Scenario One
17 Feb 2021Zamen Kensata
As with all conflicts, tribalism was at the root of it. The Voltechs and the Taari joined in a coalition to dominate what they had long since saw as nothing more than two invading species. Udaaki were all nearly identical to the VolTaar collective as they all wore a slightly lighter or darker tone of beige pigmentation and a dim charcoal thatch of hair. A miracle to have even survived under Ardua's harsh gravitational pull, every Udaaki was generally above a height of seven feet; the males claiming an extra foot above their female counterparts. Though their bone structure had not evolved to withstand the gravity of the planet, the early emerging Udaaki dropped off by some ancient extraterrestrials managed to adapt to the point where the height of their descendants did not shorten, nor did they develop any form of slouch or hump on their backs.Worse still for the collective were the Mercians. A highly advanced species of humanoid that hailed from a distant quadrant of the galaxy which held no interest for either member of the V.T.C.. These particular mouth-breathers were shorter and typically bulkier than the Udaaki, with eerily similar bone and facial structures. Yet their skin and hair ranged from the same hues of beige as the Udaaki to paler tones on par with that of the Taari. Their eyes; some blue, some green, some black like Udaaki. The collective theorized that perhaps the invaders were the failed experiments of some unknown off-world species. Many theories were entertained over the many decades of the Arduan wars but none were ever confirmed. While the arrival of the Udaaki were crudely recorded by ancient Voltechians nearly two-hundred thousand years ago, the Mercians arrived on their own star fairing cities of metal. Smashing into and nearly wiping out an ancient city constructed by the Taari once dedicated to worshiping what the Voltechs believed to be the same species that brought the Udaaki. Though the Voltechs made sure to hide this hypothesis from their allies during the war. The Taari had long since migrated to the southeastern continent of Taarue and took the violent arrival of the Mercians as an affront to their culture rather than a true invading force. Nevertheless, it was enough to move them into the arms of an alliance that would see countless members of both species from the collective slaughtered.
For Lieutenant Eric Idle, ending a life had never been personal. At least, no more personal than carving out a slate of land for your species to live can get. The Udaaki were natural allies for Mercia. Once the two societies mingled, medical science revealed a mysterious common ancestry between the two humanoid species. This of course would have solidified the belief in extraterrestrial life if the children of Earth had not already met the VolTaar Collective. More vexing than anything else for Mercian scientists was the discovery that Udaaki did not only share a common signifier within their DNA with homo-sapiens, but also with every other known human offshoot all the way back to homo-erectus. This revelation led many to believe the Udaaki to indeed be the long extinct ancestors of the Mercians. Legends from old Voltech civilizations that told of celestial beings descending from the night sky through illustrations depicting gargantuan beasts with sharp angular curves and fiery eyes that set the land ablaze. From that fire the first records of Voltech encounters with the Udaaki were recorded.
Mercian and Udaaki scientists would debate, sometimes jokingly over which planet was the true origin world of the species and which was a testing dump for some long dead alien civilization. Though there was a counter argument which held equal validity amongst researchers and scholars. Homo-erectus were not generally over seven feet tall and Udaaki are born with a physique a few months shy of a human professional athlete. Though when just an infant, an Udaaki is just as cuddly and vulnerable as any other child, by age ten their bones and muscles begin to develop twice as fast as humans and once puberty kicks in they can cave a man's chest in with one punch. Though toned, they appear frail but somehow the lack of mass does not hinder the force behind their movements. Mercian scientists argue that the Udaaki had to be some lost, undiscovered offshoot much closer to homo-erectus but not the species itself. They shrugged the common DNA signifiers with every other known species off as an unknown and refused to give up their poker chips.
