Chapter Twenty-Six: Epilogue
Tale of the Sol Dominion
Chapter Twenty-Six: Epilogue
Almost the Rest of History: 2454 to 3840
After the Triech Technocracy's defeat, the Dominion stood unchallenged in its supremacy over what remained of the galaxy. They controlled literally half the galaxy and were slowly relieving their xeno residents of their independence and enslaving them all.
Over the course of the next few decades, the Dominion would rapidly expand against multiple enemies.
The Galactic Xeltek Regime would be the next to feel the Dominion's fury. Isolated on the edge of the galactic rim with no allies or diplomatic relationships thanks to decades of work by Dominion intelligence to keep them isolated from all other powers, the Xeltek found themselves facing the full might of the Dominion military in 2460. Within the space of five years, over half their territory had been occupied and they were forced to surrender all occupied territory to Dominion control.
With the loss of over half their territory, the Xeltek descended into civil war and would not recover until the Dominion's second invasion forced them to put aside their differences. Not that it made much difference, in the end. By 2480, the Xeltek Regime was gone and its people were scattered across the Dominion as slaves.
In 2468, the Dominion began a campaign against the Fareen Unity. A barbaric hive mind in the outer rim, the Unity nevertheless maintained a defensive pact with the System Alliance which would extend the war quite a bit. By 2510, the Dominion would be able to rout the Alliance and Unity fleets and occupy roughly 1/3 of the Fareen Unity's territory but unrest on several frontier colonies forced the Dominion to sue for peace before achieving all their war aims.
This war would cement a bitter rivalry between the Alliance and the Dominion and result in a violent arms race by the Alliance to try and overtake the Dominion on the field. The Dominion would wage several more wars against the Fareen Unity and System Alliance over the next few centuries but it would take more than a thousand years before they were finally subdued.
2510 would see one of the Dominion's most secret projects finally bear fruit as Project Colossus concluded with the development of the Spear of Terra, a devastating weapon capable of deploying swarms of nanobots onto inhabited worlds to purge the population but leave the planetary infrastructure intact.
The first test was conducted in a remote system deep in the core of Dominion territory. Within the region of space that had once belonged to the Dethakkan Berserkers lay a planet of industrial age primitives long under observation by the Dominion. The planet was deemed of limited strategic importance to the Dominion but it had a large enough population to test their new weapon.
In 2540, the Dominion would finally begin their campaign against their one truly hated adversary: the Valdari Temple of Renewal. The Valdari had once almost been considered a friend and were a valued trading partner before they betrayed the Dominion and proved why xenos cannot be trusted.
When the war began against the Valdari and their northern ally, the Valdari and Shipping Company fleets were largely unmanned and at their peacetime stations. The Valdari only had a handful of colonies and limited defensive fortifications. The naval engagements were of limited scope and the Dominion swiftly seized the majority of their territory but several colonies presented significant resistance.
Still, by 2570, both enemies had been fully conquered and were annexed by the Dominion, bringing an end to several more galactic powers in the process. The next few decades were a cascade of suppressing rebellions across the frontier and annexing various splinter states that had broken away from the Dominion's former enemies.
In 2650, the Dominion's attention was drawn to the Hesukar Foundation and the Confederation of Nuur. A military coup in the Confederation had resulted in the establishment of a military dictatorship which had dissolved their alliance and gone to war with the Hesukar. After a decade of war, the Confederation successfully took over the entirety of their former ally.
Following this, the new Nuurian dictatorship felt the need to consolidate its power with a war of conquest. So, in 2664 they launched a sudden attack on the Dominion. With Dominion forces concentrated elsewhere and the region largely ungarrisoned, the Nuurians seized several dozen systems before the fleet was able to respond.
Unlike previous conflicts, this one proved to have quite a few long-lasting consequences. The war lasted for almost sixty years and, by the time it ended, the national assembly's power had begun to wane significantly in favor of the army officers who had actually fought in the war.
In the long term, the political consequences of this would lead to several devastating civil conflicts and nearly destroy the Dominion but, for the time being, the Dominion was able to push back the Nuurians and reclaim their lost territories. They were not, however, able to take any territory from the Confederation before provincial unrest forced them to make peace.
