[history] Terran-Klashnoi War

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Artemis
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[history] Terran-Klashnoi War

Post by Artemis »

The Terran-Klashnoi War: A Retrospect
It's origins, history, and effect on the modern galaxy

by Jareem Furra Siktu
to the High Seats of Parliament, the Director of Ivory Teardrop, and the Council of Military Operations

To be released to the public pending approval of all parties listed above

Introduction

The Terran-Klashnoi War, also referred to as the T-K War, the Fourth Interstellar Conflict, and the War of Sorrows, was a defining and pivotal moment for the galaxy as we know it. It ended with close to a billion sentient beings dead, from the destruction of Ben Bova SSC to the final shots, and continues to affect all eight starfaring races today. It was a tragedy, one that, it can be argued, is still playing out, even almost two decades since the end of the war.

It is the intent of this report to compile a detailed and multi-faceted history of this conflict. It has been my intent, as historian, public servant, and storyteller, to create as complete an account of the conflict as possible. This includes speaking to those who were directly involved in hostilities, and those who moved in the background of the war. It is my dismay to report that the Commonwealth leadership of the time had much more to do with the conflict than we like to admit to ourselves, and some of the interviews and evidence shown in the following document may be uncomfortable for many. Against the advice of my superiors, I also ventured within the Carepakeh Empire, including conducting interviews with citizens and soldiers of that government. Such interviews may also be somewhat unpalatable, but I urge my readers, in both the government and the public, to read this report as a whole, and not to cherry-pick their favored viewpoints or perspectives. This conflict was comprised of millions of different stories, and to ignore some because of political or social unease would be, in this storyteller's opinion, a mistake.

I hope that I can enlighten, educate, and provoke thought with this report. I also hope that my readers, not only those in positions of governmental or military power, but the workers, soldiers, artists, and businessmen of the Commonwealth will learn from the mistakes made during this time, and a repeat of such a tragedy might be avoided.

I present to you, in as complete a form as this storyteller was able to gather, the story of the Terran-Klashnoi War.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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Re: [history] Terran-Klashnoi War

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Chapter One: The Premature Dawn

Shizuoka, Japan, Earth, United Nations

Yugokari Michael is a handsome, fit young man, who, though he seems surprised at my appearance, welcomes me into his family home with the politeness and respect which the Japanese Terrans are rightfully known for. I am served locally-grown tea, which is served to me by Michael's wife Ayako. The three of us make small talk while we wait for Michael's grandfather to join us. I learn that Michael is half-Canadian (another Terran nation, apparently well-known for their laid-back nature and their proficiency at a game called hockey), and that his mother served in the Royal Canadian Marine Corps during the war, where she fought on Avalon, Faerie, and finally Uldresh. I learn that Ayako also has an interest in the conflict's history, and that she is a poet of some renown on Japan as a poet-journalist and a painter, with the war being her most common subjects.

I am just beginning to relax when Yugokari Kondo comes in from the hallway, his movements slow, careful, but steady and resolved. Michael gets up to help his grandfather, taking his by one arm and steadying him as he puts all his weight on the bamboo-plant cane he uses to support himself.

"Prosthetics, muscle pumps, clone limbs," he says to me, with a look that I take as either disdain or dismissal. "A waste of my time. What's the point in getting new legs when I'll only have another year to use them?"

Michael says something to his grandfather in Japanese, and I can only infer that the young man is berating his grandfather for his pessimism. Kondo makes no reply, only continues toward the table where I have been sitting with his family, easing himself onto a floor-seat and placing his cane beside him. He gives me a smile. "So. You're the reporter, aren't you? For the Commies?"

"I prefer the term storyteller, sir," I reply. "But yes, I am compiling a report for the Commonwealth leadership on the war. As I stated in my message, I was hoping that you might be able to give me some insight into the Terran's perspective at the beginning of the war."

Kondo begins nodding before I finish. He says something to Ayako, who pours him a cup of tea and then crushes a small capsule into it. Kondo knocks it back, grimacing at the taste of the medicine, and thanks Ayako as she pours him another cup of unaltered tea.