Nonetheless, this common ancestry and familiarity helped bridge a literal galaxy of cultural differences between the two peoples. When the generation ship crashed into what would one day be known as the first Mercian city and capitol; Lentia, while the Taari sent war parties the Udaaki sent scout ships, as they had also achieved interplanetary travel. They had even set up a colony on one of Ardua's moons, Tise. At first the Udaakin society believed they were debating amongst themselves whether or not to assist near helpless and lost travelers but within a brief span of time, the Udaaki learned who would be assisting who when it came to the wielding of power.
The first of the Arduan Wars were bloody but brief. Udaaki fighters laid down covering fire while what was left of the naval security teams from the generation ship coordinated with allied forces on the ground. Mercians, back then named Genseans, made their stand and headquarters at the crash site and refused to move. To move would mean utter defeat. But they were able to hold off the Collective for eight years. Enough time to salvage and repair three Cobra fighters and one Anaconda.
After that and a steady fuel source from Tise was established, the war was essentially over. AW1 in the beginning was mainly fought by naval pilots and crewmen turned infantry. The VolTaar Collective boasted a vast array of air fighters and ground combat vehicles with state of the art plasma beam technology that, while the main ships of the Merciana fleet were all grounded, tore through the moderate air defense the Udaaki were willing to spare. When asked why the Udaaki didn't just nuke the Collective from orbit as their fighters were capable of exiting Ardua's atmosphere and there was the Go'nu, one of two battlecruisers patrolling above the clouds. The answer came from the Udaakian council who decided that while defending a stranded species from slavery or worse, annihilation for an offense which occurred through no fault of their own was indeed the just path; destroying another species for trying to reclaim what was rightfully their territory was not an option. At least not at that point in time.
Once the Conda got off the ground though, Eric mused, all the arrogance got sucked out the airlock.
That is, the arrogance shifted. In an instant the Udaaki realized why migrating to some refugee camp on their continent was also not an option for the Mercians. The Collective wasn't giving humanity enough time to move everything we needed to move. If moving technology on that massive scale was even possible. No. The first Arduan War was over when the shields went up. After that the Udaaki were a lot more forthcoming when it came to sharing technology. Not through fear or intimidation but instead through mutual benefit. In return for basically ensuring the continued existence of humanity and the future creation of Mercia, the Udaaki were declared natural allies and the long lost cousins of mankind as the medical science that discovered the similarities between human and Udaaki DNA was through battle surgeries. Udaaki technology was quickly overtaken and assimilated into Mercian society. Their ships were rendered obsolete within a decade after the war.
That was when the radicals took root.
Udaaki naturalists who viewed humanity as unwelcome and intrusive invaders wanted the pompous multi-skins who saw themselves as superior to go back to the blue world they came from. Humanity was no stranger to prejudice and the two species mostly worked through their differences until a few radical agitators with backing from old remnants of the VolTaar Collective set loose a series of coordinated attacks that nearly brought Mercia and Udaak to their knees. No longer would the war be decided by overwhelming force. Now tactics would scribe which society would be the victor history remembers. As peace settled over the dust of AW One, treaties soon became alliances and a global effort similar to that of an ancient space faring Earth; to expand and prosper was the goal of all nations, though only a handful of Voltech and Taari citizens ever set foot on Mercian soil as they saw the vast void of space as forbidden, the Udaaki agitators were more than happy to hijack a few dozen ships to bring back to their hidden asteroid base.
One outpost became another, almost always built into a massive rock within a field of massive rocks where sensors are sketchy and piloting is deadly. By the end of the second war, the separatist coalition of Udaaki, Voltech, and Taari boasted nearly two hundred assorted ships featuring Cobras, Vipers, Pythons, Anacondas, and Corvettes. It was a logistical nightmare that many old Mercian generals used to bolster their long chastised view that humans should never have given the Udaaki everything as one disgruntled veteran commander put it. An entire, literal satellite nation consisting of nearly three-hundred million citizens was birthed within the void of space, it's main military forces hidden amongst the asteroid belts and rings surrounding Ardua.
