test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Theorycrafted fanfic: "History is not Legendary"
patrickngo
Member Posts: 9,963 Arc User
in Ten Forward
none of this fits into the unofficial literary challenges. Hell, for that matter, I couldn't figure out how to phrase the idea in a pithy way that would actually get interest...
so here goes.
disclaimer: I'm playing fast and loose with the canon to make a somewhat hard-science-fiction version of Klingon history, mostly because I don't buy the repainted Kzinti history people who think they're cavemen-with-a-napoleon-complex would push-it doesn't work, cavemen don't beat interstellar empires, period, and our own history shows what USUALLY happens when a low-development society meets one with higher technology on less than friendly terms...
The bullshitting done, hope you enjoy the story...
”...in legend, we find Truth. The Truth of Kahless, the explanations for why we do as we do, the definitions of honor. That is the purpose of Legend. But while Legend is inspired by history, it is not History. It is Tradition, it is the soul.
In Legend there is truth, but if you want to understand the Legend, you must seek out the History from which it grew. And History is not always as ennobling,or as simple, as Legends would have it-because History is soulless Fact...”
K’Ragh, son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions.”
1343, CE Earth reckoning, The homeworld of the Klingon Empire…
“We picked it up the same time the University’s people did, it’s decelerating.” Academician L’sala said, “whatever the object is, it’s not a meteor or comet.”
The Empire’s senior General of Air Defense studied the photographs from the observatory, and looked at the plots from the radiotelescopes. “Aliens.” he said, “They’re real...have your people tried to contact them?”
“Of course not!” she spat, “I may be a woman, General, but I am no fool to defy the policy of the Emperor. ‘Look before you speak’, after all, we have no way to know what their intent is…though I have heard that there are factions on the far continent…”
“We will deal with them when we are ready.” he told her, “The new atomic bombs are barely into production…”
“New to us.” she noted, then gestured at the imagery again, “How new to them, should they ally with the enemy?”
He grunted, “The Emperor is well aware of that threat, Academician.” he told her, “But we are going to pursue a policy of watchful waiting. How long before the object is in orbit?”
“A few days, based on its rate of deceleration.” She said, “no more than a week, no less than thirty six hours. Based on its trajectory, it is going to come in close to the equator, on the far side of the planet, roughly where the false-emperor’s ‘search for other life’ beacon was built.”
“HOw big do your estimates make the strange arrival?” he asked.
“No less than five thousand kellikams across-to come in at those speeds, and based on the spectra of their exhaust, I would say the bulk of it is fuel.” she recited, “It’s really very exciting, Konath’s equations predicted near-luminal velocity can be reached using the power of nuclear fusion, using hydrogen collected across interstellar space, compressed in strong magnetic fields-a fusion torch to light the way to the stars... To build it, they must be very advanced.”
“MM..so it would appear…” the General noted, then looked out the window at the air force base-the new Jet-Turbine interceptors, the turbine-propellor hybrid bombers, and waiting in patient silos, the ballistic missile corps. The experiments with attempted nuclear fusion had rendered some quite effective bombs, but little else. Power generation, and propulsion, were pipe-dreams according to many on the Emperor’s staff... “Let us hope then, that these strangers from the stars are not here on a mission of conquest.” He noted, “Though I will have to brief the Emperor on that possibility, as well as any likely technologies we might be able to use to fight back.”
She looked doubtful, “The presence of an external foe, or so both the Emperor, and his false challenger, have said, could be the key to uniting the Klingon people.”
The first strikes came at dawn, on the far side of the world. Kinetic devices on ballistic trajectory from the sky itself. While the ship that unleashed them had been slowing, the objects released continued at relativistic speeds-annihilating cities, dams, power stations, and military bases. The rains of fire continued in pulses, timed to land as land masses rotated into range.
This gave the people of the area near what would later be called ‘first city’ time to evacuate from likely strikes, and the Emperor made absolutely certain that they did-jets were scrambled from airbases, military forces from their cantonments, civilians sometimes dragged from their homes.
The enemy, was hostile, coming on a fusion torch to attack and conquer.
Six months into the war…
The enemy had landed in the fertile plains of every landmass, they were burrowers, building their bases under the dirt as their forces swept the land before them, consuming everything in their path and leaving almost nothing alive.
“WHY???” Academician L’Sala, now safely hidden in a deep rocky mine, in the mountains near the primary military base, “Why did they attack us?”
“To colonize?” Student Konra asked, “Their fortified landing areas resemble burrowing insect colonies, and long-range camera images indicate they are either insects, or wearing armor made to resemble them.”
“Like a plague of devouring insects?” B’Nala, a biologist speculated, “Seeking out fertile ground-yes, homing in on signals to bring their colonies to inhabitable worlds...it fits.”
