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Haji's Fiction / The Forever War - Part 10 q4x/aurora vb
« Last post by Haji on November 27, 2022, 01:19:03 PM »25/12/3511
The first Polish missile base becomes operational on Szpica, moon of Palisada in the Resiliencia system. While capable of firing only two thousand Osas, for a total of eight thousand to ten thousand submunitions, it is merely the start as other worlds are prefabricating needed components and the moon is merely assembling them. To arm those bases Niedzica is moving away its maintenance facilities to free manpower for more ordnance factories, meaning it will no longer be a naval base, although it will still serve as secondary line of defense due to the existing bases, which may be expanded in scope in the future.
Whether or not those will be effective depends wholly on kinhalans however. The enemy entry point is over three billion kilometers from the primary and while the jump point deeper into human space is in the opposite direction, it is located six billion kilometers away. If the enemy knows this, they can move directly away from Szpica and take oblique course, allowing them to avoid the fortifications. Designing a missile capable of covering the entire system is theoretically possible, but would have so few submunitions as to make them worthless.
Korea is also doing their best to fortify Parana and can fire a total of sixteen thousand submunitions as of now. While less than a tenth of what Baszta is capable of, every little bit helps and both nations intend to expand their capabilities.
11/10/3515
Poland develops inertial confinement fusion drive technology. While new construction will be equipped with those engines, there will be no refits as those would take too much time.
The new ships will be capable of eight thousand and eight hundred kilometers per second, but the new multi-warhead missiles will be able to move at only twelve thousand kilometers per second, making any interceptions extremely difficult. There is however a reason for this.
The new Osas were designed to use seven Wlocznias rather than five special purpose submunitions, increasing salvo density by forty percent. That was far too good to give up in the name of speed considering those will be deployed primarily in the Parana system, where the jump point deeper into human space is very close to the star. As such even such slow munitions will be able to protect most of the Polish and Korea citizens.
What they will not be able to protect is Brazil, as any kinhalan force can simply move directly away from the jump point, possibly fast enough to not get hit in the first place. However in the end this was a risk the Republic was willing to take.
The Osa DZ 2, the second generation of extended range version, has the same speed, only five Wlocznias and range of over eight billion kilometers. That particular variant was designed specifically for the Resiliencia system and should make it impossible for the aliens to bypass the new missile base.
21/01/3517
Korea launches their first eight cruisers since the end of the Second Korean War. Initially those were supposed to start picketing the alien entry point in the Parana system but DPRK has other plans.
As they point out against an overwhelming attack eight cruisers won’t do any real damage. During the Fourth Invasion Brazil performed brilliantly but that was because the disparity in tonnage was relatively low but when Poland attacked the Hwanghae system, the defenders destroyed only half of their own tonnage due to the Republic having four to one advantage. In short those cruisers will be wasted.
Their idea is to temporarily assign them to the Resiliencia picket, the most likely target of the alien invasion. Songrim is expanding its yards to build Korean space forts and will have total shipbuilding capacity of one million and six hundred thousand tonnes. Once the first flight of this forts is ready, DPRK should have two, maybe three flights of cruisers at which point jump point picket will make an actual sense.
Putting the newly launched warships together with Polish and Brazilian ones will also create a very powerful fleet that can respond in unison to attacks in other areas. In the end the other to nations agree.
15/12/3519
The Unity was back. Despite the predictions they arrived in the Parana system bringing in fifty one battlecruisers massing almost exactly six hundred thousand tonnes and twenty six heavy cruisers massing around three hundred and fifty thousand tonnes. Six of those ships were jump vessels and stayed behind but that still left over thirty six million tonnes of warships diving straight for the Korean world of Kongwon.
Such a fleet was unlikely to be a distraction so all available forces were recalled immediately. The most important component were eighty Polish light cruisers with supporting elements stationed at the jump point to Escudo. They will need a month to reach the jump point into Parana. Korea had eight cruisers and six frigates in the same place, but they were slower and would need three more days to cover the same distance.
Brazil had two fleet concentrations. The smaller once was also in Resiliencia and comprised nine cruisers. Those were the fastest human warships, capable of seven and a half thousand kilometers per second, but that was because they had no missile armament whatsoever.
Their larger force was in the Corrado system and comprised twelve cruisers, twelve light cruisers and twenty four destroyers. The smallest ships had missile armament but were designed to be slower as a result. Worse half of the light cruisers were older generation warships and could achieve only six thousand kilometers per second.
The fastest Brazilian vessels have split from the main force and headed towards Parana at their best speed. Due to configuration of the jump points they will arrive first. The rest of the force will proceed behind but will need over fifty one days to reach the home system. They will most likely not participate.
Overall the human fleets will need thirty five days to enter the fight and will have less than half the tonnage of the invading force.
16/12/3519
Eight hours after the entry Poland was confident the enemy wasn’t going to try and be fancy so they launched all they could – thirty five thousand six hundred and twenty Osas G which will carry a total of nearly a hundred and eighty thousand submunitions.
The strike achieved absolutely nothing as the aliens had enough launchers to destroy nearly thirty thousand missiles with each interceptor wave. This meant they had to have at least sixty thousand launchers, most likely for dual use, like the Polish warships. If that was the case they probably carry far too many anti-ship missiles for the human forces to survive.
17/12/3519
During the three hundred years of war there has not been a single communication from the Unity. Now their fleet stopped twenty five million kilometers away from the former Korean capital of Kongwon and declared that unless the missile bases self-destruct, they will be bombarded. Such an action would cause hundreds of millions of deaths and the new DPRK government was not willing to allow something like this, but they also didn’t intend to simply roll over. They’ve taken the chance of firing before having the bases self-destruct.
The reason they waited this long was simple – they couldn’t get past the alien defenses. Even if they haven’t wasted ammunition during the Second Korean War, what happened to the Polish strike have shown the enemy force was simply too large. As such Korea hoped to draw the aliens close enough to reduce the effectiveness of their point defense. Unfortunately the enemy wasn’t quite close enough.
The Korean plan was simple. They could launch six thousand of their multi-warhead missiles, for a total of forty eight thousand submunitions. They also got a reasonably large strike of fifty six thousand older shipkillers. However they also filled everything they could with anti-missiles. Those had range of only nineteen million kilometers and could not reach the alien fleet, but they could tie its point defense for some time and could make it use precious ammunition. They intended to fire all of this hoping that the interceptors, fired form single shot box launchers meant for larger missiles as well as from repeatable launchers in their defense bases, will be able to make the difference and allow at least some heavy hitters through.
The action was too far away to see individual missiles however the detonations pattern implied that the deception worked to an extent, but not well enough to allow any missiles through. Hopefully however the enemy has wasted a good chunk of ammunition.
Koreans didn’t have any missiles left and while they could in theory launch more interceptors, they would need time to reload and it was unlikely the aliens would fall for the trick a second time. Ultimately they destroyed their bases.
There was nothing else of sinificance in orbit of Kangwon, as all shipyards were moved and all ships escaped through the jump point so the invading fleet begun moving although it was unknown if they were heading towards Marzanna or Pyongyang which were in the same general direction. Turned out they used the innermost Lagrange point to move directly towards the secondary component to confront Brazil.
There were sixty old bases above Amazonia, each capable of launching four hundred missiles for a total of twenty four thousand. Those were unlikely to accomplish anything but there was also no reason to try and preserve them so the Federation fired as soon as they could. In the end the Unity needed only one defensive volley to nearly annihilate the Brazilian missiles and the stragglers were picked off easily enough.
