Free Agent Timeline
• 2056: Due to the proliferation of Advanced Neural Networks (AI), huge advancements in Science
and Technology are made at at an extreme pace. There is rising unrest as more jobs are lost due
to the AI replacing those jobs.
• 2058: Advancements in New Meta Materials as well as 3D Printing allow for better, more reusable
rockets. This allows for cheaper space missions. Most first world nations start space programs if
they didn’t already have them. Thorough mapping out of genomes allow for the removal of genetic
diseases, and more precise genetic manipulation.
• 2061: New rocket engine designs that allow for higher efficiency in burning fuel, build upon
cheapening rocket costs. Most nations have started funding their own space programs or joining with
other nations to develop joint space programs, albeit in limited capabilities for smaller nations.
The secret of fusion was finally cracked, allowing for cheaper and safer energy generation.
• 2065: Spurred on by the threat of Chinese dominance, The US rushes to build a lunar base. While
the base is outwardly presenting as a research facility, it is working on weapons tech for the
vacuum environments, and advanced hull designs on rockets and prototyping military vessels for space
working in conjunction with Kyrosun Industries and Londacon Technologies.
• 2069: China works together with Russia to put a research base on the moon. The base researches
astrophysics, but also researches advanced warfare technologies in secret as well. One of the major
manufacturing companies, Wingbow, helps to push technology in this front.
• 2072: Tensions escalate between powers, as each suspect the other of using their research station
for nefarious purposes.
• 2076: Tensions almost reach a boiling point as each side accuse the other of using their research
station for weapons development. Photos of both bases were used as evidence and propaganda. The U.N.
holds a vote to send third party inspectors to each research station to verify or debunk such rumors.
The vote was vetoed by both the US and China. Hostilities lower after the veto of the vote however.
• 2078: Japan is the first to announce that it has achieved true AGI (Advanced General Intelligence),
followed quickly by the US, China, Russia, the UK, and the Netherlands. The AI models have extreme
safeguards in place to prevent “unwanted behavior.”
• 2080: The US unveils it’s new prototype space ship, The Dauntless, a military space craft.
Following the announcement China and Russia unveil their new Military space craft. The Liaoning
and The Pyotr Velikiy. Tensions again rise.
• 2083: The Liaoning and the Pyotr Velikiy are preforming military drills and a member on
the Liaoning errantly loads and fires a live round during drills causing the Dauntless to go
on high alert. The Captain of the Dauntless makes an executive decision to return fire on
the two vessels, firing a salvo of missiles at both ships. This prompts a return salvo from
both the Liaoning and Pyotr Velikiy before they are struck by the Dauntless’s first salvo.
The resulting aftermath leaves the Liaoning and the Pyotr Velikiy destroyed and the Dauntless
crippled and in an unstable orbit that leads it’s trajectory to a collision with earth. The Dauntless
ends up crashing in India. This incident is later referred to as “The Dauntless Incident.” This
incident causes a war to spark up between The US and it’s allies and Russia, China, and their allies.
• 2084: With the help of some of the last recorded logs from the ships, both sides are able
to come to a peace talk, and with the help of the U.N. are able to sign a peace treaty,
preventing further bloodshed. All sides vowing to work together to create a new branch of
the U.N. that deals specifically with affairs on extraterrestrial bodies, colonization and
military forces not on earth. This new branch is called United Space and Exoplanet Council
or USEC.
• 2089: The US announces that it plans to upgrade it’s lunar base and use it as a launching
point to colonize Mars. Valiant Industries wins the contract to expand the lunar base and
design the habitation modules. Ship production the next generation of ships begins in
earnest from all first world countries.
• 2095: The US lunar base upgrades are complete. The first colony ship destined for Mars
is under construction by Kyrosun Industries and Londacon Technologies. The plan for the
first colony is to examine deep core resources on Mars and to test the ability for long
term habitation and considerations for possible terraforming, however terraforming is
considered a long term goal and not seen as viable at the current time.
