparent that at some point, one of the other two stations came to be ruled by an autocratic leader, named "Frederick Vanguard". Frederick united the populace behind the concept that the stations should use their technological know-how to bring the planetary colonies back to their previous advanced state of technology, under his guiding hand, of course. It is likely that his last name has been garbled over the years, or that he chose it, abandoning his original surname to histories' dust.
The other station resisted Frederick's plans, to the point where they went to war. The first station suffered terrible damage from the battles, but when it was over, Frederick had gained the upper hand, owing to the larger and better-armed contingent he commanded. After consolidating his gains, he turned to the third station.
Weak and under-armed, it was easy prey for his forces, but in the defense of their homes, the station's forces managed to temporarily blunt his offensive and also managed to damage his home space station with some form of guided space debris [possibly a girder assembly]. Frederick was killed in the attack, ending his plans for domination. The third station's defenders were eventually conquered and enslaved, and the station was made ready for use by the conquerors.
The result of the war was that the three stations were unified under a single government, but they were unable to support themselves. A raiding policy was implemented, where the stations sent out ships to gather necessary resources. The government collapsed, and was replaced by pirate "families", who sometimes fought each other, but mostly raided. In later years, the infighting increased, regulated only by a pirate court, who would stop feuds when they reached too high a level. On certain planets, where resistance was light, permanent settlements were established. Some went retrograde, and became as primitive as the society around them. Most remained in contact with the pirate fleet, enslaving the local populace. Other deep space stations have been reclaimed by the pirates, but most were abandoned, as the pirates lacked the know-how to get them running again.
The pirates retained the bare minimum of technological understanding in order to keep their craft running. They were very unsure about sensor usage, preferring to employ their own eyes. Communications were similarly primitive, employing only the most basic of technologies afforded them. There is very little discipline or organization amongst the pirates. The literacy rate is very low.
The Space Pirates
“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost.”-
Rudyard Kipling, Dane-geld
The attack on Landspit was not the only attack, the small ship that had landed there was only part of a larger fleet. Sector 2 was hit hard, with their capital ransacked. Other nations were similarly injured, and Sectors 4 and 6 were invested by pirate forces who chose to stay.
Sector 7 was an exception. Their government was destroyed, and the pirates had set about looting when a fanatical band of warriors appeared. These men and women were the descendants of a historical-recreation group, the Swords and Sorcery Party. With absolutely no regard for their own safety, and armed with axes, spears and swords, they charged the pirates, catching them by surprise. Such was the ferocity of their attack that the pirates, despite all their high technology, were overrun completely.
Without a government, the Sector was in disarray. The SSP members quickly set about restoring order and setting themselves as the new government. With that, the Kingdom of Starport [the major city of the region] was formed. In later years, they drove the pirates out of the nearby sector 6, and added it to their demense. Prizing strength and military prowess, the kingdom waged war inside itself and with all nearby nations. Over the years, an efficient bureaucracy was created to manage day-to-day operations while the leaders honed their combat skills.
The Magicians
The worst was yet to come. The central colony government was destroyed by pirates, and the shuttle was threatened. It would surely have been destroyed had not a group of strange men and women stopped the pirate onslaught. The magicians had arrived. Wearing clothing straight from an old fantasy novel, and riding old high technology devices modified to look as dragons or demons do, they swept into battle. Their mastery of technology was far greater than that of the pirates, and they swept the field of them. They were so superior that few pirates were killed, the rest taken prisoner and their devices captured for future use.
Recognizing that the magicians were the only group with the ability to maintain the shuttle, what was left of the central Colony government turned its operation over to them. To this day, the magician’s guild have dealt with re-supply for the lunar colony.
As it turns out, not all technology had been destroyed in the Catastrophe, but much of it had been rendered unusable. On the Western continent, a small group of skilled engineers had managed to repair some of them, but it had taken a great deal of time. It was their descendants who finished the repairs. The original engineers had been enamoured of “swords and sorcery” style fantasy books, which were still printed in long-lasting paper even in that era of high technology, and their children took to them readily. With the only high tech in the land, they quickly adopted the motifs of the wizards they read about.