The aliens stopped twenty five million kilometers away once again, but this time there was no communication as the bases were orbital so there was no threat to civilians. The invaders fired three volleys, each of around sixty thousand missiles and while the Brazilian bases were full scale, all around weapon platforms, they could fire a total of only twelve thousand interceptors every five seconds. That was enough to completely stop the first incoming volley and even make a small dent in the second one but the rest, over a hundred thousand missiles, slammed into the sixty defensive bases which was enough to destroy all of them, although only barely.
Nine destroyers and two corvettes were also destroyed. Those ships were replacements for picket ships spread out through Brazilian space and were in overhaul when the invasion happened. What was more interesting was the fact that the shipyards were left intact. This indicated the aliens believed they will be able to hold the system and were thus doing their best to preserve the industrial power of Parana.
18/12/3519
The enemy jumped into the primary system but rather than moving towards Marzanna, they set course back towards their entry point. They have used nearly two hundred thousand anti-ship missiles and around a million interceptors so they were likely going to re-arm before continuing.
19/12/3519
The aliens have reached the jump point and half of them have left the system. Humans expected colliers to be present, but apparently the enemy didn’t have enough of them, forcing them to rely on planetary stockpiles. This will delay them, giving more time for the fleets to arrive.
05/01/3520
The aliens have completed re-arming and are now coming straight for Marzanna. The Polish fleet is still twelve days away.
06/01/3520
While the aliens have been demolishing defenses of other nations, Poland has been running calculations. They assumed the enemy had ten salvos of anti-ship missiles in their magazines, which totaled six hundred thousand birds or so. The Republic could put three hundred and twenty thousand interceptors into the magazines of their bases, which should intercept one hundred and sixty thousand enemy missiles – two and a half salvos out of ten. They also had enough gauss cannons to put nearly twenty thousand slugs against each of the incoming salvos, but those turrets were to greater or lesser extent old and it was believed only a quarter of those slugs would hit. Over ten enemy salvos this added to fifty thousand intercepted missiles which means that under optimal circumstances Baszta could fend off three to four kinhalan volleys.
The reason Poland was making those calculations was simple – they still had a lot of anti-ship missiles, but they could not get through the enemy point defense. However if they could force the Unity to enter railgun range, the flight time should be short enough to do at least some damage, but it was obvious active systems won’t be the answer.
During the Second Korean War the Niedzica bases proved surprisingly survivable but simply tanking the damage also wouldn’t work as it was estimated less than fifty thousand alien missiles would have been enough to destroy everything.
Nonetheless the Republic will not fire from long range. If they did the aliens would likely just close in after the attack and use their lasers, allowing them to conserve ammunition. It was unknown how much they had stored, but they already used enormous amounts and making them use more may leave them short against the human fleets. While it was a small hope, it was the only one there was.
It also meant however that a fight in deep space was out of the question. Even if the aliens have suddenly lost all their ammunition the enormous bulk of their fleet would have allowed them to win. Parana is lost and the only thing it can do now is to ensure the aliens cannot continue forward.
07/01/3520
The enemy fleet stopped twenty five million kilometers from Marzanna and fired five volleys – a little over three hundred thousand missiles. That was more than enough to demolish the Republican defenses.
09/01/3520
The alien fleet is back at the jump point to their space. Humans expected them to re-arm again, as they used a significant amount of ammunition, but instead four battlecruiser sized jump vessels arrived and joined the formation after which the entire force seemed to head straight for the Bialowieza system. Unfortunately stabilized jump points show on gravitational sensors so kinhalans probably detected it when they were dealing with Kongwon.
11/01/3520
The aliens closed on the jump point and begun jamming communications. Several hours later they jumped. There were no defenses but a stealth scout ship was present to observe everything. Twenty four battlecruisers moved together with the jump ships in squadron transits, allowing them to shake off the after effects rather quickly. Thirteen battlecruisers and all twenty four heavy cruisers performed a standard jump. Ten battlecruisers however stayed behind. It was obvious the enemy was not willing to give up their gains and were going to use part of a fleet as a blocking force in case of a defeat. This will make things easier for humans, although it still left thirty million tonnes of warships to deal with, but it also meant that even a victory in battle will not allow the defenders to regain their home system.
After several hours the aliens have detached their heavy cruisers and begun using them to try and find the jump point. As it happened Bialomost was an A class star which was quite massive and which usually resulted in jump points being quite far away. The aliens knew it and begun by checking the outer system, but in this case the jump point to Wrota was quite close to the central star. This may just buy the human fleets the time they need to secure the jump point.
15/01/3520
The Polish fleet finally arrived at the jump point, joining twenty one Brazilian cruisers and six light cruisers. In total humanity has half the alien tonnage, which is about the same ratio it was during the initial stages of the Fourth Invasion.
16/01/3520
The main alien fleet begun to move towards the jump point. It will arrive in thirty hours but it will likely need more time to gather the detached heavy cruisers.
17/01/3520
All transmissions from Bialomost have been cut, meaning the enemy has arrived at the jump point.
19/01/3520
The defending human force comprised thirty five cruisers, one hundred and four light cruisers, twenty eight frigates and fourteen corvettes totaling a little over seventeen million tonnes of warships. Early morning the aliens have arrived.
Two of the alien squadrons appeared close together and in near opposite direction to the other two. As such the enemy begun moving to try and concentrate into two distinct formations, with the bulk of their fleet, which was right on top of the jump point, moving immediately away towards one of them, as to not repeat the mistake of the Fourth Invasion. However the human ships were faster and tried to follow closely.
The human missiles were fired into the more distant enemies, while the railguns, lasers, gauss cannons and plasma carronades begun pouring into the main force. Despite the awesome amount of firepower it took humans fifteen seconds to destroy their first two targets.
The further alien groups begun responding thirty seconds after their entry, although at first it was just gauss cannons coming online, by which point only four battlecruisers and one heavy cruiser from the main group have been destroyed. As the aliens were not capable of firing full, unified salvos, the human point defense was doing surprisingly well, stopping thousands of missiles.
It took the invaders nearly a minute to destroy the first human ships, four Brazilian cruisers, by which point ten battlecruisers have been destroyed. Unfortunately while the enemy fire wasn’t coordinated and many ships still haven’t recovered from transit effects, thousands of missiles were getting through human point defenses as there were simply too many of them.
The large group that arrived through standard transit was getting close to one of the two grouping points making humans cease their pursuit, stopping one hundred and seventy thousand kilometers away as they didn’t want to get into point blank range of active battlecruisers. The other group was still trying to form quite a bit away, using only their missiles. The Polish Wlocznias have also been doing solid work, destroying several active warships among the nearer group.
The further group begun moving soon after, still comprising fourteen battlecruisers although slightly slowed due to damage. However they had to switch to anti-missiles launched in offensive mode as that group was out of offensive ordnance.
Four and a half minutes into the engagement two of the alien squadrons were completely destroyed and the main group was reduced to a dozen heavy cruisers, but the other, mostly intact battlecruiser group was closing in, forcing the defenders to start moving in order to keep the range open. By that point humans have lost less than two dozen cruisers and light cruisers as well as nearly a dozen frigates and corvettes. This was mostly thanks to the enemy being so missile heavy that the defenders actually had an advantage in short range combat plus the Wlocznias were doing a significant amount of damage. Unfortunately the ammunition was running out.
