This is the rough draft of a world building essay that is part of an appendix for a military science fiction novel set in the UnWelcome Neighbors Universe, that I just finished.

The Combat Paradigm of the Noetic Wars

The interstellar wars fought by humans of the third Cosm of the Unwelcome Neighbors setting were waged in a unique way

In this universe, the ancient species known as the Deiwos were able to successfully merger their civilizations greatest two technological achievements the luminescent plenum and the hypergate network.

Individually, both achievements spanned the Milky Way and beyond. The hypergate network allowed superluminal travel between worlds by a connection through hyperspace. The luminescent plenum had created a basement pocket universe anchored to the gravity well of the galaxy. This energy filled pocket dimension was able to be tapped by various Deiwos technologies as a universal power source.

The merger would allow the luminescent plenum to be accessed anywhere with superluminal effects. This allowed superluminal knowledge, awareness, and communication.

This became what the humans of second Cosm Earth would call the Mythscape, and the third Cosm Earth would call the Astral Light. Both Earths would have unique experiences from their galactic realities. In the second Cosm the result would leak more than in the third Cosm. But the remit was a merging of the pocket dimensions between the universes to form one dimensional space.

On the Earth of the third Cosm, prehistoric humans found that many of their spiritual practices could produce tangible physical effects or gain real world objective knowledge. This would be strengthened and used extensively in some societies.

The most important event that would diverge this world from our own was the settlement of the Seleucid-Mauryan War in 303 B.C.. the agreement of Seleucid Nicitor with Chardrayupta Maurya was a peace treaty and dynastic marriage.

Their followed an alliance of the two ruler’s sons, Antiochus I and Bindusara. In our timeline the grandsons became rulers of their grandfather’s empires, Antiochus II Theo and Ashoka. Yet, in Cosm 3 Antiochus II did not come to rule the Seleucid Empire. Instead, his older brother Seleucus II came to rule, where in our timeline he was executed for rebellion against his father.

When Ashoka attempted to send out Buddhist monks to proselyte in the West, it was received and supported with more encouragement in Cosm 3 by Seleucus II.

All of these events would lead to a merging of Indian mysticism and Hellenistic philosophy to merge many concepts and give a system of thought to allow humans to effectively manifest and manipulate these strange effects from the Deiwos hyper luminescent plenum. Thus was born the noetic sciences.

The dominant civilization of Cosm 3 Earthy would become a merged Hellenistic-Mauryan culture with access to wonderous meta abilities. Technological development would take them into space by 700 A.D..

The existence of meta-abilities would change the nature of many human endeavors, especially transportation, communication, and warfare. The development of gnostic machines would lead to the existence of self aware space ships, and roads, and advance mathematical thinkers.

All of this would lead to the eventual development of starships that were capable of superluminal travel by the use of quantum phase shifting on a macroscopic scale. This works by the human telaesthesia sensing the current circumstances of a distant point in the space/time continuum, the gnostic machine calculating the four dimensional equation, and the combination of the shift engines and human psychportationist pulling energy from the Astral light to complete the psishifting of the ships.

This was the expansion of humans in Cosm 3 to the stars. There would be wars as daughter systems attempted for independence and as new arrangements of states were made.

The Telaesthetic Sarja (guilds) became the controlling authority in human space, but was sworn to work for any human state. These services included warfare against each other. The need for nonlethal combat led to the concept of suppression and psicasting. The concept is to use meta abilities to subdue the other ship. An offensive operation could be an attempt to suppress the other ship’s meta-ability. Another tactic was to force the targeted ship into an involuntary planeshift through a ppsicasting. This psicentric would stun and disorient the targeted ship’s crew. To counter these offensive acts, telaeshetics learned how to use their meta-abilities to disrupt and block any other usage of such effects on their ships.

The disruption of a foe allowed an attacking ship to only partially score a victory this led to the creation of the Astro Stratiotis (star soldiers).

The Astro Stratiotis started off as simple soldiers in space suits, trained for boarding actions. It eventually grew into full power armor geared to space operation.

As combat operations became more extensive, the Astro Stratiotis became more and more advanced. These power armor troops became highly effective in space or on surfaces.

The states all poured their efforts into Astro Stratiotis for most expeditionary missions, including boarding, orbital drops, and elite assault for surface tactical. The advancements in these areas became the main area of military technology development for centuries. So with advanced power armor and auxiliary developed boarding into a very viable and often used space combat.

To make this a viable tactical doctrine the auxiliary craft were the key. A grav sled was created to give the Astro Stratiotis high maneuverability in space at battle ranges these were to allow the star soldiers to close rapidly with a target ship or facility. The grav sled has extensive duration to operate deployed. The grav sleds are also able to make planet fall on many terrestrial planets.

Another auxiliary craft also used to make rapid deployment of a number of star soldiers to a large surface tactical battles. All of these added to the impact of the tanokoa (ships). The independent capacity of the star soldier allowed them to operate in the weapon range of operations of the tanakara with just the maneuver capacity of their ships.