In 2730, another war broke out between the Dominion and the Fareen Unity. Proclaiming the Dominion's rule of their territory illegal, the Fareen Unity and the System Alliance had joined together, launching a surprise attack into Dominion space. They occupied over three dozen systems before the Dominion fleets could respond. And even when the Dominion fleet was able to launch an attack, a series of hit and run attacks, fusion torch directed asteroids and suicide strike crafts combined with a growing complacency at the highest level of naval command resulted in the Dominion fleet struggling to take control of the war.
After twenty years and several of the most humiliating military defeats since the Arcadian Rebellion of 2337, the Dominion was forced to sue for peace. This war was one of the most disastrous in the history of the Dominion and forced them to surrender all their previous gains from the previous Fareen War as well as losing several frontier systems to the Alliance.
Then, in 2740, the Dominion began a war of revenge against the Confederation of Nuur for their last invasion. Unlike the last time, they had prepared for this war long in advance. The Confederation found itself overwhelmed by sheer numbers and superior Dominion firepower. Within 10 years, they were forced to surrender all but 3 of their systems and were stripped of every planet save their homeworld.
In 2815, the Dominion decided the time had come to put the religious fanatic fallen empire in its place. But, thanks to some political unrest, the Dominion couldn't just invade them and call it done. It had to look as if it was merely an aggressive form of self-defense rather than an invasion. And luckily, their obsession with certain Gaia worlds within Dominion space provided an easy way to provoke an incident.
The establishment of the colony of Paradise on one of their holy worlds was an obvious trap for the religious fanatics. And being the complete and utter idiots they were, they flew right into it. And so began the most devastating war in Dominion history. By the time it ended, trillions were dead, the fleets had all been expanded 10 times over, the former Fallen Empire had been completely conquered and their technology that once sat completely beyond the Dominion's grasp was now fully understood and had begun to be incorporated into the Dominion's fleets and their strange systems on their core worlds now powered the Dominion economy.
After the devastation of the war against the religious fallen empire, the Dominion was able to enjoy a century of virtually uninterrupted peace. Then, in the year 3000, that peace was shattered when the Fareen Unity declared war. Their hive mind's central intelligence seemed to have been led to believe the Dominion's time of peace had made them weak. They were quick to correct this assertion, destroying the Unity's tiny fleet and occupying their worlds over the course of a ten-year war.
By the time the war is concluded, the Fareen Unity is entirely occupied by the Dominion who annex them totally. By 3010, there are a grand total of seven nations left in the galaxy and four are either fallen empires or their satellite states.
Then, in 3045 war erupts between the System Alliance and an isolationist fallen empire off on the galactic rim. It appears that the Alliance laid claim to a system bordering these isolationists and they took exception to that decision. The war raged until 3110 and ended with the total capitulation of the fallen empire whose technology was appropriated by the System Alliance for their own use. The technological edge the Dominion had gained over their age-old enemy was gone.
Hoping to use their new, perceived technological edge to push back the Dominion again, the System Alliance declared war in 3130. The war lasted until 3200 with little progress made by either side. After a few brief Dominion victories in 3150 and 3154, the war devolved into a stalemate with systems changing hands monthly. By the time peace was achieved, neither side had made any gains and the entire war proved pointless.
After the grinding devastation of this war with the Alliance, the Sol Dominion desperately needed some kind of technological advantage to tip the balance of power in their favor. In an effort to gain this edge, the Dominion declared war on the Zenak Continuum, in an effort to destroy the ancient machine caretaker's civilization and appropriate their technology.
They eventually succeeded at this but only after tremendous loss and half a century of war.
The Dominion was scarcely able to rebuild its strength when they found themselves assailed by the Alliance again in 3280. Once again, the war appeared to be a stalemate at first. But the new technologies taken from the Zenak fleets and planets gave the Dominion a slight advantage. It wasn't much but it was enough to push back and reclaim the systems taken during the second war against the Alliance and the Fareen as well as a few more.
