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Excerpt from History Of Freespace:
Chapter 1: A New Frontier
In the year 2313, everyone was living as they were 300 years before then. Sure, the compact disks were smaller, the flatscreen TVs were a bit flatter, and life was a bit more technologically advanced. However, there was still crime, rivaling political ideals, taxes, disease, and long, hard days of labor. However, this minimal technological progress between 2000 and 2313 was mainly due to one fact. Man realized that the only way to make giant leaps in technology and to have significant military advantage over rival countries was to launch their empires into space. All scientists had their hands full with this task. Construction on a large-scale space station began. The result was the UEI Arcadia. The technological masterpiece was completed in 2195 by the United Powers of Europe. It served as an operating station for all space exploration activities. The massive space station was three kilometers long and had plasma defensive turrets incase it was attacked by a rival country’s space missile. The Arcadia also served as a shipyard, producing the first cruiser class warship, the UEC Fenris. The Fenris was originally built to orbit the moon and monitor it from close range. It was about 500 meters (about 1500 feet) long, and weighed a whopping 180 tons if it were to land on Earth (which it couldn’t do). The Fenris proved to be a spectacular success, and many more were built. However, under the nose of the UPE, danger was lurking.
China had secretly built its’ own spacefleet of copied Fenris designs. The UPE responded by building hundreds of small ships, known as “fighters” which were no more than 10 meters long. Fighters were armed with forward-facing plasma cannons and were manned by one pilot. They also carried a secondary armament of missiles. Some heat-seeking, some aspect-locking, and some dumbfires. China responded by building its own fightercraft, and other world powers such as the US and Russia built spacefeets. Cold war dominated the next 118 years as the countries built up their forces. The cogs and gears of destiny were set into motion.
Chapter 2: Unification Wars
You may have wondered why I mentioned the year 2313 previously. The fact of the matter is that that day could possibly have been the most important day in Terran history. That day marked the discovery of subspace.
The story goes like this: A US science cruiser, the USSC Joule, was patrolling deep in the solar system when it stumbled upon bizarre sensor reading. Scientific analysis concluded that the area contained an invisible wormhole, or a place where an object can warp from one fixed point in the universe to another one. After nearly one year of specially engineering the Joule’s engines, it was ready to test out this bizarre natural phenomenon. The Joule warped into a strange, shifting blue corridor, later to be known as subspace. After traveling for a few minutes in this twisted dimension, it was pulled out of subspace and deposited near the star Delta Serpentis.
Earth was in jubilation! Never before had they even thought of leaving the Sol system! Traveling to Delta Serpentis by conventional methods would take over 90,000,000,000 years with even in the fastest spacecraft, but thanks to subspace nodes, Earth could span this great distance in mere minutes. Obviously, they couldn’t travel just anywhere, as they had to use an already existing jump node to travel in. No one is sure how subspace nodes came to be, but scientists believe it is a natural, randomly occurring phenomena. Delta Serpentis had loads of fueling gas near the star. This gas is very valuable, as it is used to power most space faring vessels. On Earth, fueling gas had to be man made and was very costly and scarce, but in Delta Serpentis, the gas was all pre-made and ready for collecting. As nations set their eyes hungrily on this new resource, scientists found a way to actually open a rift in subspace, and use it to travel short distances within a particular star system. This made it easier for vessels to jump from planet-to-planet without actually traveling the distance. These became known as intra-system jumps. Long distance jumps from star-to-star using a pre-existing jump node came to be known as inter-system jumps. Scientists started research on a form of jumping from system to system by just creating your own rift, but they soon found out that only short distance intra-system jumps were possible.
This, of course, made the jump node out of Sol of extreme strategic importance, since there was no other way to reach Delta Serpentis to harvest its rich gas. World war soon broke out, with the jump node as prize. The world realized that the only way to create a successful inter-stellar society, Earth must unify into one nation. After 2 years of fierce fighting, the United European Powers allied themselves with the America’s. The nations designed and began construction on a super-ship, a vessel that could decisively nullify any threats against it. The Euro-American alliance quickly eliminated all other country’s spacefleets within one year. The war was surprisingly quick for the Euro-Americans, as their secret weapon was not even completed yet! After a few months of putting down riots and rebel groups, the Euro-American alliance now ruled the entire planet. The government renamed themselves the Galactic Terran Alliance. The new government was run exactly like the old United States government. A democracy by the people and for the people. In September of 2319, the mega-warship was finally completed. The GTD Orion was crowned as flagship of the immense GTA fleet. The destroyer-class vessel was a bit over two kilometers long, and was packed to the gills with death dealing turrets. The image of the ship alone sent chills down the spines of rebel groups planning revolt. This would secure the new government’s military power and discourage rebel activity. The GTA was here to stay.
