THE FIVE WORLDS: A HISTORY
Part I: Terran Contacts With The Entomalians And Avarians
Date: October 17, 2308 EST
Subject: Intergalactic Origins of the Fourth Interstellar Conflict
Source: Excerpts from the writings of First Admiral Marc Harder
Our repeated contacts by way of trading
and warfare with other powers in the past 250 years have taught us a great deal;
not only about their military prowess, but how other races have evolved and survived.
These sociological and economic factors have had as much to do with an empire's
success as their military capabilities. A brief review of the Five Powers
evolvement is in order before we take an in-depth study of the current
situation.
Much of Old Earth's technology
was interrupted and destroyed by the last World War in 1987. While this period
remains shrouded in mystery due to the loss of many records, enough data has survived
to be able to trace mankinds development through the post-atomic era. The war started among several minor countries
in what is now the Mediterranean Cultural and Recreational Center, spread to Africa
and Asia and eventually drew the empires of North America, Eurasia, and the
European continent into conventional warfare. It remains unclear as to who
fired the first thermonuclear missile; but what is clear, is that few people
survived its effects.
The survivors from distant parts
of the globe were able to contact each other via radio transmissions and
acquired surviving transportation to reach some of Earth's few untouched
regions. By 1994 the first major resettlement was established in Australia. All
mankind cooperated for the first time in our history resulting in a remarkable
recovery. By 2041 we had achieved a
technical level superior to that enjoyed in 1987 that was in no small part
achieved by great strides in energy research and rocket propulsion.
Our technical achievements during
the next fifteen years were many but two overshadowed the rest. One was the
high speed underground shuttle system that connected every major city on the
globe. The second was the orbiting space platforms that converted sunlight to
electricity and beamed it down to an energy dependent culture. From these space
platforms, shuttles were launched to explore Luna and Mars and establish our first
continually manned outposts. Two manned interstellar probes were launched into
deep space as our first strides into the heavens. Audio and visual contact with
the probes were lost in 2060 when new transmissions overwhelmed their signals.
These transmissions proved to be
an Entomalian (Bug) warfleet hunting down Avarian survivors when the Bugs
attacked the outer Avarian provinces. One Avarian pilot managed to land his
crippled craft on Luna Base where he and his ship attracted a great deal of
curiosity and suspicion. The surviving pilot enlightened us about current
intergalactic politics including the capture of one of our probes by the Bugs
before the Avarians could rescue them. As it became clear that our people could
be in deadly peril, we feverishly built defenses around massive laser and
missile installations on Luna Base and a dozen asteroids placed in orbit around
Earth.
Luna Base
The Entomalians interpolated the course
of our captured probe that entered their battle area but had no available ship
to go to the edge of the galaxy to investigate its origin. But the Bugs' memories
were long, and on the fateful day July 18, 2063, a lone battlecraft appeared on
Luna's long range scanners. It obviously scanned us because it didn't venture
within firing range but headed back the way it had come. A week later our sensors
picked up the ion trails of over forty starships closing our solar system. The
Entomalians swept in, ignoring their losses, and pulverized Luna Base, the
outpost asteroids and finally Earth itself.
By the time they had finished their destruction our recovery had been
set back 70 years.
Our short rebuilding period was
due largely to help from the Avarian culture. Most of Earth was now
uninhabitable due to radiation levels left over from the 20th Century
as well as the residue of the Entomalian massacre. For twenty years we labored
to build a new Earth but our most important population centers and manufacturing
sites had to be located on Luna and Mars. At the same time our first primitive
intergalactic battlefleet was constructed on the nearly weightless environs of
Luna. All of mankind's illusions about a peaceful exploration of space and
finding benevolent, advanced races had been shattered.
The Avarians
From our explorations during the
next century we found that our scientific expectation that planets would evolve
creatures able to survive the peculiar atmosphere and climactic conditions of that
planet were false. In some cases life existed in spite of those conditions. A case
in point was our Avarian benefactors. Their small, dusty planets have a
gravity of 0.89 compared to Earth's 1.0.
This varies of course, but the home planets closely follow this formula.