The needs of warfare did show a need for mundane weapons by the noetic powers. So every tanakara carries conventional particle beans for long range beam weapons in space usage, lasers for space and orbital usage and missiles for mission support.

The various human states warred for years against each other. Contact with other sentients led to sharing the noetic sciences and gnostic technologies. Some of these alien intelligents, were able to use it, such as the Swarmers and others were not, such as the Trees. 

The one species who were able to use the knowledge was the ‘Xenophobes’, much to the regret of the humans. The Xenophobes armed for war and attacked all of the noetic states and other known space. There would be two xeno wars and both wars would leave billions dead. These wars would force drastic total war fighting on the noetic states.

Before the ‘xeno’ wars, the most vicious wars have been clashes between the Alphas and the rest of the human worlds. The Alphas started out as a group of tel aesthetics and other meta-talents who objected to the morality restraints governments imposed upon meta-talent usage.

These clashes were rooted in the era of terrestrial development. By the time humans in Cosm 3 Earth went to space, things were at a breakpoint.

The groups that would become the Alphas invested in space technology and self-exiled themselves to remote corners of the Solar System. They would spend centuries on the fringe of the solar civilization. After the development of psishifting, a plan was hatched to build ten large mother ships capable of interstellar travel. Then they departed the solar system.

They would put some distance between themselves and the expanding noetic states, but future conflict was expected. With this in mind, the Alphas set about arming their otherships and developing military subordinate craft. This led to yet a second path of development of military technology and science among the humans of Cosm 3.

The Alphas expanded their population through cloning and genetic castes. This still only gave them some success replicating meta-talents in their population, but never full certainty.

Their lower population base and fear of being restrained led to the Alpha leaders being reluctant to use their meta-talented in war.

Where the core worlds developed meta-talents for transport with a more benign form of war, the Alpas chose to use their meta-talents just as force enhancers.

 Instead they turned to the use of attrition forces and clone soldiers, in an approach best compared to a social insect form of behavior.

They would develop small power combat armor units. After a few encounters with the noetic states, they pushed the refinement of their power suit equipped soldiers to match the cybernetic atho strategies. They would also develop transport sleds for each power armor star soldier. Where the astro stratiotis mostly deploy directly from star ships, the Alphas fear danger to the other ships so develop system assault frigates as attack transports for their own power suit combats.

For ship to ship combat, the Alphas developed small but powerful system ship category warships. These units were equipped with powerful defenses and offense to guard the other ships and project power. The Alphas found, much as the other noetic states, that telaesthetics allowed very accurate weapons fire in combination with gnostic machines.

This promoted the usage of energy weapons because all but the heaviest armored missiles are destroyed by energy weapons intercepting the missiles on approach

The alphas armed their mother ships heavily with particle beams of various sizes and extensive laser weapons as well. These made the mother ships deadly to small and large crafts.

The Alphas tended to only focus upon defending their own interests with the occasional raids on minor systems. These raids usually consisted of a mothership psishifting into a safe point in the target system. Then the system warships and assault corvettes are dispatched toward the target at a high rate of acceleration. The assault force and assets are considered expendable if necessary.

The most common battle encounter between the Alpha and the Terran Noetic States was minor skirmishes between recon ships with star soldiers and Alpha system warships and squadrons of assault transports and battle sleds. This led to battles of ships sniping and small battle craft and space warriors fighting close.

This often led to the destruction of Alpha strike forces, but sometimes the Alpha forced the noetic ships to withdraw to avoid the potential loss of a whole crew of telaeshetics.

This was often the preferred tactic, threaten the noetic forces with a strike force and then squeeze an assault force to strike at the Alpha’s objective. This concern for telaeshetics would often be an Achilles heel in many of the Noetic military states.

The third major interstellar combat paradigm developed by the humans of Cosm 3 was created by the Andrani Stellar Empire.

This paradigms essence was defined by the origins of the Stellar Empire. During the 1st Xeno war, six frontier star systems on the far side of noetic space were half abandoned. They were not deliberately abandoned as much as very low priority for a civilization fighting for survival against a hostile enemy. The star systems were self-sufficient in system interplanetary spacefaring capacity to sustain thriving economics. All they did not have was superluminal travel with the rest of human space.

Most inhabitants of these star systems likely expected the whole period of isolation to be a few years, but it grew into decades. After that time, some of the star systems began to try and find travel methods. The star systems had kept up active slow communication by light speed radio and laser the whole time.

In time, these six systems began the research into alternative superluminal methods beyond the psishifting method. One group of scientists discovered the principle of the tachyonic transposition methods. This information was shared across the interstellar communication laser with the hope that someone in the six worlds would find a way to make it effective faster than light travel technology.

Several systems went to work upon it. One system discovered what they called the tachyonic engines and set up commerce between the systems. Unfortunately, one system’s government developed the tachyonic engine for warship use, and set about conquering all the other nearby settled systems, starting with the other nearby five. This started a cycle of interstellar warfare in the local region.

