Well this was supposed to be done Monday, but we are busy working on the layout of Interceptor and I got delayed. This week we’ll highlight the warlike Terran Commonwealth, far different from the peaceful government of the Old Commonwealth from which they came.

Terran Commonwealth

With the Vanishing, a large portion of the Old Commonwealth’s government was gone and there were many who were waiting to step into the power vacuum, creating inevitable conflicts. As more worlds seceded, the Sky Marshal Nwabudike and a cabal of other marshals called for the use of force in recapturing these systems, or preventing them from seceding in the first place. This use of force led to a series of violent conflicts and hastened the pace of the secession, and to a series defeats that left Marshal Nwabudike dishonored and humiliated.

In Commonwealth Standard Year 366, the government of the Terran Commonwealth had begun discussing dissolution. By this time, a new Sky Marshal Nwabudike had risen through the ranks, seeking to restore both his father’s honor and that of the Terran Commonwealth. With the backing of the other Sky Marshals, they led a successful coup and replaced the government.

Sky Marshal Nwabudike, as head of the Tribunal, formed a new Ministry of Civil Affairs to handle the day-to-day governance of the people. As head of the Ministry and Tribunal of Marshals, he gave himself the new title of Sky Marshal Terra. Among his first acts in power was to begin, in secret, the construction of the Leviathans.

The Leviathan Doctrine, as he called it, was to build a ship that could travel between prime worlds providing its own gate and carrying the support craft for an invasion. One of the difficulties in traveling by gate and jump drive was the nature of the aetherstream. Two ships could go through a gate or jump for the same destination at the exact same time and arrive minutes, hours, or at the extreme days apart.

Because of that unreliability, attacking a system was difficult, and the largest ships had been carriers, which could use fighter wings to hold off attackers until more support ships could appear through the gate. Sometimes this worked, but often times it didn’t. System defense ships and local interceptors could quickly overwhelm an invading force.

The Leviathan Terra, first of the leviathans, is a massive ship that carried several fighter wings, and docking points for its own fleet. Along the spine of the ship is a mass driver firing guided shells at a considerable percentage of light-speed, capable of destroying ships, stations, and colonies from far away.

Whether Sky Marshal Terra’s new doctrine on warfare proves successful or not has yet to be decided, but one thing that does not is his current popularity among the Terrans. The Tribunal has effectively used jingoism, along with the benefits of wartime production to whip the people of the Terran Commonwealth into a nationalistic fervor. The successful invasion of the Callistonian Empire’s Nirvana Cluster has proven that it is possible to invade and control a cluster.

While the Leviathan Doctrine has been given a lot of credit for the early success of the Terran Commonwealth’s invasions, the fighter remains one of the key components to the Commonwealth’s success. Small, fast, and powerful, they can be used to destroy ships, control movement throughout a system, and escort landing ships. A fighter squadron can set up a base nearly anywhere. The Terran Commonwealth’s Fighter Command still knows who does the hard work, and at the end of the day know that these new leviathans are nothing but glorified carriers.