Imperial History - Pre-War

Most historians accept the traditional view of human origins as being at least largely correct, that humans evolved on Terra (2F0:2E7:82-412-3). Alternative theories put our home in many other places, and many historians believe that humans were seeded across the galaxy by another, older race. While these theories all have evidence to support them, none has proven compelling, and it is as certain as anything in history that the current Imperial Government has its historical roots on Terra.

Origins

The history of ancient Terra is fraught with problems of interpretation. While records from this period are actually quite good, verifying them as authentic can be extremely difficult since there have been many politically-motivated attempts to alter history. Archaeology is of little help in resolving these disputes, because of the scale of destruction on Terra during the Great War. We do know that humans first expanded beyond Terra in Imperial Years -7637 to -7582. Terra at this time was divided between many small powers, who had organized themselves into two major power blocs, divided along cultural and racial lines. Many of these original divisions persist to degrees even today.

The western bloc, led by two territories named Europe and the American Union, manifested a culture oriented towards individuals and derived mostly from lighter-skinned races, although also including a large portion descended from eastern immigrants. The eastern bloc, led by a territory named China, was collectivist in orientation and somewhat less diverse in racial terms. There were also a number of smaller territories, whose alignment with and independence from the two major blocs varied with time. Trade was dominated and regulated by large planet-spanning corporations, whose power rivalled those of any territory.

The two blocs established separate colonies in space and on other planets of the system. Various smaller powers and private corporations also managed to found a few small colonies, mostly in larger asteroids. By IY-7500, the list of separate territories in space had grown larger than that of Terra. They interacted little with each other and most remained tied closely to their host territories on Terra. Two exceptions to this were the Martian colony of New Mecca, and the Mercury colony of Prometheus. These established themselves as free and open ports, and were driven by trade. Other colonies justified themselves as scientific bases, penal settlements, mining outposts, tourist resorts and ideological ventures. Many were driven more by political concerns than practical, and ultimately failed.

Early Space Travel

At this early date, space travel consisted of simple rocket-driven ships, most of which could only accelerate directly for brief periods and then would coast on freefall trajectories from point to point. Journeys between settlements took months or years and trade and travel were only made practical by extensive use of off-planet supply bases and stations.

Taking advantage of the political and technological landscape, some early adventurers took to piracy. These were a varied group, many from the smaller powers of Terra and some from colonies. They were very difficult to identify, executing hit-and-run raids against easy targets for equipment and supplies. In several cases they wiped out entire settlements, leaving no witnesses. Colonists became concerned with self-defence and started arming themselves, and their supporting governments on Terra tried to act against the pirates, but direct action proved difficult and counter-productive. The blocs grew suspicious of each other and commissioned privateers to hunt out and destroy pirate bases. These were rarely successful, and when the blocs raised colonial taxes to pay for them many of the colonies rebelled and declared independence.

The Unification War

The independence movement was not originally violent, but probably destined to in the power vacuum left after cutting off ties from Terra. Colonies competed for access to stations, and to some rare resources. Most colonies were not self-supporting even with such access, increasing the stakes for them and driving alliances with stronger powers (most of which were Terran-based). Many colonists were also populated by political migrants with strong ideologies that tended to clash, and some (such as the early Spartans) were openly militant. Terran reaction to the indepence movement fuelled the drive to war, too. The blocs and some of the smaller territories depended on resources from the colonies to maintain their industries, and they saw independence as an intolerable ongoing threat.

Originally the eastern and western blocs united against the independents, but friction arose between and within the blocs because the pirates and privateers tended to be from particular Terran groups aligned with some of their members. One notorious example was a pirate ring called the Doolittles, run by refugees from an island territory called Guam. These preyed exclusively on ships and colonies aligned with the eastern bloc. Although western leaders desperately wanted to rein them in, this proved impossible as they had strong support within many of the western member territories. With numerous such splits occurring in both blocs, eventually the eastern bloc turned against the western and took matters into its own hands.

At first the war was a very low-key affair with little damage or loss of life, but it quickly escalated. Troops attacked and occupied some of the more prominent colonies, hoping to frighten the rest into capitulation. However, since the pirates and privateers operated from bases beyond these colonies, no problems were solved. Thus, the independents had little reason to back down. The involvement of private corporations also complicated matters, prolonging the war. These operated both directly and indirectly to support and oppose various colonial groups and Terran powers, effectively fighting proxy wars among themselves both to gain power directly and to trade with the various militaries.

This corporate aspect led to a major turn in the course of human history, when one consortium bribed its way to take near-total control of the government of one of the semi-independent territories of Terra, called Australia — for all practical purposes buying it. This provided a Terran base and trading centre both for the corporation itself and for pirate groups allied with it. After this, the war could no longer be kept entirely in space, and its course became very difficult to follow. Bloc militaries struggled to shut down trade through Australia. Corporations allied, jostled and betrayed each other and the territorial powers to get a bigger slice of the pie. Pirates became bolder and more colonies declared independence, seeking to free themselves from Terra's internal problems.

Terra had long had planet-side conflicts between its territories, but while it was never entirely at peace these bush wars rarely erupted into large-scale conflicts. With extra fuel from the independence battles, those small wars spread ith devastating consequences. Australia suffered badly, its cities and space facilities being destroyed by repeated nuclear bombing from enemy corporations and the eastern bloc. Western powers retaliated, driven by cultural and corporate ties, and the spreading war became total. The list of destroyed cities quickly grew: Shanghai, Lhasa, Diego Garcia, Denver, Miami, Nairobi and more. When the war ended, after twelve years, the blocs had been torn apart, their capitols and government structure smashed.