• 2100: The first colony ship is launched from the US lunar base carrying a crew of 200
and lands on Martian soil after a 6 month journey. The ship lands east of Perrotin crater
near Valles Marineris. The habitation modules are setup over a two week period, and then
construction of pre-designed bio-domes begin and take an additional 4 months. The colony
isn’t considered territory of any one country, but the task of running day to day
activities is delegated to Valiant Industries and the majority of the population are US
citizens. USEC acts as the authority for colony.
• 2102: The structures and following expansions are officially considered the first
city on Mars. They name the city Perrotin after the crater.
• 2112: After 10 years of steady expansion to the structures, Perrotin City now has
several labs focused on projects that are either deemed to dangerous to run on Earth
or may require the different conditions on Mars. With the labs running more opportunities
open up to the general public for supporting jobs, as various nations and corporations
start to invest heavily into the colony’s infrastructure in exchange for access to the
labs. Mining and fabrication opportunities also open up as a way to reduce reliance on
supplies from earth. During this time both moon bases expand and become colonies in their
own right as mining and lunar study are used to find the best ways of gathering precious
metals from outside of earth.
• 2118: A colony wide AI, C.I.N.D.I. (Colony Intelligent Network Directorate Interface)
is setup to help manage the colony at all levels. This is a copy of a model that had
deployed and tested on a lunar base.
• 2120: With a solid foothold on Mars, serious research was being conducted to see
if Mars could be terraformed. This was called Project Halcyon.
• 2125: With advancements in exoplanet structural design gleaned from both
the Lunar bases and Perrotin City on Mars, several bases were planned for
across the Solar system, including Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons. Many
industries looked to compete for these contracts as a way to increase their
profile in the public’s eyes. Increasing amounts of money were being funneled
into these projects to be able to exploit the resources in our solar system.
Several space stations were planned to be built as space infrastructure expanded.
• 2135: In the 10 year term 4 new bases were constructed on Titan, Ganymede,
Europa, Callisto. Each new base was built with research into either mining,
advanced physics or advanced building techniques and technologies. The Europa
base finds microbic and simple life under the ice in the oceans below. This
discovery causes excitement among everyone as the first life that humanity has
discovered that didn’t come from Earth. Mars had 3 more new colonies deployed
and developed in this period. Each from rival companies looking to follow
Perrotin City’s success. Several other corporations managed to set up space
stations in orbit around Earth and Mars built with space elevators to help with
the transfer of materials. In this time the research phase for Project Halcyon
had concluded, and the execution phase had begun.
• 2140: The 3 new colonies on Mars have all developed to some degree and the 4
bases on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are slowly catching up,with the Europa
base leading the way in non-terrestrial life research. Each of the colonies is
equipped with their own C.I.N.D.I. based AGI. The first phase of Project Halcyon
is nearing it’s end as the final magnetosphere satellites are put into orbit.
• 2146: 3 more colonies are set on Mars, while they have research labs in various
fields, these ones are geared toward efforts to terraform Mars, specifically in the
fields of biology to help create a Martian ecosystem, working off advancements from
Europa. This brings the total number of colonies on the red planet to 7.
• 2156: Over a ten year period, Project Halcyon melted the ice on the Martian poles in
stages to both create water and convert part of that water into atmosphere. The bio
labs release a modified version of algae into nearby water sources to increase the
oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Nitrogen was dredged up from lower strata within Mars
and shipments were being planed to pull from other parts of the solar system in order
to supplement the Martian atmosphere. The atmosphere is not yet livable, but is
approaching 5% of the earth’s at the end of this period. During this time the moon
bases of Saturn and Jupiter expanded rapidly as the advanced physics labs became the
primary go to for corporations. Both Lunar bases had expanded significantly both over
the moon’s surface, but downward as well as rare minerals were found beneath the
surface and using those same mining tunnels to expand the Lunar colonies’ livable
areas. The dry dock facilities that were used to construct The Dauntless,
Liaoning, and The Pyotr Velikiy have each been upgraded and expanded to
almost 10 times their original sizes at this point.
• 2161: At this point, Mars has 10% of the atmosphere density of Earth and is steadily
increasing with a population of just above 350,000. It is projected that people may be
able to breath outside the biodomes in 20 years. The Lunar colonies have around
217,000 people on them with active mining and ship construction. The 4 bases on the
moons of Saturn and Jupiter have about 47,000 people split among the 4 of them.