But eventually, Eric knew, those who would rather live united and fight each other through sport and debate to hash out their differences would win the day over those who saw force as the answer. Though Eric knew that sometimes, force was the only way when every word had been said, every curse spewed, diplomatic avenue exhausted. It's the true reason why the new Collective could grow so quickly, because those who had so handily defeated it before felt themselves to be above violence. They thought having the better argument was enough but failed to realize that sometimes the better argument is only better because your side thinks it is. And when you stop listening to the other side they eventually stop shouting and start shooting.
However time for worrying about such things had long since passed and now Eric found himself approaching what he believed would be the final site for the final conflict between the four species on four continents. A true national war while at the same time a true civil war. And Eric was right on the tip of the sword.
"Lieutenant, they just took out the Naguto." A frantic voice boomed through Eric's comm unit.
A megaship battlecruiser down already? The battle had barely started and already the odds of survival were falling from unlikely to nonexistent. With the Naguto gone the only other allied battlecruiser within range of the conflict was Eric's own squadron home, the MoonVale, a smaller megaship designed specifically to ferry four fighter wings through the void.
"Who was her captain?" Eric contrasted his panicked ally with the calm query. He had a hunch.
"Don't know, Udaakian detachment patrolling from Tise outpost three." The voice shot back, seemingly more fearful.
Pope was right. Had to be. This was a setup. Eric brought up the fallen cruiser's outpost on the radar of his Viper. The designation read T-O3 with a brief summary loaded up onto the holo-screen over his left shoulder.
A decision needed to be made. But it wasn't his to make. "Captain, Solvy." Eric waited impatiently for a response.
"Idle? What is it, lieutenant? If you hadn't noticed, there is a battle our detachment is about to smack into and I'm a bit busy trying to coordinate that smack." The aged and grizzled voice of Eric's squadron commander shot back from the MoonVale.
"We need to hit the Tise outpost." Eric's answer was as brief as the situation demanded.
"Again with the spycraft theories?" Captain Alex Solvy barked. "You already ran out of time to gather enough evidence of a separatist infiltration. Worry about directing your wing, commander, and don't waste anymore of my time with your baseless suspicions, we have a fight right in front of us, so shut up and get prepped!"
"T-O3 had a full squadron of twelve wings stationed there last week for a situation like this but somehow the enemy managed to rip through them before we arrived just in time for us to see their flagship blow up? It has only been twenty minutes since the distress call."
"What the fuck is your point?" Solvy demanded.
"Do a planetary scan of T-O3. I would, but I'm busy marking targets." Eric's reply was as calm as his initial transmission.
A handful of hour long seconds filled the dead air as Eric locked on to an enemy Python at a distance of about twenty kilometers. He thumbed the lock over to the power generator subsystem and waited as his ship moved closer to the conflict. I know they're there. They have to be there.
"Idle!" Solvy's voice suddenly retunred with a shout.
Eric could overhear the officer performing the scan for Solvy on the comm and a small smirk crept up from the corner of his mouth.
"Apparently the defensive squadron detached to T-O3 is somehow still on the ground at the outpost." Solvy was stern but Eric could hear the entire direction of the coming battle changing in the squadron commander's mind before he spoke. "Idle, if you're wrong about this..." Solvy began, but the next course of action could already be heard in his voice.
"The separatists got a hold of the outpost, they are going to blindside us when we're engaged with that attacking cruiser and its squad." Eric said with certainty.
Five seconds of silence, and then Solvy's voice filled the comm waves once again. "King Squadron, proceed full throttle towards the enemy cruiser." Five more seconds. "Wing four, break off and investigate Tise Outpost number three, engage and neutralize any enemy threat you encounter.
Eric instantly broke off from the rest of his squadron with his six wing mates following in close formation.
"Boss finally listened to you. I don't believe it." One of Eric's wing chuckled.