Half a minute later the coming group turned around and appeared to be heading towards the jump point. Humans realized that they did so much damage, they were actually the ones with tonnage advantage and had ships better suited for short range combat. They jumped shortly after and the defenders turned around to finish off the heavy cruisers. Five and a half minutes after the alien entry it was all over.
Humanity’s loses were relatively light, as they lost sixteen cruisers, seven light cruisers, five frigates and twelve corvettes. Several more ships were damaged, sometimes quite heavily but the three nations still had over thirteen million tonnes of warships, giving them near parity with the known remaining alien force of twenty four battlecruisers.
Unfortunately that is only half the story. There is no way humans could launch an counterattack as the Polish warships are out of ammunition for now and those represent the bulk of the human force. Worse the twenty four battlecruisers are only the known alien force. Two jump heavy cruisers stayed behind in Parana and while they may be supporting troop transports, it is entirely possible they were left to take care of some sort of reserve force that may be used either for a new offensive or to make absolutely sure kinahalns won’t lose their recent gains.
If humanity will have time to re-arm their warships and if they manage to be in the right place at the right time, they can hold quite easily as seen by the most recent battle. However if they end up being in the wrong place, the war may be lost.
In practical terms, the remaining ships will stay in place for a month. If the enemy does not attack by that time then it is very likely the aliens will wait at least several years before launching another invasion. With Marzanna and Baszta gone, the Polish missile production capabilities will be seriously degraded so the Republican light cruisers will be fitted with anti-missiles which are better than nothing. Korea will reposition their space stations, which are still back in their territory to the jump point leading to Bialowieza so that a permanent picket can be stationed there. After a month the forces will split again. Polish mobile force will guard Wrota, but the bases will continue moving towards Reciliencia which will be guarded by Brazilian mobile elements. Meanwhile the Korean warships will join Federal bases in Cerrado. While a mishmash, it is the result of what each nation has. DPKR has the smallest navy and no bases, so they cannot take full responsibility for one of the fronts. Cerrado has heavy static fortifications, but is the least important system of the three. Poland has the strongest fleet and missile bases in two systems, but they only begun deploying static defenses.
In addition the Republic will go all in on the long range missile strikes as a defensive measure. While those failed in Parana, that was because the invading force was intact and not weakened by a battle at their entry point. More importantly however Baszta was building bases only intermittently due to lack of resources and need for its industrial power to enlarge the mining sector.
Now Niedzica and Szpica will fully commit towards fortification. The former, located at Wrota, has nine bases already but no ammunition as it was all moved to Resiliencia, believed to be more likely target. However the planet can build a little over seventeen hundred Osas per year, adding to over eight and a half thousand submunitions. Within decade it will have half the striking power of Baszta.
Szpica in the Resiliencia system is in a more difficult situation. It is still industrializing but thanks to other colonies prefabricating base parts, it has four of them already with two more to come online in the next two years and ample ammunition for those. Those missiles however came from Niedzica. In the short term the small moon will be supported by Kleczanow, which after the fall of Parana is one of the only two remaining missile production sites. In the long term however Resiliencia, which Szpica orbits, will pick up the slack, but development of proper industries will take time.
In terms of coming warships, Brazil will launch six new destroyers in three years whereas Korea will launch eight cruisers and Poland will launch eight light cruisers within the next four and a half years. Further dawn the line the Federation has three cruisers and five bases under construction in Cerrado while the Republic has two bases under construction in Kleczanow. DPRK isn’t building any static defenses just yet, but four of their shipyards should finish expansion within the next three to four years allowing them to finally start producing those.
Overall humanity is in a very precarious situation. However it seems that the aliens are taking a century or so between their attacks and if they give the defenders as little as twenty years – one fifth of their usual time – the situation should stabilize.
31/01/3520
The three human nations have been counting their loses and making plans for the future as the loss of Parana will have significant consequences for all three of them. The one piece of good news is that ever since Escudo was lost everyone was mining their critical TN installations for a quick demolition, so while humanity have lost much the only thing the aliens really got was population. Here is what was in Parana and Bialomost during the invasion:
46 305 million people
6 naval yards with total capacity of 2.4 million tonnes (six Brazilian heavy cruisers to be delivered in 3522)
20 commercial yards with total capacity of 19.47 million tonnes
376 research facilities
7910 construction factories
6700 ordnance factories
9220 mines
2230 automated mines
That was not an exhaustive list as there were some terraforming installations waiting for deployment, maintenance facilities, genetic modification centers, space ports and so on. Nonetheless as the list shows the loses were significant with the only silver lining being that the mineral output of the system was much lower than it may seem from the number of mines as most of them were on Chapada or were waiting for deployment.
Of the three nations Korea have lost the least as they made a heavy push towards abandoning the system. The mineral output of the two stars was negligible, they had stockpiles of over a million tonnes of each TN element with the exception of gallicite and only forty R&D facilities were remaining. Even their loss of two thousand ordnance factories wasn’t much of a problem as they were all focused on supplying ammunition for the missile bases that no longer exist.
That doesn’t mean DPRK will face no challenges however. In many ways the nation is, economically, where Poland was nearly a century ago – they had peaked their fleet and were unable to expand it, but at the same time their industrial output was too low to allow rapid growth of the mining sector. Poland solved it by massive industrialization that froze their expansion for nearly half a century and Korea will have to go through something like that as well, but they’ve lost two fully industrialized worlds, Kongwon and Chogjin. The only silver lining is that they have lost their fleet recently which meant they needed little resources for maintenance. As a result they have stockpiles of over four hundred thousand tonnes of gallicite. Whether or not this will last them while they try to recover and expand their mining operations remains to be seen, but as they have only two fully industrialized planets and one that is still in the middle of its expansion, many are skeptical. Still what they already have was good enough for Korea to deploy a fleet of ten million tonnes, so they will be an important contributor to humanity’s defense.
Brazil is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Their capital of Amazonia was unable to expand and had population of only three and a half billion people, but two of their colonies in the home system were a different matter. Both Morro Velho and Paracatau couldn’t be made fully habitable, but as a result they ended up being covered in arcologies, just like Marzanna was, allowing them near endless expansion. Overall over twenty five and a half billion people lived there – seventy two percent of the entire Brazilian population. Only nine and a half billion lived outside the home system which means the Federation is now the smallest know nation, even smaller than the Confederation.
To make matters worse those three planets were industrialized and were the reason the nation was doing so well adopting to changing circumstances. In addition another planet, Chapada, was also very important. It was a venusian world, with everyone living in orbital habitats and operating six thousand mines. Most of the TN elements were in minimal accessibility but that still allowed the planet to extract at least six thousand tonnes of every element, providing incredibly important safety net for the economy, one that is now gone. More over duranium, neutronium and mercassium were in high accessibility and the planet was producing nearly fifty thousand tonnes per year of each. Those resources may become a problem in the near future.
Poland decided to help. Brazil have loaned two hundred thousand tonnes of boronide and a hundred thousand tonnes of corundium, but that loans were now canceled, becoming a gift instead. More over Poland pledged to provide resources, assuming it can spare them, for free in order to help with rebuilding.
The rebuilding will be difficult, due to lack of industry. The new capital, Santarem, is the only planet that can support expansion right now as others are busy. Carajas, Itabira and Suape are all venusian worlds housed in orbital habitats and are desperately expanding those to deal with manpower shortages, while Itaquaquecetuba is in an early expansion phase. To make matters worse there are only a couple of dwarf planets that could house only one billion people if terraformed. Brazil may instead decide to not do so and have people live in arcologies, like they did on Paracatau.
