The Interplanetary Wars

Interplanetary Wars

The interplanetary wars were the single largest conflict in Earth's human history in terms of sheer firepower and personnel deployed, although the number of fatalities was far lower than the Terran Hegemony Wars. While the Alpha Centauri Incidents technically involved more powerful nations, in practice even during the Third Battle of Alpha centauri the sheer travel time involved in getting to the star system and the multiplicity of interstellar interests both sides had to take care of (not to mention the fact that those conflicts never touched Sol itself) severely limited the number of ships and people involved.

The war began when the Pan-Asian Confederacy made demands that the moon of Jupiter Europa be turned over to their government for the purposes of establishing a fueling and unrep outpost for their commercial and military interests in the outer solar system, as the United Interstellar States and European Federation had just signed the Comprehensive Outer Space Cooperation Agreement, which allowed both militaries to use the others' facilities and fleet basis, as well as banning their own enemies' from using the other's. Since the UIS had banned the Pan-Asian Confed from refueling and doing business with their own facilities years ago, this effectively banned the Confederacy from all ports beyond the orbit of Mars, as the UIS and the EuroFed had claimed every single usable moon, asteroid and planet during the Great Space Rush.

The EuroFed refused…so the Confederacy set up a refueling station anyway, arguing that the European Federation had no claim to the moon, and did not even have any facilities on its surface or in orbit.

The European Federation Star Navy (EFSN) dispatched Task Force Echo, a small detachment taken from the third fleet, formally known as the Jovian Fleet, to Europa to end the illegal occupation. Assembled around the Starfire-class battleship Astral Starfire, the task force was a mix of light escort vessels such as frigates and a handful of light cruisers.

Task Force Echo was met by a squadron of cruiser of the Pan-Asian Confederacy Navy's (PACN) Outer System Fleet. Both sides exchanged messages and warning shots, but neither was willing to back down.

On the 23rd of January, 2081, Task Force Echo opened fire on the PACN squadron. In less than thirty minutes every Confederacy ship was destroyed, but so were most of the Task Force's escort ships, and the Astral Starfire was heavily damaged. A small detachment of marines was sent to secure the station, and the ships called for reinforcements.

Less than three hours later, the rest of the PACN Outer System Fleet arrived, and opened fire on the remnants of Task Force Echo. The PACN admiral commanding the fleet then sent an ultimatum to the EFSN Jovian Fleet admiral to stand down until they had both heard from their respective political commanders.

The EFSN admiral however had his standing orders, not to mention several thousand dead spacers, and launched his entire fleet at the enemy's.

The clash that resulted saw no winner. Both fleets limped from the battle, severely diminished. The EFSN Jovian Fleet had effectively lost all of its carriers, and all but one of its battlecruisers, not to mention half of its escorts.

But the PACN Outer System Fleet had lost every single battleship and battlecruiser it possessed, and only had a handful of carriers left, although it still retained a relatively high numbers of lighter ships, notably its ever so resilient Huǒyànjiàn-class heavy cruisers.

The EFSN fleet retreated to the closest anchorage, the UISN Io naval base while the PACN vessels limped back to Earth.

The PACN Belt fleet however was immediately ordered to finish off the Jovian fleet before the EFSN could send reinforcements. It was quickly estimated that they could not force a missile engagement with the EFSN before they entered the anchorage, despite the relatively low acceleration of the vessels as they refused to abandon their damaged siblings, and thus the protection of its mighty defensive batteries -not to mention risking the wrath of the UIS. Thus a long range bomber and fighter strike was decided.

On paper, it was a good idea. The squadron officers were thoroughly briefed, and carefully instructed to not engage the UISN base unless fired upon, and their firepower was such -the belt fleet had three times as many carriers as the outer system fleet ever had, not to mention several super carriers- that victory was practically assured.