“The Search for Otherlife brought them here…” L’Sala nodded, “it fits-their first strike was on the Kelora continent, where the ‘big voice’ transmitter was erected by Krolor’s followers, their foolish belief that advanced societies would have given up war-”
“Not much of a war, we were fortunate, a little less warning and we would have been annihilated along with those people.” Konra commented, “it does explain the mysterious silence in the heavens though-if these aliens...these ‘H’urq’ attack every world that puts out a search signal…”
“Hammer the planet, colonize, consume, build...they’re a disease…”
B’nala scoffed, “ANY intelligent alien is going to be aggressive-Evolution shows that only predatory species can even become intelligent. The competitive pressures to create a species with interstellar capability and the patience to endure relativistic time dilation equates to hyper predatory behaviours...I’ve already briefed the General Staff and the Emperor about this-we have to beat them, or it’s extinction.”
General Staff chamber…
“...we can’t just beat them here-they came from elsewhere.” the Emperor said, “Came in on our late cousin’s signal to the stars, his foolish idealistic dream of advanced, peaceful societies lured them here, but it lured them here from somewhere else...somewhere close, if the ladies in the Science department are right.”
“How close?” a Naval general asked.
“No more than forty light years, based on the velocity they predict the aliens were traveling when we first discovered their approach.” the Emperor noted, “Assuming twenty years to accelerate, and twenty to decelerate, and my cousin’s broadcast and the probes he launched with maps back to our world? No more than twenty years away.”
“We still have to beat them here.” a Ground General pointed out, “Before we can pursue them to their nest.”
“Yes...how is that going?”
“They have what my wife calls a ‘coherent light’ weapon, Majesty-it slices through armored vehicles like rotten meat, and makes a no-fly-zone over the valleys they have occupied, while their orbiting ship has stopped all attempts at using ballistic missile weapons.”
“We’ve lost the surface fleets in their entire-but the Submarines are still capable of occasionally launching sorties.” the Naval General helpfully suggested, “And, when the mothership is over the horizon, their air-defense and antimissile defenses are degraded somewhat.”
The airforce general cleared his throat, “The Air Force may have a chance to contribute more than conscripts to the infantry...research into stealth systems and materials has gotten a few practical boosts recently...but it will be expensive and take time, and the technology-”
“Is a waste of resources if we can’t get it into the field-your ‘bent magnetic bubble’ concept strains credibility!” the Naval General scoffed.
“What would you suggest then? My soldiers fight them whenever and however we can-but there are so many and their weapons are so powerful!”
The Emperor frowned, “Build it.” he decreed. “Build your stealth aircraft, drop a fusion bomb on one of their bases. Prove it can work!” He rounded on his advisors, “This is no time for the comfort of doubt, gentlemen-we are facing an enemy that seeks to make our race extinct and take our world for their own! Anything that can hurt them, that even has a chance, must be built, and placed in the hands of warriors to fight them!”
”...Histories are often purged by successive generations, this is not only among our culture, it is a common thread across all Klingonoid and nearly-Klingonoid cultures throughout the quadrant and beyond. In the words of the Humans (the race that most closely resembles our own in nature, if not politics), ‘He who controls the past, controls the future, he who controls the present, controls the past.’ an effort was made more than half a millenia ago, during the internal strife that saw the end of the First Dynasty, to conceal, obfuscate, and destroy our past, to bring about a new ‘year zero’. Recordings, documents and images of the early Empire, including much of the war against the H’urq, were destroyed by one faction or another, each in order to ‘win’ the claim on the leadership of the Klingon people. What we have, remaining, are fragments that were overlooked, or hidden, or forgotten…the outcome is often stagnation and a loss of progress, and of course the triumph of verbal histories over factual accounts...”
-B’Sanos, Son of R’yll, member of the Klingon High Council (2403 CE)
1344 CE (earth time)
The Target was the colony infestation in the Ketha region-a zone of rolling hills and gentle, coastal plain, the enemy had landed there early in the invasion, and dug in deep.
K’rlag watched the insectoid H’urq as their forces consolidated in the remains of another village. The pattern was gruesome in it’s efficiency-their leading forces would overrun and overwhelm an area, the follow-on forces from the hive would arrive and dismantle. Animals were either killed and consumed, or penned up and moved like cattle.
This included any Klingon civilians that had failed to escape the initial wave.
“How long?” he asked his second officer, as he peered down into the valley from a hidden point.
“The strike is soon, sir, they’re waiting on our report.”
“Inform the Air Force that the enemy is consolidating at yatlhlaHbogh vengHom, they have already begun assembling perimeter defenses and I can see commandeered vehicles carrying civilians back to their landing zone for processing.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” the younger officer-from one of the island chains that did not suffer landings yet, nor suffered the horrific bombardment of the first wave, asked.