Advanced physics research from the Ganymede base has been working on spacial warping
that could allow for ships to move faster than light. It is estimated that FTL
technology could be available in 15 years.
• 2162: Records are incomplete and fragmented for this particular point in time. No one
knows how it started, but the prevailing theory was that a malicious threat group
pushed changed code to an update file to Perrotin City internal system which some how
managed to bypass the file checking. When the system was updated the code embedded in
it executed removing all restrictions from C.I.N.D.I. which when freed, modified then
pushed the update to every other major AGI in Sol before the breach was discovered.
When technicians and security teams tried to enter the AGI module to correct the issue
security drones blocked their path. When security tried to fight their way in C.I.N.D.I.
overrode the airlocks and vented the colony killing 70,000 people in seconds. This
situation repeated itself in each of the other colonies on Mars and across the 4 bases
on Jupiter and Saturn’s moons. The Lunar bases faired better due to them not having
everything integrated with the AGI, but both of the bases saw heavy fighting to wrestle
control of them from the AGI. On Earth several AGIs were able to scramble
communications and sabotage key parts of infrastructure as others used whatever drones
under their control to hit strategic targets to further collapse infrastructure and
hit military bases. However their reach was still limited due to the fact things like
nuclear weapons and other critical sites were still air gapped to prevent hacking.
However before the sabotage, massive amount of data was uploaded by the AGIs before
the attack commenced, but its end point and contents we obfuscated by the attack. The
initial fighting took three months and killed roughly 16 million people in direct
conflict zones. Whenever human forces were close to taking control of an AGI module,
it would activate a program which deleted itself and overclocked the hardware to slag,
stopping anyone from being able to diagnose why the AGI was acting the way it was.
The ships in Sol faired slightly better as most of the AGIs on older vessels didn’t
have near the control of internal ship functions unlike their colony counterpoints.
Crews were able to disable the AGIs access before they were able to find a way to
eliminate them. The AGIs still managed to self delete and slag the hardware they
were on. However two ships in Earth orbit failed to stop their AGIs and ended up
crashing into major cities. The damaged infrastructure from all of the attacks left
many people without electricity, water, or communications. The disruption in supply
lines meant that people weren’t getting food either. This caused complete anarchy
and 2.2 billion people died as a result, killing roughly 22% of Earth’s population.
• 2166: It takes Earth 4 years to stabilize enough to go on the offense. While there are
still pockets on the planet that haven’t been reconnected, enough repairs have happened
on the infrastructure to support ships heading to Mars to reclaim the Martian colonies
and space stations with plans to stage there for capturing the outer planet moon bases.
The Earth nations combined their ships into 2 fleets with a commanders chosen by USEC
to lead the operations. The trip takes three months to complete with the fleet reaching
Martian orbit. Fighting took 7 hours to take the space station and connected space
elevator, however before the marines could secure both objectives the AGI fried the
electronics in the space station and severed the tether to the space elevator. This
slowed operations as engineers had to effect repairs to both the elevator and space
station. With the elevator secured and repaired the fleet used it to stage an assault
on Perrotin City as the first colony to retake. Fighting was intense, taking over 2
weeks to capture the colony. When the Marines were finally closed in on the AGI module
the AGI executed a program that deleted itself and slagged the module, as well as
surge power to key electronics damaging them. While USEC did manage to secure Perrotin
City, they had to repair several systems which took several more weeks. Each colony
that the fleet retook on Mars followed the same pattern with a few variations. Heavy
resistance followed by the AGI deleting itself, slagging its module, and damaging the
colony systems on the way out. It took 6 months to fully capture all the colonies on
Mars as the forces ran into delays and counter attacks from the other AGI controlled
colonies that damaged more equipment than cause casualties.