The magicians have ordered themselves into a Guild. The guild is hierarchical in structure, with a seven-member council that determines important policy decisions. It also deals with governance and punishment of magicians who behave improperly. Magicians are expected to maintain a certain distance from society at large, and only to involve themselves sparsely. They are not forbidden from profiting from their interactions, but cannot distribute high technology without the approval of the council.
The council has adopted a policy of non-interference towards the various nations’ technological development- they will not stop or interfere with high tech tests or equipment development. They have not done this for the nations’ political or warlike ambitions, and will restrict them when they attempt to make war.
For example, the nations were forbidden to produce long ranged multi-engine bombers, or to construct too many battleships, though that was many years in the past. If they attempt to defy the magicians, they will face embargoes of needed goods and, sometimes, active destruction of their devices. This has proven effective, but it has also led to a burgeoning secret world and to imbalances between the nations.
In an effort to reduce pollution, and to protect the peace, the magicians have released fuel cell, Solar Power Satellite and fusion station technology to all the nations. They hope that through this, the nations will grow in a spirit of technological co-operation.
The Colonial Republic- Growth
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"-Sir Winston Churchill
Recognizing the dangers posed by further piratical attacks, the Colony 12 government approved massive investments in technological advance. Devices like the light bulb or the internal combustion engine, long considered curiosities, were to be brought into mass service. Mass production techniques were to be examined, and the safest and best were to be adopted. The railroad was to be constructed, linking the five major cities of Colony 12. The process was long and difficult, hampered by the lack of population and of expertise, along with a limited industrial base.
The Law, revised
In the succeeding years following the collapse of the old sector government, the Republic set about changing the legal codes of the society. Already they had been much simplified, but still presented a number of major problems. Prominent in the revision was Judge Jonas Pitch, who later headed the supreme court. In 2350, he presided over Conkett v. Smithman. George Conkett had accused Ronald Smithman of negligence in selling him a plow that when used incorrectly could injure the user. Pitch threw out the suit, and then fined Conkett twenty dollars for wasting the court’s time. Under the pre-catastrophe rules, Smithman would have been found negligent, but that was back when all devices had triplicate safety systems mandated, and back when computer systems could provide the safety required. Smithman’s simple plow could not hope to meet these standards.
Later, Judge Pitch supervised the re-write of Intellectual Property laws, separating the three distinct classes of Intellectual property and assigning different characteristics to each. Previously, all IP was held under multi-hundred year guarantees of ownership, extended periodically, with the exception of patents on “real” devices, which lasted only one hundred years. Pitch and the other members of the Lower Supreme Court presided over the case of Kalman Weaving inc. V. Loft Looms llc. With the introduction of the punch-card loom, many intricate patterns could now be cheaply realised in the garment industry. Kalman had patented a series of punch card pattern plans, under the old software patent system, as the cards were regarded as software. Loft Looms had produced designs that were very similar to the patterns used by Kalman, who sued.
The Lower Court overturned a lower court decision favoring Kalman, then threw out the patent entirely. With this, the government drafted a new series of laws to cover matters of patents, copyrights and trademarks. While trademarks were in perpetuity, and required registration, copyrights were limited to fourteen years, with generous fair use provisions, as the new society recognized the need to build upon the older elements. Patents were limited to twenty-five years, and were not applicable to algorithms or other mathematical features of software, only to “real” things or processes.
For the next fifty years, the courts and the government worked out a more streamlined and simplified legal system that still stands in the Colonial Republic.
The Second Catastrophe
“There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
As the nations of the world sought to rebuild and grow, a new peril was discovered. The oceans were rising, and the tides were soon flooding areas once thought of as safe. There was considerable concern, and the magicians soon began to examine the issue. In 2401, the council sent out patrols to locate the source of the disruption.
It was discovered that one of the early terraforming devices had re-activated, and was out of control. A great search began to find it, and somehow turn it off. Led by Sortham the Tracker from the kingdom of Starport, the magicians narrowed their search to the realm of Kulas. Kulas was originally a wilderness district that was used as a nature preserve by the ancient colonists, and is a corruption of an old saying that adorned many signs about the more inhabited areas of the region. In later years, the descendants of the original park rangers formed a loose confederacy of minor dukedoms, until driven out by worsening weather. The last group left in 2390, likely this was caused by the out-of-control terraformer.