“No.” K’rlag said softly, “THe only thing we can do for them, is to stop what is happening to them-the strike is the only way.” he rolled over to look at the other man, “But maybe some will survive to be rescued once it’s done, or even escape-it’s what we can do.”
wa' mup, flying near treetop level…
‘...target confirmed, enemy forces are in consolidation mode. Observatory reports enemy mothership has dropped below the horizon.”
“Are we confirmed?”
”Wa’Mup, this is the Emperor, you are a go. Make them pay with fire from Gre’thor!!”
D’usa closed his eyes for a moment, then, he reached down, and pushed the throttles forward, the six big, twenty-bank rotary engines on the wings increased their rumble as the bomber accelerated and fought to gain altitude.
“Weapons officer, watch the scopes for enemy drones and missiles, they shouldn’t be a problem with the sea-launched ballistics coming over the horizon, but we can’t be certain…”
The plane was an older model-from the cross-continental wars of the last generation, six internal-combustion, turbocharged engines driving contrarotating propellors in pusher configuration along each main wing, which was mounted low on the bulky, blended aft -hull, the command deck set forward, and the ‘neck’ of the craft housing the bomb-bays. Turrets on the aft hull had remained, and engineering students had added turbine engines to the tips of the main wings. She was meant for high-altitude bombing runs across the pole, striking deep into the False-Emperor’s rebellious province-but that was gone now, and the mission had changed.
The twenty tonne thermonuclear bomb in the main bay was the largest ever built so far-and it required the heavy bomber to carry it. That bomber, in turn, had to carry it at far lower altitudes than she had been originally designed to fly in order to screen along behind the terrain and be difficult for the H’urq’s air-defense batteries to engage...but the women of the engineering department had tackled this challenge, modifying the strategic bomber to become a tactical weapons platform.
And there was the experimental electro-plasma device, theoretically, it could perhaps make the bomber invisible to the invaders’ sensors until they were over the target.
“Engage the Stealth Device.” he ordered, “Switch to visual navigation-our radar will not work here.”
They passed the last ridge, and were over the Ketha plain.
In the distance, lines of infrared tracer and blue ionization scattering showed the enemy’s air-defense nets were, indeed, still operational, destroying ballistic missiles launched from submarines at sea.
The bombardier announced, “Target ahead!”
“Start your calculations, bombardier, the helm is yours.”
They passed within less than a tenth of a kellikam over a convoy of vehicles taking captured civilians to the plae where the invaders would turn them to meat rations.
The stealth flickered off as the bomb bay opened, and their bomb was released, to glide in at a shallow angle before dropping it’s wing-segment and plunging into hive itself...at least, that was the theory.
The hull rang as enemy fire lanced through structure, he took the control again, and shoved the engines to full, hauling up on the twin-sticks to point the nose skyward.
The instrumentation failed with the first electromagnetic pulse, and the gamma lanced through the crew, a light shining a thousand times brighter than the sun, invisible, the aircraft transparent to it’s savagery.
Below, unseen to the crew of wa' mup, the coastal plain shuddered-nuclear fire lanced through underground corridors cut by the H’urq, shock and heat confined and propagated, the valley collapsed inward as the power source of the lander that formed the core of the hive, was pressurized into sympathetic detonation.
The enemy defense faltered and stopped as their systems overloaded and shut down explosively.
“Signal the ground attack.” the pilot wheezed, “Bomb was on target…”
As the struggling heavy bomber limped to a landing base they’d been unsure they could even reach, the land continued to collapse in the Ketha region, creating a lowland of steep hills and filthy swamps.
Over the next few weeks, the ten man crew assigned to fly the bombing mission died of radiation sickness, and the hull of the bomber was analyzed to find out what could be done to keep a crew alive after a successful mission.
There were no shortages of volunteers for follow-on missions to hit the other enemy landing sites, and the Emperor deemed all who died in those bombings to be a death in combat-and the loresingers agreed…
They died for their world, and their people.
”...many of the legends from the first war placed the Emperors in the key positions-leading the charges, battling the enemy in hand combat, defeating them with blade and muscle. The memorials to the bombers were erased along with much of the records, but even the Second Dynasty was unable to completely expunge the wa' mup’s mission, and records recovered from the Gamma Quadrant show that the enemy, at least, kept knowledge until they were themselves exterminated by the Dominion… it is very interesting that the form-factor of the heavy bomber type used, would be repeated in spirit, if not exacting detail, with the development of the D-12 class Bird of Prey...by engineers who never even knew the first successful strike happened using craft of similar layout and styling...”
-K’Ragh Son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions”
so here goes.
disclaimer: I'm playing fast and loose with the canon to make a somewhat hard-science-fiction version of Klingon history, mostly because I don't buy the repainted Kzinti history people who think they're cavemen-with-a-napoleon-complex would push-it doesn't work, cavemen don't beat interstellar empires, period, and our own history shows what USUALLY happens when a low-development society meets one with higher technology on less than friendly terms...
