The first warships of the Antares Confederacy entered into the sovereign territory of the Screk
at precisely midnight, Sagallo time on February 1st, 497al.
Their crossing of the border had been perfectly timed to coincide with the Antares Treaty
Organization’s declaration of a state of war. This was the first stage of an interstellar
offensive of such scope and consequence as to overshadow every campaign that came before.
In a controversial decision, the first phase of the invasion, named Operation:
Salah al-Din, was not directed towards Earth or the United Terran Protectorates but rather
at the Screk homeworlds themselves. While the Screk had claimed a small collection of worlds,
clandestine reconnaissance performed in the years and decades prior, gave evidence that the conquest
of two alone would decide the outcome of the war. The first was the political and industrial heart
of their empire. It was a throneworld completely enveloped in urban blight whose name was roughly
translated to mean “The Font of Knowledge”. This ecuminopolis alone likely once held a population
several times larger than all of Antares, but now was a rotting shadow of its former glory.
The role of the 2nd target was less clear. Known simply as “The Archives” it appeared to be a site
of forgotten scientific research, where all the knowledge of the Screk had been preserved. If
these two worlds could be seized, it was estimated the Screk, for all their power, would be forced
to capitulate and their hold over the United Terran Protectorates would be severed forever.
Once this had been achieved, even partially, the second phase of the campaign: Operation Reyes,
would redirect the Confederate navy and army into the heart of the Terran Protectorates themselves.
Among the highest classified military secrets within Antares was the existence
of a wormhole, a stable bridge linking together the Aldebaran system in the UTP
with the Siuhuri system in the Anthorian Republic.
Confederate fleets could emerge undetected and within just a few short jumps of Earth itself.
The scale of the campaign was such that the Intisar System, center of the Confederacy’s
military industrial complex, had been almost wholly transformed into a single grand strategic
center. From here, timetables and supply lines could be managed, and every effort made to secure
victory. Yet the greatest triumph had been won even before a state of war had been declared.
Through every manner of political capital, the Antares Confederacy had secured for
itself a place in the Galactic Council, head of the greater Galactic Community.
While the Council had dismissed the notion of some sort of galaxy wide peacekeeping mission,
the status afforded to Antares had nevertheless garnered the support of several other galactic
powers. The United Dar-Hesh Pact, an alliance of nations whose members had been ravaged by the
Protectorates or the Screk, together with the long-suffering Thimodian Republic found common
cause with Antares. No formal treaties were signed, but Antares would not go to war alone.
The Screk had assumed that Earth would be the first target and when the Confederacy’s fleets
appeared within their territory, their own armadas were caught wildly out of position.
Yet even outnumbered, what Screk vessels remained were enormously advanced,
slicing through Antares formations before they were destroyed utterly. The Battle of Rijjin,
the largest of the fleet actions against the Screk was over before it began. Various Screk armadas,
racing back to defend their homeworlds, crashed against the combined might of Antares.
Uncoordinated and wholly unprepared for the Confederacy’s lightning advance,
the Screk had no hope of victory, yet the damage they inflicted was devastating.
With the first foothold into Screk territory, the Confederacy moved to secure their objective almost
unopposed. The battle for the Archives ended 290 years to the day that the CAS Earhart first
slipped its moorings over Lindiwe and headed into the unknown. While only a token force remained to
defend the planet, Confederate losses echoed those taken in orbit. Commanders on the ground
had refused to preserve any Screk data-centers at the cost of their own soldiers , so while
losses could have been far worse, the Archives had been damaged and fragmented beyond repair.
With the last of the great fleets of the Screk shattered in orbit of their worlds
or spread in disorganized formations across the galaxy, their ability to contest the landings on
their homeworlds was over. A galaxy away, within the territory of the United Terran Protectorates,
the other members of the Antares Treaty Organization, together with the Confederacy’s
new allies in the Dar Hesh Pact and the Thimodian Republic had made unexpected progress.
A full third of the UTP’s star systems had been seized and powerful fleets of
warships seemed poised to take its core star systems. To support this welcome success,
the 2nd stage of the campaign commenced ahead of schedule. Three Confederate fleets were
redeployed through the Anthorian Wormhole, and for the first time, entered a region of
space their now distant ancestors had once dreamed of exploring themselves.
The Confederate invasion of the United Terran Protectorates now began in earnest.
Back within the Screk theater, 19 full Army Groups and many further independent field armies were
deployed to the Font of Knowledge, Throneworld of the Screk Empire. Automated defenses, slave
armies, and even some of the Screk themselves rose against the Confederate advance, but for
all their ancient knowledge and technological terrors, the planet's defenders were outmatched.
Any martial spirit the Screk once possessed had been softened by a millennia of opulence and
they faced the military apparatus whose wars of liberation had come to define their entire nation.
Still, the Confederacy fought for every towering spire that rose into the atmosphere,
every continent sized labyrinth of decaying structures and collapsed transit routes. It was
a battlefield of astonishing scale, methodically isolated and occupied day by day, month by month.
When news that the Font of Knowledge had fallen reached the Confederate fleets and
armies advancing within the United Terrain Protectorates, the war had seemingly arrived
at its inevitable end. Terran resistance had grown weaker and less organized, and all that
remained was to determine which nation would have the honor of seizing the Solar System.
Antares was poised to arrive first. Its liberation fleets had pushed as far as Barnard’s Star,
less than 6 light years away from Earth itself. The great liberation
for which generations had dreamed, worked, sacrificed and fought, had finally arrived.
