System Sanctus (Part 1)
A Sequel of Sorts to “Hortus Deorum”
This isn’t a direct sequel to Hortus Deorum, but it takes place in the same universe. If you haven’t read that story, you can find it here.
“If there’s a hell, any man or woman who violates System Sanctus is sure to end up there.”
“I don’t believe there is such a place.”
“But are you willing to take your chances?” asked Private Heni.
“No,” responded Private Gurney, “because even if I’m right and there’s no such place as hell, anyone who breaks the taboos automatically earns himself capital punishment on ten thousand worlds, and all the law enforcement teams of all the federations and coalitions in the GCPNSA will be gunning for him. Not to mention the GSPNSA’s own guys. And it’s not like he’s going to get a warm reception out in the wilds. The Gangly Rapscallions would probably eat him and the seasteader anarchists would probably assume he was undercover for the GCPNSA and execute him as soon as he arrived.”
“No doubt. Good thing neither of us is planning on doing anything.”
“Yeah, it’s all just speculative.”
Gurney and Heni looked out of the mess viewport, across the void to where the Xing fleet patrolled. The fell silent. Though the ships were too far away for them to see – all the way on the other side of the plane of the ecliptic – the privates knew they were there. Seven dreadnaughts and countless frigates and corvettes and cruisers.
Both of them were thinking the same thing. Nobody wanted to violate the sanctity of the system that had once given birth to mankind. But it had been an uneasy peace ever since tensions had begun flaring between the Xing Coalition and the Meri Federation.
Relations between the Coalition and the Federation had been poor for several decades. They’d been rivals, competitors, and occasionally even skirmishers. But no nation or empire had broken the peace of System Sanctus for a thousand years. And the last twenty had been mainly civil between the Xing and Meri. Especially with increased trade between the two polities and the freedom of movement that had come to characterize the galaxy in the last century. People had begun to assume that – perhaps – great power war was a thing of the past.
The last living survivors of the Third Galactic War were centenarians now. Even the notoriously long-lived Xing regime had little societal or institutional memory of the cataclysmic struggle that had destroyed hundreds of worlds and resulted in the deaths of trillions of human beings. The Xing Coalition had been a minor power at the beginning of that conflict, but by maintaining their neutrality for thirty years, they had emerged ascendant – one of the lone survivors of the war that broke the backs of the greatest empires in human history.
But tensions between the two states had remained bubbling beneath the surface. And in the last year, they had returned to the fore – in force. Six months earlier, the Chairman of the Xing Coalition had declared the disputed Hrothfrong Spacelane a part of Xing territory. The Spacelane in question – one of the great thoroughfares of galactic trade, through which passed nearly fifteen percent of galactic commercial cargo and freight – had long been considered outside the control of any kingdom, empire, or state. In light-years, it was closest to the Kingdom of Gur, a tiny theocracy clustered in the moons of orbiting the Glowing Worlds in the Bluestar System. But both the Xing Coalition and the Meri Federation had long asserted partial rights to the Spacelane.
The President of the Meri Federation declared her counterpart’s action, “unconscionable,” and “a violation of territorial sovereignty and freedom of navigation.” In response, a spokeswoman for the Xing Coalition announced that, “out of beneficence, generosity, and goodwill towards the people of the galaxy,” the Xing Coalition would withhold on levying a toll on foreign freightliners for the next three years, while they established their control. After that, she stated, there would be a minor toll exacted to cover the costs of defending “the freedom of navigation” of the Spacelane.
It had only been downhill from there. Retaliatory tariffs, sanctions, close encounters between military vessels, and lots of drilling for naval battles on both sides. Privates Heni and Gurney had been insulated from most of that. Out here in System Sanctus, peace still held. Occasionally, they even had to work with their Xing counterparts. Relations had been strained, but had remained relatively cordial. Everyone, on both sides, recognized the importance of what they were doing here.
“It’s a holy world for them too,” said Gurney.
