2171/77 – Winds of ChangeDuring January 2171, the government opened the Sirius System to civilian traffic. As it was forbidden to settle into the Military Outpost, the first order of business was to allow colonization from other worlds. The most populous world at the time was Mars. With a population larger than Earth, unemployment was starting to be a massive issue due to the majority of colonies being now closed for relocation and accepting only specialized workers. The Sirius outpost would have then been a good opportunity for the government to ease the Martian situation before would have become out of control.
A special permit was then issued for all those who would have welcomed the opportunity of moving out of Sol and find more fortune on Sirius.
While relocating to Mars or Luna 50 years ago would have allowed people to go back to Earth if things would have not worked out as they hoped, moving to another star system would have been a completely different journey. Currently, the civilian sector faster liner would have taken 2 months only to transport people on Sirius and another 2 to come back. With tickets sold out for years, the risk was to get stuck on the planet, liking it or not, for not less than 5 years.
This would have also been something that people had to consider before accepting relocation.
Another negative aspect was the environment. Many of the colonists would have been already coming from a harsh youth in temporary accommodation and installations. Having being able to enjoy the surface only in the latest few decades, to go back into a non terraformed planet was not appealing.
To counter these concerns raised by the potential colonists, the government started the effort to terraform the Sirius Outpost immediately, but with only one Tug the operation would have taken a while. As the shipyards were all busy refitting the class Elysium freighters for more important missions, the build of new Tugs would have not been possible till the end of the government cycle in 6 years' time.
The new Elysium class Freighter was the first step of the massive expansion of the civilian fleet promised by the Nationalists. Many believed that while the military was finally looked after, the civilian fleet was left rotting and undeveloped for too long.
The Elysium was used as the banner of such a campaign. While the truth was that the freighter was projected carefully and it managed to last long because of that, the Nationalists spun the narrative that our freighters were built in the early 2100 and now had more than 70 years under their belly. They were consuming more fuel than the one needed and their old armor required more Duranium than necessary.
A new class was then designed and all freighters were ordered to refit by the end of the year 2173.
Furthermore, all fleets were expanded from 4 to 5 vessels, which was the strategy of the early days of the Democracy and it was changed under Ertegün but criticized ever since.
UNEC Elysium-I class Freighter 40,000 tons 133 Crew 474.3 BP TCS 800 TH 844 EM 0
1054 km/s Armour 1-104 Shields 0-0 HTK 63 Sensors 6/6/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
MSP 7 Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 25,000 Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 8
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months
Commercial Ion Drive MK2 (Small) (9) Power 843.8 Fuel Use 2.18% Signature 93.75 Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 653,000 Litres Range 134.6 billion km (1477 days at full power)
Commercial GPS (1) GPS 1600 Range 25.7m km Resolution 100
Commercial EM (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
Commercial TH (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
After having discussed the logistic, the government wanted to ensure that exploration would have been again the cornerstone of the Federation. With military plans and ambitions finally aside and the renew and strengthen of our defensive fleets, it was time to set foot deeper in the galaxy.
The expansion of the Survey Fleet would have played a central role in this and plans were made to expand the number of Promise class up to 20 units along with the impressive number of 28 Twilight class.
As expansion and exploration progressed faster, in 2172 another Ruined Alien Settlement was discovered on the newly discovered Gliese 257 System. Having already dealt with similar situations, the government ordered exploration to continue and marked the site as temporarily not relevant.
Meanwhile, on the 21st of December 2172, the jump into the Ross 619 System revealed the first Earth-like planet to be discovered. Potentially, the planet did not need any terraforming to be colonized, and to make it absolutely perfect it needed only a slightly warmer temperature.
The first years of 2173 were spent expanding the number of automated mines on the Sirius Outpost. The goal was to have enough minerals to produce basic stuff directly on-site and also to ship minerals back on Earth which was starting to suffer the depletion of minerals in Alpha Centauri mining complexes. Thankfully, on the 3rd of August, a sensational discovery happened. The jump into the previously unknown system of EG372 revealed to be a potential mining Eden. Besides the 2 Planets and 29 Moons, the system had a remarkable amount of 666 Asteroids within.
The only known system with so many asteroids so far was Sol.