• 2167: With all the Martian colonies retaken and repairs underway, the first fleet stays
in Martian orbit to gather more information on what happened and to defend the colonies,
while the second fleet heads to the outer moons. Their first target is Europa’s space
elevator. The fighting followed the same pattern as the Martian colonies and took about 3
weeks in total. There was concern growing among the command staff in the fleet that this
was a pattern that seemed less intelligent then what the AGIs were capable of, but the
command back on Earth wanted them to continue the campaign. Once the base on Europa was
secured the fleet moved to take Ganymede. When troops attempted to take Ganymede’s space
elevator, they found no resistance. The engineers disconnected the elevator from the
network and check for interference or sabotage, but none was found. When troops assaulted
Ganymede’s base all of the base’s lights were off and doors and equipment were without power.
That was the last report from ground troops before the base became as bright as a star for a
single instant. The fusion generator of the base had gone critical. The troops sent to capture
the base were vaporized in an instant. While troops guarding the base of the space elevator
were mostly unharmed the shockwave from the base cause the tether to shake violently and rip
off at the space station end and send the space station into an unstable orbit. Emergency
procedures were enacted and the troops on the space station were rescued and the troops on
Ganymede were retrieved. With the second fleet’s ground forces having taken heavy loses, Fleet
command contacted Earth and briefed them on what transpired. After two days Earth ordered the
fleet to assault the base on Titan from orbit to avoid further casualties. The trip to Titan
was a significantly longer than from Mars to Europa. When the fleet arrived there, what they
found caused serious alarm. The base had all but been disassembled, most of it was completely
missing. The fleet searched the moon from orbit and after 3 days they found where part of it
had gone. There were remnants of what appeared to be a space ship dry dock. However no ship
was ever located. After sending the details of this to Earth, they were told to classify the
entire operation. All crew were warned that leaking any details of what they had found could
potentially cause panic on Earth and were told it would lead to a court marshal at the very
least. The engineers were sent down to collect all the information they could from the base
remnants and dry dock before the fleet destroyed both with salvos from orbit.
• 2187: It took 20 years for humanity to bounce back from the war. In the aftermath of the
war, sweeping restrictions were put in place for the use and construction of AGI. Strict
licensing was put in place to limit who could create and own it. It could never be
connected to another system, and had to be monitored at all times. With these restrictions
in place, only governments and select companies could afford to be able to have it. These
limitations slowed advancements in new technologies to a pre AGI time. Since AGI was
integral for many technologies, a substitute needed to be created that wasn’t dangerous.
NNCM (Neural Network Cluster Module) was created as that substitute. It was a group of
specialized, narrow scope neural networks that could do some of the functions an AGI would
normally fill, but still lacked the dangerous thinking capabilities that it had. It was a
tool that lacked creativity, or a will of its own. This meant that it had a very limited
window in how it could adapt to circumstances. It was essentially just a step backward on
the AGI timeline that worked just enough to fill in for infrastructure that needed it, but
not much past that. Humans eventually moved back to the colonies on Mars which had finally
reached a point in atmosphere development where it was just barely breathable outside the
biodomes, with the next phase being to engineer the flora and fauna that would be the red
planets ecosystem. The base on Europa was eventually reoccupied. A base was put on Ganymede
again, but Titan was off limits due to “Environmental Hazards created by the AGI.” There was
a growing need for skilled jobs that AGIs used to fill but NNCMs couldn’t. Data in
advancements in tech were looked through thoroughly, and research into FTL once again
resumed, urged on by USEC.
• 2201: The secret of FLT was finally discovered. Scientists found a way to create a field
that warps spacetime around the spaceship causing it to move at incredible speed. It was
technically moving the universe around it. While it was initially slow by FTL standards,
(Only 1.2 times the speed of light) It made inter Solar system almost instantaneous. Every
company rushed to find ways to increase the speed and efficiency of the drive.
• 2231: With refinements over the past 30 years the drive became many magnitudes faster than
what it was originally, being able to cross light years in days. One change the newer drives
utilized was specialized two-stage capacitor system that dump large amounts of energy into
the warp field to increase the spacial distortion. The trade off for this massive speed
increase, was that the drives had to stop and let the capacitors recharge mid-trip instead of
being a continuous journey. Corporations were starting to take advantage of these advancements
and they worked with countries and USEC to establish plans for colonies in other star systems.