However that doesn’t mean the Federation is out of the fight. They still have their eighteen naval yards, reasonably strong navy and many critical resources, like gallicite or tritanium, were being extracted outside of Parana. While they won’t be able to expand, they should be able to keep using what they already have and thus contribute to the common defense. Even the loss of the commercial shipbuilding isn’t all that crippling as Brazil has huge supporting fleet that wasn’t fully utilized before the invasion.
The consequences for Poland are hard to determine at this point. The vast majority of industry and all mining operations were located outside the home system, but it still provided certain critical capabilities, research being the biggest one. Two hundred and forty six research facilities were located on the home planet and rebuilding those will take decades of heavy industrial effort. Even worse the research progress have been lost which means the Polish technological advantage may soon evaporate.
Moreover Marzanna and Baszta were both industrialized and while they had their own tasks – expanding the R&D sector and building up static defenses – they nonetheless were helping a lot with development of other worlds. That would be bed enough, but the general reshuffling of priorities following the Fifth Invasion, coupled with the need to rebuild, means that the remaining industrial capacity will be strained. It was already decided that Gdansk, the most heavily inhabited planet remaining, will focus completely on the R&D sector, making it unable to contribute towards expansion. Similarly Palisada will be supporting fortification of the Resiliencia system, which means two industrial sites are effectively taken offline in addition to what was actually lost. The need to rebuild shipbuilding and ammunition production capabilities means additional worlds will be busy for years as well.
The biggest medium term problem however will be the loss of commercial shipbuilding. The Polish logistical networks were actually somewhat strained. They had what they needed to move minerals around, but development of new planets was a problem, especially with the ever increasing distances.
Having said all that, Poland is actually in a good position. Their resource base is mostly secure, two new planets with good gallicite deposits have recently completed terraformation and are awaiting new mines and naval shipbuilding is growing. Kleczanow is several years away from expanding its yards to four hundred thousand tonnes of capacity and once they are retooled – an admittedly long process – the Republic will effectively quadruple the amount of naval tonnage it can work on at any given time. Whether or not this will be enough remains to be seen.
26/02/3520
JTIMR have completed their analysis of the most recent invasion. The most important question was why their analysis of the target was so wrong, as humanity believed Resiliencia will be invaded. There are many potential answers, such as some sort of internal pressure to try and finish the war quickly, aliens having knowledge of warship disposition and more, but most analysts believes the answer laid elsewhere and for that they had to move to the second part of the report first.
The alien logistics seemed lacking. Unlike during the Second Invasion they did not use colliers, instead having to retreat to their base and while there was one case of re-arming, they did not refill their magazines after they used three hundred thousand missiles against the Polish defenses. Not only that but after the enemy have run out of shipkillers during the Battle of Wrota they switched to anti-missiles, but not the newest models, instead using ordnance at least a generation old. Last but not least they obviously didn’t have enough jump ships.
The JTIMR speculates the enemy have focused on building the largest possible force at the expense of everything else. This worked in a sense that the largest human system has been lost but it had significant consequences, such as alien inability to keep pushing, their need to use part of their own force to secure captured territory and insufficient number of jump ships which made them chose a more heavily defended system that had a clear entry point over a system with next to none static defenses but heavily contested jump point. And that, according to the analysts, is the real reason the aliens have chosen to attack Parana rather than Resiliencia. It may also be humanity’s salvation.
The three nations have enough firepower to defeat the alien force in a defensive action, but only if they are concentrated. For that matter Poland could probably manage that by itself. However the aliens can chose any of three potential targets, and it’s impossible to adequately protect all of them right now. As more ships are launched, missile bases are built and new jump point defenses erected, that will change, but the next twenty years will be critical. However the aliens are very missile heavy and if they will have trouble supplying the ammunition, they may be unwilling to launch another attack with half-filled magazines. This may give humanity the time it needs.
In the long term, JTIMR is optimistic about their chances. While they danced around the issue, trying to not put blame on anyone, they asked their audience to imagine what would have happened if Korea still had their fleet and was working together with the other two powers. In such a situation the missiles bases that were in the Wrota system would have been in Resiliencia and over ten million tonnes of DPKR warships would have waited for the invaders at the Parana jump point. For that matter Kongwon would have additional hundred thousand missiles they could have used. There was no way kinhalans would have managed to get through that and while admittedly the loss of the home system is painful, the analysts believe humanity will be able to defend itself once they solve their current issues. Whether or not the three nations can go on the offensive is a different matter however.
As for tactical analysis there isn’t much to say. The human fleets have performed exceptionally well, driving away an alien force twice their size while suffering reasonably light loses, showing the current shipbuilding practices work well. The analysts point out however that while the current ships are excellent for jump point defense, they aren’t necessarily optimized towards deep space combat due to the aliens switching to the same small, dual purpose missile launchers humanity is using. The current interception chances for anti-missiles hover around fifty percent which means it is more expensive, in both tonnage and monetary terms, to defend than it is to attack. With the alien fleets being consistently larger, the JTIMR claims it is more effective to give up on missiles for deep space combat, instead relying on armor and gauss cannons. In fact some propose that the idea of warship designed for jump point defense should be abandoned and the three nations should go the Brazilian route of using missile armed bases for defense and non-missile warships for support and deep space combat.
07/03/3520
After surprisingly short negotiations, the three nations have decided how to divide the alien wrecks. Poland have given up any rights to them, deciding to only salvage their own ships. Brazil will get right to the twenty five wrecks of enemy battlecruisers while Korea will get the twenty four heavy cruisers.
While DPKR is under new management and fully integrated partner, many have not forgotten the Polish trickery that kicked off the Second Korean War nor have they forgotten that the Republic have made claims to all Korean wrecks to shore up its resource stockpiles. That is why Poland has been trying to fix their image through concessions, such as giving up on alien wrecks or indeed giving up on the remaining DPKR wrecks as not all have been processed so far. That is ultimately a small gesture, but hopefully it is also a step towards better relations between the two powers.
Nonetheless during the Battle of Wrota Korea contributed the least due to them having the smallest fleet, that is why Brazil have gotten so much more. Besides the Federation needs the resources more.
27/06/3520
When looking at their options, Brazil realized there was one planet they overlooked due to very low temperature. The world can be made habitable and is the size of Earth but will require enormous amount of work. The first infrastructure is on its way, but one planet won’t be enough so in desperation the Federation decided to accept that they will have to modify their people.
Korea has been using genetic engineering for a couple of centuries now, but them developing it was exactly the problem, as their government had no qualms about risking the lives of their citizens. Many test subjects were unwilling political prisoners, and hundreds of millions suffered from side effects of hastily deployed modifications.
However even someone like DPKR could made the process safe if they’ve spent two centuries on it so that was no longer an actual problem, but the reputation persisted, making citizens of the other nations resistant to the idea. Now however the Federation simply had no choice, so they have done something never done before – they agreed for a technology exchange between the two nations, giving military related developments in exchange for all they needed to modify their citizens.
They really had no choice. While research facilities were being moved away from Amazonia due to it having insufficient population, over a third of Brazilian R&D sector remained in Parana. Worse it wasn’t all that large to being with, due to the nation having constant resource problems that distracted the industry. In short they will start falling behind so using the advantages they had for trade was entirely logical.
Even so it will take a lot of time for them to develop proper infrastructure to modify their people on any large scale. Only one world has spare industrial capacity and it will be used for other projects, like industrializing other worlds or rebuilding commercial shipbuilding. Even once that is done, there is only one good candidate for colonization that will be opened through genetic engineering although there will be two more planets that are completely covered in water, but would otherwise be habitable.