"Keep those ships in your sights at all times." Eric commanded. "You see any small ant like dots scurrying towards those ships, speed up and pray we get into range before they manage to get airborne. We're highly outnumbered here, people. The objective is to eliminate as many fighters as we can before they can take off to reinforce the enemy."
"What happens when they start taking off?" Another of Eric's wing asked.
"Keep shooting." Eric waited for any disagreements. When none came he gave one last general command before the dogfighting started. "All power to engines, we're going nose down, people. Priority targets are the frigates. Wipe those Vettes and Condas off my radar. First target five kilometers out until gravitational snare, she's still cold so they haven't realized we're on to them yet. Break point two kilometers up, keep those afterburners asleep until my signal unless you want to contribute your ship to the fight as a missile."
"As long as they hit one of them, I'll take it." A wingman joked.
"Breakpoint in three...two...one...fire!" Eric had noticed that during their approach not one of the ships seemed to be activating and no pilots or SRVs carrying pilots were spotted moving towards them which meant one of two things were true; either they were hiding in the outpost, hoping Eric would have broken off his assault, or...
"Heat signature detected." The AI voice of Eric's ship computer warned.
"They're already in the ships!" Eric snarled. Now he had a decision to make. "Do not divert power to shields, you will not have enough energy to pull out of our descent." Something Eric was now convinced the enemy knew.
Rare though the maneuver was; some would say suicidal, there was someone on that rock who had seen it done before and knew that the first few seconds of the counter descent were the most vulnerable for any ship performing it. No matter, they were already committed. Eric's wing of Vipers lifted their noses seconds before the immense speed at which they traveled connected them with the Tise moon surface. Their afterburners shot white hot flames into the night sky and for a few seconds, engulfed the gray sandy ground in red flame, turning it a dark, singed black.
Two Eagles managed to launch from the surface during Eric's descent. Three bursts of pulse lasers from each ship ripped through a Viper under Eric's command before they settled into a wide arc that would bring them around to the wing's rear just as they completed their rapid afterburner ascent.
"Shields up! Evasive maneuvers!" Eric ordered through gritted teeth.
Blue orbs of light began springing to life around the Vipers in defiance of the red pulse lasers from the combat Eagles.
"King five, king eleven, clear our chemtrails." Eric ordered.
Two of the surviving six Vipers flipped in unison while still maintaining the same course and speed of their peers. The pointed front of each vessel settled unleashing two steady beams of plasma on the Eagles, destroying the small craft within seconds.
"Commander, the Conda's heating up!" King 3 shouted.
"I want all firepower on that Anaconda, now. King 2 and King 3, dumbfire missiles!" Eric commanded.
Three enemy Cobras sprung from the ground as six large unguided missiles slammed into the massive Anaconda frigate, ending its launch before it could start. The enemy had made a gamble. They were hoping Eric would break off and rejoin the main fight if the ships on the ground didn't move. For that they had to keep their shields and systems on standby. They knew the location of their stolen ships were already known by their enemy.
Eric had also taken a gamble and lost one squad member before the skirmish could begin. But I'm not gonna lose.
"Break off! Remember we're outnumbered, choose your targets accordingly." Eric flicked one extra pip of energy into his engines when his shields had fully charged and lined himself up behind one of the three Cobras, destroying it moments later with his beam lasers.
"How does one forget they are outnumbered?" The voice came back jokingly from one of Eric's wing. "It's really hard to do with the majority of people shooting at you."
"I'll let you know when we get back." Eric's reply held the dryness of a squadron commander even though he had yet to acquire the rank.
"With your fist?" The wingman asked.
"Both of them." Eric found himself smirking again as he replied, while gunning down another Cobra.
The separatists may have had the numbers since most of the allied nations had somewhat demilitarized during peacetime, but they damn sure didn't have the skill. The six Vipers made short work of the few remaining ships to get off the ground and then turned their attention to the outpost.
"How many more we got on the ground there, boss?" King 14 asked.