The Terran counter-attack destroyed centuries of planning in a single stroke. Vast armadas,
dwarfing those of the Confederacy and its allies appeared seemingly from nowhere. In the battle of
Barnard's Star, two Confederate battlegroups were routed by superior Protectorate forces and a third
fleet similarly shattered during the Battle of Alpha Centauri. Everywhere, the victory that had
seemed so certain began to slip away. Allied fleets were routed by Terran reinforcements,
scattered Screk task forces seized undefended systems. The Screk in particular had embraced a
campaign of terror, targeting the Confederacy’s allies in calculated acts of destruction.
While the last remnants of their ancient armadas had little hope of meeting the Confederacy in a
pitched fleet action, they were more than suited towards ravaging undefended worlds and trade
routes. Both the Commonwealth of Vi Talas and the Commonwealth of Ventin Vi’Ta suffered greatly,
with both their own forces and those of Antares, too distant to effectively resist.
On December 20th, 501al, four years after the campaign began,
the Confederate High Command ordered a complete withdrawal from Protectorate space.
The strategic reserve was activated, and every effort made to protect the Confederacy’s allies.
To abandon the liberation of Earth when its fleets had been so close was a heart wrenching
decision for both the highest generals and admirals within the Antares Military,
who had long awaited a second reunification day. But there could be no honor in liberating Earth,
if it came at the cost of those the Confederacy had sworn to defend.
The eruption of another terrible robotic uprising, this time against the Anthorian
Republic, was a further devastating blow to the Confederacy’s morale.
With the worlds of its most powerful ally turned into battlegrounds and its people massacred,
the Confederacy struggled to hold the line against the United Terran Protectorates.
Countless ships were lost in battles on both sides of the wormhole,
while everywhere, scattered Confederate task forces, armies and lone ships fled ahead of Terran
battlegroups in a desperate attempt to regroup. For a perilous 19 months, it seemed like the whole
of the Confederacy collapsed, as it struggled to retake the initiative on multiple fronts.
The revelation that secret negotiations between Antares and the United Terrain
Protectorates had taken place , was yet another terrible burden for the nation to bear.
The armistice was signed while a decisive battle between the Confederacy and the Protectorates
still raged, a move that likely saved another of Antares’ greatest fleets from annihilation.
The worlds of the Screk would be turned over to the Confederacy and the last of the Screk war
criminals hunted down, but neither the Antares Treaty Organization nor its wartime allies would
be granted any claim over Terran territory. It was not the end to the conflict they had imagined,
but with the great effort needed not only to preserve its allies but integrate the vast
domains of the Screk, Antares was left with no other options. Within days of signing the treaty
that fully ended the war between the Protectorates and the Confederacy, the Greater Terran Empire
was proclaimed. In a single stroke, Antares had freed Earth from the hold of the Screk,
only to see it become the center of something even worse. Antares intelligence would spend
decades analyzing if that hadn’t been the goal of the Protectorates all along.
The terrible machine intelligence that had massacred great swathes of the Anthorian Republic
was finally destroyed in 512al. That same year, the Greater Terran Empire unleashed a weapon of
mass destruction, identical to that used by the Screk on a defenseless world within the
neighboring Tavurite Republic. Antares was left in a state of shock, struggling to find purpose
when their single vast effort had only served to unleash a greater evil upon the galaxy.
The integration of the Screk was in many ways a greater campaign than the invasion
of their worlds. Unfathomably old, to have their ancient ruling caste, their traditions and society
replaced by the Confederacy’s Occupation Forces, created feelings of consternation
or terror among their race that dwarfed any that had arisen across the rest of Antares.
Slowly however, those amenable to the Confederacy presented themselves to form a growing provisional
government. With renewed stability, came the opportunity to study the great vaults of knowledge
that the Screk had hoarded across the centuries and millennia. A legion of Antares scientists,
engineers and scholars poured over the Archives of the Screk. The greatest secrets of the universe
were open to Antares and the advancements they brought to the Confederacy helped soothe
the relentless anguish and hatred that so many races felt towards that ancient fallen empire.
With the knowledge secured from the Screk, worlds across the Confederacy were transformed
into paradises. Ancient foundries were repurposed to create new centers of industry and power. And
plans were dawn and the foundations laid for an artificial world without any equal in the galaxy.
But the greatest discovery within the archives of the Screk was a towering black obelisk,
venerable even to the Screk themselves. The shifting patterns of glowing eldritch
lights that emanated from deep beneath its surface were unmistakable. It was a countdown.
A countdown to a date not centuries, decades or even years away, but mere months.
It was the closest thing to a religious relic within the dominion of the Screk,
and those tasked with its care had sacrificed themselves well before the first Confederate
forces had landed on their world. Those that remained could only guess at its purpose.
As the countdown turned from weeks to days, the subtle rise of subspace power across the galaxy
became overwhelming. And then, on March 3rd, 517al, the countdown reached its end. The tear
that formed in reality splintered communications for months. Only fragmented and conflicting
accounts of terrible shapes in the darkness and the annihilation of entire worlds reached Antares,
all too appalling to be believed. The Confederacy’s own reconnaissance of the affected
area was similarly garbled and confused, but it was clear something had arrived within the galaxy.
Since the first diplomats of Antares met their counterparts from Earth,
the Confederacy had come to believe that the Screk saw in humanity
nothing but a slave race that could be used to restore their ancient glory.
Too late was it realized that the true purpose of the United Terrain Protectorates was to provide
a bulwark against a greater threat. No true translation could be produced from the Screk
warnings, only that their primeval foe had again arrived, one they named “The Unbidden”.