The first painting is Action between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, 19 August 1812, by Michel Felice Corne. The second picture is courtesy of the US Park Service, and shows the Constitution during the 2014 Independence Day celebrations at Boston Harbor.
Many people will look at the USS Constitution and the USS Olympia and see nothing to compare or connect the two ships together. Both ships indeed bookmark the 19th Century for the United States Navy. Each ship also fulfilled similar roles in the Navy’s national mission
The USS Constitution was launched in October 1797 while the USS Olympia was commissioned for the first time in Feb 1895, almost a century apart. Both ships would see battle soon after joining the fleet. The USS Constitution would participate in the Quasi War and the First Barbary War, while the USS Olympia would lead the American Asiatic Squadron into the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish American War.
Marines from the Constitution captured the French privateer Sandwich in 1800, and the Constitution would help blockade the Barbary Coast ports in 1802 and 1803. All of this was to defend American merchant ships against attacks.
The Olympia would take over as flagship of the Asiatic Squadron in 1896. This was a mission of showing the flag and patrolling the West Pacific sea lanes to protect American national interest. The Olympia would secure Manila Bay for the United States from Spain, and even a threatened seizure by the German Imperial fleet. In the years after, she would head up the Caribbean Squadron and take part in an intervention into Honduras.
Both ships would go on to serve in various roles for decades more. The Constitution would see extensive action in the War of 1812, while the Olympia would serve in several vital roles during World War One.
In the 18th Century the frigate was the ship class to patrol sea lanes, show the flag, and disrupt enemy mercantile shipping. By the late 19th Century the cruiser became the class to fulfill the same role. The role also had work with the fleet to act as a scout for the fleet and harassers for any retreating units.
The Sskaria Fleet doctrine is based upon the use of powerful capital ships accompanied by robotic warships and fighters. All such capital ships tend to use numerous drone munitions. Such weapons can be fired as massive shoals, rapid fire, and barrage rates. The fighter cover is often remote controlled and FTL capable. Much of the war capacity of the Sskari was designed with expectations of combat to occur right up to relativistic velocities. This includes sprint missiles, heavy drone weapons, massive beam weapons, and micro weaponized clouds. Beam weapons include everything from large high energy lasers, antimatter particle beams, and annihilation cannons (composed cosmic rays resulting from heavy P+-P- interactions).
The Sskaria fleet structure is around its capital ship classes and categories.
–Alphas are designed for sustained battles in deep space at a wide range of acceleration and even relativistic velocities. It’s armament are built more around beam weapons and smaller drone fighters.
–Betas are designed as system control ships, responsible for coordinating large task forces with the goal of securing space superiority across an entire star system. The armament is a balance between beam weapons, missilery, and drone tending.
–Deltas are designed as rapid strategic strike ships. While using the same hull and systems as other capital ships, they are designed with extensive energy production capacity which allows high delta Vs in normal space, and powerful FTL drives. Weapons are almost all energy based, or simple munitions that can be manufactured by the ships facility from local materials.
–Gammas are unusual and are classified as strategic mission support ships. They are capital ships with substantial firepower. But they carry extensive gravimetric manipulation systems, as well as flux field generators. These allow the Sskaria fleet to manipulate matter and energy on a large scale.
Each of these capital ships will have a crew of several dozen to a few hundred Sskaria.
Group defense and attack ships are always robotic, mostly armed with photonic weapons for point defense & close action, and missile barrage subordinate platforms for offense.
Surveillance ships are robotic, used as advance scouts, recon units, communication picket units, and attack group support Intel units.
Planetary Assault ships are specialty modified Alphas used as troop transports for Sskaria and robotic planetary combat units.
The Skrimka use their own unique strike forcers and warrior ships both for assault and fleet battle.
DESIGN NOTE: Sskaria are slow to expand their population because their creators hard programmed not only a set of mores into the Sskaria but also sexual roles and recreation-reproduction protocols. the Skrimka are a unique mutation of the Sskaria who has learned to exceed their core programming protocols. This allows the mostly nanite cluster robots to be much more flexible with form and function.
The Sskaria fleets are designed to operate most effectively in two modes of combat. The first is planetary assaults with heavy orbital combat support, and the second is relativistic combat exchanges between ships. This has to do with the early origins of the Sskaria war history, and the nature of their most common used technologies.