"Not many." Eric replied. "We've taken out the big ships and it seems they haven't managed to get pilots into all of them."
Just as Eric finished speaking, a gigantic black object rose up from behind T-O3. Its flat angled rear design was similar to that of an Anaconda but on a slightly larger scale. Instead of a diamond, the long body of the vessel was shaped more like a half cone. When it's nose peered over the outpost and rose into view of Eric and his wing the ships immediately scattered.
"Break off! Break the fuck off, now!" Eric roared just before a massive red beam of plasma tore through the void towards his wing of Vipers.
The beam managed to clip one of the Vipers, draining what little shields it had left in almost an instant. A full quarter of the back right end of the vessel was seared clean off and a brief explosion from the exposed metal knocked the ship off its course into a death spiral towards the ground.
"Kailey!" Eric shouted through his rage. She was gone. "Okay, King 3 regroup on me." Eric's eyes darted around his cockpit from the radar to the subsystem target readout to the surrounding void. "The rest of you, split-s under that big fucker's gut and let loose."
In space, anything could maneuver. But big ships were still slow. Eric took the full brunt of the enemy ship's attention by unleashing his own compliment of missiles towards the Corvette's nose then quickly spun off to the side, narrowly avoiding a large laser blast. The wingman who stayed with him bounced off in the other direction and used the distraction to come about and pepper the frigate's right side with missiles. Though heavily armored, the large ship hadn't managed to get its shields up yet. When the three remaining members of Eric's wing secured their positions beneath the behemoth, obeying their commander's order, the pilots did indeed let loose every last missile they had into the gut of the enemy vessel.
The ensuing explosion split the Corvette into two halves that rained down onto the moon. The sight pulled many whoops and hollers from the surviving members of Eric's wing.
"Squadron wing number four successful completion of all objectives." A robotic female voice suddenly echoed as Tise, the outpost, and even Eric's wing mates began to phase out of existence. "Pilot registry number one-one-three-eight, Admiral Eric Idle; Naval branch of Arduan Defense Force. Scenario one; first official conflict of second Arduan war. Score...calculating......calculating..."
Eric gave a brief sigh and waited.
"...Calculating..." The computer voice continued. "...Calculating...calculating...error...error...scarlet Krait...error..."
Eric slammed his fist into the side of his cockpit.
"Cal, cal, cal, calculating..." The computer chimed. "Pilot has achieved a perfect run matching historical records."
"Well, I'd hope so." Eric replied.
"If you wish to continue, please select a new scenario and designate either open or solo play." The computer advised.
"That's enough for today." Eric pushed open the wall of his cockpit, which was not inside of a Viper but instead built into a round sphere shaped simulation capsule.
"Tried saving them again, Admiral?" One of the simulator mechanics asked as the Navy leader stepped out of the machine.
"No." Eric replied with a solemn gaze. "If recent events have taught me anything; holding on to the past won't get you anywhere."
"So you played it straight? Just like back when you were there?"
"Yeah." Eric nodded before turning back to the simulator. "I realized I had never done this simulation with the perspective that there wasn't anything I could have done differently."
"How did it feel?" The mechanic wondered.
"Like I was in control." Eric stated definitively.
Loud clanging footfalls echoed across the area. "Admiral Idle." A voice shouted.
Eric turned in the direction of the voice and spotted what looked like one of Prime Minister Ford's aides. Now what? Eric sighed.
"Sir." The aide snapped to a halt in front of the Admiral.
"What is it?" Eric asked.
"They are requesting your presence at the Prime Minister's office." The aide replied.
"Who is? Ford?" Eric pondered.
The nervous aide's mouth opened and closed once before she spoke as she collected her thoughts. "Everyone, sir. I was told to inform you that the target has been acquired and a debriefing will begin within the next few hours."
"Well then." Eric said with a nod to the simulator mechanic before turning towards the exit. "Best get on with it."