In the icy wastes, Sortham disappeared into the swirling snow, never to return. His assistant, however, did. After being told of a strange device found by Sortham, he had been charged with guarding their camp against roving wolf packs, and when food ran out, he was forced to march out of the park to meet with a waiting ship. Near death, he was nursed back to health and soon was able to lead a new team back to his camp. Johan became a great tracker in his own right afterwards, and was instrumental in accurately locating the terraformer.
In 2406, with the device finally located, the magicians gathered their strength and assembled nearby it. Over a period of months, they managed to disable the device, and save the world from drowning. The damage, sadly, had already been done. Many areas sank, and many lowlands were flooded. What once was a trio of mighty continents was now reduced to numerous islands and archipelagos.
The Colonial Republic was very lucky. Few of its lands were divided by the oceans, and the railroad lines all remained intact. As it had been far inland and rather high up, it had been spared most of the destruction. Now, it was a largish island floating amidst a stream, and found itself mastering a new craft: shipbuilding. With the assistance of numerous refugees from shoreline communities now submerged, a navy was soon established, and the Republic secured its waterways.
It was in this period that practical aircraft began flying, and proved very useful in mapping the changes that had been wrought on the world. Although little more than motorized kites at the time, they established themselves as important parts of the communities that their pilots touched. It was not long before the Colonial Republic inaugurated a full air force and supporting air militia.
The Pirate Invasion
"War is an ugly thing, but not the
ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and
patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much
worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight,
nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a
miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and
kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--
John Stuart Mill
Observation of the space surrounding the colony had started thirty years earlier, but it failed to detect a landing by another pirate ship. This time, the pirates landed near the Nightfall military base, on January 16th, 2416. The Republican soldiers inside were battle hardened veterans, having served in the suppression of the Leeward Island rebellion, and they quickly armed themselves against the oncoming onslaught.
The ensuing battle was a hard fought victory for the colonial forces. The enemy weapons were far in advance of the bolt-action rifles of the soldiers, and many were killed in the battle. The discipline and determination of the Republic army won the day, as again the enemy fought without armor or organization. A brave party of soldiers managed to fight their way aboard the pirate ship to capture it and the crew onboard.
The ship was sent to the magician’s council for examination, along with the captured pirate weapons. There was some grumbling regarding this course of action in the Upper house, as it was felt that the equipment should be kept by the CR in order to repel further attacks. The reasoning behind sending it off was simple- the magicians, with their higher technology, could better analyze the equipment and use it to serve as a defense against further incursions.
That this course of action was correct was borne out by later events. Pirate attacks were reported in increasing frequency all over the globe, but seemed to be conducted in a far different fashion than the earlier ones. Lighter craft were being employed, craft which did not appear to have an exoatmospheric capability. On patrol near the Quarry Islands, a recon flight of two “Pinetree” class biplanes spotted an open cockpit hover vehicle. They were spotted, but hid inside a cloudbank until the hover-vehicle abandoned its search, departing southwards. Their report went immediately to the government, and was then transmitted to the Magicians’ council.
The council gravely considered the news, and began a search for the possible location of a pirate base, but also considered that the craft may have been deposited by a larger pirate ship. Over the next ten years, the council searched the world and the space beyond for evidence of the pirates, even sending a dangerous mission to the abandoned mining base near the gas giant Foruth. Still, no evidence of the pirate bases was uncovered. Worse yet, the number of pirate attacks was increasing. Were it not for the actions of a few young magicians, the pirate base may never have been discovered, and far graver threats would have lain hidden.