The earliest forces of the Sskaria were the combat units of the Builder’s fleets. After seeing the inadequacies of these ships, the Sskaria command structure decided to strategically withdraw for a time to research and develop new technologies, and build new fleets. The newer ships were based upon technological uses of inertial fields that allowed a magnitude of higher ship performance.
The Sskaria had been at work with a faction of Imperial Malanthekar for centuries. These were the foes that had exterminated the Sskaria’s creators. These new forces enabled the Sskaria to gain the strategic as well as tactical upper hand and eventually defeat their Malanthekar foes.
The doctrine for combating the Imperial Malanthekar anchored upon hit and fade tactics and heavy planetary invasions. This lead to a split of force types and fleets into two categories for the Sskaria, strike and assault. After the unique technology of the flux field generate was developed, another force was developed to use the unique capacities offered by that system for combat operations.
The Sskaria explored and built a few projects during the centuries after their victory over the Imperial Malanthekar. Two of their biggest responsibilities is preserving and studying their Builder’s home world, and keeping the faction of Malanthekar that attacked them quarantined and confined to several habitable planets. During that era they encountered a slower than light traveling interstellar explores from a species known as the Cetes. The Sskaria were impressed and made contact with this young species.
This relationship would develop over a thousand Earth years, before the Sskaria decided to withdraw for a few centuries to debate the their own future. They promised the Cetes they would return in time, and left a means of contact just in case something truly catastrophic happened to the Cete civilization.
Just such a cataclysm did occur several centuries later when a Tranc Exploitation Fleet found the Cete’s inhabited space volumes. After deliberation with the Central Committee, a full war effort was decided to be waged against the Cetes. They were sizable enough that piracy was not the best strategy, and they were still weak enough that pure infiltration and subversion was not the only viable strategy.
The Tranc drew forces from several of their services and organizations including the Exploitation Fleet, Stealh Operation Units, Survey Fleets, and several militias from nearby hidden colony worlds. The Over Commander of this war did not do adequate investigate using Stealth Infiltration Units, so was unaware of the past association with the Sskaria until well after the invasion of Cete space had begun.
The Cetes summoned the Sskaria in their hour of need. The Sskaria returned to find a strange force invading their allies colony worlds. After a brief but brutal war, the Sskaria were able to repel the Tranc. Most of the Tranc forces disappeared into deep space, but the Sskaria were able to get the location of one close hidden colony world, near Cetes space. The Sskaria invaded and captured some information and prisoners. Over years of investigating they began to realize the sheer magnitude of threat the Tranc posed to the galaxy.
After intense deliberations, the mores programmed into the Sskaria created a necessity to take actions to informed other species in the galaxy about the Tranc and their dark plans. This was the origins of the Sskaria Expeditionary Fleets and the War of Truth.
The Fission Sail is an odd little idea suggested by the late Dr. Robert Forward to augment existing other sailing propulsion systems such as solar sails.
His suggestion was to create a two layered material as part of the sail. The layer toward the forward direction of the ship would be very absorbent of stray particles. The layer toward the backside of the ship would be made of decaying radioactive material. As the natural decay occurred it would emit random particles in all directions. Those particles ejected from the radioactive layer backward would add a low constant thrust to the ship. Those emitted from that layer to the fore of the ship would immediately impact the absorbing layer. The impact with the absorbing layer would add thrust to the material.
The overall effect would be a constant low level vector of thrust to the ship, despite of the performance of the other sail mechanism. The headache behind this method would be its constant output. The ship would have figure out a way to stow the sails in such a way to decrease this constant thrust when trying to station keep, but there is still the need to handle constant source of radiation on the ship.
Then there is the need to create a material sail out of radioactive material. The handling of the material for manufacturing need some safety concerns, as would the general maintenance needs of the ship.
Overall it is a creative idea, trying to utilize every possible method to achieve ‘free’ acceleration, but it would bring complications with it. Due to the low propulsion to a pure sail craft, the likely spacecraft will be mostly robotic. This could make it easier to deal with safety concerns of radioactive material being such an integrated part of the ship.
Because of the historical importance of the USS Constitution, the United States Navy goes to great length to make her available to the public.