With the Terran threat gone, the last of the colonies declared themselves independent and the major surviving corporations began to base themselves in space. The balance of power had now swung decisively to their side, and they used their position to force peace upon the territories of Terra. The final form of the peace settlement came in the historic Treaty of New Mecca. Among hundreds of lesser protocols it specified several major principles which, with only slight modifications, have dictated the shape of all human society since:

• All colonies would remain independent of Terra and of each other.
• The government of Terra would be unified.
• Corporations could exist independently of planetary governments and outside their control, and could operate their own colonies and bases.
• An umbrella treaty organization, the Terran Union, would bring together leaders of governments and corporations to decide common matters, and all would contribute to a common collective force to enforce those decisions.

In retrospect, it was easy to see the origins of the Unification War in the inherent difficulty of managing colonies across space. Thus, the Treaty of New Mecca can be seen as articulating the fundamental principles necessary to maintain a space-going society, in particular stating a doctrine of separation so that even now governments and organizations are either planet-side or interplanetary. The treaty also formalized the role of corporations and other space-based organizations.

Expansion of the Terran Union

Once reorganized, the new Terran Union proved to be considerably more flexible and adaptable than the old national governments, and the pace of human expansion exploded. The corporations eagerly encouraged all space exploration efforts, since the one invariable result of them was an increase in business. With no more wars to fight amongst themselves, the old territories of Terra had to find new ways to divert the energies of their peoples, and they had more money to do so. Colonizing space often came to be seen as the only way to preserve their identities, so many of them established colonization ventures.

Once the major planets and planetoids of Sol had all been colonized, pressure grew to continue onwards. The first effort at interstellar travel consisted of building "generation ships" which were essentially larger versions of the primitive inter-planetary transports known then. They would accelerate at low rates for relatively short intervals, then drift to their destination systems over the course of many dozens or even hundreds of years. Fourteen of these were known to have been built, but only two are known to have arrived.

Real progress at interstellar travel came somewhat later, when engineering advances allowed the creation of ultra-high-impulse efficient rockets. These allowed starships to drive under direct acceleration halfway towards their target, at which point they would flip and decelerate for the remainder of the distance. For systems too far away for constant acceleration, they could also drift part of the way while at high velocity. Voyages now took years instead of generations, limited only by fuel capacity and the difficulties of maintaining life support for long intervals. The first few such ships reached nearby systems easily, and later versions grew to have reaches of up to twenty or thirty light years.

The structure of this expanded Terran Union remained essentially the same as that of the earlier Union. It was necessarily a very loose organization, with cooperation and trade only on practical matters and that driven by the corporations. The politics of the Union altered subtly to become somewhat feudal. Member worlds and colonies would pool resources so that every established star system maintained its own fleet. An entire new class of humanity developed; the crew of the starships and their families, who spent their whole lives travelling at relativistic speeds between planets without ever calling any home. These inter-related clans ultimately became the Spacers, but in their early days they were much more fragmented and had yet to develop a common culture.

The Human Federation

This pattern of expansion continued largely uninterrupted and without significant historical events until the discovery of collapsar travel. Collapsars, or "black holes," had been known in theory since ancient days but were first encountered in reality as the Terran Union expanded. After generations of study and technical advance, scientists first managed to send robot probes through them in IY-7308, and the first successful human transit came in -7304. Early attempts at collapsar travel were only slightly better than suicide, but with improved knowledge and technology they gradually became only moderately dangerous. Death rates in the first days of c-tunnel travel averaged 87%; centuries later, at its peak, they averaged around 14%. While never a remotely safe way to travel, they did tremendously expand the range of settlement possibilities. The technical advances which made it possible to transit c-tunnels also made possible faster and better direct-drive ships. The settled volume of human space gradually expanded, and new spheres of settlement expanded around the endpoints of known traversible c-tunnels.

The discovery of c-tunnels also forced another change in the way humans governed ourselves. While the essential organization of the Terran Union was sound and could be extended to stars beyond c-tunnels, a majority of the corporations and governments making up the Union refused to have anything to do with c-tunnel travel because of the risks. Newer and bolder groups seized the possibilities and gained the rewards. The new c-tunnel colonies organized themselves into the Human Federation, in which the Terran Union was formally only one "sphere" - a new term denoting volumes of space within which direct-drive travel was practical. Relations between the Union and Federation were complex at first, and often strained.

First Contact

Humans first discovered alien life while exploring the New Lands sphere, one of two connected to the Terran Union. The alien species they found were mostly immobile and plant-like, although a few planets had animals. Even this low level of life was very rare, and we came to expect all future contact would be as risk-free and peaceful.

Crucians were first contacted in IY-7099 in the Frontier Zone, and immediately dispelled this impression. While relations at first were peaceful, they were never friendly. From the beginning the Crucians aggressively marked and defended territory they considered their own, and since their physical requirements were very similar to ours, humans territory would inevitably overlap with theirs. In their first two encounters, at Iliad and Blast Mountain, humans and Crucians avoided conflict as one side abandoned the planet to the other. Later, another group of colonists decided not to avoid the Crucian presence on their destination world and established themselves, calling their new colony "Five Canal". The reaction of the Crucians hardly needs repeating; they shortly attacked, starting the Great War.