In 3370, the Dominion was still recovering from the last war against the Alliance when they were faced with war against the Djunn Peacekeepers. Largely isolationist despite spending decades building up their strength, the Peacekeepers had sent several demands that the Dominion cease their campaign of galactic conquest. All had been ignored but it appears that the Dominion's refusals had exhausted their patience.
Lasting for a full century and a half, this war would be one of the longest in recorded galactic history. By the time it ended, the Dominion had taken control of the Peacekeeper's one satellite as well as two of their systems but were unable to fully conquer the peacekeepers. Still, the technology appropriated from their wreckage would provide the Dominion with an overwhelming edge during their next war against the System Alliance which would break out in 3520.
Lasting until 3590, the "Fifth Terran Unification War" resulted in the destruction of roughly 1/5 of the Alliance fleet and stripped the System Alliance of the planets they had taken from their Fallen Empire neighbor, limiting their access to their advanced precursor technology and forced the Alliance to withdraw back into their core region.
In 3610, the Dominion began their final war against the Djunn Peacekeepers. After 40 years of war, the peacekeepers were finally destroyed for good.
As the 37th century ticked on by, the Dominion proceeded to address the greatest of all horrors: independent splinter states. A number of the empires annexed by the Dominion had previously suffered from a variety of secessionist movements which had led to many different former colonies breaking away and forming their own independent states.
With most of their major foreign opposition removed, the Dominion spent the next two decades bringing these splinter states under Dominion control, through both diplomacy and force. By 3630, most of the galaxy had been united under the Dominion. Only the Alliance remained.
In 3657, the Dominion's political system was shaken to its core when Konstantin Dragomirov XXXVII, the descendant of the last Dominion Grand Marshal from the era of autocratic rule by a single dictator, was elected Archon. Dragomirov was a famous war hero who had fought in almost every major military engagement over the last two centuries and was well loved by both the people and the military.
Disgusted at the weak and ineffective National Assembly and seeking to restore his family to their "proper place" at the head of the Dominion, he stormed the capital building of the Assembly on New Terra with 20,000 troops while a fleet loyal to him sat in orbit. With the entire planet held hostage, the National Assembly had no choice but to submit to his demands and proclaimed him as Emperor Konstantin Dragomirov of the Terran Empire and Supreme Commander of the Terran Armed Forces.
But for all the support he enjoyed in the core territories and mid-rim, Dragomirov was staggeringly unpopular on the outer rim and the frontier of his new empire. He was emperor of most of the galaxy now but it was still up in the air if he would manage to hold onto the position.
Days after he proclaimed his "Emperorship" and began establishing his government systems, reports began to flood in from the frontier about mass protests from both the human citizens and the slaves.
In response, the Emperor sent police and soldiers from the local garrisons to quell the protests by force. This caused things to go from bad to worse and nearly a dozen colonies along with a number of uncolonized local systems rebelled, declaring his rule illegitimate.
In response, Emperor Dragomirov sent three battlegroups and an army of genetically enhanced super-soldiers to put down the rebellion. But instead of a quick suppression of a minor revolt, more and more systems joined the uprising and, before long, nearly 2/3 of the frontier had joined the rebellion against him.
The emperor mobilized the full force of the Terran armed forces to crush this rebellion. The first battle took place in the Acheron system, just inside the outer rim territories, and was a nominal imperial victory. The imperial battlegroups cornered a rebel force of a few hundred vessels, including a dozen capital ships and one dreadnought, in the system and cut off their escape. The rebel fleet was eventually destroyed but did significant damage in the process, including the destruction of Battlegroup Balerius's only Titan and three of their twelve cruisers.
Over the course of the next thirty years, the imperial fleet and rebel forces would engage each other all across rebel-controlled space. The empire claimed victory in most battles but the rebels always inflicted substantial casualties on the empire at the same time.
In 3687, after a series of decisive victories across the frontier, the empire had gained the initiative against the rebels and was able to push deep into rebel territory and begin a campaign to reclaim the lost planets for the Empire.
By 3700, most of the rebel-held territory had been retaken by forces loyal to Emperor Konstantin yet the fires of rebellion continued to burn. The rebels had seemingly decided to embrace guerilla warfare to battle the Emperor's forces and now utilized isolated cells of fighters spread across the empire. Whenever one was put down, it seemed that another would crop up. Whereas before the rebels fought as a conventional military power, now they would simply vanish and reappear somewhere less defended. Not only that but they could appear anywhere across the empire, from the core to the fringe.