Tythar, a young magician who had shown great promise during entry into the council, had gathered a few friends together and began to delve into why the magicians could not find the pirate forces. What he discovered stunned him, and later the whole council. In a series of difficult and dangerous infiltrations, he and his compatriots uncovered a conspiracy by a trio of magicians to rule the entire colony. They had made secret deals with the pirates to assist them in destabilizing the world order, and to gain access to their ancient high technology. The magicians had planned to use the pirates as their foot soldiers, along with a group of bored warriors from the Swords and Sorcery Party. Their plans were laid bare, and the leaders of the conspiracy were swiftly brought before the magicians’ council. Their punishment was delayed while the council debated what action to take.
Some of the SSP warriors escaped the drag-net and fled, presumably to meet with the pirates directly. Only later was it determined that they had merely hidden themselves, as the magicians in control had the foresight [or perhaps conceit] to restrict contact with the pirates to themselves alone. Others repented of their treason and joined the attack force that was later composed. They were viewed with great suspicion, but in the end it proved unfounded. Even so, it was only by the grace of their master that they were permitted to do so, and they were kept separate from the other members of the force.
There was considerable debate at the Countries council [where the nations of the world gathered to discuss matters] when the magicians informed them of what happened. Previously, the magicians had been regarded as good friends and mentors for the struggling nations. Now, with the revealing of the conspiracy, the nations grew wary. Did the other magicians have designs on mastery? While the Colonial Republic felt satisfied by the explanations, some nations were not convinced of the forthrightness of the mages, and it was only the impassioned speeches by members of the Kingdom of Starport’s party that convinced them to not desert the council entirely.
And so, the combined might of the nations of Colony 12 and the mages’ council was set to a single task- defeat the pirates and rescue any slaves. A recon mission was organized, using a newly formed cadre of special forces. The soldiers reported back that a major base had been established. It had a population of roughly ten thousand inhabitants, who conducted farming operations. Most of the farmers appeared to be slaves to their pirate masters. The total number of armed pirates was around five hundred. They had ten ships on the planet, which periodically lifted off to destinations unknown.
As always, the pirates were heavily armed, but did not care to use their sensors, favoring their eyes. The two councils was very concerned that the lunar base might be invaded by the pirates, as it was almost defenseless. For years, the lunar colony had expended nearly all its resources in merely surviving. The introduction of new shuttles [produced by the magicians] reduced the burden of producing recovery vehicles, but the lunar economy was still very weak, due to the small population and the many years of desperate scramble.
Various options were considered for the reduction of the pirate base. One proposal was to bombard it from orbit with iron spheres until it was destroyed. Another was to use a fusion power device as an explosive. Yet another involved the construction of an "atom bomb" to be delivered by a shuttle. It was decided that these options would be horribly cruel to the massive slave population and to the families of the pirates. It would also be prohibitively expensive to construct even a single atomic weapon or fusion device and the effects were reportedly dangerous in the long term. A decision needed to be made quickly, as the hover patrols were getting nearer major population centers. A large slave raid might happen at any moment.
A daring plan was hatched to both eliminate the pirates and free their slaves. Using the body of a newly designed medium tank, the Colonial Republic, in concert with the mages mounted a beam cannon, power generator and shield on top of it in place of the turret. Six tanks were converted. Two hundred soldiers from all the nations participating were equipped either with captured pirate arms, or with lower powered copies. The forces were moved quietly to the southern continent over the period of three weeks. They then moved into position for an assault on the pirate base. The mages acted as both advisors and in their own units.
At the same time, an old cargo ship was loaded with high-quality alcoholic beverages and was set adrift near a known patrol area for the pirate's hover vehicles. It took very little time for them to find the ship, and they quickly towed it back to shore using one of their spacecraft. That night, the pirates opened the cargo, and began to party wildly. It was August 23rd, 2436. A recon team made note of their positions, and using newly developed radios, contacted the main body of troops.
Battle
He, therefore, who desires peace, should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory, should spare no pains to train his soldiers. And he who hopes for success, should fight on principle, not chance. No one dares to offend or insult a power of known superiority in action.
VEGETIUS, Military Institutions of the Romans
In 2430, the 1st patrol squadron was inaugurated, consisting of three large patrol amphibians and nine two-seat patrol fighters. The three patrol amphibians of the “Amphibian” class proved instrumental in accurately locating the base. When the decision was made to attack the pirates’ base, the attacking fleet was screened by the patrol fighters of the 1st squadron. They normally operated from a series of small islands offshore of the Republic, but received basing rights in Starport and numerous smaller kingdoms for the duration.