As the symbolic and acting flagship for the US Navy, she is both a symbol and a great public relations for the sea service.
She even has her own official blog and webpages: http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/constitution/
Currently the USS Constitution is undergoing drydock work that should be completed by the end of 2017.
To any visitors to Boston it is well worth their time to visit the USS Constitution Museum.
There are fourteen known gate worlds. Almost every one of the planets has several well known gates leading to other worlds. The gates are large distinct features. On each planet, the gates manifest differently, but they are always large, obvious, and highly magical. The gates are almost indestructible by any known methods to the majority of peoples on the Gateworlds.
The gates are different on each Gateworld. On Dra Skan, the gates appear as large concentrations of elemental phenomena. On Rhihhi, they appear as vast arches over 250 meters high at the apex. On the Gateworld of Su Nar, the gates take the form of an immense tree with an arch in its trunk. On Ygm, they manifest as a vast stone skull with the gate as a dark cavern in the mouth. On Meremorn, the gate lies as just the space between two basalt obelisk, with no visible changes between them, so no indication of where the gate is set to lead. On Jard, the gates appear as natural hillocks with a large perfectly circular entrance that leads into a tunnel going deep. On Sacrisca, the the gates appear like Nihongo Torii “spirit gates” in some places, and in others it looks like a Chinese paifang. On New Tellus, the gates take the form of the Indian Torana gate. On Wingard, the gates take the form of a power wheel that is strangely resistant to change from incidental phenomena such as wind and rain; only a conscious action by a thinking being can change the arrangement of colored sand and stones. On Teign, it is a spiral of menhirs with the teleportation point in the center. On Lutin, a gate looks like a small body of water with a river flowing off the water and into a permanent bank of mist. On Spinarr, the gate is a strange combination of shadow and light. The Gateworld of Baem has all of its gates underwater, appearing as flat topped pyramids where the platform at the top of the pyramid is the point of the gate. On Chin’ka, it is always the exact center of a naturally occurring circular structure of stone. It might appear as a depression, or a small valley surrounded by hills.
Recently I watched a yoga video that suggested 8 yoga poses that would help people with back problems. The yogini was a talented instructor, who was very competent at instructing and demonstrating the poses. To an experienced yoga practioner, the flow she suggested was a good one for back issues, but some of the poses are intermediate while others are basics.
The 8 poses she suggested, in order of the flow, were cat, downward doggy, plow, seating forward fold, plow, child’s pose, cobra, bow, and triangle pose. All of them are excellent poses, but I don’t consider them ideally connected all together in such a flow for my own usage.
I have often seen Cat position suggested to be done in sequence with Cow position. I find that a much balance for a simple basic position that causes the spine to flow through its full range of motions.
Downward doggy is just such a key pose, that it seems a shame to have a flow that moves into it without utilizing it more in connection with other poses that complement it. Maybe the use of cobra position should have sequenced in after downward doggy flowed through child pose.
The addition of plow and bow into the sequence are a bit more challenging. It turns what is basically a simple basic yoga sequence addressing back issues into a more intermediate level one.
Still overall, it was not a bad sequence. I just found it easier to shuffle the poses and add so it was Cat, Cow, Downward Doggy, child pose, cobra, then work in plow or bow.
Chapter 1-Introduction
The Solar System is the home star system of the human race. By the creation of the Solar Coalition, Humanity had been in space within the Solar System for over 1,200 years. The Solar Coalition treaty was signed to replace the Commonwealth Treaty, Interstellar. The treaty was made at the height of the K’talla War.
The K’talla forces had conquered 80% of the Commonwealth System beyond the Solar System. The Solar System governments felt that the human world would be the main K’talla target. After the First Battle of Sol was won by humanity with the aid of the Sleip and Jonnerian, the Coalition Treaty was formed so the Solar System would speak with one voice at the forming of the League.
After the League was formed the Solar Coalition set about perfecting the defense of the Solar System. The League tried to develop a grand strategy of defense against the K’tallan offensive.
The Sleipnir were unwilling to aid any human offensive to retake the conquered Commonwealth worlds. If the humans wanted those systems back, they could take them back on their own efforts. The Jonnerans took the necessary steps to organize the League’s defenses.