Yugokari Kondo is suffering the advanced stages of microgravity trauma, a treatable illness, but not curable except by preventative medicines and cybernetics, which were not available in the UN at the time Kondo was, for lack of a better term, wounded. As he explained to me in our correspondence prior to this meeting, Kondo was stranded on board the HMS Battle of Trafalgar during the opening shots of the war, in far orbit around Eden. The Trafalgar was critically damaged during that first battle, and ship lost all primary life support systems, including simulated gravity as the ship's superstructure was nearly folded in half by a direct gauss cannon hit. Kondo and barely a dozen others survived by sealing themselves in the ship's infirmary, using emergency oxygen tanks to enrich their air, and subsisting entirely off of nutrient supplements and water they acquired by drilling holes into the ship's frozen plumbing system and catching melted ice in IV bags.

They were there for more than two months, unable to send a distress signal with the ship's power out, and the corpse of the Trafalgar slowly drifting into Eden's powerful gravity well. Kondo and his fellow survivors were rescued by a military salvage team, sent out by the Asgardian Expeditionary Fleets, who were desperate for any usable material to build more ships to defend their planet. Each survivor came out alive, but suffering from severe dehydration, malnutrition, dementia in some cases, and severe microgravity trauma.

Kondo is the only survivor of this experience still living, and as he said, he doesn't have long to live. Along with all the other muscles in his body, his heart has deteriorated at a rapid rate, and the is slowly being crushed by the weight of his body on Earth. He has refused artificial or clone organs. After fourteen years living in microgravity clinics, he chose to come home to Japan, to live out his final years.

"A year ago, I might have tried to go out like a samurai*," he says, laughing and making a slow, but clear, slice across his belly with the back of his hand. "But now, I don't think I could even lift a sword, much less do the deed with any dignity. And Michael simply wouldn't have the stomach to chop my head off." He laughs again. "Which is probably a good thing."

NOTE: *Pre-Gunpowder Age warriors of Japan, known for adhering to a strict code of honor and tradition, which included a form of ritual suicide, called sepekku.

I ask him what his position within the United Nations government was, prior to the entry of the Klashnoi Confederation into the interstellar community.

"See, that's a thing you Commies still don't quite get about us," Kondo replies. "We're not a single government, we're a collection of sovereign nations with a shared history and genetic code. We're less of a single country, and more like an agreement to help each other out when we need it, be neighborly to each other, and leave each other alone otherwise. This was even more true in the early days. But, to better answer your question, I was Japan's Minister of Defense, just ending what turned out to by my final term."

He continues, telling me that in the days just following the United Nations' development of Second Space, and subsequent contact with the Interstellar Commonwealth and, later, the Carepakeh Empire, there were two very different reactions amongst Terrans and Tekks. The first, and more vocal and widespread, was joy and wonder at the fact that they were no longer alone in the universe. The other was, understandably enough, fear.

"As nice as you guys were in the months after first contact," he says, "we couldn't help but notice that you had a fleet that could easily wipe out every military asset we had at the time. And if half the stuff you were saying about the Carepakeh was true, then they were just as much a potential threat." It was decided by the United Nations Security Council that a mission be sent to both the Commonwealth and the Empire for the purposes of seeing if either power had any reason to threaten UN citizens, territories, or interests. This mission was to be diplomatic in nature, and no secret was made of it's ultimate goal. "We wanted you to know we were looking. We didn't want to come across as naive, I suppose."

I ask him what made him the best man for the job.

"That," he says, leaning forward and pointing at me "had everything to do with you, the Commonwealth, and nothing to do with me."

"How so?"