After a century of such wars, the end result was a unification of the six star systems under a complex federated constitutional monarchy. This government began to expand and annex nearby settled systems.

The next stage was for this new star nation to send out expeditions toward the old core worlds and Earthy, all to find out why the noetic ships had never returned.

This expedition entered the most settled volumes of the noetic states just at the end of the 2nd Xeno War. these wars had been exhausting for all factions and species. The end result had been a victory, but a very costly one.

To avoid future conflict and build upon their war alliances, the noetic states chose to build the interstellar concordance. This idea was to build a government to avoid conflicts.

The resulting reestablished contact was fraught with tension and eventually conflict. The noetic concordance became more organized and unified in matters of defense and commerce. The Ardoni annexed several volumes of space and in defensive measures against a larger Concordance. The Alphas had maintained their independence throughout all of the past wars and into this era.

The Xenos were still considered a threat to everyone. The first war was thought to settle the issue of the genocidal species, then the second war had started suddenly. It was even more destructive than the first war. So, with these memories haunting them, all of the human powers feared a third war.

The Ardoni were faced with several challenges. The methods of weapons and defense developed during their short unification wars were ineffective against the noetic forces of the Concordance or the mass attritional tactics of the Alphas.

The Ardoni’s answer was to develop new dedicated warships in two fleet arrangements. The patrol fleet  was a security, patrol, and recon force with the responsibility of covering all of the systems of the empire. The Battle Fleet operated in concentrated squadrons out of strategic hubs. All of this was to compensate for the slower strategic response of the tachyonic engine equipped starships relative to the noetic ships’ psishifiting.

For weapons, the Ardoni developed versatile beam weapons and tried using large antiship torpedoes. The beam weapons of the Adroni battle and patrol fleet are designed to be multirole. Where the Noetic forces only needed direct energy weapons as secondary mission needs and the Alphas preferred several different types of energy weapons, the Ardoni fleets preferred a lower number of weapons with a variety of firing formats.

To counter the star soldiers of the Noetics and the battle craft power suits of the Alphas, the Ardoni battle fleet developed fleet defense interceptors based around a power armor and propulsion assist unit combination. This allowed a high performance close range interception yet still have an assault and boarding defense unit. The cataphract of the Ardoni are large but effective in surface tactics and assault against both the noetic star soldiers and the Alphas power troopers.

The Ardoni patrol fleet went for a different concept. They chose to develop long range system interceptors able to engage attrition and battle crafts at a distance. The long range system interceptors have high acceleration capacity, larger mission duration, and long range weapons to engage the noetic star soldiers on grav sleds or the Alpha power troops using assault sleds. This tactic does not work if either opponent supports their attrition battle craft with heavy fleet units. The system interceptors do not have the defenses to engage full scale war ships.

This all leads to the Ardoni being able to engage opponents and keep forces in most of their vulnerable points.

Tranc Wars Introduction

 

The Tranc Wars began in areas of the Milky Way far away from the Solar System. Such wars would rage for thousands of solar years before starfaring humanity would be aware of these wars.

The causes of the wars rest with a species known as the Tranc, who plotted to dominate the galaxy. The Tranc did not have the largest numbers or the most advanced technology in the Milky Way, but they had an intense will and vast social discipline.

The knowledge of other stellar civilizations motivated the early Tranc to adopt a subtle and covert approach. Motivations might have initially been for defensive reasons, but the Tranc turned in time to plans of how to control and subvert other stellar civilizations.

Tranc endeavors got bolder over the centuries as they became more successful. Cycles of new gain and new successes developed. Thousands of stealthful colonies would be founded and while new fields of technology be acquired or stolen from other civilizations.

Flux field generation technology was gained about a thousand years into their galactic plan. This form of superluminal technology enabled the Tranc to greatly expand their ambitions. After finding a way to apply the technology, the Tranc began to covertly build a vast network of flux relay stations across the galaxy.

The first stages of the Tranc’s galactic plans had been to hide their efforts and homeworld in plain sight by subterfuge. The homeworld was part of a large interstellar trade region.

Second stages were the slow subversion or infiltration of all stellar societies the Tranc had frequent contact with at this early stage. The Tranc would move on to piracy, covert operations, and building a campaign interstellar infrastructure.

Third stages of this galactic plan were empowered by the flux generators. With this new technology the Tranc were able to greatly expand the practical range of their galactic expansion. This led to thousands of hidden colonies and bases.

Fourth stage of the galactic plan would have the Tranc approach with stellar civilizations far from their home regions. Those more advanced they would spy and attempt to steal technology. Primitive species the Tranc would conquer and enslave. Stellar societies of comparable technology to the Tranc were infiltrated and subverted through espionage and covert operations

The fifth stage of the Tranc’s plan was to begin covert efforts to use stolen technology from more advanced civilizations to greatly empower the Tranc capacity to act. Then they could begin to stealthily commit to operations to weaken the most dangerous powers in the galaxy. This stage would be disrupted before it was well along by two incidents occurring within a decade of each other, but on opposite sides of the galaxy.

