Director-General Telnik’s plan in action.
A Grand Adventure
The TUG plunged itself into war on September 12, 251. In the previous several years, the administration had attempted to assemble a coalition for its operations, billing their aggressive action to other regional powers as a proactive anti-slavery campaign. Throughout the 240s, this approach had led to deepening cooperation with the cyggans, who were themselves frequent targets of varelviv slave raids. Though the TUG’s strategic planning was underpinned by the assumption that the cyggans would not agree to a full alliance, Director-General Telnik hoped that the emperor Slugradeb would recognize the opportunity presented to him and launch a coordinated invasion of the VIS. His hopes were dashed when the emperor announced a renewed war with the Seban Commonwealth in February 249. The cyggans had been at war with the sebans for most of Slugradeb’s long reign, and as he neared the end, he wished to prove his worth in combat once more. [1] His foreign ministry was apologetic, but they were mere advisors to the unitary authority embedded in the person of the emperor. They were instead only able to offer the TUG stronger cooperation agreements in the form of scientific knowledge-sharing and very favorable terms for bilateral trade opportunities. This was a poor substitute for a full alliance, but the Director-General appreciated the gesture nonetheless. Any assistance, even tacit, for the coming war would be welcomed.
The administration, recognizing its inability to find a partner for the invasion of varelviv space, began to look further afield for diplomatic arrangements. Though some species were receptive to the vailon overtures, none were yet willing to support the TUG in their war efforts. Telnik still hoped for a strategic alliance with the cyggans, though he recognized that this may have to wait for a new emperor to take the throne on Cyggia. Thinking of long-term goals, the director-general began to focus diplomatic efforts on regimes that would be amenable to cooperation with both the vailons and the cyggans. A likely candidate was the Pithok Confederacy, holding numerous star systems due west of the galactic core and sharing a hostile border with the sebans. The pithoks hailed from the densely jungled Thokkia. The society of the arthropoid species was structured around units known as “families” – nomadic clans comprised of millions of individuals, which could generally trace their lineages back millenia, to the earliest proto-societies. Each family functioned as an autonomous political entity, developing their own cultures and engaging in intense competition for status. Over time, a small number of families were able to consolidate wealth and power; though they still competed amongst themselves for primacy, they had largely been able to exclude other families from rising in the ranks for several centuries. The Aspinaca family currently held power, having successfully put their own candidate into the position of High Commissioner. Xybber Aspinaca was a willing servant, seeking to expand pithok hegemony in the quadrant in order to feed the extensive factories of the Aspinaca economic empire. In this, Telnik saw an opportunity, opening negotiations with the High Commissioner on the potential for future cooperation. The pithok leader was encouraging but noncommittal; the delegation left Thokkia with the belief that a show of good faith towards the pithoks would dispose them to treat favorably with the TUG in the future. While this offered little help to Telnik with the immediate prospect of war, he recognized the need for the vailons to forge deeper diplomatic ties across the galaxy. On May 7, 250, the administration issued a formal announcement that the TUG would provide material support to the Pithok Confederacy, in the event of unprovoked hostilities against the arthropoids. This was received favorable on Thokkia, and the ruling family transmitted promises of future agreements via their permanent embassy on Tebazed.
On December 1, 250, the long-awaited upgrades to Starbase Con Viab were completed, turning the station into the strongest defensive bastion in the quadrant, aside from those rumored to exist inside the borders of the Chroniclers deep in the galactic core. By mid-year 251, Task Force Mirasma was in place to begin its invasion of varelviv space. Everything was ready for the plan to proceed, save for Telnik’s own confidence. The director-general was engaged in frantic negotiations with the Commonwealth, seeking to draw them into the impending war. He already had the agreement of the hissma to provide material support; now he simply had to convince the mith-fell to aid the vailons as well in order to bring the full might of the federation fleet into play against the varelviv. The mith-fell had no reason to love the slavers themselves, having been the targets of the Great Raid of 223; moreover, the militant crusaders for democracy believed in using their might to bring liberty to all individuals across the galaxy. However, the Commissariat was still licking its wounds after a disastrous preemptive war of its own with the saathids. Instead of cutting down the threat, the Commonwealth Navy was forced to fall back, losing contact with a colony on the border between the two empires. The fate of the mith-fell on the colony was unknown, but one could only guess at the horrors which they must have endured at the hands of the genocidal saathids. It was not a time for the Commonwealth to return to a war footing, and the Commissary-General was hesitating to even offer implicit backing for “this grand adventure of yours”, as he termed it in one communication with Telnik. The vailon persisted in his entreaties, but to no avail; the mith-fell refused to budge over the course of three months and numerous high-level negotiating sessions. Telnik eventually realized that his efforts were futile, and in September he unilaterally set in motion his war to end the varelviv threat.