The bullshitting done, hope you enjoy the story...
Part 1:The Desperate Hours
”...in legend, we find Truth. The Truth of Kahless, the explanations for why we do as we do, the definitions of honor. That is the purpose of Legend. But while Legend is inspired by history, it is not History. It is Tradition, it is the soul.
In Legend there is truth, but if you want to understand the Legend, you must seek out the History from which it grew. And History is not always as ennobling,or as simple, as Legends would have it-because History is soulless Fact...”
K’Ragh, son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions.”
1343, CE Earth reckoning, The homeworld of the Klingon Empire…
“We picked it up the same time the University’s people did, it’s decelerating.” Academician L’sala said, “whatever the object is, it’s not a meteor or comet.”
The Empire’s senior General of Air Defense studied the photographs from the observatory, and looked at the plots from the radiotelescopes. “Aliens.” he said, “They’re real...have your people tried to contact them?”
“Of course not!” she spat, “I may be a woman, General, but I am no fool to defy the policy of the Emperor. ‘Look before you speak’, after all, we have no way to know what their intent is…though I have heard that there are factions on the far continent…”
“We will deal with them when we are ready.” he told her, “The new atomic bombs are barely into production…”
“New to us.” she noted, then gestured at the imagery again, “How new to them, should they ally with the enemy?”
He grunted, “The Emperor is well aware of that threat, Academician.” he told her, “But we are going to pursue a policy of watchful waiting. How long before the object is in orbit?”
“A few days, based on its rate of deceleration.” She said, “no more than a week, no less than thirty six hours. Based on its trajectory, it is going to come in close to the equator, on the far side of the planet, roughly where the false-emperor’s ‘search for other life’ beacon was built.”
“HOw big do your estimates make the strange arrival?” he asked.
“No less than five thousand kellikams across-to come in at those speeds, and based on the spectra of their exhaust, I would say the bulk of it is fuel.” she recited, “It’s really very exciting, Konath’s equations predicted near-luminal velocity can be reached using the power of nuclear fusion, using hydrogen collected across interstellar space, compressed in strong magnetic fields-a fusion torch to light the way to the stars... To build it, they must be very advanced.”
“MM..so it would appear…” the General noted, then looked out the window at the air force base-the new Jet-Turbine interceptors, the turbine-propellor hybrid bombers, and waiting in patient silos, the ballistic missile corps. The experiments with attempted nuclear fusion had rendered some quite effective bombs, but little else. Power generation, and propulsion, were pipe-dreams according to many on the Emperor’s staff... “Let us hope then, that these strangers from the stars are not here on a mission of conquest.” He noted, “Though I will have to brief the Emperor on that possibility, as well as any likely technologies we might be able to use to fight back.”
She looked doubtful, “The presence of an external foe, or so both the Emperor, and his false challenger, have said, could be the key to uniting the Klingon people.”
The first strikes came at dawn, on the far side of the world. Kinetic devices on ballistic trajectory from the sky itself. While the ship that unleashed them had been slowing, the objects released continued at relativistic speeds-annihilating cities, dams, power stations, and military bases. The rains of fire continued in pulses, timed to land as land masses rotated into range.
This gave the people of the area near what would later be called ‘first city’ time to evacuate from likely strikes, and the Emperor made absolutely certain that they did-jets were scrambled from airbases, military forces from their cantonments, civilians sometimes dragged from their homes.
The enemy, was hostile, coming on a fusion torch to attack and conquer.
Six months into the war…
The enemy had landed in the fertile plains of every landmass, they were burrowers, building their bases under the dirt as their forces swept the land before them, consuming everything in their path and leaving almost nothing alive.
“WHY???” Academician L’Sala, now safely hidden in a deep rocky mine, in the mountains near the primary military base, “Why did they attack us?”
“To colonize?” Student Konra asked, “Their fortified landing areas resemble burrowing insect colonies, and long-range camera images indicate they are either insects, or wearing armor made to resemble them.”
“Like a plague of devouring insects?” B’Nala, a biologist speculated, “Seeking out fertile ground-yes, homing in on signals to bring their colonies to inhabitable worlds...it fits.”
“The Search for Otherlife brought them here…” L’Sala nodded, “it fits-their first strike was on the Kelora continent, where the ‘big voice’ transmitter was erected by Krolor’s followers, their foolish belief that advanced societies would have given up war-”
“Not much of a war, we were fortunate, a little less warning and we would have been annihilated along with those people.” Konra commented, “it does explain the mysterious silence in the heavens though-if these aliens...these ‘H’urq’ attack every world that puts out a search signal…”
“Hammer the planet, colonize, consume, build...they’re a disease…”
B’nala scoffed, “ANY intelligent alien is going to be aggressive-Evolution shows that only predatory species can even become intelligent. The competitive pressures to create a species with interstellar capability and the patience to endure relativistic time dilation equates to hyper predatory behaviours...I’ve already briefed the General Staff and the Emperor about this-we have to beat them, or it’s extinction.”