These two incidents would be the discovery of the Tranc’s plans by the Sskaria and the Aracana. Both events would spark the outrage of the two factions who discovered the Tranc’s efforts and exploitation of others.

The Aracana would be the first to discover the Tranc endeavors. But the later to react. Wandering starships observed the Tranc expanding and establishing hidden outposts and noted it. These efforts would not draw any concern from the Aracana.

What would be eventually considered is the exploitation and mass atrocities committed by the Tranc against other sapient species. These incidents would also be reported by the Starships to the homeworlds as well. The authorities on the homeworld would be slow to react.

When they did react contemplations of how to stop the Tranc were long debated among the Aracana. The only effective method that seemed a solution was a strange, alien concept known to other species, but never practiced among the Aracana. And this was the institution of war.

Observations from afar had the Aracana see other species practice wide scale conflict, but that was not the Aracana’s way. Conflicts were just a part of disagreements, with the actual art of violence being performed between individuals in duels, either for personal disagreements or as champions for larger causes.

The Aracana would be slow to decide upon war, but even slower to plan and prepare for it.

The second incident would be a complex miscalculation by a Tranc regional commander. Expansion into a new region of space brought awareness to the Tranc of a new starfaring nation, the Cetes.

Tranc observation of the Cetes lasted several years. During that time, regional strategic communities considered the best way to exploit this new civilization. There was some debate if they should be infiltrated or conquered.

Conquest was always a risky and time consuming effort. It would often destroy future potential exploitation of a civilization as well

Wars of conquest could also draw the attention of the more advanced civilizations in the galaxy if the Tranc were not cautious. This would bring more awareness than the Tranc wanted long term from such powers.

Yet the Cetes had more advanced hyperspace superluminal access technology than the Tranc had. Such a tempting target made the Tranc regional commander weigh their options carefully.

After almost a decade of observation they attacked the Cetes outer colonies and began to wage a hit and run attack strategy to wear the Cetes down and attrition their space fleet.

The initial strategy of the Tranc worked. They presented a sinister and deadly presence to the Cetes, that struck on surprise and vanished. The war would go against the Cetes for almost two years of their time. Each battle brought higher losses. When they won it seemed to have little impact on slowly the invader’s war efforts. The Cetes began to despair on their colonies were cut off or destroyed one by one.

The Tranc pushed the Cetes back to their home star system and pushed the Cetes into one large fleet battle. After losing the battle, the surviving Cete forces retreated to their inner region of their inner region of their star system. At this turn of events, the Tranc believed it was just a matter of time before they would be launching an invasion of the Cetes homeworld. The high gravity and different atmosphere mix would force the need for environmental suits and hazardous environ power armor, but those were long addressed issues for the Tranc efforts.

The real surprise came for the Tranc at the time. The Cetes had a long history of contact and aid from a more advanced civilization, the Sskaria Technologary.

The Sskaria in an era before, had made contact with the Cetes when the Cetes were still bound to their homeworld, but looking into space with hopeful potential. First Contact was made when a Sskaria scout ship chose to save a dying Cetes space mission to their nearest moon. Altruistic ehte act might have been, but it put a new responsibility upon the Skarria as a whole society.

It was their first contact with any other intelligent life since the Sskaria had defeated a remnant of the Imperial Malanthekar fleets in the defense of their Builders.

As a machine intelligence, the Sskaria had thought it difficult to deal with the biological intelligences they had observed in the galaxy up to this point.

The dealings between the Cetes and Sskaria would last centuries. During these times, the Sskaria learned much of dealing with biological intelligents, and the Cetes made great advances in technological advances and scientific knowledge.

Trends began to develop that concerned the Sskaria leadership. The Cetes were depending more and more to make progress upon Sskaria tutorship. If it was just a matter of mentorship, things might have not become a crisis. Instead, the Cetes were starting to seek out not just Sskaria advice, but also approval and permission.

After quiet deliberations between the leadership of the Sskaria and the Cetes, the decision was made that the Sskaria would move onward, yet secretly leave communication channels in case of future crisis the Cetes may face. It was this method that the Cetes would reach out to in their dire need.

The Sskaria response to the emergency call was rapid. Tranc war fleets moved to attack the surviving Cete forces, to find several new, strange ships awaiting their attack.

Sskaria forces would quickly defeat the Tranc and secured the surviving Cetes worlds. Then the Sskaria set out to find the origin of the Tranc attack and the motivees. The effort took more effort than the Sskaria suspected.

After searching several thousand star systems, the Sskaria discovered a Tranc flux relay generator station. Study of this find gained technological knowledge, but also an idea of how the Tranc strategically operated.