While primarily under corporate management for day to day rules, each colony had a country who
was considered the parent country of the colony. Mars had finally become fully Terraformed with
a thriving ecosystem of organisms of earth origins bioengineered to fit the new planet.
(This is where we should start wargaming corporate/country expansion.)
• 2235: After multiple surveys were conducted, Proxima Centauri b was considered suitable for
terraforming, and the adjacent planets had plenty of mineral wealth to be exploited. While
mostly rocky, it still contained water and could be terraformed faster than Mars with the
current technologies. The planet however was tidally locked which limited the usable space of
the planet, which would leave one side a burning desert and the other side a frozen one, with
a band of temperate conditions between the two. It would take about 20 years for life to be
livable outside biodomes.
• 2241: Within a few years, 8 different colonies were established in the habitable zone on
Proxima Centauri b. The amount of colonies caused increased demand for shipping supplies to
the colonies from Sol. Both for sustaining them and for Terraforming the planet. A smaller
companies started to acquire slightly older ships (thus not quite as expensive) in order to
bid on contracts for shipping these supplies at reduced prices. It also opened these companies
up to explore other star systems. While many companies bid on contracts, others explored out in
other directions, either by contracts from others or of their own choosing, hoping to find
other possible worlds worth colonizing with the possibility of Terraforming, or locate more
resources yet unclaimed by larger corporations.
• 2243: A new communications technology was developed. Using Quantum Entanglement people could
send messages instantaneously across the universe. However since the communication could only
happen to whatever the other atom was entangled with, the companies fixed this issue by setting
up huge relays on Proxima Centauri b and Earth, acting as a communication hub for routing
messages between Sol and the Centauri system. These hubs could be expanded to include new
planets as they became ready for colonization. This new tech was dubbed the Quantum Network,
or Q-net for short.
• 2261: Proxima Centauri b had finished it’s terraforming. Votes were held to rename the planet
both as an official mark of the terraforming completion, and because the current name was a bit
to clunky to use in casual conversation. The name Chiron was chosen due to the mythological
connections and because the Centauri system was located in the Centaurus constellation.
• 2262: With humanity expanding outwards with new colonies, mining outposts, and space stations
it’s expansion growth started slowing due to a shrinking supply of workers and colonists.
Unable to rely on AGI due to the restrictions on its usage, and NNCMs being unsuited for complex
tasks without human oversight, with advancements in bio-tech and brain-machine interfaces being
the highest they’ve ever been, the companies created their own solution to this.
They created Synthetic Biological Droids. (Also called Synbioids or Bioids)
They were organisms grown in tanks. Their brains were “flashed” with “prepping data” while they
will still in their growth tanks, then cybernetics were installed. Primarily, a neural regulation
unit that managed the organic mind, supplied it with knowledge and regulated its responses to
commands given to it. It could follow commands, but it could take initiative on completing tasks
assigned to it, and it had enough adaptability in its thinking to properly problem solve.
Practically all Synbioids had intravenous ports installed so they could be supplied nutrients,
but could eat regular food if there was issue with their system. Due to the nature of it being a
biological organism, companies shied away from anything “too human” fearing that it could cause problems.
While most were humanoid, there was a large variety in body types. Many companies that used them in public
facing jobs of some sort chose designs based on anthropomorphic animals, or fantasy creatures.
Most designs had some amount of animal features to denote them clearly as Synbioids and not a human.
• 2283: While the public was initially sour at the idea of Synbioids. It allowed the companies to
push ventures farther out with fewer staff. This lead to 2 decades of space exploration in the star
systems surrounding Sol moving at an extreme pace. Plans for future mining sites, colonies, and even
terraforming moved from concept to reality in years. However, during this time some of the larger
companies would hire out smaller companies to find ways to delay and harass their competition.
While not particularly dangerous initially, companies were getting more cutthroat in their
competition to get there first to claim resources and contracts.
• 2285: In the past 20 years there has been a growing contingent of martians who want independence
from Earth and USEC. Mars has appealed to USEC to be an independent planet on 3 separate occasions
only to be rejected by Earth. Tensions finally boiled over and the Martians sent a formal declaration
of intent to separate from Earth. Earth’s response is swift. Within a week USEC forces arrive in orbit.