The first Polish missile base becomes operational on Szpica, moon of Palisada in the Resiliencia system. While capable of firing only two thousand Osas, for a total of eight thousand to ten thousand submunitions, it is merely the start as other worlds are prefabricating needed components and the moon is merely assembling them. To arm those bases Niedzica is moving away its maintenance facilities to free manpower for more ordnance factories, meaning it will no longer be a naval base, although it will still serve as secondary line of defense due to the existing bases, which may be expanded in scope in the future.
Whether or not those will be effective depends wholly on kinhalans however. The enemy entry point is over three billion kilometers from the primary and while the jump point deeper into human space is in the opposite direction, it is located six billion kilometers away. If the enemy knows this, they can move directly away from Szpica and take oblique course, allowing them to avoid the fortifications. Designing a missile capable of covering the entire system is theoretically possible, but would have so few submunitions as to make them worthless.
Korea is also doing their best to fortify Parana and can fire a total of sixteen thousand submunitions as of now. While less than a tenth of what Baszta is capable of, every little bit helps and both nations intend to expand their capabilities.
11/10/3515
Poland develops inertial confinement fusion drive technology. While new construction will be equipped with those engines, there will be no refits as those would take too much time.
The new ships will be capable of eight thousand and eight hundred kilometers per second, but the new multi-warhead missiles will be able to move at only twelve thousand kilometers per second, making any interceptions extremely difficult. There is however a reason for this.
The new Osas were designed to use seven Wlocznias rather than five special purpose submunitions, increasing salvo density by forty percent. That was far too good to give up in the name of speed considering those will be deployed primarily in the Parana system, where the jump point deeper into human space is very close to the star. As such even such slow munitions will be able to protect most of the Polish and Korea citizens.
What they will not be able to protect is Brazil, as any kinhalan force can simply move directly away from the jump point, possibly fast enough to not get hit in the first place. However in the end this was a risk the Republic was willing to take.
The Osa DZ 2, the second generation of extended range version, has the same speed, only five Wlocznias and range of over eight billion kilometers. That particular variant was designed specifically for the Resiliencia system and should make it impossible for the aliens to bypass the new missile base.
21/01/3517
Korea launches their first eight cruisers since the end of the Second Korean War. Initially those were supposed to start picketing the alien entry point in the Parana system but DPRK has other plans.
As they point out against an overwhelming attack eight cruisers won’t do any real damage. During the Fourth Invasion Brazil performed brilliantly but that was because the disparity in tonnage was relatively low but when Poland attacked the Hwanghae system, the defenders destroyed only half of their own tonnage due to the Republic having four to one advantage. In short those cruisers will be wasted.
Their idea is to temporarily assign them to the Resiliencia picket, the most likely target of the alien invasion. Songrim is expanding its yards to build Korean space forts and will have total shipbuilding capacity of one million and six hundred thousand tonnes. Once the first flight of this forts is ready, DPRK should have two, maybe three flights of cruisers at which point jump point picket will make an actual sense.
Putting the newly launched warships together with Polish and Brazilian ones will also create a very powerful fleet that can respond in unison to attacks in other areas. In the end the other to nations agree.
15/12/3519
The Unity was back. Despite the predictions they arrived in the Parana system bringing in fifty one battlecruisers massing almost exactly six hundred thousand tonnes and twenty six heavy cruisers massing around three hundred and fifty thousand tonnes. Six of those ships were jump vessels and stayed behind but that still left over thirty six million tonnes of warships diving straight for the Korean world of Kongwon.
Such a fleet was unlikely to be a distraction so all available forces were recalled immediately. The most important component were eighty Polish light cruisers with supporting elements stationed at the jump point to Escudo. They will need a month to reach the jump point into Parana. Korea had eight cruisers and six frigates in the same place, but they were slower and would need three more days to cover the same distance.
Brazil had two fleet concentrations. The smaller once was also in Resiliencia and comprised nine cruisers. Those were the fastest human warships, capable of seven and a half thousand kilometers per second, but that was because they had no missile armament whatsoever.
Their larger force was in the Corrado system and comprised twelve cruisers, twelve light cruisers and twenty four destroyers. The smallest ships had missile armament but were designed to be slower as a result. Worse half of the light cruisers were older generation warships and could achieve only six thousand kilometers per second.
The fastest Brazilian vessels have split from the main force and headed towards Parana at their best speed. Due to configuration of the jump points they will arrive first. The rest of the force will proceed behind but will need over fifty one days to reach the home system. They will most likely not participate.
Overall the human fleets will need thirty five days to enter the fight and will have less than half the tonnage of the invading force.
16/12/3519
Eight hours after the entry Poland was confident the enemy wasn’t going to try and be fancy so they launched all they could – thirty five thousand six hundred and twenty Osas G which will carry a total of nearly a hundred and eighty thousand submunitions.
The strike achieved absolutely nothing as the aliens had enough launchers to destroy nearly thirty thousand missiles with each interceptor wave. This meant they had to have at least sixty thousand launchers, most likely for dual use, like the Polish warships. If that was the case they probably carry far too many anti-ship missiles for the human forces to survive.
17/12/3519
During the three hundred years of war there has not been a single communication from the Unity. Now their fleet stopped twenty five million kilometers away from the former Korean capital of Kongwon and declared that unless the missile bases self-destruct, they will be bombarded. Such an action would cause hundreds of millions of deaths and the new DPRK government was not willing to allow something like this, but they also didn’t intend to simply roll over. They’ve taken the chance of firing before having the bases self-destruct.
The reason they waited this long was simple – they couldn’t get past the alien defenses. Even if they haven’t wasted ammunition during the Second Korean War, what happened to the Polish strike have shown the enemy force was simply too large. As such Korea hoped to draw the aliens close enough to reduce the effectiveness of their point defense. Unfortunately the enemy wasn’t quite close enough.
The Korean plan was simple. They could launch six thousand of their multi-warhead missiles, for a total of forty eight thousand submunitions. They also got a reasonably large strike of fifty six thousand older shipkillers. However they also filled everything they could with anti-missiles. Those had range of only nineteen million kilometers and could not reach the alien fleet, but they could tie its point defense for some time and could make it use precious ammunition. They intended to fire all of this hoping that the interceptors, fired form single shot box launchers meant for larger missiles as well as from repeatable launchers in their defense bases, will be able to make the difference and allow at least some heavy hitters through.
The action was too far away to see individual missiles however the detonations pattern implied that the deception worked to an extent, but not well enough to allow any missiles through. Hopefully however the enemy has wasted a good chunk of ammunition.
Koreans didn’t have any missiles left and while they could in theory launch more interceptors, they would need time to reload and it was unlikely the aliens would fall for the trick a second time. Ultimately they destroyed their bases.
There was nothing else of sinificance in orbit of Kangwon, as all shipyards were moved and all ships escaped through the jump point so the invading fleet begun moving although it was unknown if they were heading towards Marzanna or Pyongyang which were in the same general direction. Turned out they used the innermost Lagrange point to move directly towards the secondary component to confront Brazil.
There were sixty old bases above Amazonia, each capable of launching four hundred missiles for a total of twenty four thousand. Those were unlikely to accomplish anything but there was also no reason to try and preserve them so the Federation fired as soon as they could. In the end the Unity needed only one defensive volley to nearly annihilate the Brazilian missiles and the stragglers were picked off easily enough.