After a decade of attempting to combat the rebellion by conventional means, Imperial Intelligence determined that these rebels were being funded by the System Alliance in an attempt to weaken the Terran Empire for a future invasion.
In an effort to cut off the rebel's funding at the source, several newly raised fleets were put in charge of intercepting rebel fleets while the veteran forces were deployed against the Alliance. After a long and bloody invasion and the occupation of much of their military infrastructure, the Alliance capitulated. Now stripped of most of their territory, the Alliance had only a small handful of systems left and was forced to disband a large percentage of its fleet to avoid bankruptcy and cut off funding for the rebels.
Lacking Alliance financial backing, the rebels were unable to maintain the same level of military activity as they had been and were slowly flushed out of their hiding places until, by 3760, only a single base remained.
The Imperial Fleet descended on the rebel forces holed up on Scorpio VIII and, in 3760 the skies erupted with the glow of imperial landing craft as hundreds of divisions landed across the base. After days of bloody hand to hand combat, the rebellion's final holdout had been crushed.
After a rebellion lasting just over a century, Emperor Konstantin Dragomirov (now age 149) had finally secured his position for good. He had taken control of the empire, nearly destroyed the Alliance and put down the largest rebellion in galactic history. If there was anyone still living who questioned his right to rule, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it.
Over the next few decades, Emperor Dragomirov would finish the unification war and conquer what was left of the Alliance, and stamp out another three rebellions and fourteen xeno-led secession movements as well as wiping out an extragalactic invasion force and an AI uprising.
In 3840, Emperor Dragomirov passed away peacefully in his sleep and his son Markov ascended to the throne as Emperor Markov I of the Terran Empire. By this point, the Empire was beginning to fracture. They had been waging war on every possible front for so long that the idea of ceasing to wage war against anyone did not sit well with anyone. But the galaxy was united now so who was left to fight?
Who indeed...
Chapter Twenty-Six: Epilogue
Almost the Rest of History: 2454 to 3840
After the Triech Technocracy's defeat, the Dominion stood unchallenged in its supremacy over what remained of the galaxy. They controlled literally half the galaxy and were slowly relieving their xeno residents of their independence and enslaving them all.
Over the course of the next few decades, the Dominion would rapidly expand against multiple enemies.
The Galactic Xeltek Regime would be the next to feel the Dominion's fury. Isolated on the edge of the galactic rim with no allies or diplomatic relationships thanks to decades of work by Dominion intelligence to keep them isolated from all other powers, the Xeltek found themselves facing the full might of the Dominion military in 2460. Within the space of five years, over half their territory had been occupied and they were forced to surrender all occupied territory to Dominion control.
With the loss of over half their territory, the Xeltek descended into civil war and would not recover until the Dominion's second invasion forced them to put aside their differences. Not that it made much difference, in the end. By 2480, the Xeltek Regime was gone and its people were scattered across the Dominion as slaves.
In 2468, the Dominion began a campaign against the Fareen Unity. A barbaric hive mind in the outer rim, the Unity nevertheless maintained a defensive pact with the System Alliance which would extend the war quite a bit. By 2510, the Dominion would be able to rout the Alliance and Unity fleets and occupy roughly 1/3 of the Fareen Unity's territory but unrest on several frontier colonies forced the Dominion to sue for peace before achieving all their war aims.
This war would cement a bitter rivalry between the Alliance and the Dominion and result in a violent arms race by the Alliance to try and overtake the Dominion on the field. The Dominion would wage several more wars against the Fareen Unity and System Alliance over the next few centuries but it would take more than a thousand years before they were finally subdued.
2510 would see one of the Dominion's most secret projects finally bear fruit as Project Colossus concluded with the development of the Spear of Terra, a devastating weapon capable of deploying swarms of nanobots onto inhabited worlds to purge the population but leave the planetary infrastructure intact.