Shortly after the discovery, operations of refit and upgrade of the Military fleets were completed and the Defensive Fleet Alpha and Beta were reorganized to include the new designs and ships. Eventually, one was sent to Sirius to provide protection in the system.
Sirius Defensive Fleet Alpha OOBSol Defensive Fleet Alpha OOBOn the 2nd of October 2173 the discovery of a connection to EV Lacartae from DEN 1048-3956 redesigned space as we knew it. Apparently, there was a loop connecting the Andromedae Arm with Sirius one. The discovery puzzled the Scientists as a new concept of dormant jump points started to be openly discussed in the scientific community. The theory was that some jump points could have been opened only from one side and they could not be detected and therefore used until that side would have been discovered. With this new knowledge exploration of the nearby systems became even more important.
As theorized, in 2174, a new loop from the Andromedae Arm was discovered but this time it led to the Luhman 16 arm via Epsilon Indi through another dormant jump point. In only 2 years Lacertae became then the system with the most strategic value of the known space, even more than the Epsilon Indi one. In fact, its position was central respective to the whole Federation Territory and it was also close to the highly valuable EG372 System which in time would have been hopefully become the main source of minerals for Earth.
Meanwhile, operations to collect minerals in Alpha Centauri completed, and plans to move the mines elsewhere had to be drawn. With Alpha Centauri-A II as the best candidate due to having deposits of all TN Minerals, the government allowed a different strategy than the one used before.
As Alpha Centauri and Ultima Centauri were effectively a dead end, it was decided to use the Osiris class to build a gate network opening the system to the Civilian Sector and exploitation as well.
The civilian would have then been tasked to move the majority of the installation from the asteroids to the planet, incurring virtually no effort from any federation ships. This would have resulted in a massive save of fuel, personnel and it would have stimulated the civilian presence into the systems. If all would have gone as planned this should have also attracted some investors and potential growth in taxes and wealth.
With the plan drafted, to start it would have been necessary to relocate the tenders. The problem was that the Herald class Tug was still busy in moving all the terraforming stations from Mercury to Sirius. As the limited amount of tugging machinery was already discussed and with the completion of the freighters upgrade, the government finally decided to build and design a new Herald class Tug.
UNEC Herald-I class Tug 11,500 tons 86 Crew 351.3 BP TCS 230 TH 750 EM 0
3260 km/s Armour 1-45 Shields 0-0 HTK 44 Sensors 6/6/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
MSP 19 Max Repair 100 MSP
Tractor Beam
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months
Commercial Ion Drive MK2 (Medium) (5) Power 750 Fuel Use 1.73% Signature 150 Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 341,000 Litres Range 309.3 billion km (1098 days at full power)
Commercial GPS (1) GPS 1600 Range 25.7m km Resolution 100
Commercial EM (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
Commercial TH (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 19.4m km
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
As the end of the legislation approached and with all plans set in motion, the government started to look at the exploitation of the new ruins in the Gliese 257 System. The proposed operation, called Black Swan due to the connection with the Cygni system, would have started as soon as another important matter would have been solved.
In fact, since the uncovering of the installations in Struve, nothing was done to actually plan what to do with them. The most important discovery was the weapons that would have to be analyzed by the scientists on Earth. To do so, we should have brought them back first. Thanks to the new Elysium-I class, a return trip to Struve from Earth was finally viable.
All freighters were then ordered to start bringing back all the alien technology and installation starting from the particle beams. Once on Earth, a team of Scientists disassembled the alien weapons and found some very valuable information that would have cut our efforts in researching the 2 respective techs by 94%.
Known Space 2177On the 1st of January 2177 elections were then due in all Federation’s planets. The past six years were characterized by a crescent Republican sentiment mounting through the population which was also starting to realize why the Federation as it was conceived would have not worked in the long run.
The limitation in resettling, the weight a planet with minerals could impose on those without, high unemployment rates and many other causes were also responsible for a shared vision of independence in some planets more than others.
With the parties busier in discussing if we should have gone to war or not, soon everybody detached from the real issues on the territory. The Federalists' form adopted, unfortunately, did not account for the most important component Democracy was bringing in. In the old Democracy, people represented people in a way that everybody felt personal but on a collective scale, while in the Federation model people represented planets where the collective scale was replaced by a group of people, a very specific group of people to be honest. And therein lies the rub…
How could the government keep planets united under a flag if every Senate representative was trying to bring the water to their wells only and without caring for the implication of that on other planets?