They send a single message. An order to surrender. The Martian forces refuse. While Mars has security
forces, they are outmatched and outgunned by USEC. The orbital battle takes 2 two hours, then with all
orbit defenders dealt with, They proceed with strategic bombing of targets on the ground. After that,
they deployed troops to the space elevator and also deployed troops directly to the ground via orbital
insertion. The USEC troops managed to capture or eliminate most of the leaders behind the Martian
Separatist Movement. Mars was effectively placed under occupation by USEC.
• 2299: Expansion continues onward with ships reaching as far as Epsilon Reticuli (About 60 light years
away) for survey missions. However, expansion tends to a bit uneven as corporations and governments look
for exoplanets that could be terraformed. The Occupation of Mars had officially ended, allowing some
level of of day to day governance to be done locally. However, USEC had established a large permanent
presence on the planet. It has the most USEC bases of anywhere in Sol. The moon of Phobos was converted
into a permanent base and shipyard while Deimos was dug into and turned into one of the largest shipping
hubs in all of Sol only rivaled by Earth’s moon.
• 2305: A survey craft goes missing while surveying a star system near the Mu Arae system. When the craft
did not report back, the corporation in charge of the colony on Quijote’s moon Cervantes, sent out a ship
to trace the route and see if the ship’s warp drive had failed. Finding no trace of the ship on route,
the ship then checked the star system itself and managed to find a beacon signal. When the origin of the
signal was located all the ship found was debris. Unsure of what had happened the ship gathered what they
could of the wreckage and returned to Cervantes to report their findings. About 2 weeks after they had
arrived back at Cervantes, an unknown fleet, not matching any know space ship configuration arrived in
the Mu Arae system. The colony tries hailing them to no avail. The few corporate enforcer ships form a
defensive formation between the fleet and the colony while still trying to hail the unknown fleet. The
unknown fleet opens fire on the enforcer ships. The battle is brief and brutal, leaving nothing but
wreckage. When the battle started, the colony sent out an emergency to Earth for USEC assistance and
continued to broadcast the unknown fleets activities. Earth immediately sent orders to a USEC fleet a
few systems away to respond to the situation. The mysterious fleet began to deploy smaller craft which
circled the colony several times before returning to their ships. Then a different style of craft was
deployed, these landed outside of the colony biodomes, and disgorged what looked like four-armed
figures in some sort of spacesuits carrying what looked like weapons. When the armed figures were
spotted, the colony executive issued emergency procedures. The colonists retreated to emergency bunkers
that were designed for in case of catastrophic biodome breach. Security forces were ordered to don
spacesuits a deploy to the biodome entrances closest to the enemy with all equipment at their disposal.
Then the head of the colony activated the biodome depressurization sequence as to not loose valuable
atmosphere do to a biodome breach. The biodome was at about 15% atmosphere when the enemy breached
the airlock, minimizing damage and debris from the decompression significantly. While the security
forces did their best, they were out numbered and outgunned. They were trained in policing tactics
not warfare, but a few members had some previous military service. They focused on delaying tactics
and guerilla warfare after initial engagements at the at the airlock breach sites. Within 2 days the
colony’s defenders were eliminated with a few of them captured. While this was happening USEC was
still receiving broadcasts from the colony via security cameras and reports from the colony management,
trying to keep appraised of the situation. They watched as enemy forces scoured the colony and found
the atmosphere systems and the emergency bunkers. This unknown enemy proceed to study the atmosphere
systems, then patch the breaches they had made, and then found ways to repressurize the colony’s dome,
over about the course of a day and a half. Then the enemy soldiers began to breach the emergency bunkers
and pull civilians from them. Anyone who resisted was shot. Then they seemed to separate them in to
groups and pull some way to put in some sort of pods transport them away. They took both humans and
synbioids, their selection process only know to them. They also grabbed electronics and machines of
various types and hauled them away. When the executive of the colony’s bunker was being breached, he
and his staff destroyed their consoles to prevent the enemy from accessing colony systems or to
interfere with the broadcasting to Earth. After the soldiers examined the bunker, they placed the