On the afternoon of August 15th, 2436, a Sandpiper Mk I twin seat patrol fighter, flown by Pilot Officer Edward Johnson, spotted a ship’s wake right on the path of the Global Republic Fleet. Johnson, having determined that the fleet would be in sensor range before he would be able to return with the other craft of his squadron, decided to make an attack on the ship, though he was certain it would cost him his, and his gunner's lives.
Approaching at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, Johnson began his dive on the target. Beneath his craft was a single seven hundred pound armor-piercing bomb, developed from captured pirate technology. The pirates were unaware of his approach, or perhaps did not fear it greatly. At an altitude of three thousand feet, Pilot Officer Johnson released his bomb, which struck the pirate ship in the bows. The ship quickly began to take on water, as a black plume of smoke rose into the sky.
Scanning the sky, Flying Sergeant Justin Smith spotted a small hover-fighter departing the crippled pirate vessel. It rapidly gained altitude, and was soon close on the tail of the Sandpiper. Using the twin plasma cannon mounted on a rear-facing flexible emplacement, Sergeant Smith tried to drive off the hover-fighter. The fighter pulled back, daunted by the force of fire directed at it, but the pirates soon regained their confidence, closing again, letting loose with a hail of energy fire.
Again, Sergeant Smith returned fire, as enemy rounds skipped off the rear shields of the patrol fighter. In an attempt to shake the pursuit, Pilot Officer Johnson dove towards the waves, as a new volley of fire partially pierced the rear force field, injuring Flying Sergeant Justin Smith. Despite his injuries, Sergeant Smith continued to fire, striking the enemy hover fighter in several key locations and causing it to break off its attack. Sergeant Smith’s coolness under fire allowed Pilot Officer Johnson time to plan his next move. Now at wave-top level, the Sandpiper sped towards the rapidly sinking pirate ship. Spray from the ocean was kicked up by the propeller, temporarily obscuring his forward vision. With a deft movement, the fighter climbed through the black pillar of smoke from the dying pirate ship, vanishing from sight.
When he broke through the dark cloud, Pilot Officer Johnson spotted the pirate hovercraft, above and about to over-fly his fighter. Raising the nose, he let loose a long burst of plasma fire, shattering the enemy fighter. Circling the site, Johnson quickly determined that no further pirate vessels were in the region, then turned his plane for home.
Sadly, Flying Sergeant Justin Smith did not survive the long flight back to the airbase. His fighting spirit and skill prevented the pirate fighter from signaling the intent of the Global Republic. Pilot Officer Edward Johnson’s precision attack stopped the pirate vessel from doing the same. The actions of the single Sandpiper patrol fighter were instrumental in securing an undetected landing for the invasion force. Pilot Officer Edward Johnson remained in the Republic Air Force, eventually becoming commander of it. Flying Sergeant Justin Smith received the Flying Cross posthumously, and was buried in the Colony 12 War cemetery.
With surprise achieved, the small army set ashore on a protected cove. The colonial forces advanced under the cover of a tropical forest, emerging into the ploughed fields of the encampment. The tanks advanced along secretly prepared routes through the forest. The raucous party masked the groaning, screeching, clanking tanks as they and their infantry support advanced. Surprise was total, and the soldiers quickly overran the party. The majority of partygoers were quickly overwhelmed and subdued. The soldiers had brought along restraints for this very reason. The few attempts at resistance were quickly overwhelmed either by the infantry or by the tanks running over the positions where fire was coming from. A particularly stubborn group of defenders had ensconced themselves in the pirate's Space/Air Traffic Control tower. A few rounds from one tank's main cannon collapsed the tower, ending resistance. 250 pirates were killed or captured, and five space-capable craft were taken.
The mages had conducted careful signals monitoring during the operation . It was determined that the pirate camp had sent off a signal spaceward. The contents or even the form was unknown. A decision was made to reinforce the soldiers at the camp. Many soldiers had trained on the pirate weaponry, and five hundred further troops were sent to bolster the camp's defenses. The captured pirate ships were modified so that their shields would cover the defensive positions of the camp, again with the assistance of the grateful former slaves.