General Staff chamber…
“...we can’t just beat them here-they came from elsewhere.” the Emperor said, “Came in on our late cousin’s signal to the stars, his foolish idealistic dream of advanced, peaceful societies lured them here, but it lured them here from somewhere else...somewhere close, if the ladies in the Science department are right.”
“How close?” a Naval general asked.
“No more than forty light years, based on the velocity they predict the aliens were traveling when we first discovered their approach.” the Emperor noted, “Assuming twenty years to accelerate, and twenty to decelerate, and my cousin’s broadcast and the probes he launched with maps back to our world? No more than twenty years away.”
“We still have to beat them here.” a Ground General pointed out, “Before we can pursue them to their nest.”
“Yes...how is that going?”
“They have what my wife calls a ‘coherent light’ weapon, Majesty-it slices through armored vehicles like rotten meat, and makes a no-fly-zone over the valleys they have occupied, while their orbiting ship has stopped all attempts at using ballistic missile weapons.”
“We’ve lost the surface fleets in their entire-but the Submarines are still capable of occasionally launching sorties.” the Naval General helpfully suggested, “And, when the mothership is over the horizon, their air-defense and antimissile defenses are degraded somewhat.”
The airforce general cleared his throat, “The Air Force may have a chance to contribute more than conscripts to the infantry...research into stealth systems and materials has gotten a few practical boosts recently...but it will be expensive and take time, and the technology-”
“Is a waste of resources if we can’t get it into the field-your ‘bent magnetic bubble’ concept strains credibility!” the Naval General scoffed.
“What would you suggest then? My soldiers fight them whenever and however we can-but there are so many and their weapons are so powerful!”
The Emperor frowned, “Build it.” he decreed. “Build your stealth aircraft, drop a fusion bomb on one of their bases. Prove it can work!” He rounded on his advisors, “This is no time for the comfort of doubt, gentlemen-we are facing an enemy that seeks to make our race extinct and take our world for their own! Anything that can hurt them, that even has a chance, must be built, and placed in the hands of warriors to fight them!”
”...Histories are often purged by successive generations, this is not only among our culture, it is a common thread across all Klingonoid and nearly-Klingonoid cultures throughout the quadrant and beyond. In the words of the Humans (the race that most closely resembles our own in nature, if not politics), ‘He who controls the past, controls the future, he who controls the present, controls the past.’ an effort was made more than half a millenia ago, during the internal strife that saw the end of the First Dynasty, to conceal, obfuscate, and destroy our past, to bring about a new ‘year zero’. Recordings, documents and images of the early Empire, including much of the war against the H’urq, were destroyed by one faction or another, each in order to ‘win’ the claim on the leadership of the Klingon people. What we have, remaining, are fragments that were overlooked, or hidden, or forgotten…the outcome is often stagnation and a loss of progress, and of course the triumph of verbal histories over factual accounts...”
-B’Sanos, Son of R’yll, member of the Klingon High Council (2403 CE)
1344 CE (earth time)
The Target was the colony infestation in the Ketha region-a zone of rolling hills and gentle, coastal plain, the enemy had landed there early in the invasion, and dug in deep.
K’rlag watched the insectoid H’urq as their forces consolidated in the remains of another village. The pattern was gruesome in it’s efficiency-their leading forces would overrun and overwhelm an area, the follow-on forces from the hive would arrive and dismantle. Animals were either killed and consumed, or penned up and moved like cattle.
This included any Klingon civilians that had failed to escape the initial wave.
“How long?” he asked his second officer, as he peered down into the valley from a hidden point.
“The strike is soon, sir, they’re waiting on our report.”
“Inform the Air Force that the enemy is consolidating at yatlhlaHbogh vengHom, they have already begun assembling perimeter defenses and I can see commandeered vehicles carrying civilians back to their landing zone for processing.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” the younger officer-from one of the island chains that did not suffer landings yet, nor suffered the horrific bombardment of the first wave, asked.
“No.” K’rlag said softly, “THe only thing we can do for them, is to stop what is happening to them-the strike is the only way.” he rolled over to look at the other man, “But maybe some will survive to be rescued once it’s done, or even escape-it’s what we can do.”
wa' mup, flying near treetop level…
‘...target confirmed, enemy forces are in consolidation mode. Observatory reports enemy mothership has dropped below the horizon.”
“Are we confirmed?”
”Wa’Mup, this is the Emperor, you are a go. Make them pay with fire from Gre’thor!!”
