A Monument to Our Sins
November 2167 - Tazri Control Station
Every system in Confederate space had at least one Traffic Control Station. While serving as “lighthouses” for transiting ships, their main purpose was to maintain a presence in every system that Humanity claimed.
(Art by
Alexander RG House)
Alois Sondheim rolled out of bed as the alarm chimed. He’d woken up two minutes before and was wide awake. One of the strange side effects of the job’s highly regimented nature, his body was working like it had been replaced with clockwork.
The shower was just as regimented. A thirty second rinse, followed by soaping up without water and ended with a ninety second shower.
Some of the larger stations Alois had been stationed on had allowed ten-minute showers. But those had been much larger than Tazri Control Station. During training, some of the cadets had complained about those showers being too short. He chuckled to himself, wondering how they were doing now. Tazri was at least an inhabited system. There were far more remote postings.
After getting dressed he made his way to the mess hall. One of the undeniable advantages of being on the B shift was the high probability of freshly baked bread. Today was not just one of those days, but Anderson had brought a couple of tomatoes from hydroponics as well.
The lack of fresh food had been one of those things that Alois hadn’t thought about when he signed up, but after two years on Tazri station, he was never going to take that for granted again.
Sitting down next to Anderson, he grabbed a slice of both bread and tomato.
“How are we doing today?”
“There is a 0.02% loss of water pressure in the main recycler,” Anderson said with the grim stoicism he applied to anything that wasn’t perfectly optimised. “There must be a leak. The Commander wants us to find it ASAP.”
On a larger station, a water loss like that typically meant shenanigans. Someone running a still tucked away in a bulkhead or an illegal shower. But that was unlikely on Tanzri. While Nzau’s proximity meant that help was just a few days away, Commander Lehmann ran an incredibly tight ship. His last posting had been on the Pithria observation station, a posting where help was months away and where the slightest issue could kill them all. And he had brought those habits along with him to Tazri.
Alois let his attention wander back to the fresh bread with tomatoes as Anderson listed off his top five candidates for the leak’s cause. It wasn’t his problem, and help would be there before they all died of dehydration.
Finishing breakfast, he walked over to one of the lifts, riding it to the central command structure. As he did, he gradually left the spin gravity of the cylinder. Arriving, he floated gently to the opposite wall before launching himself to the traffic control centre. Inside he found Heidegger and Gomez still in their seats.
“Morning,” he said. “There are tomatoes in the mess.”
“Nice,” Heidegger said as he undid his straps and floated out of his seat.
“Anything worth mentioning?”
“Still no sign of the Ember Celica. She might be running late, but I wouldn’t be worried for another few days. Other than that, Gomez saw something weird on the scanner.”
Alois slipped into the seat and strapped in. Turning to Gomez, he gave an inquisitive glance.
“There were some strange LIDAR blips near the hyperlane point to the Lane system. I was hoping Cáo could have a look at it.” Gomez glanced at the clock. “Speaking of which…”
Alois’ hand hovered over the comms unit. “Want me?”
Gomez glanced at the clock again, slowly ticking into the B shift. “Let’s give her 60 seconds.”
Cáo hurtled into the traffic control centre with 17 seconds to go.
“Sorry I’m late!”
Her jacket wasn’t buttoned, her hair was a tangled mess and Alois was pretty sure it was dried drool staining her cheek.
“Sorry. Sorry. I just–”
“Overslept,” they all said in unison.
If the people working on frontier stations were organised, punctual and orderly people, at times bordering on being clockwork, Cáo Yazhu was the exception that underlined the rule. Undisciplined, unpunctual and disorganised, but a genius at signal analysis. That was probably the only reason Commander Lehmann hadn’t kicked her off the station yet.
As Gomez slid out of his seat, he briefed Cáo on the LIDAR blips from earlier. Alois, meanwhile, ran down the system traffic. There wasn’t too much going on in the Tazri system. Fourty or so small craft buzzing about the system, and another dozen or so freighters moving to and from the colony. Considering the high pay and rigorous selection process, there wasn’t a lot of work for Alois to actually do.