It took several more years for the Sskaria to find the regional hidden colony of the Tranc. The Sskaria moved to attack and conquer the Tranc facility. The goal was to seize all intelligence and material for the Sskaria to fully comprehend the Tranc efforts.

With all goals achieved, the Sskaria discovered the Tranc’s galactic plans and the thousands of years of progress. Much of the Tranc’s achievements and plans offended the sensibility programmed into the Sskaria by their builders. The Sskaria had originally been created as sentient weapons with ethical restraints. Much of this programming still guided the Sskaria, comparable to the instincts guiding biological intelligences.

This program caused the Sskaria to chose to do something about the Tranc, seeing the Tranc as a threat to the whole galaxy.

The next step was what approach should the Sskaria take to counter the Tranc. Debate took years. During this duration, the Tranc became aware of the compromise of their regional assets in that part of the galaxy. The Tranc Central Committee did not suspect how much information the Sskaria had gained. So the Tranc destroyed all of their bases and abandoned colonies in the region and strategically pulled back.

It was hoped that disengaging for a few centuries from the area would allow the Tranc time to hide their projects. The Tranc would not get that time. The Sskaria decided to try and engage other stellar civilizations to show them the true threat of the Tranc. The Sskaria also outfit expeditionary fleets. These fleets would begin to press a war against the Tranc on a galactic scale.

These two incidents would seriously threaten the Tranc’s galactic conquest plan. The Sskaria expeditionary fleets would begin to push inward from the middle distances of their quadrant of the Milky Way, while the new Aracana War Fleet would spread out all across half the outer regions of the galaxy.

These actions would be countered at regional levels at first by the Tranc leadership. That would be a costly mistake. By the time Tranc Central Committee strategically reacted, the Tranc were effectively in two galactic wars.

These wars would redefine the entire civilizations of all three major belligerents; Tranc, Sskaria, and Aracana. In time, dozens of other species would become involved on all sides, and the wars would last thousands of human years.

In setting description:

The Periphery War was Humanity’s first interstellar war. It started because of a political movement on Earth and then spread out to many other star systems. The idea was a desire for a greater political and economic unity between all the human settlements and nations among the stars.

This was not acceptable to five frontier star systems who prized their political and cultural independence. This lead to an expedition being dispatched from Sol to the largest of the resistant colony systems, with the intent of subduing the colony as an example.

The expedition was opposed and not allowed to land. The Commonwealth next decided to blockade the world and interdict all space travel within the star system. This sparked an emergency conference between the other four independent minded worlds.

These worlds put together a hastily gathered expedition of ad hoc armed ships and set out to contest the Commonwealth’s blockade of the main world. The first engagement was indecisive, but the ships of the Peripheral Worlds, after engaging the Commonwealth, pulled back to the second gas giant in the system and awaited the arrival of further forces.

Within a month the second wave of Periphery star ships arrived in the star system, and set course to rendezvous with their compatriots. During that month the Commonwealth task force made a sortie with a secondary force to the gas giant to keep a checking force on the 1^st Periphery force. This holding force was instructed to block the Periphery rebel star ships from attacking the transports and other naval ships in the orbit of the main inhabited planet of the system.

In time the Periphery star ships gathered and launched a coordinated attack on the Commonwealth forces. The holding force fought the Periphery star ships in a running battle as both forces moved toward the primary planet. Once the battle reach the main inhabited world, the planetary rebels launched aerospace forces from the planets surface.

The Commonwealth commander became shaken by the slashing attacks from the aerospace forces, and the determined hit and run tactics of the Periphery star ships. In a period of bad maneuvering by the Commonwealth forces, their flagship was destroyed, which demoralized the Commonwealth task forces. A negotiated settlement soon followed which saw the Commonwealth forces begrudgingly departing the star system under a truce.

By the standards of later battles it would be a minor one, but it would be the start of the Periphery War, humans’ first interstellar war.

The Commonwealth of Worlds faced the same problems as the new United Peripheral Worlds. Star ships had been rare and heavily utilitarian over the first 3 centuries of human star faring colonization. This meant that neither side started the war with dedicated warships. The ships the Commonwealth had dispatched to the Peripheral world of New Frontier, had been law enforcement transports with some spatial combat capacity.

Each side took a long hard look at their resources and what strategy would best achieve their war aims. These factors dictated what warship designs were developed by each side. The UPW was faced with the age old problem of the insurgency and the rebellion. How do you defend the territory you have against offensive action by the larger force that wishes to dominate you, while at the same time projecting sufficient force to discourage the larger force or nation. After the first battle, the provisional government of the UPW decided that they could not remain merely on the defensive with a guerrilla war approach. With successive expeditions, the main Commonwealth would wear each of the five rebelling star systems down eventually, then merely occupy their worlds. So that meant there had to be an offensive component of the Peripheral Worlds war strategy, to take the war into the Commonwealth and force it to expend resources defending its own member star systems.

