2182/5 – The Unending ThunderstormChancellor elected Pyung Chung-Hee was allowed by the War Party to lead the government even if his win over the preferred Republican candidate was only by 0.13% of the votes.
The intention of the government was to close the Sirius matter as soon as possible and a debate on who was the rightful winner of the election would have only slowed down operations. The move of replacing Admiral Lahab Mansoor at the head of the party was then to be seen also as to facilitate transitioning of power.
At the moment of the election, the General was still fighting at the front and an urgent dispatch was sent to ensure the safe extraction of the new Chancellor.
Pyung Chung-Hee ProfileHowever, the militaristic line was allowed to pass only at one condition: the new Chancellor would have had free reins in conducting a thorough audit of all matters of the state. Chung-Hee started immediately and it took him almost a month to compile a full report. Once completed, results weren’t publicly released firstly because they showed a complete lack of management of the state resources and secondly because it was agreed so.
Apparently, the findings in EG 372 were below average with only one site recognized as valuable over the available 700 bodies. Asteroid #25 had accessibility 0.9 to 220,618 tons of Neutronium, 13,433 tons of Vendarite at 1.0 accessibility, and 301,401 tons of Uridium at 0.9 accessibility. Across the system, there were also other sites that could have been exploited but nothing really worth the effort. Obviously, the push for the gate network before the survey of the system was a big mistake, and considering it took 4 years to complete the project it was logical to keep this catastrophic failure hidden from the population.
The road to Gliese 257 was also ready to be used for more than 2 years and operation black swan could have been launched anytime if it wasn’t for the government's interests in keeping all the available troop transport to help with Sirius Separatists Outpost invasion. Again, the information was kept secret with the Scientists Faction that was quite upset of knowing they were lied to, as it was inquired many times to report status and an ETA for the operation to start and it was always answered that logistic preparation was still ongoing.
As known, operation in the Centauri Systems could have been started anytime and 1 mining outpost was already active in the system but the logistic operations were far from optimal.
The government used the minerals destined for the extra freighters to build more warships. This resulted in the old liners that were running the asteroid operations to take over the new Mining Outpost mineral transport. The problem with that was that with an annual capacity of 15,000 tons and a current output generated of over 26,000 tons, Earth was missing deliveries for over 11,000 tons of TN minerals per year, minerals that would have needed now more than ever.
New Harvesting operations were also planned to start in both Ultima and Alpha Centauri and yet again nothing was done.
The only consistent findings of the report were on the exploration side. Apparently, the government kept the promise of not jumping into any new system as agreed, however, it was also agreed to exploit and potentially secure some important systems so that we would have been ready to start exploring as soon as the war would have been over. In particular, the system of EV Lacartae was marked as a priority. It was then with great disappointment that the complete lack of any effort towards this goal had been undertaken over the years by the government.
Unfortunately, due to the great mineral crisis and the negative trend of the ground invasion of Sirius Separatists Outpost, there wasn’t much to be done to rectify the issues if not waiting and hope for a positive resolution of the war.
The report had also a minor section dedicated to the piracy claims reported in many systems. Over the years only 2 Civilian Companies were operating for the Democracy first and for the Republic now passing from the brief spell of the Federation. Until now it was believed that all the other attempts were simply failed, bought by the bigger entities, or even been sabotaged by them.
Eventually, evidence showed that these companies were forced to close due to the disappearance of their ships. The complaints were reported several times and no judge had ever allowed a full investigation to be launched on the matter.
Interview with the few owners that were possible to be found showed a consistent pattern: as soon as the company was big enough to launch ships and had started to be sustainable all its ships were missing within a month. The ships to disappear first were always the liners to Mars or Sirius and never the one running through Luna or Mercury. Once the liners were gone the empty freighters were targeted.
This last piece of information was the clue: somebody did not want to alert the authorities.
If the liners and the people on board were almost all unregistered most of the time, there was little if no concern at all when entire “batches” of people were missing. Especially when new colonies opened and with an intake of 30 to 40 million people per year, to keep track of everything and everybody was almost impossible.
The situation on the minerals though was completely different. After part of the inventory on Earth was found wrong/missing by almost 20% by the Zorlu administration of 2125, strict controls on all mineral transport were introduced. The Zorlu protocol, as we know it today, was pretty much perfect and completely automated system. Each mineral package was assigned a unique code which was registered at production, then at load and unload, and finally once at the warehouse.
The peculiarity of the code was that if the serial was unique the status code was the same, therefore if anything would have gone missing then it would have been easy to understand where and consequentially to find out why.