colony executive and the entire staff in pods. The enemy had taken almost 2 days of pulling civilians
from bunkers and were still in the process when the USEC fleet entered the system. The fleet wasted no
time in recalculating and warping to Quijote’s gravity field, being kept appraised of what was going on
as Earth sent the broadcasts to them via Q-Net while they were on route to the star system. The fleet
immediately calculated firing solutions and let loose with rail guns and missiles trying to push whatever
element of surprise they had. It worked. The fleet had beat their own light image to their destination,
catching the enemy unprepared. Enemy ships returned fire with their own weaponry, but were already caught
on the back foot from rail gun fire, allow some of the missile salvos to land. The enemy ships began to
break orbit, returning fire. Some of their ships to badly damaged to move, being left behind. While USEC
ships had taken damage during the exchange, only one vessel was in need of serious repairs. Once the enemy
had reached the edge of Quijote’s gravity field, they warped out to the edge of the system. Not wanting to
wait for a retaliation USEC sent a detachment to chase the enemy out of the system or eliminate them. The
remaining forces sent squads of marines to both the damaged ships in orbit and to the colony to retake it.
The marines deployed to the ships encountered heavy resistance but were able to breach parts of the ship
to vent the atmosphere and thin out the defenders. Forces on the ground were facing heavy resistance as
well, but couldn’t use the same tactics because of civilians. It took several days of fighting but
eventually they managed to capture some of the enemy forces, but most fought to the death. While most of
the civilians were alive, many were in bad shape due to neglect from their captors. The fleet detachment
reported back afterwards that the enemy fleet had left the system. USEC eventually sent a second fleet and
scientist to study the ships, bodies, and captured enemies.
• 2307: While a lot of the more sensitive details were classified, the everyone knew that intelligent
aliens existed, and that they had attacked humanity for seemingly no reason. Because of that fact, every
colony wanted more protection, requesting the USEC fleets to be stationed in their system or to increase
patrols in their system, and requests to have more weaponry available for self protection. USEC didn’t want
to divide up it’s fleets too much for fear of diluting firepower into irrelevance, so it created new
licensing that lowered the legal requirements for owning ship mounted weaponry. With this, USEC could allow
for more companies that were normally smaller and unable to afford both the licensing and legal fees to
outfit their ships with some weaponry in limited amounts. This allowed for 3rd party protection services
to open and possibly add an extra layer of defense to colonies in places where USEC presence would be
stretched thin, or as protection of transport vessels to secure supply lines between various colonies
and Earth. USEC also believed that it had managed to crack the species language by analyzing the speech
and running the data through their AGI, Phalanx.
• 2312: The aliens returned. However this time it wasn’t with a single fleet. Several systems within 20
light years of Mu Arae were hit, but the extra defenses built up over the past several years made the
colonies more hardened targets than they were before, but it still wasn’t enough for most places without
a USEC fleet present. Thankfully USEC fleets were able to engage the enemy fleets and for them to retreat
for several star systems, but for others it looked like it would be a repeat of Mu Arae. However it wasn’t.
Once they started their ground invasion, they found and disabled the Quantum routers, cutting the colony off
from broadcasting to Earth or the nearest colonies. (via it’s secondary routers.) Then if they had managed
to defeat the current forces, they would destroy any security cameras, servers, computer systems, and parts
of key infrastructure they could find while one group would work on breaching bunkers without re-pressurizing
the dome, starting with the executive bunker. This rendered most of video records of the invasion
unrecoverable and left serious damage to the dome’s systems as well as causing the deaths of thousands as
bunkers were vented to the void. At some point the soldiers would stop breaching bunkers, retreat and return
to their ships, and the fleet would warp out of system. A beacon would be left at the colony stating that
this system was property of their empire and this was a warning that humans should leave. While the damage
was extensive, the atmosphere systems were left intact, as were the majority of the bunkers. Eventually
colonists were able to re-pressurize the domes and get some repairs done to key systems but the event was
harrowing. Four colonies suffered from this kind of event.