Heni looked at him.
“I was just thinking about the XM boys. Most of them pray to some of the same gods that we do. This is their holy system. Nothing’s going to happen – at least not here.”
“Do you think something will happen outside? Back home?”
“You mean a war? I don’t know.”
“Three months until we get rotated out of here.”
“Yeah.”
Private Heni looked back across at the invisible Xing fleet. If it did come to war, he and Gurney would probably see action as soon as they left System Sanctus. As young marines without wives or children, they would be expected to do their national duty. Neither of them had seen conflict, having joined the Meri Marine Service after the end of the Donal Rebellion and the Aangsho Insurgency. They’d been stationed with various fleets around the Milky Way and they’d gotten to see a good part of the galaxy in the last four years. But never any world or system within Xing Territory. Not yet, at least.
At 1800, they went to report to their Naval liaison. “Have you heard?” the petty officer asked them. “Some Xing pirates – some say freebooters, some say privateers sanctioned by their home government and equipped with letters of marque and reprisal – just took a cargo ship.”
“One of ours, sir?” asked Private Gurney.
“Yeah. Actually, a buddy of mine was aboard. Nobody was killed, but they gutted the ship and marooned my buddy and the rest of the crew on Solaria.”
“Has the President said anything?”
“She called the Federation Council back into session. They were in recess. She put every ship in the Navy on heightened alert – excepting this system, of course.”
“Do you think there will be war, sir?”
“I don’t know, Private. I don’t know.”
The two privates watched their holos attentively for the next week as things began to cool off between the rival powers. But then, a Meri patrol wandered into what may have been an ambush or may have been a mistake. There was a skirmish. Eleven Merians died, including two naval officers. Two Xing droneships were permanently disabled and abandoned for scrap.
Within twenty-four hours, war had been declared by both sides. And just like that, the galaxy was at war. Juyipel and Tauria immediately declared neutrality. Several other planets did as well. Most of the rest of the galaxy began picking sides. At least in the inner galaxy. The anarchists and terrorists and pirates out in the fringes would probably use the opportunity to up their criminal actions. Perhaps if the war dragged on, they might sit down with the Meri or the Xing. More likely out of an attempt to play each side off each other than any genuine goodwill. One cartel did align itself with the Xing Coalition, but most observers already knew that it operated out of Xing near-space and therefore must have some kind of relationship with the regime.
New Sicily and the Second Ottoman Empire had an alliance with the Xing, so they declared war on the Meri Federation. The Proximates, the Yulon Confederacy, and the Inner Core Alliance all had alliances with the Meri Federation. Within a week, the Vegans and the Uoolons and New Kenya had all announced for the Xing, while the Holy Sinese Empire and the Bard Union announced for the Meri.
The Kingdom of Gur also announced it had a treaty with the Meri Federation. The Gurians had been in danger of being swallowed up by the Xing Coalition for decades. In his announcement, the head bishop asked for Merian protection against the Xing menace.
Naturally, this announcement placed a target on the kingdom. Perhaps the Bishop of Gur had hoped the Meri could win the war outright and his kingdom would be saved by the quick alliance. In reality, he had just picked the site of the first battle.
The Meri levied a draft and began mobilizing their entire fleet. Their closest armada, the Twenty-Ninth Armada, was given orders to make for the Bluestar System. Word came that the Xing had a fleet of forty dreadnaughts and two hundred smaller vessels bearing down on the Kingdom of Gur. The Twenty-Ninth wouldn’t be enough.
Ten flotillas in that region of the Milky Way were also given orders to make for the Bluestar System. But that would only bring the strength of the Merian fleet up to one hundred vessels, not including support ships. The Gurians would have to hope it would be enough.
Both fleets arrived at the Glowing Worlds on the same day. Immediately, it was obvious that the Merians would be overwhelmed. They attacked first, lasing several scout-ships. But a Xing droneship took out one of the Merians’ capital ships and the battle went downhill from there.