The first test was conducted in a remote system deep in the core of Dominion territory. Within the region of space that had once belonged to the Dethakkan Berserkers lay a planet of industrial age primitives long under observation by the Dominion. The planet was deemed of limited strategic importance to the Dominion but it had a large enough population to test their new weapon.
In 2540, the Dominion would finally begin their campaign against their one truly hated adversary: the Valdari Temple of Renewal. The Valdari had once almost been considered a friend and were a valued trading partner before they betrayed the Dominion and proved why xenos cannot be trusted.
When the war began against the Valdari and their northern ally, the Valdari and Shipping Company fleets were largely unmanned and at their peacetime stations. The Valdari only had a handful of colonies and limited defensive fortifications. The naval engagements were of limited scope and the Dominion swiftly seized the majority of their territory but several colonies presented significant resistance.
Still, by 2570, both enemies had been fully conquered and were annexed by the Dominion, bringing an end to several more galactic powers in the process. The next few decades were a cascade of suppressing rebellions across the frontier and annexing various splinter states that had broken away from the Dominion's former enemies.
In 2650, the Dominion's attention was drawn to the Hesukar Foundation and the Confederation of Nuur. A military coup in the Confederation had resulted in the establishment of a military dictatorship which had dissolved their alliance and gone to war with the Hesukar. After a decade of war, the Confederation successfully took over the entirety of their former ally.
Following this, the new Nuurian dictatorship felt the need to consolidate its power with a war of conquest. So, in 2664 they launched a sudden attack on the Dominion. With Dominion forces concentrated elsewhere and the region largely ungarrisoned, the Nuurians seized several dozen systems before the fleet was able to respond.
Unlike previous conflicts, this one proved to have quite a few long-lasting consequences. The war lasted for almost sixty years and, by the time it ended, the national assembly's power had begun to wane significantly in favor of the army officers who had actually fought in the war.
In the long term, the political consequences of this would lead to several devastating civil conflicts and nearly destroy the Dominion but, for the time being, the Dominion was able to push back the Nuurians and reclaim their lost territories. They were not, however, able to take any territory from the Confederation before provincial unrest forced them to make peace.
In 2730, another war broke out between the Dominion and the Fareen Unity. Proclaiming the Dominion's rule of their territory illegal, the Fareen Unity and the System Alliance had joined together, launching a surprise attack into Dominion space. They occupied over three dozen systems before the Dominion fleets could respond. And even when the Dominion fleet was able to launch an attack, a series of hit and run attacks, fusion torch directed asteroids and suicide strike crafts combined with a growing complacency at the highest level of naval command resulted in the Dominion fleet struggling to take control of the war.
After twenty years and several of the most humiliating military defeats since the Arcadian Rebellion of 2337, the Dominion was forced to sue for peace. This war was one of the most disastrous in the history of the Dominion and forced them to surrender all their previous gains from the previous Fareen War as well as losing several frontier systems to the Alliance.
Then, in 2740, the Dominion began a war of revenge against the Confederation of Nuur for their last invasion. Unlike the last time, they had prepared for this war long in advance. The Confederation found itself overwhelmed by sheer numbers and superior Dominion firepower. Within 10 years, they were forced to surrender all but 3 of their systems and were stripped of every planet save their homeworld.
In 2815, the Dominion decided the time had come to put the religious fanatic fallen empire in its place. But, thanks to some political unrest, the Dominion couldn't just invade them and call it done. It had to look as if it was merely an aggressive form of self-defense rather than an invasion. And luckily, their obsession with certain Gaia worlds within Dominion space provided an easy way to provoke an incident.
The establishment of the colony of Paradise on one of their holy worlds was an obvious trap for the religious fanatics. And being the complete and utter idiots they were, they flew right into it. And so began the most devastating war in Dominion history. By the time it ended, trillions were dead, the fleets had all been expanded 10 times over, the former Fallen Empire had been completely conquered and their technology that once sat completely beyond the Dominion's grasp was now fully understood and had begun to be incorporated into the Dominion's fleets and their strange systems on their core worlds now powered the Dominion economy.