Vegetation is plentiful with many
farms to develop the tremendous amounts of protein the Avarian's diet and
metabolism require. Much of the planet's surface is cultivated with fast
growing grains that must be continuously irrigated because of the lack of
surface water. This lack of water on the
planet's surface or in shallow underground reservoirs ruins our long held
evolutionary theory that life must evolve in a water environment. Even the
Avarians are unable to explain with any scientific certainty how their ancestors
survived the rigors of their planets.
Cities are usually built high and
are spaced far apart to allow the maximum land area to be devoted to
agriculture and protein farms. The architecture is simple in detail but
complicated in design and form. Thin spires rising hundreds of meters into the
atmosphere support their graceful cities as the legs support the weaving body
of a spider. The flow and sweep of their building lines have few flat panels to
mar the sculptured effect of these trade centers.
The Avarians are somewhat shorter
than we are with a light, hollow bone structure. Internal organs are similar to
ours with the exceptions of a duplicate liver, minor heart system and an organ of
unknown function placed anteriorly to the pancreas. Their fast metabolism gives
them only a marginally reduced lifespan compared to ours because their advanced
medical technology has been able to compensate for the rapid degeneration
typical of a species with a high metabolic rate.
The Entomalians
Entomalian lifestyles are the most
structured in the galaxy. Three classes of individuals exist on their jungle
planets. The Office of Galactic Intelligence (OGI) has classified 76% of the
population as workers, 3% as the ruling or managerial class (code named drones)
and the remaining 21% are performing military duties. Their society is strongly
influenced by the military; a continuous state of war with someone is their way
of life. Living quarters and 40% of the manufacturing sites are buried deep
underground. The principal energy
processing centers are located on the surface, along with extensive
agricultural sites. All large animals (principally mammalian!) have been ruthlessly
exterminated which caused such an ecological imbalance that many of the
Entomalian agricultural areas suffered from an unchecked small pest population
(actually a related species of the Entomalians). This caused a timely decrease
in the Entomalian population that helped save the Avarians and ourselves shortly
after our first contact with them in 2063. They have fully recovered now, but
are in a state of technical obsolescence particularly with our introduction of
the Star Base REVENGE (the newest Terran weapon, REVENGE is a mobile killer
satellite capable of destroying whole planets).
The Entomalian chitinous
exoskeleton serves as body armor but is not as protective as our armored
infantries form-fitted plate. Their internal organs are bathed in a green
mucoprotein solution that oxygenates the body's cells. Oxygen transfer takes place through pores in
the thorax making them susceptible to suffocation when operating in a smokey,
gaseous or liquid atmosphere. With four
arms to bear weapons, plus their large numbers of soldiers, a fusilade of
concentrated firepower can be directed against any target. They tend to be a little
slower afoot than we, but utilization of underground trams in their tunnel complexes
has caught our troops by surprise on more than one occasion.
Usually stymied by well protected
sites, they try to encircle the site to isolate it and capture it later. This
nullifies fortress type defenses but isn't effective against a MAATAC Corps.
The workers and drones have not proven to be a challenge to our Interstellar
Assault Corps (ISAC) but the soldiers will fight to the last. They have no
regard for casualties because their losses can easily be recovered in their
breeding chambers. The blood feud
between the Entomalians and Avarians has existed for about four centuries. The
hard working Avarians found that their meager existence carved out of their
barren planets was imperiled by the Entomalian desire to secure new
agricultural centers. The distance between the major planets of these two races,
and the technical superiority of the Avarians, have kept the tremendous masses
of Bugs at bay until recently. The Avarian nation is reduced compared to what
it once was but we have resolved to relieve some of the Entomalian pressure
from their beleaguered fleet. This comes at a time when we are not bound by
treaty but by our gratitude.
Our treaty with the Avarians
ended when we became involved in the Carnivore-Aquarian dispute. The Avarians have
been friendly with both nations and were politically embarrassed when we chose
sides. We have found it difficult to support Carnivore claims on border systems
because they have attempted seizure of some of our colonial planets and pirated
defenseless merchant ships. The Entomalian sham of negotiations was broken when
we revealed the existence of the REVENGE. The Bug's delegation has returned
home leaving our military to ponder the possibility of another extended
campaign.
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