They soon settled into their usual work rhythm, with Cáo passing updated vectors on pretty much everything she could see in the system, man-made or otherwise, and Alois calculating dozens of potential solutions to whatever worst-case scenarios they could come up with. Most of them would never be used, but should the need arise, they had the solution before the crew of the ship in question realised they had a problem.
They were almost four hours into their shift when Cáo let out a simple “Huh…”
He didn’t respond. He knew her well enough to not bother. If she had found something interesting, she probably wouldn’t hear him.
Another few minutes passed before she spoke again. “Are we expecting anything from the Lane system?”
It was an odd request. The Lane system was outside Human space, and Alois had never seen a ship enter or leave it. But he dutifully pulled up his traffic chart and scanned it.
“No, nothing planned. What’s going on?”
“I’m getting several hyperlane pulses. Like, lots. Something just entered the system. Retasking LIDAR #2.”
As she did, Alois pointed the telescope the same way. It would be more than an hour before the light reached them, and the LIDAR would take double that. Maybe the telescope would give them some idea of what was going on before then.
The minutes ticked by, with Cáo tapping away at her console. Alois checked the work schedule. Commander Lehmann was sleeping. There was no need to wake him up without anything concrete.
When the images from the telescope finally resolved, they were a blurry, distorted mess. There was clearly something there, but exactly what was hard to say. So he spent a good while trying to clean up the image. He didn’t get much, but whatever it was, it was artificial in nature and accelerating at a decent pace. His hand reached for the intercom. The time for waking the Commander had come. He pressed the buzzer for his quarters.
“Holy shit!” Cáo said, quickly followed by “Oh, God…”
“What?! What is it?”
“I’m… I’m reading 60-plus warships. Large ones. Larger than I’ve ever seen. And their acceleration… That speed would rip apart one of our ships.”
“What do you mean? Warships? Where would they come from? The only thing that way is…” The realisation hit him like a sack of bricks.
“The Rixi,” Cáo said what they were both thinking.
Alois glanced back at the images from the telescope. He realised that the distortion was from the shielding, except it was much stronger than anything he’d ever seen on a Human ship. Beyond that, their overall shape was strange, unlike anything he’d ever seen. The Rixi were the only ones that made sense.
He checked the intercom. There was no response from the Commander. He was a heavy sleeper. Hesitating just a second, he flipped the switch to emergency broadcast.
“Commander, report to Traffic Control. I repeat, Commander, report to Traffic Control. A large alien fleet has entered the system. Believed to be Rixi in nature. All hands, secure station.” He heard himself echo throughout the hallways, then added “This is not a drill.”
He’d been a kid when the Second Lavis broke out. He remembered the Siege of Eissam Station, and the 237 aboard who gave their lives in a final stand. People called them heroes. Alois had seen some of the messages the station’s crew had sent back home before their deaths. Few looked like heroes.
Right now, Alois was feeling a certain kinship.
Commander Lehmann came sailing into the room in his underwear, his trousers held in his hand.
“What are we dealing with?” he asked as he began putting them on.
“Sir, we detected several hyperlane pulses from the Lane system,” Cáo said. “LIDAR and optical observations show that they are ships of unknown origin. Their acceleration suggests they will reach us within four days.”
“Any idea of when we will be within weapons range? No, scratch that. Shots may already be heading our way. Sondheim!”
“Yes, Sir!” Alois said.
“Crisis Protocol White. Send as much data as possible to the comm buoy. Keep the jump delay short, less than fifteen minutes. We need to get as much info as possible back home.”
“Understood, Sir!”
“And get me a priority line to the Governor. We need to get as many people off Nzau.”
“Sir,” Cáo said. “With their acceleration, there is no way anyone will be able to outrun them.”