The war began with a major success. The TUG had achieved complete strategic surprise; Task Force Mirasma entered VIS space unopposed and was able to operate for several months before the varelviv fleet eventually made its presence known. After pushing through Ushminaria, the task force bore down on its first major target, Starbase Bihjall, the site of a strategic blunder by the esteemed Admiral Piriam in the previous war; its defenses were disabled and it was occupied by vailon marines within the first two months of the war. Command and control specialists moved in quickly and set up a forward operating base on the starbase, turning it into a major staging area for the early period of the war. By the end of the year, logistical lines of support were set up, and the task force set out to secure the surrounding star systems. Over the course of the next twelve months, the fleet seized Veyer, a dead-end system just outside the spiral arm, and then Arrakis, up-spiral from Bihjall. In April of 253, the varelviv finally counterattacked, with an assault on the TUG position at Arrakis. The two VIS fleets involved mistimed their attacks, one arriving in-system several weeks before the other; Mirasma dispatched this first wave with ease, destroying fourteen ships, including one destroyer, for the loss of only two corvettes; however, moderate damage to most of the other ships necessitated a retreat in the face of the second wave. Admiral Piriam pushed his ships’ engines to the max, racing to reach the safety of Con Viab, at points mere hours ahead of the chasing VIS fleet. Aided by a delay to retake the outpost at Ushminaria, the task force reached Starbase Con Viab, ahead of the varelvivi and relatively unscathed, in April 254.
The First Battle of Arrakis confirmed vailon intelligence reports about the relative powers of the two fleets.
Losses
The tactical retreat by the fleet necessitated a temporary withdrawal from Bihjall. The fleet left behind a legion of marines, with instructions to fortify the station and hold out until the task force could relieve them. Though the VIS fleet did manage to disable the starbase’s defenses while the vailons undertook repairs, they were only able to seize portions of the station’s interiors before the task force returned in December to relieve the siege. After a hard-fought battle against the larger blockading fleet, TF Mirasma regained control of the system, taking heavy casualties but inflicting still greater punishment on the varelvivi. Over the next five years, the fleet would maintain its forward base at the starbase, as Piriam attempted to execute his mandate and consolidate control over the cluster, territory which had been surrendered to the varelviv in the previous conflict. Most of 255 was spent conducting repairs and reinforcing the fleet. The industrial sector was on a war footing, and the replenishment rate for ships began to outstrip the rate of losses in battle. The Naval Staff predicted that the TUG fleet would begin to outnumber their adversaries in combat soon. This prediction was borne out in a second engagement near Arrakis, where TF Mirasma soundly defeated a similarly sized VIS force.
Signs of a downturn in fortune were beginning to appear, however. Disturbing rumors reached Telnik’s desk across 255 and 256 about Admiral Piriam’s condition, suggesting that the war hero had seen a rapid decline in mental and physical abilities. Though all reports from the Naval Staff denied the rumors, the seemingly lethargic performance of the task force under Piriam's command provided at least anecdotal evidence. By the end of 256, five years into the war, only Veyer, Bihjall, and Arrakis were in vailon hands. The VIS still held the remainder of the cluster, and the fleet had been unable to put any pressure on the varelviv core worlds beyond. Telnik, concerned about the conduct of the war, attempted to find out the truth of the matter, first via official channels, and later by sending aides to have informal discussions with sub-flag officers posted to the Naval Staff. He also assigned some linguists in the Sociology section of the Science Directory to study Piriam’s messages back to headquarters on Starbase Tebza. While none of these avenues offered concrete evidence or firsthand knowledge, in total they all seemed to point to the admiral’s increasing frailty and inability to perform the job of commander of the fleet.
Matters came to a head in early 257. While in Sedrin, Telnik prepared to force the Admiral to retire, even in the face of stern political opposition, at the front a VIS fleet was detected transiting the Prothon system. The varelviv were preparing another counterattack at Arrakis. The attacking force were split into three waves; once again a failure of coordination allowed TF Mirasma to engage with smaller groups separate from the main fleet. In the first two engagements of the Third Battle of Arrakis, the task force was able to pick off several corvettes, giving the vailons an advantage in numbers for the main engagement, which occurred on April 17. With more ships, and more effective ships, this should have proved to be an easy fight. For Admiral Piriam, it instead proved to be the end of a long and distinguished career. Afterwards, different theories about the cause were bandied about; some believed that Piriam’s age finally caught up with him and overwhelmed the effects of the drugs, while others suggested that his supply of drugs had been disrupted and he was going through an intense withdrawal. Regardless of the particular cause, when a glancing blow from a coilgun rattled the ship, something snapped between the admiral’s horns. The official report from the captain of the flagship stated that the Admiral became unresponsive, refusing (or unable) to acknowledge anyone speaking to him, simply standing on the bridge and not saying a word. After a few minutes of chaos, Vice Admiral Valdrig den Hullos, commanding Squadron Two of the task force, declared Admiral Piriam to be incapacitated and therefore relieved of duty; Admiral Hullos herself took overall command of Mirasma for the remainder of the battle. The fleet was lucky not to suffer too badly from the loss of its commander; for the several minutes when nobody was in command, fleet cohesion broke apart and three varelviv ships made it inside the vailon formation, causing heavy damage to one corvette and moderate damage to several others, but the hole was plugged quickly once Hullos took charge and the remainder of the enemy fleet was driven off. In the end, TF Mirasma only lost the one ship, destroying eleven VIS ships during the day, but the greater loss by far was the esteemed Admiral, who did not recover from his fugue state for several days after the battle. When he woke up and learned of his actions, he gracefully accepted retirement, allowing his former aide Hullos to take over the post of Admiral of the Fleet.