The UPW’s answer was to develop highly efficient system ships within each rebellions star system for defense against any Commonwealth expeditions. For an offensive component they would adopt a raiding strategy aimed at attacking the shipping and spatial infrastructure of the Commonwealth worlds. By sticking to a pure space based strategy, it allowed them to focus their power in a fluid war with no set front. It also minimized the chance of high civilian casualties. The Peripheral World government realized they were conducting a war for the hearts and minds of the rest of Humanity as much as a physical war. If they killed to many innocent bystanders, the civilian populations of the Commonwealth worlds would be firmly behind the Commonwealth war effort.

For the offensive component of their raiding strategy,the Periphery developed a space force built around a multi-role, multi-mission star ship they called a strike ship. These ships were designed for extensive independent operations, with long cruising times. The concept was that the strike ships could launch strike missions across the Commonwealth star systems. Strike ships were mostly armed with kinetic weapons that could carry simple munitions that could be in situ replaced.

Large laser weapons were an inherent part of the Carsmir relativistic engine. The UPW adapted this technological capacity to make it more usable for space combat. That required the ability to focus the beam with a more variable intensity and to aim the beam with a wider range of weapons angles. Secondary laser weapons were installed for point defense, and small target attacks.

For assault and boarding missions, almost 4000 space troops were barracked aboard the strike ships. This troop number combined with the 300 member crew made for tight quarters for all aboard the ships. The long mission duration required some amenities and luxuries be built for crew morale.

The war requirements of the strike ship, plus the extensive fuel and reaction mass storage needs, made the ships some of the largest star ships built by mankind up till that point in time. A decision was made by the Periphery Space Force to emphasis for engine reliability and power, instead of a pure acceleration. This made strike ships able to conduct long strategic voyages, but were not always the most rapid tactical performance. The United Peripheral Worlds felt this was acceptable, because the strike ship missions were to be offensive operations, picking their targets careful, and practicing prudence in their battle operations. Strategic withdraw was not uncommon during the war by strike ship captains facing questionable odds.

The Commonwealth of Worlds had a very different strategic problem. How to impose the political will of the central government without inflicting such high casualties on rebellious populations, while still defending loyal colony star systems. To address these war aims, the Commonwealth developed a space navy capable of sustained battle operations. The concept was that any strategy that heavily fortified the colonial star systems would be economically cost prohibitive to the war effort. Instead the decision was to develop common star ship classes that could be dispatched to defend colonial star systems, defend the central developed star systems, and still project power in expedition forces to attempt to conquer the rebellious worlds.

The Commonwealth Navy was developed around 3 combatant star ship classes. Fleet documents would equate these classes to maritime historical analogies of battleships, destroyers, and scouts; but in the popular vernacular they would be called Battlers, Brawlers, and Reconners.

The Commonwealth Space Navy chose shorter logistic mission duration for their classes in comparison to the Peripheral Space Force, due to having the ability to resupply more easily and to deploy a fleet logistic train. With these increased logistic capacities, the Commonwealth were able to deploy more smart munitions for their ships, leading to more smart kinetic munition, and missiles.

These would be the fleets that both sides conducted their war strategies for the next 127 years Earth time. While the Carsmir inducer and relativistic engines did allow superluminal travel, the crews still were subjected to time dilation. Time dilation, suspended animation, and the extended longevity of all of humanity in the 27^th century lead to a long war being conducted with the same combatants throughout its duration.

Creator’s note:

The Periphery War as a story plays within that classic of space opera, the colonial rebellion. In most golden age and silver age science fiction stories, the colonial rebellion in more realistic contexts are interplanetary wars. In pure space opera settings, where faster than light travel is a simple thing, interstellar rebellions occur with not much more challenge than in the age of fighting sail.

Some authors tried a slightly more realistic approach such as Gordon R. Dickson’s Tactics of Mistake, or C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station. Dickson took the approach that sociopolitical influences were critical to new settled star systems rebelling against Earth’s control, while Cherryh tried for a more space based infrastructure and long war as a larger society and economy goes on around the combat.

Each of these authors, and others, are trying to show that such rebellions would be complex affairs, because any settled star systems are built from new, implying a complex star faring economy and political system. Historical rebellions usually were long established populations rebelling against central governments, instead of very new population centers and societies rebelling against a central controlling government.

With those considerations the Periphery War is world built so that young colony star systems had enough centuries to develop strong industrial infrastructure and sizable populations. Also superluminal travel is a must to make interstellar warfare for political gains even reasonable, yet such a fanciful FTL capacity can not be so quick that the military and industrial might of the Solar System can be applied rapidly against the rebelling systems.

The strategic situation of the Periphery War is comparable to the American War of Independence. The United Colonies, later the United States, needed to defend their territory against soldiers deployed to North America by the British Empire, yet any attempt to project power to conduct strategic offensive operations by the Americans against the English required naval raiding of commerce as their only reasonable effective method. This compares to the United Peripheral Worlds having to defend their star systems against expeditions by the Commonwealth Navy, while sending out their strike ships to raid Commonwealth space infrastructure in the various Commonwealth systems.

by Erl Tyriss

What is Unwelcome Neighbors? It is several things. It is a setting for various fictional creations, but also encompassing a thematic series of creative works.