D’usa closed his eyes for a moment, then, he reached down, and pushed the throttles forward, the six big, twenty-bank rotary engines on the wings increased their rumble as the bomber accelerated and fought to gain altitude.
“Weapons officer, watch the scopes for enemy drones and missiles, they shouldn’t be a problem with the sea-launched ballistics coming over the horizon, but we can’t be certain…”
The plane was an older model-from the cross-continental wars of the last generation, six internal-combustion, turbocharged engines driving contrarotating propellors in pusher configuration along each main wing, which was mounted low on the bulky, blended aft -hull, the command deck set forward, and the ‘neck’ of the craft housing the bomb-bays. Turrets on the aft hull had remained, and engineering students had added turbine engines to the tips of the main wings. She was meant for high-altitude bombing runs across the pole, striking deep into the False-Emperor’s rebellious province-but that was gone now, and the mission had changed.
The twenty tonne thermonuclear bomb in the main bay was the largest ever built so far-and it required the heavy bomber to carry it. That bomber, in turn, had to carry it at far lower altitudes than she had been originally designed to fly in order to screen along behind the terrain and be difficult for the H’urq’s air-defense batteries to engage...but the women of the engineering department had tackled this challenge, modifying the strategic bomber to become a tactical weapons platform.
And there was the experimental electro-plasma device, theoretically, it could perhaps make the bomber invisible to the invaders’ sensors until they were over the target.
“Engage the Stealth Device.” he ordered, “Switch to visual navigation-our radar will not work here.”
They passed the last ridge, and were over the Ketha plain.
In the distance, lines of infrared tracer and blue ionization scattering showed the enemy’s air-defense nets were, indeed, still operational, destroying ballistic missiles launched from submarines at sea.
The bombardier announced, “Target ahead!”
“Start your calculations, bombardier, the helm is yours.”
They passed within less than a tenth of a kellikam over a convoy of vehicles taking captured civilians to the plae where the invaders would turn them to meat rations.
The stealth flickered off as the bomb bay opened, and their bomb was released, to glide in at a shallow angle before dropping it’s wing-segment and plunging into hive itself...at least, that was the theory.
The hull rang as enemy fire lanced through structure, he took the control again, and shoved the engines to full, hauling up on the twin-sticks to point the nose skyward.
The instrumentation failed with the first electromagnetic pulse, and the gamma lanced through the crew, a light shining a thousand times brighter than the sun, invisible, the aircraft transparent to it’s savagery.
Below, unseen to the crew of wa' mup, the coastal plain shuddered-nuclear fire lanced through underground corridors cut by the H’urq, shock and heat confined and propagated, the valley collapsed inward as the power source of the lander that formed the core of the hive, was pressurized into sympathetic detonation.
The enemy defense faltered and stopped as their systems overloaded and shut down explosively.
“Signal the ground attack.” the pilot wheezed, “Bomb was on target…”
As the struggling heavy bomber limped to a landing base they’d been unsure they could even reach, the land continued to collapse in the Ketha region, creating a lowland of steep hills and filthy swamps.
Over the next few weeks, the ten man crew assigned to fly the bombing mission died of radiation sickness, and the hull of the bomber was analyzed to find out what could be done to keep a crew alive after a successful mission.
There were no shortages of volunteers for follow-on missions to hit the other enemy landing sites, and the Emperor deemed all who died in those bombings to be a death in combat-and the loresingers agreed…
They died for their world, and their people.
”...many of the legends from the first war placed the Emperors in the key positions-leading the charges, battling the enemy in hand combat, defeating them with blade and muscle. The memorials to the bombers were erased along with much of the records, but even the Second Dynasty was unable to completely expunge the wa' mup’s mission, and records recovered from the Gamma Quadrant show that the enemy, at least, kept knowledge until they were themselves exterminated by the Dominion… it is very interesting that the form-factor of the heavy bomber type used, would be repeated in spirit, if not exacting detail, with the development of the D-12 class Bird of Prey...by engineers who never even knew the first successful strike happened using craft of similar layout and styling...”
-K’Ragh Son of D’Ward, “Foolish Notions”
0
Comments
The idea that Klingons like some historical revisionism strikes true with me. (Jadzia's story about Martok's wife and her family fits it.)
Also, I would assume that the Klingons didn't just steal all their technology - and even if they did, reverse engineering still requires understanding the science behind the stuff they build.
The only thing I am willing to believe about science and engineering is that they do not gain anywhere as much respect as the Klingon warriors. (Maybe this has something to do with Warriors risking their own lives to serve the Empire - the life of scientists and engineers is comparatively safe. Even if Madame Curie might point out it's not without risk.)