Meanwhile, the mages seized the surviving pirate hover vehicles, and set about using them in defense of the perimeter. A number of heavy cannon were removed from the five captured pirate ships and placed in defensive positions. The prisoners were evacuated first to the original army gathering point and then to a troop transport that had disgorged its forces. The slaves were evacuated to the gathering point and were given rations.
After three weeks of waiting, a large pirate force attacked. Roughly ten ships were employed, carrying an estimated one thousand warriors. Eager to recapture the camp, the pirates landed nearby and then launched their assault. They were unwilling to risk damaging either their slaves or their gathered riches [a large supply of valuable materials were found in the camp], and so advanced in a careful fashion, eschewing area weapons. The colonial army braced for the attack, which included the enemy use of hover vehicles.
The defense of the camp started off poorly when the forward guard suffered a number of weapon failures. Only the advance of one of the tanks prevented their over-running. This time, the enemy was more organized, and far more aggressive.
The battle see-sawed for many hours. Slowly, the defenders of the camp were pushed back due to weapons malfunctions and the heavy weaponry employed by the pirates. In an act of tremendous heroism, four tanks advanced against the enemy without infantry support. They made it all the way to the landed transports, destroying two that attempted to provide fire support for the advancing soldiers. The tanks were all destroyed, save one that escaped into the jungle when a mage intervened [who was killed shortly following] and provided harassing fire against the enemy forces for the rest of the night. This attack disrupted the enemy assault. A second assault was repulsed by a band of SSP warriors, the selfsame group who had thrown in with the criminal mages. They died to a man, but such was the strength of their charge that the pirates could not mount a third attack.
The enemy forces withdrew temporarily in the night, giving both sides a brief respite. The rest was to be short lived, as the enemy launched one of their spacecraft. It hovered over the colonial positions, firing down into the defenses. Only the shields of the captured pirate vessels prevented defeat. As the ship moved off momentarily to let its guns recharge, a hover vehicle, crewed by mages and carrying a team of elite SSP warriors, dashed out from behind cover to land atop it. Using the hover vehicle's main cannon, the mages blasted a hole in the upper portion of the spacecraft, and boarded it. Taking control of the spacecraft, the warriors flew over the enemy encampment and attacked the pirate forces resting there.
At this time, the weary defenders of the colonial army rose from their trenches and their gun nests and charged at the enemy. The two remaining tanks advanced with the infantry, and the survivor of the earlier attack emerged from the forest to join the assault. A reinforcing group of mages swooped overhead in hover vehicles that looked like mechanical dragons and monsters, annihilating their foe where-ever they flew.
The ferocity of the attack set the enemy off balance, and in the space of an hour the entire force had been killed or captured, with the exception of some fifty pirates who managed to escape in a shuttle.
At the end of the battle, the pirates were amazed at the treatment they received. They were not enslaved, nor were they executed. Instead, they were interrogated, then placed aboard a prison ship for transport to the North continent.
The matter of the slaves was somewhat more difficult. They had come from many places. Some had been captured on remote colonies, some were the losers of pirate family battles and some were descendants of the inhabitants of the third deep space station. Some more were recent slaves, made so from the peoples of the colony. They were given the lands about the old pirate base, and were given assistance in starting new lives on Colony 12. The colonial citizens were returned to their nations and homes. The land about the pirate base in time came to be known as Red Island, named such for the blood spilled and the flowers that bloomed every spring with a crimson hue.
In 2438, two years after the battle, another pirate ship landed on Colony 12. This time, the forces that emerged were unarmed, and came to negotiate the release of their prisoners. This was agreed upon, after the pirates supplied the colony with a number of items to further the research effort. Only half of the captured pirates agreed to leave, the rest wanted to start new lives on Colony 12. During their captivity, they had been educated and had received training in many fields. They had no desire to return to their plundering ways, instead they wished to live free from want and hunger.