They established the third Unity to develop the region of space just rimward of the old human commonwealth and UPW Spaces. The Third Unity consisted of the New Commonwealth formed by all of the refugee population from the conquered colonies and all of the rescued space stations and space habitats.
Some of the populations were taken in by Jonnerian populations out of necessity. Many were resettled with NCW communities when possible, but the other refugees chose to remain with the Jonnerian communities that took them in during the crisis. These Jonnerians began to culturally change after three generations. This was the foundation of the Companion Sept.
To defend the lightly populated UPW systems the Jonnerians proposed the use of robotic warships. These measures led to a major Jonnerian presence within the UPW spaces. These Jonner worked so extensively with the UPW navy and populations that the Machine Talker Sept developed from the relationship.
The Jonnerians negotiated with the Sleip to look at measures of defending the core human worlds and systems. Part of those measures was a detachment of Sleip ships in those systems, including Sol. the Sleip also stationed large module arsenal shoals within those systems, with human permission.
After several decades the Sleip developed several new types of Edits to fight in the K’talla War. These edits were placed under the command of several Jonner families. Since the war stretched for centuries, those families developed into a new Sept, the Minion Sept. These fleets were based in several star systems but not the Solar System.
The Jonnerians aided human efforts to liberate the K’tallan occupied systems. These were joint operations between the NCW, Companion Sept, Minion Sept, Machine Talker Sept, and the UPW fleet.
Among these factions was the Exile Navy. The Exiles were the remnant of the Commonwealth Navy. The Commonwealth had formed a force from all the human communities of the Commonwealth to try and build a truly neutral force for the betterment of Humanity. After the K’talla conquered most of the Human systems, the Exiles felt it their sacred duty to liberate those human populations. The Exiles consisted of the old Commonwealth Navy, their support facilities, and many new recruits from the refugee populations.
These campaigns often ended in sorrow. Some advances were made, but each time the K’talla would counter attack and win back any liberated systems. But these campaigns continued decade after decade. The Humans found it unacceptable to just give it up.
The Solarian powers were involved in some campaigns, but were not involved in each of them. Their most important focus was the defense of Sol. As the homeworld of Humanity, it was a major target of the K’talla.
While there was only four full scale assaults on the Solar System by the K’talla war fleets, there was constant proving attacks by the K’talla over the four centuries of the Human-K’talla War.
The total casualties measured were in the tens of millions. Most came from space communities, but up to a quarter of them were Solarians.
The total war force of the K’tallan War, changed most of the human society almost all other human activity came to a halt, but humans did try and advance their civilizations.
The UPW subcultures became more conservative and static. They tried to emphasis the cultural tenets which were their strengths through the generations.
The League human factions turned their energies to expansion and new population growth. Their populations grew twenty fold during the war, despite war losses.
The Third Unity spread from a few dozen star systems to over two thousand in the four hundred terran years. The Companion Sept focused upon gas giants using sky city technology. The NcW and Jonnerian First Unity Septs moved throughout the area helping to develop the space.
The Solarians continued to develop as Humanity had for ages. While the K’talla attacks disrupted such projects as the terraforming of Venus and Mars, Humanity repaired the damage and pressed ahead.
Chapter Two
The various fleets and military services that waged the K’tallan War were numerous. The K’talla were united, but humanity was fragmented as were their allies.
The Solarian treaty members were the Mars Republic, the Earth Alliance, and the Imperial Federation. Each had member states, but those were the signature members. It also included the primordial terrestrials that were still alive and dealing with the Solarians. These include the Crinoids and the Theropods. Certain concessions were granted them by the Solarian governments for the Terrestrials aid against the K’talla.
The League saw these minor populations as a part of the Solarian Coalition. To honor all agreements the Solarian Coalition must defend the old legacy star colonies of the primordial terrestrials.
The oldest species is the crinoids who have one surviving extrasolar colony and a small population in Antarctica.
The theropods have populations on the crinoid colony, but there is also one world where a residual population was settled by the crinoids and allowed to develop.
These two systems were developed to have a major military defense force. These are also guarded by the League as well.
Chapter Three
It was not known till after the war that during the First Battle of the Sol, that the strike on Earth that devastated the biosphere of Earth and killed over a billion people was not performed by the retreating K’talla, but was launched by the defending Sleip to test the mettle of Humanity.