“I know,” Lehmann said. “But I’ll be damned if I won’t at least try.”
Alois set up the channel for the Commander, then turned back to his console and began compiling the data for a message home. For a brief moment, he considered including a personal message to his parents, but rejected it. People would make their own stories no matter what he said.
The package sent, he looked up to find Cáo and the Commander pouring over the LIDAR returns while talking to the colony. He scanned his displays to see if there was anything more he could do. There wasn’t. But there was one line on his display that was very ordinary, but also very strange.
“Sir, I’ve got an incoming message from the Rixi fleet.”
Commander Lehmann and Cáo both got very quiet and stared at Alois, then at his screen. Floating over, he fixated on the line showing the incoming message.
“Play it.”
“Good day,” a voice said in perfect Standarddeutsch. For a brief moment, Alois wondered if there was some sort of mistake and he’d played the wrong message. But the voice continued. “This is Fleet Admiral Brown Plume, commander of the Rixi Chronicler’s Second Expeditionary Force. My cultural intelligence service has informed me that it is standard practice in Human systems to contact the system’s traffic control station upon entering a system. Is this correct?”
Lehmann waited for a moment, then pushed talk on his headset.
“Fleet Admiral Brown Plume, this is Walther Lehmann, Commander of Tazri Control Station. Your information is correct. We aid ships in transitioning the system and work to avoid any accidents.” He swallowed. “May I… uh… inquire as to the reason you are moving through Confederate space?”
The message was sent, though light lag meant it would take almost two hours before any response reached them. Nobody said anything as the minutes ticked by.
“We are on an expedition to open a second front against the Sildor Blessed Union. It is a fool’s errand. The Sildor will fall before we even come close to their borders. But such are my orders, and I am duty-bound to follow them.”
“The Rixi are at war with the Sildor?” Cáo asked.
“The Rixi can be at war with half the galaxy as long as it’s not us,” Alois replied.
Commander Lehmann took a deep breath. “I understand. We will give you priority transition. And also send a message that you are coming. In order to avoid any… misunderstandings”
After the reply was sent, time once again ticked by in silence. The Rixi fleet had in a few hours moved a distance that would take a couple of days for the Confederate Fleet.
“That would be ideal,” the reply came. “Thank you, Commander Lehmann. Fleet Admiral Brown Plume out.”
Lehmann let out a deep breath, then turned to grab Alois.
“Plot a priority course for the Rixi fleet. And send a message that the Rixi are coming. Tell them not to do anything stupid. For God’s sake, tell them to hold fire.”
“Yes, Sir,” was all Alois could say.
* * *
While the outbreak of war in Humanity’s backyard was politically concerning, the immediate effects were limited. The vast distances involved, even with hyperlane travel, meant that months would go by without ships engaging each other. Most engagements involved a fleet firing a few warning shots at a system’s traffic control station before boarding it. Once in control, freighters carrying ore from the various mining stations would be redirected according to the invader's whim. Thus, an undefended system would see little actual change beyond a disruption to resupply[1].
Unlike Humanity’s wars with the Lilarobus, the War of the Dual alliances was fought on several fronts and across vast distances. For the Welfon-Boordar Trade Association, this proved a benefit. While the Association claimed a vast number of systems, most of the Suramo population lived in a handful of populated systems clustered around their core. This gave them tremendous strategic depth, allowing them to pick most of their fights.
As a result, the war quickly faded into the background for most people. Both sides made extensive use of propaganda, turning minor engagements into massive fleet battles that would end the war. Most within the Confederacy ignored it or turned to analysts from organisations like the Raumstreitkräfte.
Those organisations had one of two conclusions: “We don’t know” and “War of Attrition”. From what little could be gleaned, neither side could marshall all their forces in one location, leading to several inconclusive battles where both sides lost a few ships and the surviving ships had to pull back for repair, a situation mirroring the First Lavis War.