The aliens stopped twenty five million kilometers away once again, but this time there was no communication as the bases were orbital so there was no threat to civilians. The invaders fired three volleys, each of around sixty thousand missiles and while the Brazilian bases were full scale, all around weapon platforms, they could fire a total of only twelve thousand interceptors every five seconds. That was enough to completely stop the first incoming volley and even make a small dent in the second one but the rest, over a hundred thousand missiles, slammed into the sixty defensive bases which was enough to destroy all of them, although only barely.
Nine destroyers and two corvettes were also destroyed. Those ships were replacements for picket ships spread out through Brazilian space and were in overhaul when the invasion happened. What was more interesting was the fact that the shipyards were left intact. This indicated the aliens believed they will be able to hold the system and were thus doing their best to preserve the industrial power of Parana.
18/12/3519
The enemy jumped into the primary system but rather than moving towards Marzanna, they set course back towards their entry point. They have used nearly two hundred thousand anti-ship missiles and around a million interceptors so they were likely going to re-arm before continuing.
19/12/3519
The aliens have reached the jump point and half of them have left the system. Humans expected colliers to be present, but apparently the enemy didn’t have enough of them, forcing them to rely on planetary stockpiles. This will delay them, giving more time for the fleets to arrive.
05/01/3520
The aliens have completed re-arming and are now coming straight for Marzanna. The Polish fleet is still twelve days away.
06/01/3520
While the aliens have been demolishing defenses of other nations, Poland has been running calculations. They assumed the enemy had ten salvos of anti-ship missiles in their magazines, which totaled six hundred thousand birds or so. The Republic could put three hundred and twenty thousand interceptors into the magazines of their bases, which should intercept one hundred and sixty thousand enemy missiles – two and a half salvos out of ten. They also had enough gauss cannons to put nearly twenty thousand slugs against each of the incoming salvos, but those turrets were to greater or lesser extent old and it was believed only a quarter of those slugs would hit. Over ten enemy salvos this added to fifty thousand intercepted missiles which means that under optimal circumstances Baszta could fend off three to four kinhalan volleys.
The reason Poland was making those calculations was simple – they still had a lot of anti-ship missiles, but they could not get through the enemy point defense. However if they could force the Unity to enter railgun range, the flight time should be short enough to do at least some damage, but it was obvious active systems won’t be the answer.
During the Second Korean War the Niedzica bases proved surprisingly survivable but simply tanking the damage also wouldn’t work as it was estimated less than fifty thousand alien missiles would have been enough to destroy everything.
Nonetheless the Republic will not fire from long range. If they did the aliens would likely just close in after the attack and use their lasers, allowing them to conserve ammunition. It was unknown how much they had stored, but they already used enormous amounts and making them use more may leave them short against the human fleets. While it was a small hope, it was the only one there was.
It also meant however that a fight in deep space was out of the question. Even if the aliens have suddenly lost all their ammunition the enormous bulk of their fleet would have allowed them to win. Parana is lost and the only thing it can do now is to ensure the aliens cannot continue forward.
07/01/3520
The enemy fleet stopped twenty five million kilometers from Marzanna and fired five volleys – a little over three hundred thousand missiles. That was more than enough to demolish the Republican defenses.
09/01/3520
The alien fleet is back at the jump point to their space. Humans expected them to re-arm again, as they used a significant amount of ammunition, but instead four battlecruiser sized jump vessels arrived and joined the formation after which the entire force seemed to head straight for the Bialowieza system. Unfortunately stabilized jump points show on gravitational sensors so kinhalans probably detected it when they were dealing with Kongwon.
11/01/3520
The aliens closed on the jump point and begun jamming communications. Several hours later they jumped. There were no defenses but a stealth scout ship was present to observe everything. Twenty four battlecruisers moved together with the jump ships in squadron transits, allowing them to shake off the after effects rather quickly. Thirteen battlecruisers and all twenty four heavy cruisers performed a standard jump. Ten battlecruisers however stayed behind. It was obvious the enemy was not willing to give up their gains and were going to use part of a fleet as a blocking force in case of a defeat. This will make things easier for humans, although it still left thirty million tonnes of warships to deal with, but it also meant that even a victory in battle will not allow the defenders to regain their home system.
After several hours the aliens have detached their heavy cruisers and begun using them to try and find the jump point. As it happened Bialomost was an A class star which was quite massive and which usually resulted in jump points being quite far away. The aliens knew it and begun by checking the outer system, but in this case the jump point to Wrota was quite close to the central star. This may just buy the human fleets the time they need to secure the jump point.
15/01/3520
The Polish fleet finally arrived at the jump point, joining twenty one Brazilian cruisers and six light cruisers. In total humanity has half the alien tonnage, which is about the same ratio it was during the initial stages of the Fourth Invasion.
16/01/3520
The main alien fleet begun to move towards the jump point. It will arrive in thirty hours but it will likely need more time to gather the detached heavy cruisers.
17/01/3520
All transmissions from Bialomost have been cut, meaning the enemy has arrived at the jump point.
19/01/3520
The defending human force comprised thirty five cruisers, one hundred and four light cruisers, twenty eight frigates and fourteen corvettes totaling a little over seventeen million tonnes of warships. Early morning the aliens have arrived.
Two of the alien squadrons appeared close together and in near opposite direction to the other two. As such the enemy begun moving to try and concentrate into two distinct formations, with the bulk of their fleet, which was right on top of the jump point, moving immediately away towards one of them, as to not repeat the mistake of the Fourth Invasion. However the human ships were faster and tried to follow closely.
The human missiles were fired into the more distant enemies, while the railguns, lasers, gauss cannons and plasma carronades begun pouring into the main force. Despite the awesome amount of firepower it took humans fifteen seconds to destroy their first two targets.
The further alien groups begun responding thirty seconds after their entry, although at first it was just gauss cannons coming online, by which point only four battlecruisers and one heavy cruiser from the main group have been destroyed. As the aliens were not capable of firing full, unified salvos, the human point defense was doing surprisingly well, stopping thousands of missiles.
It took the invaders nearly a minute to destroy the first human ships, four Brazilian cruisers, by which point ten battlecruisers have been destroyed. Unfortunately while the enemy fire wasn’t coordinated and many ships still haven’t recovered from transit effects, thousands of missiles were getting through human point defenses as there were simply too many of them.
The large group that arrived through standard transit was getting close to one of the two grouping points making humans cease their pursuit, stopping one hundred and seventy thousand kilometers away as they didn’t want to get into point blank range of active battlecruisers. The other group was still trying to form quite a bit away, using only their missiles. The Polish Wlocznias have also been doing solid work, destroying several active warships among the nearer group.
The further group begun moving soon after, still comprising fourteen battlecruisers although slightly slowed due to damage. However they had to switch to anti-missiles launched in offensive mode as that group was out of offensive ordnance.
Four and a half minutes into the engagement two of the alien squadrons were completely destroyed and the main group was reduced to a dozen heavy cruisers, but the other, mostly intact battlecruiser group was closing in, forcing the defenders to start moving in order to keep the range open. By that point humans have lost less than two dozen cruisers and light cruisers as well as nearly a dozen frigates and corvettes. This was mostly thanks to the enemy being so missile heavy that the defenders actually had an advantage in short range combat plus the Wlocznias were doing a significant amount of damage. Unfortunately the ammunition was running out.
Half a minute later the coming group turned around and appeared to be heading towards the jump point. Humans realized that they did so much damage, they were actually the ones with tonnage advantage and had ships better suited for short range combat. They jumped shortly after and the defenders turned around to finish off the heavy cruisers. Five and a half minutes after the alien entry it was all over.