The losses in the battle were heavy, particularly amongst the mages forces. Many magicians were killed during the battles, as they strove to save the lives of both the slaves and the colonial soldiers. The entire senior council of mages was killed during the battle, falling one by one in the desperate struggle. The Swords and Sorcery party lost fewer members as a percentage of their total warriors than the mages, but they were their best and brightest. There would be no replacement for these brave fighters.
Many of the pirate space vessels had been destroyed in the fighting, but ten were still operable at the end of the battle, and are now used by the magicians to resupply the lunar colony. Some are used for spare parts, and keep the fleet flying. The pirate weapons were distributed amongst the nations, and are kept for times of great emergencies. Unknown technologies are even now being studied by the magicians to determine their worth and purpose.
It was behind this backdrop that the industrialized nations began to achieve pre-eminence.
Approaching the Modern Days
"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose
righteousness."
-Theodore Roosevelt
After the great battles to drive off the space pirates, Tythar the Magnificent assumed the role of chief magician in the council, as all the senior members had been killed. The magicians had been sadly weakened by the fight, and would take many years to recoup their losses. They still have not fully recovered, and their power has declined accordingly. They reside only on the Western continent, and do what they can to help the nations here. For some reason, these nations are far less developed than those on the Northern Continent, and require more supervision and assistance.
In order to give the various nations some measure of self-sufficiency, Tythar instructed his magicians to teach the scientists of the world how to manufacture and maintain various high tech devices, Republic scientists amongst them. In a flurry of activity and over a period of twenty years, the Galactic Republic introduced fusion power, lattice energy storage, energy direction devices and supertech flight engines along with many other revolutionary devices. A large-scale computer network was set up in 2460, and has achieved widespread usage.
As the nations gradually improved their technological state, the magicians have gradually withdrawn, acting less and less to supervise and manage the overall society. This has proven a wise course, as some tension had developed due to their rule. Some nations felt that they did not have true sovereignty, and that the magicians wielded far too much power.
With the reduction of the magicians’ power and with the possession of the tools necessary, more archaeological explorations were undertaken by all nations. The Colonial Republic developed a large and sophisticated artifact recovery operation, and it became one of the three key governmental missions.
The Colonial Republic government, formed and constituted by the will of the people, was set to three key tasks to ensure that all the citizenry would benefit. Defense, Research and Recovery were of the utmost importance, and one could not survive without the other. Defense was to protect the archaeologists, the research facilities and the international trade routes, along with the nation proper. Without trade, no research could occur, as there would not be enough funds available. Without research and artifact recovery, there could be no adequate defense, however. Only through the combination of these three disciplines can the nation’s survival be ensured. Accordingly, the Research and Archaeological Councils were formed in 2465, and unified the previously fragmented investigative measures.
The New Space Race
While computer technology developed slowly, owing to the need to produce robust systems that could resist EM blasts, space technology came along much more swiftly. Owing to the captured spacecraft, and technology research released by the magicians, a new class of spacecraft began to take to the skies. In a short while, the Colonial Republic had several research companies working towards new space launches, and long term plans were drawn up for exploration and development.
The upstart company, Caldicott Quick-crete, managed to launch a test Solar Power Satellite, and with the viability of the research into power beaming confirmed, planning began for larger SPS systems, including multi-phase arrays. In 2480, the largest one came online, supplying power to both the stations under construction, and ground bases in the Colonial Republic. Other nations swiftly followed suit, and fusion power was restricted to military and emergency purposes, along with spacecraft. This was absolutely necessary, as the production of material suitable both for fusion plants and fusion fuel was very expensive and time consuming.
Small space stations were rapidly being built, the first using rediscovered inflatable station components. The magicians then helped organize several expeditions out to the still extant space stations that circled the globe. Unfortunately, not much was left of them, but the central power cores and life support systems were salvageable, and with new components brought up from the ground, three stations were used to become six operational units. The Colonial Republic placed it's station, GeoRepublic, at a convenient Lagrange point, and in later years added a gravity generator. It served well as a research and transhipment site for many years, before being expanded in 2505, and now acts as the main habitat for Colonial Republic Space operations.