"The Security Council wanted to send someone from a military background, who would recognize trouble if he saw it, but who wouldn't set off any alarms in the heads of his opposite numbers in the Commonwealth or the Empire. We didn't want to send a Blunderbuss* veteran, because conquerors don't make good diplomats, but we wanted to send someone who was a representative of a powerful, influential culture on Earth. Well, Japan hadn't fired a shot in anger in two centuries, yet we were one of the most technologically advanced, economically stable, and culturally influential nations in Sol System, and one of the oldest. Assuming the Commies and the Empire looked into the background of this curious diplomat, and saw that as his nation of origin, they'd have an easier time accepting us than, say, if we'd sent someone from Britain or Russia. And so, Ishii Goku, Japan's representative to the UN, took me aside one day and said, 'Kondo, I've put your name forward for this little sightseeing tour, and I think the Security Council is going to take it. Pack your bags, you're going where no man has gone before.' And he was right - the Security Council voted unanimously to send me over the mountain, so to speak."

NOTE: *Operation: Blunderbuss was a military/humanitarian/diplomatic mission into war-torn regions of Earth's continent of Africa in the early to mid-21st century, largely considered to be the event that allowed the United Nations to truly live up to their mandate. While it was deemed a success in 2058, subsequent operations with similar intent followed on other parts of the planet, and later the Solar System. Such operations were deemed "Blunderbuss Wars." Such conflicts continue even to the current day, though they are much, much smaller than their original, epic namesake.

For three years, Kondo's work continued without a hitch. Far from being seen as an aggressive move, his visits to the Commonwealth actually strengthened the ties between our people and the United Nations. Such an open-handed gesture, soon reciprocated by the Commonwealth, made the idea of a military conflict almost absurd. While the isolationist Carepakeh Empire was not as actively receptive to Kondo's visit, it had a much more profound effect on the Empire - the fact that another power was taking notice of them, and was actively contacting them (albeit to establish their potential as a military opponent) managed to awaken an interest in the Empire to rejoin interstellar civilization, particularly through a relationship with the United Nations.

"My visit is probably the reason they were so friendly with the Klashies when they showed up on stage," Kondo says. "And, of course, if you follow that line of thinking, I'm the reason they started up their breakneck technology trade, which led to the haphazard upgrades, which led...but we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?"

In 2249, the Klashnoi Confederation developed a working Second Space drive, and first contact with the Interstellar Commonwealth, the United Nations, and the Carepakeh Empire all happened within a matter of days for the Klashnoi.

"So here's a new race of aliens - sorry, I know the term is 'non-Terrans' these days, but old habits die hard - who have just popped up, and what do you know, they've already got a warfleet! So, I was in the neighborhood so to speak, and I went to go talk to them, the same way I'd talked to you guys and the Carepakeh."

What Kondo learned was that the Klashnoi had recently ended a war with a rogue faction of their race, the Charred Rock Tribe, and was still engaged in hostilities with the remnants of that faction.

I ask him if he still believes, knowing what he does now and having experienced what he has, that sending a military task force to the border of Confederation space, upping military production more than 2000% all across the United Nations, and generally preparing for a potential war with the Klashnoi less than a month after first contact, was still a good policy.

"You have to look at it the way we saw it back then. We, Terrans, have 'been around' less than fifty years, as far as you and the Empire are concerned, and the most we've managed to put together are a few patrol craft, maybe twelve capital ships in the entire UN, and that's mostly just because we saw that you guys had them. The Klashnoi, on the other hand, come on scene with nine times as many warships, an industrial complex still geared entirely towards interplanetary warfare, an army of well-trained and experienced soldiers, and a government that was just a little jumpy with all of the new things that it had to deal with. To us, the Klashnoi Confederation looked like a kettle ready to boil over at a second's notice - and if they did, well Three Paradises was only one Second Space transit away.

"Not to mention, these Charred Rock guys? Same situation as the rest of the Confederation, but they're still actively pissed off, they're not a little xenophobic, they're religious fanatics, they've been backed into a corner between the Confederation and us, and they've got weapons of mass destruction and, we found out quickly, Second Space drives they'd taken off of crippled ships and reverse-engineered. If that's not a serious potential threat, I don't know what is. I delivered my report, the Security Council made their speech, and the rest of it was out of my hands."
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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