(And I am also willing to believe that you don't need Science Vessels in your fleet to be able to conduct scientific research and exploration. After all, the greatest Explorer ships in Starfleet were Cruisers. In canon, science vessel seemed mostly a specialized role, with less capabilities then a Cruiser - not the source of space magic that they are in STO.)
The Hard Sci-Fi take is an interesting approach. I like it. Though I must admit, it doesn't quite fit Star Trek physics. Canonically, Earth was able to build FTL engines before it seemed able to build "conventional" ships capable of near-relativistic speeds. The ancient Solar Sail ships of the Bajorans even managed to reach FTL by accident. It seems in Star Trek physics, you basically stumble upon FTL sooner than later.
Even though I didn't remember the name of the real plane, your description of the Klingon plane evoked exactly the right associations
I figure one of the biggest challenges in making a propellor based craft stealthy might be the props themselves. But if someone where to figure out how to do it, I think a species under attack by a foe with superior anti-aircraft abilities would feel the pressure to be very inventive...
Starfleet canon on the early times of any culture but the Human one is sketchy and probably inconsistent.
My favorite depiction of Klingons was still the novel from John M. Ford, which fits the TOS Klingons a lot better than the TNG/Moore Klingons ever dids. To be half-way consistent, we have to assume a lot of shifts in culture and politics, I think. (And it feels kinda worth uniting these disparate aspects, since both Klingon depictions had cool elements.)
And, like Patrick, I can't swallow the notion of an entire society of star-going barbarians. Without advanced technological capabilities, they would be unable to even maintain stolen starships, much less build new ones. I'd figured our skewed view of Klingon society might have something to do with the fact that almost every on-screen Klingon has been a member of their warrior caste, and that other castes of society might have different priorities. Then again, I've never really subscribed to the whole Planet of Hats idea...
Adding my two cents to the discussion: It's not altogether implausible that a culture would glorify and to an extent emphasize 'honorable combat' with antique weapons (in other words, bat'leths
One possibility could be that it used to be somewhere between Andorians and modern-day Klingons (feudal Japan, maybe?) until something, like the Hur'q invasion, caused a rapid militarization. (Or, as Jon said, our view may have been excessively skewed by almost exclusively seeing the warriors with virtually no other Klingons.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I felt the 'barbarian' line was a bit of Federation propaganda - we do usually see Klingon warriors on screen, and less of the other parts of society - never even a mention of what a Klingon shipyard looks like. There have been naval military traditions in Earth history where the commanders and the engineers were of separate social classes and even didn't dine together, besides working to get ships where they needed to, and had a similar 'disdain' of the people who actually made the ship's work versus the fighting. Building and running them were important, but not work of the nobility.
And then the Federation Diplomatic Corps exaggerated everything.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Their science may have slowed down compared to Eurasia, but the same can be said of the pre-colonization Americas - and as more 'honorably victorious' technologies popped up, like the aircraft and armored vehicles seen in Patrick's story, they would be adopted and pave the way for more advanced stuff like starships, with one's definition of honorable combat broadening over time. If you isolated Japan from the rest of the world in that era and inflated it to planetary scales... it could work. Drawing on the Japan comparison again, the Japanese were capable of modernizing in a fairly decent amount of time once they broke their self-imposed isolation again; it wouldn't be much of a stretch for a Cold War-era Qo'noS to advance to a warp-capable civilization once provoked by the Hur'q, especially if their survival depended on it.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I am not convinced in hard-sci-fi, the logistics of warfare to conquer a world would ever work out - the investment into such warfare seems crazy, but Star Trek science might offer... "shortcuts" that just don't exist in real life.
Actually, the way I remember it, nobody really cared either way. It was just casually mentioned; you may be thinking about Trevana's hostile attitude to the player, instead.
Other than that, your explanation seems pretty logical and consistent. I like it.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
I liked the little detail with how the lasers couldn't become effective because the targeting wasn't good enough and the enemy ship's spinning hulls (for artificial gravity) made them unable to maintain their target. A good detail.
The sociological challenges of a century long war are interesting, and I think the Emperor's "quotas" or something like that would be natural outgrowth. (Even in just 6 years of WW2, Germany strongly encouraged women to have children and presented the soldier-bearing mother as the female ideal. And of course, more women in the workforce are also a quite normal thing to happen when the men are send to fight wars.)
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
And it isn't just the efficiency of shields that impressive - ships have known to survive direct torpedo hits even without shields. The bigger surprise is that a ship's warp core explosion isn't already an extinction level event when it happens in orbit. Because you might excuse starships be made from space-material-from-the-future - but planets shouldn't be.
SIFs are awesome apparently. Maybe that was Beverly's day job in the All Good Things future - doing post-Praxis style environmental cleanup of warp core explosions?
(Heck, even an impulse reactor overload is seriously bad news - rigging one is apparently a decent sized fusion bomb).