The tiny Gurian fleet made a sortie out of their moons. A knot of Xing destroyers and cruisers, deploying a tight EM shield, made quick work of this fleet. Gurian projectiles were deflected harmlessly off of the EM shield. A Xing littoral combat vessel slipped in within hijacking range and their cyber team took control of the Gurian networks. Within minutes, they had disabled the defense systems of the entire Gurian fleet and the Xing cruisers simply floated amongst them, picking them off one-by-one.
The battle was a rout. The Xing fleet deployed overwhelming firepower and the Merians lost twenty ships and thousands of crewmen before they could do anything of significance to the Xing. Several Merian ships were crippled, and the Merians only managed to take out a couple destroyers before they limped away in defeat. During the course of the battle, the Xing launched an atomic attack on the Glowing Worlds. Several of the inhabited moons were completely destroyed.
The Chancellor of the GCPNSA condemned the violence and called for peace, but his warnings went unheeded. The war continued to escalate.
In System Sanctus, the marines watched on telecaster and holo as their comrades perished and the war dragged into a protracted struggle. This was the first war since the galactic communications revolution, and the privates could watch in real-time, wondering what was going to happen next.
The second battle took place in deeper space, far from any inhabited systems. It was a stalemate, and both sides lost capital ships. The Xing lost more men, but the Merians had already had the worst of the war so far. Analysts were beginning to realize that this would be a long war.
Days later, a small Xing fleet jumped deep into Merian territory and ambushed a supply convoy, marooning a small group of survivors on an uninhabited planet in a nearby star system, to let the Merian people know why the convoy disappeared. This had its intended effect – fear and anger roiled through the Federation and some openly called for a quick surrender to spare the Federation a brutal conflict, while others called for pogroms against any Vegans or Uoolons or Xing citizens on Federation worlds.
The Xing Coalition followed this up with a breathtaking foray even deeper into Merian space. Four hundred ships spun down out of hyperspace into the Regero System where the Merian Navy had one of its largest bases, Joki Naval Base, as well as one of its largest shipyards, the Guigdo Shipyard. Regero was a hub of heavy industry, for the military and for commercial spacing and the Federation Merchant Marine. There was a small naval war college, as well as strip mining in the asteroid belt and gas mining out in the Jovian worlds.
The sudden appearance of this Xing fleet caught the Merians off guard. But Merian forces within the Regero System still outnumbered the Xing. Over nine-hundred orbital colonies and perhaps seventeen-hundred smaller orbital stations orbited Regero Star. Even worse for the Xing, the Eighth Fleet was only a short hyperjump away.
Despite their surprise advantage, the Xing quickly grew overwhelmed by the anti-ship defenses of hundreds of thousands of satellites and planet-to-space nuclear assault systems. The fleet found itself mired in a thicket of lasers springing out of small moons and asteroids. Before the Xing fleet could escape, the Eighth Fleet arrived in-system and proceeded to vaporize twelve Xing destroyers, four dreadnaughts, twenty-one frigates, forty cruisers, sixty droneships, and a repurposed cargo vessel kitted out as a floating missile battery, before the rest of the Coalition ships managed to spin up and jump away.
The Xing left behind several autonomous artillery barges, which were quickly requisitioned and gutted for repurposing by the Merian Navy. By abandoning those ships, the Coalition gave the Meri access to their autonomous networking tech, in addition to encryption keys and various other advanced hardware and software. This made the Merian victory even more decisive. Until that moment, the Xing Coalition had held a strong leg up in cyber and autonomous tech.
But the battle brought bad news to Private Gurney. A Xing droneship had struck one of the under-construction frigates in the shipyard, sparking a fire that killed everyone working onboard.
“My uncle was a contractor at the shipyard,” he told Private Heni, “And he was on that frigate.”
“Damn. I’m so sorry, buddy.”
But Gurney just stared silently out of the viewport towards the invisible Xing ships on the other side of the system.
Part 2 is available here.