The constant low-level stream of news from the frontlines did influence politics. While getting funding for naval expansion had never been difficult following Humanity’s wars with the Lavis Republic, it had been focused on what was proven to work. With interstellar war on Humanity’s doorstep, the Military-Industrial complex began thinking big. And people listened.
While there had been a push for making warships larger since the days of the first corvettes, there were practical limitations to just building a bigger ship. The chief limiting factor being the life-support. Early destroyers had strained their life-support systems to their limits by doubling the crew requirements compared to corvettes. In contrast, most cruisers had five to six times the crew requirements of destroyers. Keeping this many people alive had required some technical innovations.
There were two schools of thought as to how to approach the design of the next generation of warship. The first was a continuation of sea-based aircraft carrier design, with the ship carrying a number of smaller fighter craft that would support existing naval operations.
The Danube class, while ostensibly a carrier, still carried more conventional armaments for defence. The idea was that the carrier could still support the attack wing with conventional weapons. Naval historians were quick to make comparisons to early carriers that also carried guns.
The second school of thought harkened back to the days of the Weltkrieg and the Battle of Jutland. It argued that carriers had replaced battleships due to range. Gravity and air resistance had limited the range of a ship’s guns, while the weather and curvature of the Earth had limited visibility. None of these were a factor in space, and engagement ranges could be across a system with enough time and computation power.
The Anyi Machen focused on a few, larger guns. During trials in the Sol system, the cruisers, in Earth orbit, managed to hit and destroy practice targets placed in Mars orbit. While not a realistic test from a military standpoint, it proved the underlying theory.
In the end, four cruisers would be built, two of each design. Germany and the Danubian Federation built the carriers Danube and Rhein. Meanwhile, China and Russia built the Anyi Machen and the Belukha[2]. These new ships would be heralded as a cornerstone in the defence of Humanity. But the Confederacy would soon learn how inadequate they would be should Humanity find itself fighting the wrong enemy.
On the 11th of November, 2167, the Tazri system’s traffic control station detected a hyperspace anomaly coming from the Lane system. This anomaly turned out to be a Rixi war fleet. While it was quickly determined the fleet harboured hostile intent towards Humanity, it demonstrated just how outmatched Humanity would be in a fight.
The transiting Rixi ships were unlike anything Humanity had seen so far. Their design defied many common conventions when it came to spaceship construction. What was most concerning to military analysts was the fact that they could not identify any weapons. They were sure the ships possessed them, they were warships after all, but what they were or how they worked was a mystery.
The Rixi fleet’s presence did bring up the question of what its goal was, and Admiral Brown Plume was quick to share. The Rixi were in a state of war with the Sildor Blessed Unions, and he was tasked with opening a second front. When asked why the Rixi and the Sildor were at war, he replied that “The fanatics must be put in their place.”
This caused quite a stir among Confederate leadership, as the war had apparently been ongoing for several months. The Sildor, however, had made no mention of it in the Galactic Council. When asked about this, the Sidor representative, Volor Shranman, got quite heated, stating that “There is no war between the Sildor Blessed Union and the Rixi Chroniclers'', that “the Sildor - Rixi relationship is better than ever”, before rounding off by stating that Humanity bringing up this supposed war was “just another attempt by the godless species of the galaxy to cloud the vision of the faithful”.
Despite the claims of the Sildor, few believed them, especially as Humanity had audio recordings of Admiral Brown Plume. The actual cause of the war, however, remained a mystery as neither side was willing to divulge further details.
Unlike with the War of the Dual Alliances, no Galactic Council member state made any effort to organise peace talks. Whether this was due to the member species being preoccupied with the ongoing war, or if it was due to the perceived power of the Rixi Chroniclers, is a matter of some debate. In the end, it mattered little, as the conflict lasted only nine months, a lightning-fast war by the standards of interstellar conflict. What terms the Rixi and the Sildor settled on were also unclear[3], but no change in territory occurred.