To ask something on the story, if it hasn't come up yet: Have the Hurq brought any serious equipment with them to land? I can understand the Klingon interest in closing the weaponry gap, and the lack of communication is certainly a factor on reverse engineering factory equipment versus copying concepts , but a slowboat interstellar invasion is a pretty impressive achievement, industrially.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Even Star Trek considers the problems with trying to conquer a planet on occasion. C.f. Bajor, as described in the Terok Nor novel trilogy. The Cardassians were originally invited in to protect Bajor from a Tzenkethi invasion (which was actually a false-flag attack carried out by Dukat) and quickly overstayed their welcome. Meanwhile the Central Command was overconfident and distracted: They never really took the Resistance seriously enough (reference the downplayment in Kira Nerys's Cardassian dossier), plus they were simultaneously fighting border conflicts with the Talarians and the Federation. And their haphazard and heavy-handed attempts to deal with the Resistance just made everything worse. So the difficulties of fighting fifty-odd years of insurgency eventually gave the figurehead Cardassian civilian government enough political leverage to get the Central Command to call it quits. But by that point the planet was in absolute ruins and would likely have fallen into civil war had the Federation not agreed to intervene (and nearly did anyway in season 2).
Basically, think Afghanistan during and after the Soviet invasion but before the American invasion, except minus the CIA funding the mujaheddin.
What happens in other cases is, I think, that the planetary government tends to cut their losses and surrender once the enemy achieves space superiority, because at that point they've got a lot of serious advantages. To continue the Honorverse analogy, that 'verse's Eridani Edict describes the rules of war for capturing planets: you're not permitted to glass an inhabited world but you can use precision orbital bombardment (with kinetic strikes) against military or government targets. And in the case of the First Manticore-Havenite War, most Havenite worlds would rather work with Manticore anyway rather than deal with Haven's human rights abuses and pillaging of their economies.
The weird ones are places like Masada, which basically turned into Space Somalia after Manticore captured it after The Short Victorious War (mainly from abused wives murdering their husbands because Masada sucks).
ETA: Anyway. The thing I'm liking about this story is that it also provides some good explanations for modern Klingon culture. They were at war with the H'urq for so long that they collectively plain forgot there even could be a non-war mindset. I guess my Bajoran analogy was even closer to the mark than I thought: the Klingons are maybe something like what the Bajorans could've become if the Federation hadn't moved in.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The analogy I'd use, would be likening the first instance to an adult meeting someone, getting into a relationship, setting up home together, and then having their partner becoming abusive and violent... The second instance, would be of a child who gets r@ped not just by a house-invader, but several house-invaders. Who keep coming back...
The child in the second instance, is going to have a much harder time trusting anyone, and so will be hostile toward any outsiders, where the adult in the abusive relationship, will at least have the perspective of healthy relationships to know that not all relationships are abusive, and that just because their last relationship was bad, that doesn't mean the next one will be...
In terms of not only joining the galactic community, but the impact to their own society, the Klingons really got the sh*t-end of the stick, and Patrick has really captured that notion perfectly
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I can work with Vulcan characters any day of the week, but working with Romulan characters really does show that there're not only two sides to every story, but that there doesn't necessarily have to be a 'wrong side', simply a case of each scenario being right for each group
Though it should be noted they more or less the Romulans fell all over each other into wars once they found a nice ecosystem. The structures that evolved to hold society together hold a lot to the Sundering, but they didn't really 'take' at first.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Because to me, as a woman: it would mean contributing toward survival of the entire species and honor the future to bear children....at the same time as working on projects and ideas to advance technology, too. (Maybe even a show of loyalty to the Emperor?)
Honor doesn't only have to come from victory in battle, in this scenario. And people will contribute in all the ways they can. Including, continuing work, while pregnant.
Unless there is new technology where children are grown in an artificial environment... or inside a male of the species. Don't dismiss the important contribution of a woman and her womb. And think! A woman's life does not end because she is having a child....especially in the war situation you have created.
After decades of war...SURVIVAL comes first...there wouldn't be a second thought of sexual preferences. And with people dying all around, it wouldn't be about capability or long term or even about raising your own children.
I believe it would be very easy to find a nursemaids and guardians that would step up and take care of someone else's children, even orphaned children, for that matter, while parents made their contributions in battle. It would be an honor to be entrusted with the future, too.
Like I said, honor doesn't only come from victories in battle. And glory can come from nurturing the future....especially if a child you raised can "bring it".
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
And the indicators of the Klingons coming from a 'poor' region of space referenced in TOS as more a result of Hur'q's mindless attacks versus the subtle implications of mis-management from the Communist stand-ins is done delicately and very well.
This remains a deep and thoughtful look at a culture in transition, what it loses and what it gains, and what lessons were kept as lessons versus simply the way of doing things.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!