After the devastation of the war against the religious fallen empire, the Dominion was able to enjoy a century of virtually uninterrupted peace. Then, in the year 3000, that peace was shattered when the Fareen Unity declared war. Their hive mind's central intelligence seemed to have been led to believe the Dominion's time of peace had made them weak. They were quick to correct this assertion, destroying the Unity's tiny fleet and occupying their worlds over the course of a ten-year war.
By the time the war is concluded, the Fareen Unity is entirely occupied by the Dominion who annex them totally. By 3010, there are a grand total of seven nations left in the galaxy and four are either fallen empires or their satellite states.
Then, in 3045 war erupts between the System Alliance and an isolationist fallen empire off on the galactic rim. It appears that the Alliance laid claim to a system bordering these isolationists and they took exception to that decision. The war raged until 3110 and ended with the total capitulation of the fallen empire whose technology was appropriated by the System Alliance for their own use. The technological edge the Dominion had gained over their age-old enemy was gone.
Hoping to use their new, perceived technological edge to push back the Dominion again, the System Alliance declared war in 3130. The war lasted until 3200 with little progress made by either side. After a few brief Dominion victories in 3150 and 3154, the war devolved into a stalemate with systems changing hands monthly. By the time peace was achieved, neither side had made any gains and the entire war proved pointless.
After the grinding devastation of this war with the Alliance, the Sol Dominion desperately needed some kind of technological advantage to tip the balance of power in their favor. In an effort to gain this edge, the Dominion declared war on the Zenak Continuum, in an effort to destroy the ancient machine caretaker's civilization and appropriate their technology.
They eventually succeeded at this but only after tremendous loss and half a century of war.
The Dominion was scarcely able to rebuild its strength when they found themselves assailed by the Alliance again in 3280. Once again, the war appeared to be a stalemate at first. But the new technologies taken from the Zenak fleets and planets gave the Dominion a slight advantage. It wasn't much but it was enough to push back and reclaim the systems taken during the second war against the Alliance and the Fareen as well as a few more.
In 3370, the Dominion was still recovering from the last war against the Alliance when they were faced with war against the Djunn Peacekeepers. Largely isolationist despite spending decades building up their strength, the Peacekeepers had sent several demands that the Dominion cease their campaign of galactic conquest. All had been ignored but it appears that the Dominion's refusals had exhausted their patience.
Lasting for a full century and a half, this war would be one of the longest in recorded galactic history. By the time it ended, the Dominion had taken control of the Peacekeeper's one satellite as well as two of their systems but were unable to fully conquer the peacekeepers. Still, the technology appropriated from their wreckage would provide the Dominion with an overwhelming edge during their next war against the System Alliance which would break out in 3520.
Lasting until 3590, the "Fifth Terran Unification War" resulted in the destruction of roughly 1/5 of the Alliance fleet and stripped the System Alliance of the planets they had taken from their Fallen Empire neighbor, limiting their access to their advanced precursor technology and forced the Alliance to withdraw back into their core region.
In 3610, the Dominion began their final war against the Djunn Peacekeepers. After 40 years of war, the peacekeepers were finally destroyed for good.
As the 37th century ticked on by, the Dominion proceeded to address the greatest of all horrors: independent splinter states. A number of the empires annexed by the Dominion had previously suffered from a variety of secessionist movements which had led to many different former colonies breaking away and forming their own independent states.
With most of their major foreign opposition removed, the Dominion spent the next two decades bringing these splinter states under Dominion control, through both diplomacy and force. By 3630, most of the galaxy had been united under the Dominion. Only the Alliance remained.
In 3657, the Dominion's political system was shaken to its core when Konstantin Dragomirov XXXVII, the descendant of the last Dominion Grand Marshal from the era of autocratic rule by a single dictator, was elected Archon. Dragomirov was a famous war hero who had fought in almost every major military engagement over the last two centuries and was well loved by both the people and the military.
Disgusted at the weak and ineffective National Assembly and seeking to restore his family to their "proper place" at the head of the Dominion, he stormed the capital building of the Assembly on New Terra with 20,000 troops while a fleet loyal to him sat in orbit. With the entire planet held hostage, the National Assembly had no choice but to submit to his demands and proclaimed him as Emperor Konstantin Dragomirov of the Terran Empire and Supreme Commander of the Terran Armed Forces.