As said this question resulted in two answers: those who said they were better off alone and those who believed a restructure was needed. Having the Democracy already “failed” maybe a hybrid between the Democracy and the Federalism could have been the solution. A new Republic with Democratic powers and Federalists ideals was the answer.
Soon the election turned then to be a referendum for Humanity to stick together or simply part ways.
When the first results started to come in, plans were already in motion on Mars and Sirius to present their separation motions. Mars had an incredible amount of people that needed a job and the potential to grow larger than Earth. The mineral situation was the same as Earth and considering both depended on other colonies, Mars felt that it deserved the chance to have part of the manufacturing sector to be relocated from the capital which was, on the other hand, always short of workers.
Sirius, instead, had access to military forces, all TN minerals were present on the planet, and thanks to the first intake of colonists it did now also have a decent amount of population.
By the time all senators were elected, everything was drawn and ready to be put for discussion.
Elected Seats 2177As the new Senate formed, talkings started between factions to form a majority in the house. The 2 main factions of the Separatists and the Republicans were fighting to the last seat and for almost a week the situation was pretty clear: Sirius and Mars wanted out and the government wasn’t ready to concede two colonies to leave at the same time. Furthermore, to have Sol “contested” by two powers wasn’t even considered.
Negotiations then revolved around getting Mars back on board and may allow Sirius to go his way. Mostly, to get Mars would have also meant investing much less in terms of resources as the planet was one of the first colonies and the amount of infrastructure and economic requests as damage reparation advanced by the Martian Federal Government were simply insane.
To agree in staying, Mars demanded the dismissal of the Federal System and the institution of a Republic as the latest attempt to make things work for the sake of humanity. The government found the request acceptable but there was still the Sirius matter to sort out.
The vote had to take place anyway and if the Separatists, even without Mars, would have the majority, then the Senate would have been forced to deal with that.
Possible Coalitions 2177Finally, at the end of an exhausting week, votes were cast and with only 1 vote difference the Senate approved the motion for Sirius to leave the Federation. With satisfaction and to the general amazement, the separatist delegates left the house immediately communicating that their demands would have followed as soon as they would have reached Sirius unharmed.
The Senate needed then to ratify a new motion to make the new government legit as such a situation wasn’t constitutionally regulated. General chaos and protests followed the departure of the separatists' exit from the Senate with people talking over each other, Martians rethinking their strategy and threatening again to leave when Admiral Lahab Mansoor, leader of the Republican party, asked to be heard.
Only him, known to be courageous and decisive could have tamed such a wild crowd. His dogmatic and inflexive tone, after only a few words, managed to get the attention of all the remaining Senators. In a speech that would have touched topics such as unity, pride, and courage of the human race the Admiral proposed to go on with what was agreed. The republicans were the second faction after the separatists and having lost by only 1 vote they deserved the chance to govern. Furthermore, the promise made to the Martian people had to be respected and fulfilled to avoid further divisions.
What left of the government then decided to move on allowing 1 year for a new election campaign to be undertaken. A new Republic would have been formed after that and life would have resumed as it was before this nefarious day. The current transitional government would have managed only the treaty with the Sirius Separatists in the attempt of getting the best deal possible.
As the Sirius Separatists delegates reached their colony, they found the Navy waiting for them. Fearing the worse, only a bunch of them attended the meeting while the others were ready to flee. With surprise, they found out that the whole fleet stationed at Sirius was backing the separation. Under Federation rules, the fleet was tasked to serve and protect the Sirius Outpost Federal Government and Population, therefore, to carry on their duty regardless of the events was the right thing to do.
Obviously, all those who had families off-world were given the choice to go back to Sol Navy Command.
The Military garrison was disbanded shortly after and replaced with a Sirius Police Force entirely composed of Sirius residents. With the majority of the people coming from a military background due to the early years of military exclusivity, it wasn’t hard to find Crewmen and Soldiers to fill the ranks.
The next step would have been to claim was due from the Federation.