An Age of Piracy

By 2660, as though to turn a new leaf and in turn signify a new era for Humanity, the Gregorian calendar was abolished and reformed as the Universal Calendar, hereon abbreviated as UC. Following a week-long public referendum in the Australia-led Oceania commonwealth, the remaining nations formed a new single political entity; the Federation of Sol. So it was that on January 8th of the Universal Calendar that humanity stood firm and ever so diligently under one flag.

Hereafter the next two centuries were spent exploring and chartering the vast, endless stars. Although many were initially disasters of catastrophic magnitude, or colonies never heard from again. Humanity never failed to recover and dive charge once more onto the breach. By the year 210, it was a shared sentiment by many that ‘in good probability, we have charted, civilized, or otherwise established resource facilities from all there is in our section of the Milky Way.’ Although there were a plethora of systems outside of the Orion Arm that Man resided in, they were billions of light-years away obstructed by vast empty void, which would’ve made communications and traverse far too unreliable. Thus, it can be said that rather than push the envelope even further, humanity’s no-stop progress forward had steered to an absolute stop, and basked in their achievements.

Despite all the borderline impossibility yet genuine extravagant accomplishments pulled off, however, it was in due time, to be paid for quite dearly. One of the prominent perplexities earlier on in the Federation’s life was space-faring piracy, which in of itself had developed in parallel to the developing colonial settlements. These lowlife thugs harassed passenger liners and cargo transportation to and from Metropolitan Sol.[ A historical term for the planetary sector that included Terra, Satursol, Lilon, Maalhata, and lastly Lambia. Additional systems often considered part of the Metropolitan Federation are Sondieu, Cambreau, and Ionnia. By the 4th century this term had largely fallen out of use, and was referred to as Nouveau from then on.] It was further frustrated by an obstructive bureaucracy who saw no need for a militarized space organization. The very idea of fighting wars in space was lunatic. But was it also lunatic for humanity to spread like cancer across the Milky Way in such a short time? Debates would rage on in the Sydney capitol for years to come.

By the time the central government came to a mutual agreement to create a new military branch―the Metropolitan Space Navy―in 213, rampant piracy had caused a fundamentally colossal amount of damage to colonial trade in the Central and Greater South regions of Ruthenia[ By far the largest cluster of star systems in the Orion Arm. It is nominally divided into three regions; Greater Ruthenia, Central Ruthenia, and Lesser Ruthenia. It is the centermost one and is the main link to several corridors, including the Caldonia corridor to the Northeast, the Kongriega corridor to the East, and the Taishō corridor to the Northwest.]. As such, when word arrived of this new endeavor, local governments in these troubled regions neither lauded the news nor were overjoyed but simply demanded the assistance. Federation naval officers protested sending out the infantile naval force until they could assemble more ships for the expedition. Their objections were regrettably overturned; an ill-fated decision that could’ve been a source of divergence for later historical events.

And so, the Federation Navy under vice-admiral Ramsay DeRyck, which mainly comprised of a dozen “battleships”―in reality, no more than large, commandeered civilian vessels with missile platforms strapped to them―and at least twenty feeble “cruisers”. Following a brief inspection, the punitive force lifted off from their land naval yards on Terra and rendezvoused with a reinforced cruiser squadron under the command of commodore Cicero Garofano at Lambia before departing south to conduct search and destroy operations.

Had Metropolitan Sol officials listened to their rational general staff, the chances of victory would’ve been more in their favor. More importantly, the right decision making would’ve protracted the fateful subsequent chain of events that would inflame the galaxy. DeRyck returned to the capitol only a couple of months later. He returned not as a victor over the pirates but as the disgraced defeated.

Nonetheless, DeRyck and his colleagues remained undeterred. With enough complaints, intrigue, and some connections, more resources were pooled from an increasingly starved quantity of strategic reserves for an efficient armada. In record time the Metropolitan Navy had both commandeered and constructed enough wartime ships that were satisfiable enough for long-term campaigning. At the beginning of 216, this new fleet sailed yet again under the leadership of DeRyck and Cicero, totaling a combined strength of over 300 ships of various sizes.

Meanwhile, amid bandit country, the colonial legislature had expressed nothing but disdain for the central government. Their futile efforts had in a sense, been far too little and too late. In a desire for self-defense was the establishment of local militia navies―which were a step up from their Federation suzerain and more aligned with their infringing raiders. With more resources at hand than their ailing overlords, the colonists would construct an adequately strong, decentralized force in half years and owe it to themselves the role of pacifiers. At the helm was a vice admiral elected overall commander, Tory Dolz. Their success was marginal at best but yielded more results than the Federation had some years before.

When the two forces encountered each other, there was a sense of uneasiness. To the colonists, they were bewildered that Metropolitan Sol had not given on up them after all. For the Federations, they were alarmed that the colonials were able to scramble together a considerably substantial force in record time. Putting aside their doubts, for the time being, the two bodies worked together as one to quell the pirates in the region. By early 218 the largest contingent of pirate havens, located namely in the Zonal[ The easternmost star zones. They are split into two regions; North Zonal and Southern Zonal. It connects to Central Ruthenia in the north, and the Hunan region to the south.] star zones at the Jakland system, were subduced under the combined Federation-Ruthenian fleets. Left with no safe shelters to harbor them, most Zonal raiders were forced to flee further into deep space into other regions, or accepted their fate and surrendered to the Federation.

When the remaining prisoners surrendered after it’s fall, an interesting episode had occurred. There were a little over two hundred thousand prisoners reportedly on record. Unsure exactly what to do with them, DeRyck had ordered for them to be taken back to Sydney to be tried under civilian courts. His reasoning for trafficking them back to Metropolitan Sol was that if they were tried under any given colonial court―particularly that of a raided one―they would most certainly be treated far more harshly. Could a court that acts on intuition be any better than the monsters they would most certainly summarily execute?

Dolz, however, was adamant on a more fitting fate for them; by utilizing a dozen shuttlecraft or so, they would ship them off into the eternal void on an irreversible autopilot. In other words, a one-way ticket to slow starvation, oxygen depletion and ultimately death. Most Federation staff agreed that Dolz’s suggestion was far too inhumane, including DeRyck who brushed it off as a peculiar taste of comedy. Dolz, who was not of native Terran birth and came from the outer rims, had insisted this would be the only way to serve justice for his fellow spacemen. It would go on record that Dolz would utter that if it was Sol itself raided, he(DeRyck) would do much the same.

After much debate, it was agreed that they would split prisoner responsibility in half. The Federation would try theirs in Metropolitan Sol and the colonials would, in practice, ‘do as they will at their discretion’. After the departure of the Federation forces, it was never recorded what befell the fate of the colonial division of former pirates.

In the same year, DeRyck and his compatriots returned home in triumph. His men were treated as saints. In the words of Cicero, ‘they leisurely enjoyed the warm cots of women, food and drink with no sense of shame entailed’. Once the human cargo was unloaded and paraded in conjunction with their captors with crowds of excited specters, DeRyck was tasked once more with subjugating piracy havens beyond the Ruthenian regions. As this would implicate venturing further out for an equally longer duration, DeRyck theorized this would require a far bigger naval flotilla, not to mention the logistics to keep his men’s stomachs satisfied. Different camps suggested dividing areas of responsibility to other admirals or easing the unspoken ban of colonial fleets.

This would, of course, bring us to the colonial militia question.