But for all the support he enjoyed in the core territories and mid-rim, Dragomirov was staggeringly unpopular on the outer rim and the frontier of his new empire. He was emperor of most of the galaxy now but it was still up in the air if he would manage to hold onto the position.
Days after he proclaimed his "Emperorship" and began establishing his government systems, reports began to flood in from the frontier about mass protests from both the human citizens and the slaves.
In response, the Emperor sent police and soldiers from the local garrisons to quell the protests by force. This caused things to go from bad to worse and nearly a dozen colonies along with a number of uncolonized local systems rebelled, declaring his rule illegitimate.
In response, Emperor Dragomirov sent three battlegroups and an army of genetically enhanced super-soldiers to put down the rebellion. But instead of a quick suppression of a minor revolt, more and more systems joined the uprising and, before long, nearly 2/3 of the frontier had joined the rebellion against him.
The emperor mobilized the full force of the Terran armed forces to crush this rebellion. The first battle took place in the Acheron system, just inside the outer rim territories, and was a nominal imperial victory. The imperial battlegroups cornered a rebel force of a few hundred vessels, including a dozen capital ships and one dreadnought, in the system and cut off their escape. The rebel fleet was eventually destroyed but did significant damage in the process, including the destruction of Battlegroup Balerius's only Titan and three of their twelve cruisers.
Over the course of the next thirty years, the imperial fleet and rebel forces would engage each other all across rebel-controlled space. The empire claimed victory in most battles but the rebels always inflicted substantial casualties on the empire at the same time.
In 3687, after a series of decisive victories across the frontier, the empire had gained the initiative against the rebels and was able to push deep into rebel territory and begin a campaign to reclaim the lost planets for the Empire.
By 3700, most of the rebel-held territory had been retaken by forces loyal to Emperor Konstantin yet the fires of rebellion continued to burn. The rebels had seemingly decided to embrace guerilla warfare to battle the Emperor's forces and now utilized isolated cells of fighters spread across the empire. Whenever one was put down, it seemed that another would crop up. Whereas before the rebels fought as a conventional military power, now they would simply vanish and reappear somewhere less defended. Not only that but they could appear anywhere across the empire, from the core to the fringe.
After a decade of attempting to combat the rebellion by conventional means, Imperial Intelligence determined that these rebels were being funded by the System Alliance in an attempt to weaken the Terran Empire for a future invasion.
In an effort to cut off the rebel's funding at the source, several newly raised fleets were put in charge of intercepting rebel fleets while the veteran forces were deployed against the Alliance. After a long and bloody invasion and the occupation of much of their military infrastructure, the Alliance capitulated. Now stripped of most of their territory, the Alliance had only a small handful of systems left and was forced to disband a large percentage of its fleet to avoid bankruptcy and cut off funding for the rebels.
Lacking Alliance financial backing, the rebels were unable to maintain the same level of military activity as they had been and were slowly flushed out of their hiding places until, by 3760, only a single base remained.
The Imperial Fleet descended on the rebel forces holed up on Scorpio VIII and, in 3760 the skies erupted with the glow of imperial landing craft as hundreds of divisions landed across the base. After days of bloody hand to hand combat, the rebellion's final holdout had been crushed.
After a rebellion lasting just over a century, Emperor Konstantin Dragomirov (now age 149) had finally secured his position for good. He had taken control of the empire, nearly destroyed the Alliance and put down the largest rebellion in galactic history. If there was anyone still living who questioned his right to rule, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it.
Over the next few decades, Emperor Dragomirov would finish the unification war and conquer what was left of the Alliance, and stamp out another three rebellions and fourteen xeno-led secession movements as well as wiping out an extragalactic invasion force and an AI uprising.
In 3840, Emperor Dragomirov passed away peacefully in his sleep and his son Markov ascended to the throne as Emperor Markov I of the Terran Empire. By this point, the Empire was beginning to fracture. They had been waging war on every possible front for so long that the idea of ceasing to wage war against anyone did not sit well with anyone. But the galaxy was united now so who was left to fight?
Who indeed...