This event would have consequences centuries later. The Exiles would find these events intolerable, especially as the Sleip were conceded the planet Neptune.
These agreements would push the Exiles to Exodus the known human space.
Chapter Four
The Solarian Coalition found that the era of the K’talla War was a trying time but the challenges brought out the best in Humanity.
The planets Mars and Venus were still going through centuries of terraforming. Earth spent decades repairing the damage from the Ktallan assaults and the Sleipnir testing.
Also resources are tapped from the Solar System and neighboring star systems to develop and build major new fleets and vast system wide defense capacities.
Another major endeavor by the Solarian States is to research all of the technology and science that has been discovered by exposure to the war and alien races, especially the Sleip and Talla. These technologies include the ability to manipulate space/time through metric engineering and how to tap gravity fields for power.
The solarian Coalition also had expeditionary fleets set to aid in the liberation efforts, but also to the lleyu trying to aid in their war against the Ktalla. This expedition was a diplomatic nightmare. The Talla blame Humanity for the start of the whole war.
The whole effort was a mixture of Talla rebels, N’talla revived soldiers, the Ptanj mercenary fleets from the Union, the Ileyal royal fleets, the Ileyoll member state fleet, and the Solarian expeditionary force.
These expeditions were a matter of tension between the Earth Alliance and the Imperial Federation. Each was the major collective of the States of the Solarian Coalition. The Imperial Federation forward focusing on the League’s efforts to liberated occupied human worlds. The Earth Alliance (Diqui Lianmeng) wanted to seek other strategic options to try and turn the K’tallan war effort.
Once the Sleip refused to take the offense against the K’talla, and the primordial terrestrial could not furnish any significant immediate war effort, the Diqui Lianmeng sought other potential contacts.
While the Imperials focused on close ties and direct war efforts with the League, the Lianmeng launched out to explore stray contacts. The Chinese and Russians hit upon the idea of trying to reestablish contact with the Talla and negotiate a cease fire to the war, which had gone so against the humans once the Talla introduced the K’talla super soldiers.
Negotiations was difficult, but the humans learned that the K’talla had seized power and the Talla were in rebellion with Allies.
With this information the Solar Coalition agreed to a new grand strategy. The Mars Republic would be accepted as independent, but would be expected to take major commitment to the Solar System.
The Imperial Federation would focus to take over the Solar contribution to the League expedition. The Diqui Lianmeng would continue to send expeditionary forces to scout out the K’tallan space beyond the occupied worlds and aiding the Talla.
There would be observers from all factions on all expeditions. These observers would have full ability to report to their home capitals.
The First Alliance expedition after the change of strategy agreement was to establish a military base of operations within the same region of space as the anti k’talla alien alliance.
The second expedition of the Alliance was to the Ileyol thrown world. This was an effort to try and exchange war tech and aid the Lleyoll with intelligence about the K’talla.
The third expedition of the Alliance was to take part in a joint strike with the N’talla and Ileyoll royal fleets against one of the three major K’talla shipyards. The result was a disaster with most of the attacking force destroyed.
The plan had been for the human ships to piggyback on the alien ships and attack. Human FTL does not have the strategic speed to counter the K’talla strategic movement. The Alliance resolved to improve their technology after this campaign.
There was no agreement between the Talla and n’talla and humans. The past history was to extensively negative. The Ileyoll were more willing to negotiate with the humans.
The result from these exchanges would not go rapidly. But in the end the Diqui Lienmeng fleets would develop new technologies centered upon phase shifting.
Weapons systems were refined to fit upon smaller ships designed than older ship designed.
Chapter Five
The Imperial Federation is made up of many of the states once called West Civilization. Over the centuries these states have politically changed but culturally have changed slowly.
The major member states of the Imperial Federation are the Republic of the United states, the commonwealth of Nations, Brazilian Republic, Nihon, and the Indian Republic.
History unfold after the Third World War to drive separations in human civilizations.
The Imperial Federation is driven by the rights of the individual above all other aspects of legal or philosophical theory.
Chapter Six
The Diqui Lianmeng is made up of many old nations that opposed the Western nations. These include China, Russia, the African Union, and the Muslim Association. Of these four powers, the first three are the ones with active space presences. The populations of Venus have their greatest ties to China and Indonesia, but are still recognized as partially independent.