The Third Battle of Arrakis was a bittersweet victory for the vailon task force.
Admiral Hullos had a reputation for caution, one she very nearly obliterated with her quick thinking during the Third Battle of Arrakis. It reemerged rapidly in the aftermath. Having long been a dissident against the war planning of the administration, she wanted to regroup at Starbase Bihjall and reevaluate the TUG’s options in the war. To her, it was clear that the vailons were, if not losing, then certainly not winning either. As she had predicted before the war on numerous occasions, one task force, however much stronger than the VIS forces it was, had been unable to consolidate control over the cluster and ward off counterattacks at the same time. Instead of pursuing such a foolhardy idea, Hullos proposed retreating all the way to the Con Viab bastion and patiently replaying the strategy from the previous war. They could trade space for time, and use the time to continue the naval construction program. Within a few years, the TUG fleet would outnumber the VIS fleet in addition to outgunning them, and the fleet could split into two task forces – the stronger of which would seek out and destroy the varelviv fleets while the weaker would seize lightly defended outposts.
While this plan had its proponents in Telnik’s inner circle, the Director-General himself and those closest to him vehemently opposed it. The VIS had clearly been surprised by the invasion, and the current strategy had kept them off-balance so far. The lack of coordination displayed by the varelviv had led to several easy victories for the vailon forces in the first years of the war. The admiral’s ideas were not completed dismissed; Telnik believed that the forces on hand in 257/8 were enough to execute the strategy. He ordered a detachment of ships to be split off from the main fleet and form Task Force Kampas, whose command he gave to Admiral Hullos, sidelining her from future involvement in the major events. He promoted an ally from the Naval Board, Modrig den Harak, to take command of the main fleet. Under Harak, TF Mirasma would be tasked with driving on Viverva and drawing varelviv attention, and most importantly, fleets, away from the smaller task force, so that it could capture the outlying star systems in the border region. This plan appeared to be working through 258; by the end of the year, TF Mirasma had taken Prothon, defeating several small detachments in the process, and blockaded the only hyperlane route to the front from the VIS home cluster, while TF Kampas was nearing the former TUG outpost at Turim, which was expected to be retaken with minimal effort.
But in 259, the first truly organized resistance from the VIS navy made its presence known. Two large fleets, no more than a day apart, were detected en route to Prothon. Harak withdrew his fleet to Starbase Bihjall, where he planned to make a stand backed by the guns of the station. The varelviv fleets combined, and, outnumbering Mirasma by 50%, bore in on the fleet’s position in orbit of the star. A fierce battle ensued; the vailons inflicted significant damage on the varelvivi ships, but in the end the weight of numbers was telling, and Harak was forced to retreat, lest the entire task force be overwhelmed by the assault. The starbase itself held out for a few months, but this time no reinforcements were in the region, and the command center finally fell in February 260. Eight-plus years of hard work, winning nearly every battle, had left the TUG in the same position in which it had started.
Footnotes
[1] That the emperor himself would never go near a battle was no sticking point for the propaganda machine on Cyggia.
[2] At the outset of the Second Battle of Bihjall, TF Mirasma stood at 32 ships strong, eight destroyers and 24 corvettes. It attacked a VIS fleet of twelve destroyers and 27 corvettes. The vailons were able to destroy fourteen enemy ships, losing only nine of their own, before forcing the defenders to retreat.
[3] This will be elaborated upon in a subsequent chapter.
[4] Telnik offered to keep the old admiral on as a member of the College and an informal advisor to the Navy Board, but Piriam declined, preferring the quiet of obscurity to live out his days. He died five years later, largely a forgotten figure, though later historians would resurrect his legacy.
[5] In five days of near-continuous combat before being forced to retreat, TF Mirasma lost three destroyers and ten corvettes, while the VIS fleet lost a total of four destroyers and nine corvettes in the two phases of the battle.
[2] At the outset of the Second Battle of Bihjall, TF Mirasma stood at 32 ships strong, eight destroyers and 24 corvettes. It attacked a VIS fleet of twelve destroyers and 27 corvettes. The vailons were able to destroy fourteen enemy ships, losing only nine of their own, before forcing the defenders to retreat.
[3] This will be elaborated upon in a subsequent chapter.
[4] Telnik offered to keep the old admiral on as a member of the College and an informal advisor to the Navy Board, but Piriam declined, preferring the quiet of obscurity to live out his days. He died five years later, largely a forgotten figure, though later historians would resurrect his legacy.
[5] In five days of near-continuous combat before being forced to retreat, TF Mirasma lost three destroyers and ten corvettes, while the VIS fleet lost a total of four destroyers and nine corvettes in the two phases of the battle.
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