With the assistance of the magician's council, a series of expeditions were conducted to survey the planets in the system, in 2490. Most were shown to either be lifeless rocks, or gas giants. The asteroid belts, two in total, attracted considerable interest from the various nations, and as such, agreements were drawn up to subdivide the nearest one into spheres of influence [as the farther one was not economically reachable at that time]. Immediately troubles flared, as the Intergalactic Union and the mysterious Southern Federation began to dispute the absolute position of the border between them. This has led to several in space skirmishes, mainly between the various mining concerns of each nation.
Shipping routes, as they must be precise orbits to make for efficient transits, are now key, and the chiefest danger lies in the interdiction of these routes. Even the introduction of semi-warp engines [that could reduce flight times even to the heliopause to a matter of a few days] did not change this. As soon as space travel became more common, again, then the age-old piracy dilemma arose once more.
The asteroids proved a rich source of minerals, and in-space manufacturing saved energy and time for spacefarers, making construction of in-orbit facilities far easier. This was important, as one of the key facilities that needed to be constructed was the numerous defensive bases and space ships that were needed to both patrol the frontier and protect the supply lines. It soon became apparent that piratical attacks were not just coming from forces somehow secreted into space from the colony, but from pirate vessels from far afield.
In this explorational period, some of the more distant, but still in-system space stations were explored. Most were in very bad shape, their organic-like core materials deteriorated. Several unique discoveries were made, however. On the farthest from the center station, artefacts were discovered that were far too primitive to have been used by the original station's users. Further examination showed examples of post-catastrophe occupation of the station- for example, markings and some spare tubing showed where rudimentary life-support systems had been set, and the materials used resembled nothing of what was in use at the time [so these items were either fabricated on the station, or brought from elsewhere]. It has not been determined as to who was using the station, when, or why they departed. A popular theory implies that the pirates used it as a staging base for attacks on the Colony proper, but given that the captured pirate vessels were equipped and stocked for long inter-system travel, it was difficult to explain why they'd stop there. Also, none of the interrogations showed that the pirates who had been captured were familiar with or had used these stations.
With the development of spacecraft built by the colonists, the Magicians opted to use two of the captured Pirate vessels for a longer exploration. The results of this exploration are largely unknown outside of the magician's council, though some facts have come to light. In 2495, the mage's exploration began, and took two years. At least three colonies were found and visited, but little is known about any of them, save one. It was barren, and wholly uninhabited, at least it seemed to be, based on the research of the mages, who had only a few weeks to scan the surface, given the perilous supply situation that they were in near the end of their journey.
In addition to the exploration of terrestrial colonies, apparently several primitive but functional deep space stations were found, but little has been spoken of them, even whether they were inhabited or not.
In 2505, an important milestone was reached: over one hundred thousand people had moved off the planet's surface, and were now living, either part or full-time, in space. twenty five thousand of them were Colonial Republic Citizens, and the rate of growth of CR space assets was the highest in the world, slightly ahead of the much larger Southern Federation, according to Mage research.
The latest developments in space exploration involve the development of much larger space stations, based on the recently recovered historical texts about the “O'Neil” colony system, and also the development of lower-energy use launch vehicles.
History Notes
There is a myth, popular mainly in the Intergalactic Union territories, that there was in fact no “Earth”, rather, Colony 12 is humanities' ancestral home. The Catastrophe erased the earlier true history of the world, and many such catastrophes have occurred throughout history, setting humanity back. Pirates in fact come from space stations set up by Colony 12, and small terraforming experimients conducted on distant planets.
When the slaves were freed from the pirate forces, they told tales of other worlds, some that they and their fathers came from, some of planets that they had visited at one time or another. Many told tales of a strange world that was all ocean beneath, but above there were floating islands, and travel between them was entirely aerial, though some of the closer ones had long suspension bridges bowing between them.
The slaves also brought many unique items and cultural relics from their homeworlds. They did not, however, bring their cultures- after several generations of slavery and changes, they did not remember much of the cultures, though some had passed down knowledge of the places they lived. Sadly, however, they mainly recounted the villages that their forefathers had lived in, and very little of the surrounding areas.