Humanity’s loses were relatively light, as they lost sixteen cruisers, seven light cruisers, five frigates and twelve corvettes. Several more ships were damaged, sometimes quite heavily but the three nations still had over thirteen million tonnes of warships, giving them near parity with the known remaining alien force of twenty four battlecruisers.
Unfortunately that is only half the story. There is no way humans could launch an counterattack as the Polish warships are out of ammunition for now and those represent the bulk of the human force. Worse the twenty four battlecruisers are only the known alien force. Two jump heavy cruisers stayed behind in Parana and while they may be supporting troop transports, it is entirely possible they were left to take care of some sort of reserve force that may be used either for a new offensive or to make absolutely sure kinahalns won’t lose their recent gains.
If humanity will have time to re-arm their warships and if they manage to be in the right place at the right time, they can hold quite easily as seen by the most recent battle. However if they end up being in the wrong place, the war may be lost.
In practical terms, the remaining ships will stay in place for a month. If the enemy does not attack by that time then it is very likely the aliens will wait at least several years before launching another invasion. With Marzanna and Baszta gone, the Polish missile production capabilities will be seriously degraded so the Republican light cruisers will be fitted with anti-missiles which are better than nothing. Korea will reposition their space stations, which are still back in their territory to the jump point leading to Bialowieza so that a permanent picket can be stationed there. After a month the forces will split again. Polish mobile force will guard Wrota, but the bases will continue moving towards Reciliencia which will be guarded by Brazilian mobile elements. Meanwhile the Korean warships will join Federal bases in Cerrado. While a mishmash, it is the result of what each nation has. DPKR has the smallest navy and no bases, so they cannot take full responsibility for one of the fronts. Cerrado has heavy static fortifications, but is the least important system of the three. Poland has the strongest fleet and missile bases in two systems, but they only begun deploying static defenses.
In addition the Republic will go all in on the long range missile strikes as a defensive measure. While those failed in Parana, that was because the invading force was intact and not weakened by a battle at their entry point. More importantly however Baszta was building bases only intermittently due to lack of resources and need for its industrial power to enlarge the mining sector.
Now Niedzica and Szpica will fully commit towards fortification. The former, located at Wrota, has nine bases already but no ammunition as it was all moved to Resiliencia, believed to be more likely target. However the planet can build a little over seventeen hundred Osas per year, adding to over eight and a half thousand submunitions. Within decade it will have half the striking power of Baszta.
Szpica in the Resiliencia system is in a more difficult situation. It is still industrializing but thanks to other colonies prefabricating base parts, it has four of them already with two more to come online in the next two years and ample ammunition for those. Those missiles however came from Niedzica. In the short term the small moon will be supported by Kleczanow, which after the fall of Parana is one of the only two remaining missile production sites. In the long term however Resiliencia, which Szpica orbits, will pick up the slack, but development of proper industries will take time.
In terms of coming warships, Brazil will launch six new destroyers in three years whereas Korea will launch eight cruisers and Poland will launch eight light cruisers within the next four and a half years. Further dawn the line the Federation has three cruisers and five bases under construction in Cerrado while the Republic has two bases under construction in Kleczanow. DPRK isn’t building any static defenses just yet, but four of their shipyards should finish expansion within the next three to four years allowing them to finally start producing those.
Overall humanity is in a very precarious situation. However it seems that the aliens are taking a century or so between their attacks and if they give the defenders as little as twenty years – one fifth of their usual time – the situation should stabilize.
31/01/3520
The three human nations have been counting their loses and making plans for the future as the loss of Parana will have significant consequences for all three of them. The one piece of good news is that ever since Escudo was lost everyone was mining their critical TN installations for a quick demolition, so while humanity have lost much the only thing the aliens really got was population. Here is what was in Parana and Bialomost during the invasion:
46 305 million people
6 naval yards with total capacity of 2.4 million tonnes (six Brazilian heavy cruisers to be delivered in 3522)
20 commercial yards with total capacity of 19.47 million tonnes
376 research facilities
7910 construction factories
6700 ordnance factories
9220 mines
2230 automated mines
That was not an exhaustive list as there were some terraforming installations waiting for deployment, maintenance facilities, genetic modification centers, space ports and so on. Nonetheless as the list shows the loses were significant with the only silver lining being that the mineral output of the system was much lower than it may seem from the number of mines as most of them were on Chapada or were waiting for deployment.
Of the three nations Korea have lost the least as they made a heavy push towards abandoning the system. The mineral output of the two stars was negligible, they had stockpiles of over a million tonnes of each TN element with the exception of gallicite and only forty R&D facilities were remaining. Even their loss of two thousand ordnance factories wasn’t much of a problem as they were all focused on supplying ammunition for the missile bases that no longer exist.
That doesn’t mean DPRK will face no challenges however. In many ways the nation is, economically, where Poland was nearly a century ago – they had peaked their fleet and were unable to expand it, but at the same time their industrial output was too low to allow rapid growth of the mining sector. Poland solved it by massive industrialization that froze their expansion for nearly half a century and Korea will have to go through something like that as well, but they’ve lost two fully industrialized worlds, Kongwon and Chogjin. The only silver lining is that they have lost their fleet recently which meant they needed little resources for maintenance. As a result they have stockpiles of over four hundred thousand tonnes of gallicite. Whether or not this will last them while they try to recover and expand their mining operations remains to be seen, but as they have only two fully industrialized planets and one that is still in the middle of its expansion, many are skeptical. Still what they already have was good enough for Korea to deploy a fleet of ten million tonnes, so they will be an important contributor to humanity’s defense.
Brazil is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Their capital of Amazonia was unable to expand and had population of only three and a half billion people, but two of their colonies in the home system were a different matter. Both Morro Velho and Paracatau couldn’t be made fully habitable, but as a result they ended up being covered in arcologies, just like Marzanna was, allowing them near endless expansion. Overall over twenty five and a half billion people lived there – seventy two percent of the entire Brazilian population. Only nine and a half billion lived outside the home system which means the Federation is now the smallest know nation, even smaller than the Confederation.
To make matters worse those three planets were industrialized and were the reason the nation was doing so well adopting to changing circumstances. In addition another planet, Chapada, was also very important. It was a venusian world, with everyone living in orbital habitats and operating six thousand mines. Most of the TN elements were in minimal accessibility but that still allowed the planet to extract at least six thousand tonnes of every element, providing incredibly important safety net for the economy, one that is now gone. More over duranium, neutronium and mercassium were in high accessibility and the planet was producing nearly fifty thousand tonnes per year of each. Those resources may become a problem in the near future.
Poland decided to help. Brazil have loaned two hundred thousand tonnes of boronide and a hundred thousand tonnes of corundium, but that loans were now canceled, becoming a gift instead. More over Poland pledged to provide resources, assuming it can spare them, for free in order to help with rebuilding.
The rebuilding will be difficult, due to lack of industry. The new capital, Santarem, is the only planet that can support expansion right now as others are busy. Carajas, Itabira and Suape are all venusian worlds housed in orbital habitats and are desperately expanding those to deal with manpower shortages, while Itaquaquecetuba is in an early expansion phase. To make matters worse there are only a couple of dwarf planets that could house only one billion people if terraformed. Brazil may instead decide to not do so and have people live in arcologies, like they did on Paracatau.