What did change was the Sildor’s foreign policy. Almost immediately after the war, they issued numerous condemnations of the Sol Confederacy and Humanity as a whole.
While some pointed to Humanity allowing the Rixi to move their fleets through Confederate space, or revealing the war in the Galactic Council, most blamed the shift in foreign policy on domestic needs. After losing the war, the ruling Reverend Elder, Renvan Vis, had to shore up the ruling council’s legitimacy, and a foreign enemy was an easy way of achieving this.
This posturing was of little concern back on Earth. The Sildor were far away and, more importantly, were unlikely to have much of a fleet left following their war with the Rixi. So the Confederacy fell back into that most familiar of peacetime activities: internal bickering.
Thanks to aggressive border expansion by the Aifu Remnant, Humanity’s access to what became known as the “Rim Pocket” was cut off. The Aifu were also clear that they would not allow any Human ships to pass through their space to the pocket (though they would allow ships already in the pocket to return home).
The Aifu - Human border and the Rim Pocket. Spectral and gravitational analysis suggested that the Pocket contained several planets capable of sustaining life. As such, it became a race between the Aifu, the Connisthians and Humanity as to who could gain control of the pocket. Thanks to taking the Regis system, the Aifu had locked Humanity out of that race.
With peaceful expansion locked off, it was clear to everyone that the days of easy colonial expansion were, at least for the time being, coming to an end. Ynessa III and Tunobo II would be the last of the virgin worlds. Naturally, the number of nations submitting colonial proposals to the Assembly was through the roof. But despite the Assembly having clear guidelines for the granting colonial charters, realpolitik was very much still in play. The Great Powers had (on paper) given up significant power with the establishment of the Confederation of Sol. But behind closed doors, they still wielded a great deal of power. And with no new colonies on the horizon, old alliances made themselves known once again.
In private meetings, the Russian President, Marianna Artemyeva, and the Chinese Prime Minister, Fan Xiuying, made their opinion clear. In their view, Russia and China had been short-changed by the agreements made following the Lavis Wars. None of Russia’s close allies had gotten their colonial charters approved, while China’s only colony, Chang´e, was a small moon that was rapidly running out of space. Meanwhile, Germany had grabbed two worlds early on, while Canada’s colony, Albion, had been transformed into a paradise. Both nations’ allies had also been granted several charters.
The Russian demand was met without too much issue. The Nordic Federation already had a solid colonial proposition for Ynessa III, dubbed Ægir. The Russian Republic’s colonisation of Russalka had in large part been possible due to Nordic marine engineering. With decades of experience in the field, the Federation had little trouble getting Assembly approval.
The Chinese demand was more difficult. While most agreed that the Chinese had gotten the worst deal of all the Great Powers, few were sure if trying to rectify the issue was a good idea. This was especially true for the nations that had no colonial projects of their own. If Fan Xiuying got their wish and joined Germany in the two-colonies club, Russia and Canada would no doubt demand the same. And with few new worlds on the horizon, this would end the colonial ambitions of several nations.
There was, however, one more complication. There was a third colony available. One that nobody really wanted.
Global warming had caused massive destruction to the environment of Earth in the decades leading up to the discovery of the Hyperlane network. While Humanity had suffered greatly, the real victims were the planet’s biodiversity. And while geo-engineering and other technologies had gotten the weather and heat under control, there was little that could be done to the loss of countless species. While often forgotten during the years of the Lavis Wars, it was something that hung heavy in the hearts of most people at the time.
When the Kværner - Sistema corporation, which had been instrumental in the colonisation of Russalka, approached Confederate leadership about terraforming Samnivik II, it was understood that the planet did not support life. The surface temperature was high enough to boil water, a substance that was not very common groundside. While the planet was listed as habitable, this was more down to having an atmosphere that was not instant death to Humans. Most exploration of the planet was done using remotely operated drones.