UwN (UnWelcome Neighbors) is in setting terms three a parallel universes of Earths and Milky Way galaxies. Each has been touched by similar events in ancient civilizations. These civilizations were able to bridge the dimensional barriers of each universe and contact their counterparts in the parallel universes.

Over 200 million years ago a species, later to be called the Deiwos by humans, built a series of very advance technological constructions. One of those constructs is an advance set of hyperspatial gates, that the Deiwos built at many sites throughout the Milky way galaxy. These gates twist space/time to allow travel between the gates at all points within the network. Those gates had the potential to even cross outside of the universe.

The other construct was a basement pocket universe that underlay, but connected to, the local galactic group. The Deiwos filled this lumscent space with energy and particles till it became a complete plenum. This lumscent plenum became a power source and communication medium for the Deiwos civilization.

In one of those universes the Deiwos decided to advance the work of their predecessors by combining these two massive construct. This plan was considered significantly in three universe. The outcomes were drastically different in each of these three.

The first universe is identified by the writer title of the Dissolution Wars. In setting, once the Deiwos started to communicate between the universes, the Deiwos would come to be called this universe the Bleak. In the Bleak, the consens between the Deiwos feel apart about connecting the hyperspational gate network to e lumscent plenum. There was great concern that the result could cause sufficient spatial distortion to slowly destroy the whole local galactic group by collapsing the local space into a large galactic size singularity.

The disagreement lead to eventual total wars that spanned millenia and destroyed the galactic wide Deiwos civilization. The result was to treaty that split the galaxy with a clear neutral dividing line between the various Deiwos societies. The Deiwos lost most of their past civilizations influence and capacity. New species would go to the stars and build new civilizations in the place where the Deiwos had lived and walked.

The second universe is identified by the writer’s title of Taraka Indriya. In setting, once the Deiwos started communicating between the universe, hey called this universe the Bliss. In the Bliss, the Deiwos were able to discover the flaw in their merger plans and adjusted the engineering designs. The leaders of the Deiwos galactic civilization were able to persuade all of the dissenting factions to allow the project to go forward, and thus the Deiwos civil war was avoided in this universe.

The lack of galactic level strife would see the Deiwos continue to dominate the stars for millions of years. As younger species developed into space faring technological societies, they would always encounter aspects of the Deiwos presence. This would and did lead to minor strife and tensions, yet the Deiwos made room for these newcomers.

The third universe is identified by the writer’s title of the Enduring Realm. In setting, once the Deiwos started communicating between the universes, they called this one the Broken. In the Broken, the Deiwos pushed through with the engineering merger, despite the violence of the dissidents. The fear of an eventual galactic collapse into a singularity was found to be incorrect, but such vast metric engineering was found to have another price. The adjustment done in the Bliss were not done in the Broken, so dimensional tensions and strain was created . These stressors caused volumes of resulting hyperspatial lumscent plenum to be unstable. The new structure placed strain on prime space/time, but also tore into other space/times showing the Deiwos wee not the first civilization with these vast space construction ambitions.

From these other spaces came strange forms of life, some not even following the natural laws of the prime universes. The Deiwos of the Broken would find themselves having to defend their home galaxies against some of these strange life forms.

These three parallel universes would find connection through the actions of the Deiwos. In time the Deiwos and other civilizations would find ways to communicate and travel between the Bliss, the Bleak, and the Broken.

These three universes each represent connected but separate settings for a variety of fiction, each with their own genre. The next post will discuss the worldbuilding aspects of the human civilizations of each universe of UnWelcome Neighbors.

Unwelcome Neighbors is a space opera setting. That is the first thing that can be said about it. But it goes just a little further than that in its themes and subgenre parts. The attempt in creating the setting and the stories set within it, were to experiment with a wide range of science fiction subgenres across a vast scope.

Unwelcome Neighbors is one story setting but within the setting it is not one universe, but two universes connected by the actions of ancient civilizations within the Local Group of galaxies. As a writer this has allowed me to work with my coauthors to experiment with a number of different thematic genres, while still sticking to a space opera setting in size and scope of time and space.

There are whole story arcs of broad strokes and sometimes narrow focus set within the UnWelcome Neighbors setting. Each is connected and has a distant impact on the others, even when they are of different genres.

The first universe operates under the title of the Dissolution Wars. It was first created with an eye for trying to write military science fiction with a harder science fiction edge. Far too much military science fiction over the years has failed to give the reader a full impression of just how vast interstellar distances are, especially upon a galactic scale.

For the moment the Dissolution Wars are divided into two story arcs; the Artisans of War & the Tranc Wars. Both are military science fiction, and only tentatively connected in plot, even though occurring in the same galaxy at roughly the same eras.