Chapter Seven
The planetary forces of the League have a sizable contingent ofthe League have a sizable contingent of Solarian military with them.
The League has shared war tech among the various to best fight the K’talla. But eachfaction uses it to develop their own doctrine.
The Imperial Federation’s acceptance of cybernetics, bionics, and genetic engineering allows them several military options. The Imperials also use AI’s at the warbot level, which their opposites do not.
The Diqui Lienmeng use far more mundane troops with extensive power armor and countermeasures of complex natures.
Chapter Eight
The space fleets and starships of the Solarian powers changed drastically over the course of the K’tallan war.
When the Talla attacked the Commonwealth the fleets were the old member nation fleets and the Commonwealth Interstellar Navy.
The nation fleets were system ships and big fleet tenders, with packets and couriers for small communication missions. Each nation used a different policy, but after 150 years of interstellar travel the Commonwealth Navy was formed.
The balance of power was maintained by the Commonwealth being based out system. The idea was that the Commonwealth Navy would take responsibility for most interstellar actions, while not traveling back to the Solar System with any warships.
The nature of the Carsmir Inducer allow FTL travel, but it still required a relativistic ship to utilize the system for interstellar travel.
This meant either very large starships or the use of a fleet tender for ferrying forces and system ships over the interstellar distances. This was sufficient to allow the old solarian powers to strategically balance the Commonwealth of Humanity.
The Periphery War or 1st Interstellar War was mostly fought between the UPW and the Commonwealth Administration. The UPW objected to the aggressive unification policies of the Commonwealth, not keeping ties to the home system. In this early period the Treaty of Separation was in effect but was not as ossified as in later eras. Each of the major member nations of the Commonwealth had various stances on the UPW’s push for full recognized independence.
USA: Sympathetic, but not more than informal support
Commonwealth (British): sympathetic and vote often for peace.
India: sympathetic but believe a legal solution
United Europe: Believed that the rebellion was illegal
Russia: supportive of independance
Brazil: supportive of the Commonwealth
African Union: Supportive of the commonwealth
Mars Republic: Neutral
China: Sympathetic but disapproves.
In the end the commonwealth Administration found the threat from the UPW and the growing political hostility from Earth to much and agreed to the peace settlement.
After the war interstellar technology changed slowly with more efficient designs. The Commonwealth expanded the Colonial Authority and pushed new efforts to explore. The Solarian States moved to strengthen their fleets and devise counters to the concept of relavistic bombing, after the war.
The Solarian nations also tied their oldest stellar colonies closer to them. This created a two tier stellar civilization for Humanity. The oldest colonies keep their alliance to their parent nation, while the post commonwealth owed more to the colonial powers. This led to some tensions at the legal and political level but never at the military.
During the Second Interstellar War, or the Periphery-Jonneran War, the Commonwealth was mostly ignorant of the affair. Much of the combat was in star systems beyond the core UPW five main systems.
Everything would change after a Commonwealth Expedition encountered Talla colony world. The first expedition was scientific that had detected unusual gravity waves from the star system. Once they realized it was a space faring species they departed without making contact. The second expedition tried to make contact but were told to depart by the Talla. The third expedition was to insistent and was attacked by the Talla destroying several ships. The regional Commonwealth respond with a partially martial response, and the Talla went to a state of war and attacked the Commonwealth.
The Talla were more advanced than Humanity and wanted to inflict enough damage upon human space to remove any contact.
This war caught the humans off guard. The Talla used superior technology with the limited goal of driving humans out of the star systems close to their colonies to wage the war.
These efforts were successful at first, but the humans went on the offensive. These expeditions were defeated by the Talla, but they despaired that the humans would not get the message.
The Talla found that their war against the humans could not move past a stalemate. The Talla had no interest in diplomatic interaction with the humans, and the humans stubbornly pursued hostilities.
In a bid to pursue the war the Talla debating reviving their past super soldiers, P’talla or maybe creating something new targeted specifically at the humans. Ultimately both steps were taken. New war technology designs were developed. Then the K’talla were developed to work within the psychological aspects of the human species.
The Talla planned was to withdraw from the war with humans directly. They activated the P’talla and used their super soldiers to bolster the defenses of their core worlds, just in case the humans tried any deep space strategic strikes.