With this in mind, the Confederate Assembly had little issue with approving Kværner’s proposal. The project would serve as a pilot for the viability of terraforming worlds that were otherwise unviable for Human habitation. With the lucrative contract in hand, Kværner went to work.
The project had taken a decade, which, given the scale of the endeavour, had been remarkably quick. Kværner had worked to make the planet as Earth-like as possible, and many nations had proposals waiting for the project to be declared a success. However, with just months to go before the Assembly were to discuss the colonisation of Samnivik II, a security breach of Kværner’s internal networks led to thousands of documents being leaked[4].
The documents did not paint a pretty picture. Early on in the project, Kværner surveyors had discovered that the planet possessed a unique biosphere deep in the sand and in cave systems that lay beneath the dunes. But these reports had been suppressed by Kværner’s board, who feared that they would lose the terraforming contract. The project continued, and the biosphere of Samnivik II drowned over a decade.
On the surface, Samnivik II was the ideal world, having been explicitly modelled on Earth. Most of the new biosphere had been transplanted from Earth, with some minor genetic engineering to account for factors that couldn’t be addressed by the terraforming process.
Kværner’s leadership was arrested and their offices raided, though there was some confusion about what crimes they could be charged with and whose jurisdiction applied[5]. However, the damage was already done. Nothing could be done to restore Samnivik II, and Humanity had to decide on what to do next. Some argued that the planet should be left alone, to serve as a kind of memorial to Humanity’s sins. While this was an emotionally resonant argument, it was unacceptable from an economic one. The planet had to be used. The issue was by whom.
So the offer was given to Fan Xiuying. China would have their second world. In return, a Chinese-aligned nation would take Samnivik II. After this, China and its allies would not make any colonial requests until the colonial game had been “equalised”. This effectively meant the end of future Chinese colonial projects.
This deal also meant that Samnivik II was going to the Philippines. This added to the problems, as the Philippines had been one of the nations hardest hit by climate change, and were thus especially angry about what had happened.
After weeks of closed-door negotiations, the Chinese and Philippine governments agreed to the deal, and China would have a second colony, Yutu. Presenting the agreement to the Filipino public, however, did not go as well. The Filipino government tried to spin it by naming the world Perlas sa Langit, the Pearl in the Sky. It never caught on. Instead, the colonists gave it a different name: Bangkay, the corpse world.
For many on Earth, it was the end of an era. The easily exploitable virgin worlds of the galaxy had been claimed, and now only scraps remained for those who had not gotten their fill. However, even as the first ships departed for the corpse world, another lush colony world appeared on the horizon. All Humanity would have to do was take it.
By force if necessary.
[1] With the exception of the Versum Divine Empire. When the Versum took a system they would enslave all the workers and ship them off to the core worlds, while the stations would be manned by Celimy slaves shipped in. Few enslaved workers would ever return from Versum captivity.
[2] The Canadian Republic's first cruiser was delayed due to internal disagreement as to which design to follow. In Parliament, Canadian Prime Minister Simon Harkness would argue that the government was instead funnelling the money into construction on Albion, downplaying tensions and stating that the security situation did not warrant more ships. Canada would begin construction of its first cruiser, the McKinley, an Anyi Machen class, three years later.
[3] It can be inferred that the peace treaty included some sort of transit agreement, as Sildor ships began approaching Human systems by transitioning through Rixi-controlled space. They would later push their luck by claiming a handful of systems on the “Human side” of Rixi.
[4] The leak is widely understood to have been an inside job, but nobody ever stepped forward, despite government assurances of immunity from prosecution. The only clue to the identity of the leaker(s) is a single text file with the phrase “We all bear some responsibility.”
[5] In the end, the Kværner’s board would be tried for environmental destruction and fraud. As the planet had not yet a legal owner, the Confederacy itself was deemed to have jurisdiction. In the end, the case set a precedent regarding the Confederation’s legal authority in areas not under the sovereign rule of a member nation.
