The Xenocide Option

a combination story and AAR, now with commenting abilities!

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The Xenocides, or Kin, as they refer to themselves, are four-armed, matriarchical, bipedal mammalian species which retains strong evolutionary links with their ancient roots as an apex predator. They retain thick fur, sharp claws and teeth, keen senses of smell and eyesight, and have the ability to enter extended periods of hibernation at will, though upon waking they are subjected to the Waking Frenzy, a short period of intense, conciousless, predatory activity – an adaptation of unknown origin. They are native to a system which originally had two habitable planets, each with its own intelligent life-form.

Though technologically advanced, Kin society retains a strong element of superstition and spirituality among the general populace, and the species remains divided among dozens of independent nations. Their history is one filled with violence: until only a few decades ago, the Kin were periodically consumed by massive cycles of global war, which the society has alternately attempted to prevent, or wholeheartedly indulged in.

The cycles of war stopped when, about fifty years ago, the Kin were observed by Terran probes to have built a fleet of primitive spacecraft and used them to subject their system’s second habitable planet to a withering bombardment of thermonuclear warheads.

The Terrans, still unobserved by the Kin’s comparatively primitive sensor systems, responded by setting up a maximum-stealth observation base within the system’s asteroid belt, with state-of-the-art hyperspace relays to ensure prompt reinforcement if the Kin discovered the base.

Which they did, in November 2226.

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This, as you may have noticed, is my first AAR (and, incidentally, first forum post - it seems my habit of typing posts in Word and pasting them in caused problems, thus this new thread). I am playing on Crippling difficulty, with Slow technology, an Immense map, and Random star distribution that turned out to be Tight Clusters. My race, the Kin Commonwealth, is based off of the Arceans, with the following settings:





I’m going to have the AAR primarily advanced in blocks of fiction, plus short OOC sections where I directly describe my strategy and thoughts. Though I’m playing with normal GalCiv time, for AAR purposes I’m going to translate each game-time week to a fiction-time month – I saw this trick on an earlier AAR, and it makes more sense – completely new technologies being researched and implemented in mere weeks? Yearly elections? Also, this gives much more time for subtle plot threads to grow and develop. Each update will cover one year of fiction-time.

For the curious, the Kin are very heavily inspired by the XC's in Ben Jeapes' excellent book The Xenocide Mission.

So, without further ado:




Chapter 1: Pride of Erudition


It was the third Forced Entry Drill of the week.

The sirens wailed, hall lights turned to a harsh, panicky yellow, and each member of the Pride of Erudition's forty-Kin crew had to drop whatever they were doing to join a mad dash to the nearest strategically-located security closet. Inside were uncomfortable hardshell spacesuits with embedded air tanks and jetpacks - jetpacks! inside which they were to congregate in the Pride's partially separated forward compartment. It was tiring, difficult, stressful, repetitive, and always seemed to happen whenever Tiraing began analyzing a particularly interesting bit of spectroscopic data.

Major Rasamec always told her the Forced Entry drill was possibly the most useful of the repertoire, as it could be applied to everything from a hostile boarding party to a simple hull breach or catastrophic reactor overload. It made sense - but Rasamec and her marines always grabbed their carbines.

Tiraing stayed doggedly harnessed at the lab station for a full ten seconds before the noise and light overpowered her. She saved her work, cursing, then unclipped the harness and pushed off, heading for the door. She propelled herself off of the opposite wall and nearly collided with an already-suited Marine, who glanced at her as he floated up the corridor. The closet wasn't much further down the corridor, and she arrested her momentum with three hands on its open hatch, then put on the spacesuit with bored, unconscious precision. Nine minutes - a new record, whispered one corner of her mind. Then it was turning around, reorienting herself in the zero g and heading back towards the bow of the ship.

It was always a long journey. The labs Tiraing used were at the rear of the vessel, right up top near the Pride's long-range communication banks, and between its huge twin reactors. Just aft, below the communication relays, and ahead of the Pride's extensive array of plasma-torch main thrusters, was the experimental hyperdrive module. Most Kin would be extremely uncomfortable working so close to such a badly-understood technology, but Tiraing paid it no heed - the extraterrestrials seemed to have found it safe enough, and the Pride's module was salvaged directly from the wreck of the extraterrestrial warship - not one of the pathetic replicas fitted to Ark colony vessels, or Commerical Office bulk haulers.

What did make her uncomfortable, though, was the way they had reacted to discovery of the extraterrestrial spy station. The Commonwealth was lucky to be in the shape it was in, and the new regime was still extremely fragile, but, Gods, would it have been too much to so much as notify the public before the incident was over? The first she'd heard of the extraterrestrials was the now-famous news blotter: A hidden extraterrestrial spy base was found in the asteroid belt near the planet Stormwind, was hailed and warned according to protocol, was attacked and destroyed when no reply was recieved. And the next day, the report that an extraterrestrial warship had appeared using some kind of hitherto unknown faster-than-light transport system, and was subsequently destroyed during an extensive engagement in high Stormwind orbit.