The Artisans of War deal with the antics and tribulations of Humanity as it expands out from the Solar System and finds both allies & foes. This covers a period from 3100 A.D. up through 5100 A.D. and leads to numerous advances. Throughout the entire period Humanity is still fragmented politically and culturally. This has been the reality for the entire 10000 years of human civilization so far, there is no reason to believe the future will be that different, especially as humans spread out to the stars.

The Tranc Wars deal with a series of millennia long wars between a species known as the Tranc and various other interstellar traveling sapience, who find dealing with the Tranc difficult, often violent. The purpose of those stories is to try to capture an alien perspective looking at conflicts and interstellar efforts spanning the equivalent of centuries of human time.

The second universe operates under the title of the Enduring Realm. The focus of this setting and the stories set there is more of an attempt to tell a science fantasy epic with more than just an idle sop to hard science fiction and science concerns.  Science fantasy, soft space opera, or planetary romances are all similar genres that have long been popular going back to the works of Edger Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom stories.

Science fantasy has its appeal of escapism and often merely carries the trappings of science fiction settings and futuristic technology to make it more appealing to certain fan bases. There is nothing wrong with such stories, but often it leaves the question could such grandiose stories be told with more hard science fiction focus. That is the literary experiment for the Enduring Realm.  There are many fine examples of previous, and much better writers achieving such  literary experimentation, but these are my humble attempts at doing  the same.

The Periphery War was Humanity’s first interstellar war. It started because of a political movement on Earth and then spread out to many other star system. The idea was a desire for a greater political and economic unity between all the human settlements and nations among the stars.

This was not acceptable to five frontier star systems who prized their political and cultural independence. This lead to an expedition being dispatched from Sol to the largest of the resistant colony systems, with the intent of subduing the colony as an example.

The expedition was opposed and not allowed to land. The Commonwealth next decided to blockade the world and interdict all space travel within the star system. This sparked an emergency conference between the other four independent minded worlds.

These worlds put together a hastily gathered expedition of ad hoc armed ships and set out to contest the Commonwealth’s blockade of the main world. The first engagement was indecisive, but the first ships of the Peripheral Worlds engaged the Commonwealth, but would pull off to the second gas giant in the system and await the arrival of further forces.

Within a month the second wave of Periphery starships arrived in the star system, and set course to rendezvous with their compatriots. During that month the Commonwealth task force made a sortie with a secondary force to the inner gas giant to keep a checking force eon the 1^st Periphery force orbiting the outer gas giant.

This holding force was to just stay out and keep the Periphery rebel starships from attack the transports and other naval ships in the orbit of the main inhabited planets in the system.

In time the Periphery starships gathered and launched a coordinated attack targeted at the Commonwealth forces. The holding force fought the Periphery starships on a running battle as the battle moved inward. Once the full battles entered closer to the main inhabited world, the planetary forces launched aerospace forces from the planets surface.

The Commonwealth commander became shaken by the slashing attacks from the aerospace forces, and the determined hit and run tactics of the Periphery starships. In a period of bad maneuvering by the Commonwealth forces, their flagship was destroyed, which demoralized the Commonwealth task forces. A negotiated settlement soon followed which saw the Commonwealth forces begrudgingly departing the star system under truce conditions.

By the standards of later battles it would be a minor one, but it would be the start of the Periphery War, humans’ first interstellar war.

 

The Baiselu are old friends with the Aracana from their earliest starship days. The Baiselu ships are large clusters of spheres approximately 1 kilometer in diameter.

The settlement pattern of the Baiselu has cast them all across the galaxy. They are colonist who seek out oceanic worlds. Since such worlds are scattered among the stars, the Baiselu settle only a few stars out of 10,000s.

They are a long lived and patient species. War is not an institution of their civilization. From their long history, they have only face combat when defending their worlds or lives. The Aracana have agreed to a mutual support treaty under which they have defended and aid the Baiselu several times through various local emergencies on numerous worlds across the galaxy.

In the Dissolution Wars universe for Unwelcome Neighbors, the primitive Aracana were heavily influenced by seeing a major battle between a Homeworld Malanthekar stellar fortress and an Imperial Malanthekar battleship in the skies above the Aracana’s home world.

The event was so large that all of the Aracana across the planet witnessed the most deadly parts. The battle raged for almost a week, but the last 3 planetary days of the battle occurred in orbit around the Aracana’s planet of origin. The energies being exchanged in the battle were so vast it could be seen even during the height of the daylight hours.

Events seen by the observing Aracana would influence them extensively. The most important outcome was an awakened belief in the Aracana that the heavens were a place they could go if they found the right methods. The next 1000 years for the Aracana were filled with hundreds of experiments in mystical and scientific approaches, all seeking to find some method to ascend into the heavens. Most of these experiments were dead ends, but there were enough successes to galvanize the Aracana and set the stage for a global common culture and interconnected societies across the planet.

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.