The K’talla were developed into a major force and then unleashed upon the Commonwealth of Humanity.
Chapter Nine
The K’talla onslaught was devastating to humanity, and the first existential threat to the species since all humans were on the home planet with several polities having large arsenals of nuclear weapons.
The Talla had withdrawn from any combative encounters for over two terran years when the Ktalla attack fleets attacked. Within just half a year the Ktalla had conquered and occupied all of the Commonwealth systems on the side of human space closest to Talla space.
As the K’talla fleets prepared for the assault upon Sol System, they launched probing attacks on all the systems in the other half of human space, including the UPW.
All of the forces in human space began to try and defend, but many were destroyed with ease.
The assault on Sol led to a seige of all the major planets of the system and rampant destruction system wide.
Strange some targets were not attacked.
The Jonnerian involvement was part of the UPW’s efforts to help the Solar System. Unknown to the humans that would also bring the Sleip involvement in the Second Battle of Sol.
Chapter Ten
After the K’talla’s strategic advance was halted at the Second Battle of Sol, they set about strategically consolidating their hold upon the other Commonwealth star systems.
The League agreement laid out that the Sleip would only help defend existing free populations of humans, including the refugees in League space, Sol, and the few other still human held systems.
When the idea of archery in military history comes up to most English speakers, the English long bow and its performance in the 100 Year’s War comes to mind. Let’s do a quick review of the details, even though most everyone who has studied medieval history is aware of the details.
The Hundred Year’s War lasted for approximately 115 years, running from the years 1337 through 1458. The cause of the war was the English Throne contesting the succession to the French throne of the House of Valos. Edward III would lead an army into France, and would campaign there off and on through out the rest of the years of his life. One of the changes Edward III had done to the English army was to add the Welsh longbow men to the English army.
To many students of history the long bow is well known. Its impressive power, often with a pull weight of over 50 kilograms, and range was something new to many medieval battles. It would prove to be critical in 3 of the most famous battles of the Hundred Year’s War. While over 55 major battles were fought during the century long conflict, the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt earned the Welsh longbow its incredible history.
The Battle of Crecy was fought in 1346. Edward III divided his outnumbered army into 3 wings and took the high ground against a pursuing French army. With each wing having longbow men on the flanks and infantry at the center they received a French charge and devastated the French forces.
The Battle of Poitiers was a repeat of similar circumstances in 1356, when Edward the Black Prince deployed an army with longbow men on the flanks and dismounted English knights to fortify the English infantry in the center. A fatigued pursuing French army attempted to press home a cavalry charge into the English center, costing them dearly. The French then followed up with an infantry charge. In each case the French were devastated by the volley fire from the longbow.
The Battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415, following much the same pattern as the previous two mentioned battles. Henry V lead an English army to stand its ground behind embedded stakes as a pursuing French army attempted to press home an attack. Bad weather, and the volley fire from the English archer’s wielding longbows, devastated the French nobility.
The war would last forty more years, with the English never performing quite the same effect. Historians have debated the reasons for centuries. It could be that the plague cut down the number of longbow archers available to the English kings. The development of plate and chainmail combinations in the later decades of the war might have nullified part of the longbow’s deadly effect.
There is also the idea that the French got much wiser in how they conducted battles against the English. Dr. Archer Jones, in his work The Art of War in the Western World, proposed that the English tactical doctrine of using heavy infantry and dismounted knights to withstand French charges, while archers devastated with volley fire, lacked a key offensive component to force the French into battle.
Regardless of which factor was the critical one to the loss of effectiveness, the Welsh longbow would go down in history as one of the most effective usage of archery in warfare. With a bit of irony, historians would come to call the longbow, a weapon developed by the Welsh, the English longbow, from its effective use as a weapon of war by English kings.
My Six Daughters is set to be a collaborative modern fantasy series of about 12 novels. The genre is as much young adult as it is modern fantasy. The story is being written by myself and two other authors. In total, it is a collaborative effort of 3 coauthors.
The goal of the story is to try and capture the emotions and thoughts of the parent as well as the children. Many young adults, or as they use to be called juvvies, focus purely upon the young protagonists.
The inspiration for the story was the concept of an old fashion father having to deal directly with the antics of maturing teenage girls. The modern fantasy element is to add to the challenges and interesting story.