Unfortunately, no one thought to brief the grunts who actually manned the squadrons' guns. Space fighters and bombers were, after all, not the single or two seat crafts used in Earth's atmosphere. They were mamoth ships, the size of entire buildings, the only crafts capable of carrying weapons with the endurance and power to actually damage the kilometers long capital ships used in space warfare. Some of the strategic bombers used in the strike were even larger, a few of the newer ones being closer to some corvettes in size at a hundred meters long.

So, when the fighter strike neared the EFSN fleet, dangerously close to the anchorage, going as stealthily as possible, and the UIS sent a group of escorts to investigate the anomaly, a gunner panicked when they were pinged with targeting scanners, and fired.

The UISN immediately opened fire, but a handful of frigates had no hope of survival against the combined squadrons of three super carriers and a dozen smaller carriers.

But the naval base very much did. Its long range defenses retaliated before the frigates had even finished exploding, and the entire UISN Io fleet sortied.

The strike craft squadrons suddenly didn't face a crippled fleet with at best a few half destroyed battleships, but an entire UISN naval base and its fleet, spearheaded by six super carriers and a stars damned dreadnought.

They didn't even live long enough to fire their short range missiles.

This incident exploded. The UIS media spun it as a new Pearl Harbor, and the approaching legislative elections made the response a campaign issue for the current President. And while the bureaucracy effectively ran the entire UIS had turned him into their puppets, even they needed figureheads…and couldn't fully ignore the sheer indignation rising, not to mention the threat to their own commercial interests in the outer solar system.

So when the European Federation demanded explanations, the UIS followed.

In response, the Pan-Asian Confed declared war against the EuroFed…and the UIS declared war against the PAC.

The war lasted for over a decade, with various truce, armistices and other pauses in between. The war threatened to spin out of control at several points as more and more nations joined in against the UIS and the European Federation, clamoring for a stake in the bounty of the solar system as well. This culminated in the Second Battle of Luna, where the Combined Coalition Fleet, composed of elements from the Pan-Asian Confederacy Navy, the Indian-Oceanian Commonwealth Navy, the Martian Republican Navy, the Ottoman Directorate Navy, the Brazilian Conglomerate Navy and various ships from revolutionary movements in the outer system met the combined UISN and EFSN fleets.

By tacit agreement, neither side's Earth based home fleets, defensive installations (notably the EuroFed's terrifying Planetary Defence Centers, whose railguns and missiles could hit target in lunar orbit) and strike craft squadrons intervened in the battle to avoid a full scale strategic engagement on humanity's homeworld.

It was, by sheer number of ships and tonnage involved, the single largest space battle in human history. Over five hundred capital ships and nearly ten thousand escort vessels fought in an engagement that saw enough nuclear warheads detonated to scour the Earth's surface clean of human life three times over.

The UISN and the EFSN emerged victorious. Not by much, but they were the undisputed winners. The entire coalition fleet was either captured or destroyed. No vessels escaped the cataclysmic clash, due to the coalition fleet engaging at a low velocity to court a fight to the finish.

Despite their victory however, the EuroFed and the UIS were left exhausted. The war effort had taken much out of their economy, and there were increasing calls to bring it to an end. After all, they were fighting for a handful of moons and asteroids they hadn't even colonized !

So a peace treaty was signed. In it, the European Federation and the UIS ceded a substantial amount of moons and asteroids in the solar system. In exchange however the other nations acknowledged the sovereignty in perpetuity of both powers' remaining holdings, and agreed to a certain number of restrictions on outer solar system military deployments.

This war caused the military alliance between the European Federation and the United Interstellar States that endured (at least on paper) when Alexandra was precipitated into hyperspace. Originally made to prevent the Pan Asian Confederacy and their allies from demanding more territorial concessions, it evolved into an informal agreement that both powers would protect one another from enemies in the solar system, but anything else was fair game.

One of the war's interesting consequences was the rush for the outermost bodies of the solar system which resulted in the creation of the settlements that were subsequently left to fend for themselves when hyperspace was discovered, and banded together to create the Outer System Republic and launched the Arcstar attack.