For instance, a new Sorium Package was ready to be delivered and coded with a unique serial 152364-SO. The last 2 letters were to identify the Mineral, in this case, Sorium. The code would have been generated by the Zorlu Protocol and assigned the code P for production. The package P-152364-SO would have been scanned by the courier and the system would have then generated the L status for picked/loaded: PL-152364-SO. Once at the destination, the scan would have generated the U code for unloading, then the T for transport to the depot, and ultimately the S for stored. If all went well the stored package would have then been PLUTS-152364-SO.
It is worth note that the words PLUT and PLUTS were also introduced into the day to day language and slang and are still used nowadays. As you know a PLUT is something shady if referred to as an object or an insult if we say it to someone: "you are a plut!", something incomplete or worthless. Pluts were instead all the minerals and it was mostly used by merchants at the beginning. If you saw a "we accept pluts" sign back then it meant that it would have been possible to barter minerals for goods. While today the concept of PLUTS has disappeared, we still call someone a plut from time to time.
So if the missing package would have been the PLUT code then it would have signified that the package was stolen on the way from the Starport to the Depot and the Police would have been involved and tasked to find the culprits. With all the roads full of cameras it would have not taken much for them to find and recover the stolen goods.
Back to the missing freighters then. It is obvious that if several PL codes were suddenly missing something must have happened on the way to the starport, therefore, in space. This would have resulted in the involvement of the Navy. Now a missing shipment may have been passed undetected but the report showed that more than 50 freighters were going missing over the past 40/50 years. At an average of 25,000 tons per shipment, we were looking at roughly 1,250,000 tons of minerals.
Maybe the first 10 or 15 missing ships and shipments would have been classified as an organic error but 50 would have been sooner or later picked up by any of the controllers.
It was then reasonable to assume that the freighters were targeted empty for a reason and this reason was to do not raise too many questions. Also, it was no coincidence that only small companies were targeted as the big ones had too many political ties to let the matter slide easily.
The Chancellor recommended that a formal investigation should have followed his report and that it should have been kept secret to increase the chances of finding out what was really going on.
Meanwhile, newly appointed Grand Admiral Kinugasa Hirohisa was tasked with looking at the reports from our recent fight against the Sirius Separatists’ Navy.
Contrary to some of his colleagues, the Admiral believed that the PD effect was more than satisfactory. In fact, Earth’s Navy could count on more PD ships than the one used by Sirius and if required every ship's laser weapon could contribute to the PD barrage as well. The concerning point was then only on the missed detection of the fighters and the general range of detection of the Navy.
The Admiral suggested that the government should have invested in a new series of Passive Sensors either more technologically advanced or simply more powerful than the ones currently in service and in a new Active Sensor able to detect fighters at a reasonable range. The government agreed on researching new passive sensors and to consider building bigger ones as well once the research would have been completed. As changing the sensors on all ships would have been too expensive both in terms of time and costs, a new ship was designed with the intent of providing better detection capability to the whole fleet.
Paladin-I S class Recon Frigate 12,000 tons 309 Crew 1,784 BP TCS 240 TH 862 EM 4,140
3593 km/s Armour 5-46 Shields 138-460 HTK 51 Sensors 200/200/0/0 DCR 20 PPV 0
Maint Life 4.91 Years MSP 1,729 AFR 115% IFR 1.6% 1YR 119 5YR 1,783 Max Repair 200 MSP
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Morale Check Required
Ion Drive (Ship) (4) Power 862.5 Fuel Use 81.06% Signature 215.62 Explosion 11%
Fuel Capacity 815,000 Litres Range 15.1 billion km (48 days at full power)
Delta Shields (Medium) (3) Recharge Time 460 seconds (0.3 per second)
Anti-Missile Search Sensor AS6-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 6.4m km MCR 574.5k km Resolution 1
Area Search Sensor AS55-R100 (1) GPS 5600 Range 55.4m km Resolution 100
Anti-Fighter Search Sensor AS43-R10 (1) GPS 1600 Range 43.5m km Resolution 10
Long Range EM Sensor EM25-200 (1) Sensitivity 200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 111.8m km
Long Range TH Sensor TH25-200 (1) Sensitivity 200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 111.8m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
On the 28th of March 2182, ground reinforcement from Earth finally arrived on Sirius. With supplies extinguished for over 4 months, the situation was almost out of control. However, thanks to the constant economic pressure the Sirius Government was under, except for 25,000 tons of military units, nothing was available to be sent to the enemy troops either. This new intake of soldiers would have maybe enough for Earth to win the battle on Sirius-A IV. However, new supplies were tasked to be produced on Earth in the eventuality war would have last for longer.