However that doesn’t mean the Federation is out of the fight. They still have their eighteen naval yards, reasonably strong navy and many critical resources, like gallicite or tritanium, were being extracted outside of Parana. While they won’t be able to expand, they should be able to keep using what they already have and thus contribute to the common defense. Even the loss of the commercial shipbuilding isn’t all that crippling as Brazil has huge supporting fleet that wasn’t fully utilized before the invasion.
The consequences for Poland are hard to determine at this point. The vast majority of industry and all mining operations were located outside the home system, but it still provided certain critical capabilities, research being the biggest one. Two hundred and forty six research facilities were located on the home planet and rebuilding those will take decades of heavy industrial effort. Even worse the research progress have been lost which means the Polish technological advantage may soon evaporate.
Moreover Marzanna and Baszta were both industrialized and while they had their own tasks – expanding the R&D sector and building up static defenses – they nonetheless were helping a lot with development of other worlds. That would be bed enough, but the general reshuffling of priorities following the Fifth Invasion, coupled with the need to rebuild, means that the remaining industrial capacity will be strained. It was already decided that Gdansk, the most heavily inhabited planet remaining, will focus completely on the R&D sector, making it unable to contribute towards expansion. Similarly Palisada will be supporting fortification of the Resiliencia system, which means two industrial sites are effectively taken offline in addition to what was actually lost. The need to rebuild shipbuilding and ammunition production capabilities means additional worlds will be busy for years as well.
The biggest medium term problem however will be the loss of commercial shipbuilding. The Polish logistical networks were actually somewhat strained. They had what they needed to move minerals around, but development of new planets was a problem, especially with the ever increasing distances.
Having said all that, Poland is actually in a good position. Their resource base is mostly secure, two new planets with good gallicite deposits have recently completed terraformation and are awaiting new mines and naval shipbuilding is growing. Kleczanow is several years away from expanding its yards to four hundred thousand tonnes of capacity and once they are retooled – an admittedly long process – the Republic will effectively quadruple the amount of naval tonnage it can work on at any given time. Whether or not this will be enough remains to be seen.
26/02/3520
JTIMR have completed their analysis of the most recent invasion. The most important question was why their analysis of the target was so wrong, as humanity believed Resiliencia will be invaded. There are many potential answers, such as some sort of internal pressure to try and finish the war quickly, aliens having knowledge of warship disposition and more, but most analysts believes the answer laid elsewhere and for that they had to move to the second part of the report first.
The alien logistics seemed lacking. Unlike during the Second Invasion they did not use colliers, instead having to retreat to their base and while there was one case of re-arming, they did not refill their magazines after they used three hundred thousand missiles against the Polish defenses. Not only that but after the enemy have run out of shipkillers during the Battle of Wrota they switched to anti-missiles, but not the newest models, instead using ordnance at least a generation old. Last but not least they obviously didn’t have enough jump ships.
The JTIMR speculates the enemy have focused on building the largest possible force at the expense of everything else. This worked in a sense that the largest human system has been lost but it had significant consequences, such as alien inability to keep pushing, their need to use part of their own force to secure captured territory and insufficient number of jump ships which made them chose a more heavily defended system that had a clear entry point over a system with next to none static defenses but heavily contested jump point. And that, according to the analysts, is the real reason the aliens have chosen to attack Parana rather than Resiliencia. It may also be humanity’s salvation.
The three nations have enough firepower to defeat the alien force in a defensive action, but only if they are concentrated. For that matter Poland could probably manage that by itself. However the aliens can chose any of three potential targets, and it’s impossible to adequately protect all of them right now. As more ships are launched, missile bases are built and new jump point defenses erected, that will change, but the next twenty years will be critical. However the aliens are very missile heavy and if they will have trouble supplying the ammunition, they may be unwilling to launch another attack with half-filled magazines. This may give humanity the time it needs.
In the long term, JTIMR is optimistic about their chances. While they danced around the issue, trying to not put blame on anyone, they asked their audience to imagine what would have happened if Korea still had their fleet and was working together with the other two powers. In such a situation the missiles bases that were in the Wrota system would have been in Resiliencia and over ten million tonnes of DPKR warships would have waited for the invaders at the Parana jump point. For that matter Kongwon would have additional hundred thousand missiles they could have used. There was no way kinhalans would have managed to get through that and while admittedly the loss of the home system is painful, the analysts believe humanity will be able to defend itself once they solve their current issues. Whether or not the three nations can go on the offensive is a different matter however.
As for tactical analysis there isn’t much to say. The human fleets have performed exceptionally well, driving away an alien force twice their size while suffering reasonably light loses, showing the current shipbuilding practices work well. The analysts point out however that while the current ships are excellent for jump point defense, they aren’t necessarily optimized towards deep space combat due to the aliens switching to the same small, dual purpose missile launchers humanity is using. The current interception chances for anti-missiles hover around fifty percent which means it is more expensive, in both tonnage and monetary terms, to defend than it is to attack. With the alien fleets being consistently larger, the JTIMR claims it is more effective to give up on missiles for deep space combat, instead relying on armor and gauss cannons. In fact some propose that the idea of warship designed for jump point defense should be abandoned and the three nations should go the Brazilian route of using missile armed bases for defense and non-missile warships for support and deep space combat.
07/03/3520
After surprisingly short negotiations, the three nations have decided how to divide the alien wrecks. Poland have given up any rights to them, deciding to only salvage their own ships. Brazil will get right to the twenty five wrecks of enemy battlecruisers while Korea will get the twenty four heavy cruisers.
While DPKR is under new management and fully integrated partner, many have not forgotten the Polish trickery that kicked off the Second Korean War nor have they forgotten that the Republic have made claims to all Korean wrecks to shore up its resource stockpiles. That is why Poland has been trying to fix their image through concessions, such as giving up on alien wrecks or indeed giving up on the remaining DPKR wrecks as not all have been processed so far. That is ultimately a small gesture, but hopefully it is also a step towards better relations between the two powers.
Nonetheless during the Battle of Wrota Korea contributed the least due to them having the smallest fleet, that is why Brazil have gotten so much more. Besides the Federation needs the resources more.
27/06/3520
When looking at their options, Brazil realized there was one planet they overlooked due to very low temperature. The world can be made habitable and is the size of Earth but will require enormous amount of work. The first infrastructure is on its way, but one planet won’t be enough so in desperation the Federation decided to accept that they will have to modify their people.
Korea has been using genetic engineering for a couple of centuries now, but them developing it was exactly the problem, as their government had no qualms about risking the lives of their citizens. Many test subjects were unwilling political prisoners, and hundreds of millions suffered from side effects of hastily deployed modifications.
However even someone like DPKR could made the process safe if they’ve spent two centuries on it so that was no longer an actual problem, but the reputation persisted, making citizens of the other nations resistant to the idea. Now however the Federation simply had no choice, so they have done something never done before – they agreed for a technology exchange between the two nations, giving military related developments in exchange for all they needed to modify their citizens.
They really had no choice. While research facilities were being moved away from Amazonia due to it having insufficient population, over a third of Brazilian R&D sector remained in Parana. Worse it wasn’t all that large to being with, due to the nation having constant resource problems that distracted the industry. In short they will start falling behind so using the advantages they had for trade was entirely logical.
Even so it will take a lot of time for them to develop proper infrastructure to modify their people on any large scale. Only one world has spare industrial capacity and it will be used for other projects, like industrializing other worlds or rebuilding commercial shipbuilding. Even once that is done, there is only one good candidate for colonization that will be opened through genetic engineering although there will be two more planets that are completely covered in water, but would otherwise be habitable.