At the beginning of 2183, with the conflict still going on the Surface, Earth’s supply companies were ready to be delivered at the front. The impressive amount of 1,600 supply trucks would have been loaded and delivered on-site asap. The Army hoped that this should have sufficed to finally defeat the few remaining Separatists Units. With millions of dead on both sides, an entire colony economically and socially disrupted, and Earth’s civilian policies halted in the past 6 years, it was evident that both governments underestimated the gravity of the events.
Eventually, after another year of the war, Sirius Separatists Government decided to strip the population of all they had left to resupply the few units remained in the attempt of slowing the invasion down and keep the enemy at bay. They were firmly intentioned of keeping the war of attrition to go for as long as possible. The plan was to wait for a change of the government or intentions on Earth. What the Separatists did not understand was that Earth committed already too much time, resources, and lives to simply withdraw at this stage and even more supply companies were being prepared at the capital for a final push to conquer the planet by the end of 2184.
That was the deadline the Republic set prior to moving into more drastic measures. The Admiralty was, in fact, already planning a full-scale bombing of the surface in an operation which would have been called “NO MERCY”.
With scientific effort entirely focused on the new sensors, it was also decided to increase the ability of cloaking of our ships. The reason was then the Discovery Scouts were in need of a refurbish. New less thermal emitting engines, longer-range sensors, and EM cloaking technologies were almost ready to be produced and fitted into the 2nd generation of Republican scouts. As to have all installed together would have taken too long, it was opted to use only the engines and sensors while the cloaking would have been used later in another project the Navy was working on in secret.
Discovery-IJ 2185 class Scout 7,000 tons 122 Crew 603.8 BP TCS 140 TH 109 EM 0
2232 km/s JR 1-25(C) Armour 1-32 Shields 0-0 HTK 32 Sensors 120/120/0/0 DCR 5 PPV 0
Maint Life 6.63 Years MSP 1,069 AFR 78% IFR 1.1% 1YR 42 5YR 632 Max Repair 120 MSP
Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months Morale Check Required
Commercial Jump Drive (7k) Max Ship Size 7000 tons Distance 25k km Squadron Size 1
Discovery Ion Drive (2) Power 312.5 Fuel Use 7.83% Signature 54.6875 Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 416,000 Litres Range 136.7 billion km (708 days at full power)
Medium Range EM Sensor EM15-120 (1) Sensitivity 120 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 86.6m km
Medium Range TH Sensor TH15-120 (1) Sensitivity 120 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 86.6m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Eventually, by August 2184, all Geological Survey Vessels completed the mapping of the known space while the Gravitational Survey of the galaxy was still ongoing and it wouldn’t be completed earlier than the end of 2185 or even 86.
Finally, on the 28th of December, as the Colony on Sirius was not defeated yet, the full Strike Force on Earth was ordered to park on Sirius-A IV orbit. 3 days later, the operation no mercy was launched. Missiles would have been used only as of the last resource and in case the Sirius Government would have decided to do not surrender within the end of June. The Batteries of all ships started to become a persistent noise in the atmosphere. Later, one of the survivors would have said that it was like witnessing and hearing an unending thunderstorm.
On the 12th of February 2185 at 4:00 am Sirius Government sent an unconditional surrender dispatch to the Republic Army Command on Sirius. After 4 years the war was finally over and Sirius was officially occupied. Another war would have now started, the one to convince the inhabitants that Earth was not the enemy or the oppressor but the savior from the economic disasters that happened before the war. A new Occupation force was then started to be trained on Earth to pacify the planet.
To Transport the troops efficiently a new Station was designed as well. Meanwhile, troops on Sirius were rearranged to include 4 Army Occupation Forces and 1 Army reservists for a total of 215,000 tons of troops.
UNESS Apocalypse class Troop Transport 103,772 tons 366 Crew 1,877.8 BP TCS 2,075 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s No Armour Shields 0-0 HTK 220 Sensors 8/8/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
MSP 11 Max Repair 80 MSP
Troop Capacity 100,000 tons Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months
Standard GPS (1) GPS 1600 Range 29.6m km Resolution 100
Standard TH (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
Standard EM (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 22.4m km
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Space Station for construction purposes
On the 13th of April 2185, the damaged fleet of Sirius reached Earth’s orbit to repair and start rebranding. The Sirius Separatists had in fact renamed all the ships seized during the rebellion and the UNEN wanted them back as they were before the war. In particular, to have some of the Early Corvettes built-in 2100 back felt good and helped with morale.
With the end of the year and election approaching, the government dismissed all pending operations to focus on campaigning.
NOTES: I have tried to increase the world-building with notions of daily life and references to past events. I hope you can all appreciate and the more we can see the Humans evolve the more we can add to these things.