Typical military types to overreact and go in guns blazing. An international group of generals had tried to seize power and tightly unify the twenty-three major nations, but had just barely been thwarted and replaced with a set of more moderate generals. The Commonwealth, formerly a glorified customs union, became the primary arbitrator of Kin affairs, and its Space Presence the governing body for all activity outside the atmosphere of Homeworld.

Tiraing had played a major part in that. An astronomer and climatologist, she had first captured the public eye by leading an expedition to land on Seaghost, the farthest true planet in the First System. And just after receiving the news, she had lead a very public, and very dangerous campaign criticizing the handling of the Contact Incident, as it was now known. Tiraing's televised appeals were critical in preventing the hawkish General Karpeh's ascension to Marshal of Space. Things hadn't turned out quite as well as she had hoped - the simple presence of a Marine squad on a scientific vessel made that obvious - but Marshal of Space Latair was much more accommodating. She had, for example, followed Tiraing's call to put the Ark colonization program in the hands of an independent organization, rather than the Security Oversight, and thus the Settlement Authority had been born. Already it had begun to bear fruit - the first Ark had carried a mere hundred million hibernating passengers (most of them having received paramilitary training), but the new vessels now held more than twice that number.

Sadly, thought Tiraing, Latair had chosen to maintain the traditional silence about the now decades-old events on the Dead World.

As well as putting troops on the Pride of Erudition. Tiraing floated angrily above the armory subsection - situated just forward of the ship's twin spinning habitation modules, most researchers thought it was a waste of space. Latair's order to put soldiers on the Pride cut out a whole subunit of exobiologists and their labs.

Another swing and long corridor, as the Pride's main section tapered towards the two long, thin links to the forward compartment. A few levels below her was the viewing deck, placed where it wouldn't compromise hull integrity too much. It wasn't strictly necessary, but Tiraing was glad of the deck's presence. It kept the Pride from feeling like a two-hundred-twenty-eight meter long prison.

Up ahead, though, was one of the only two forward corridors. Each wasn't much wider than a crawlspace - the connectors were thin as it were, and then jammed through with cabling, pipes and wires. Perfect if you wanted to seal off one section of ship from the other, or if you wanted to protect the Pride's dizzying array of sensor and analysis equipment from exotic particles spewing from its reactors, engines, or hyperspace drive - but not perfect if you wanted to move forty Kin from the main hull section to the forward compartment. There were about fifteen Kin hanging around this connector. And Major Rasamec was among them.

Tiraing pushed hard off a wall and grabbed a handhold next to her.

"Another damn drill? I'm sorry, Major, but we scientists have work to do. We can't be constantly interrupted by alarms and calls to throw on suits and jump into the most crowded section of the ship!"

Rasamec looked at her impassively. "This isn't a drill."

"Oh, drop the pretense - we know you're just keeping us on our toes. What, is there a spy asteroid in our galley now? This is an exploration vessel, not Boot Camp."

"Apologies, Learned Sister, for the misunderstanding. But this isn't a drill. There are other spacecraft in this system."

Tiraing nearly continued her aggravated rant, but the implications sunk in just before she spoke. Her mouth hung open for half a second.

"Other spacecraft?"

"Three, to be exact. We detected the drive flames mere minutes ago. One craft's flame closely matches that of the extraterrestrial warship, though it is much smaller - not much more than a probe. The other two are radically different."

Radically different.

"I'm... assuming we've concluded the other two originate from entirely different species?"

"Yes."

Three different species, thought Tiraing. This galaxy must be more densely populated than they thought. Her mind was nearly paralyzed running through the implications. So many theories validated, so many others discredited...

"Have they hailed us? Do they pose any danger?"

"We attempted to hail them, but of course we're still working on the proper decryption algorithms. The first extraterrestrials may be threatening, which is why I called the alarm. I've already sent a signal to Homeworld not to engage - we don't know what kinds of organization these species may have, nor their capabilities."

By now, Tiraing and Rasamec were the only Kin in the corridor. The others must have already been informed. How did she miss this?

"That's... exactly what I would have recommended. Thank you, Martial Sister." Rasamec was obviously smarter than Tiraing had given her credit. Perhaps the crew of the Pride was better composed than she'd thought.

"You're welcome, Learned Sister," answered Rasamec. She launched herself down the connector, leaving Tiraing alone in the corridor.

As she followed, pulling on the connector's handholds, she imagined the possibilities. Three species of extraterrestrials, and the Kin had already attacked one. Somehow, knowing there were other forms of life now made the universe seem lonelier.


----


Setting out with the Arcean template, I knew I was going to get screwed on speed, which is key to my usual strategy. I always had a colony-rush strategy of expanding inward, rather than outward - instead of colonizing each planet with the closest ones being first, I always skip the close ones and colonize the ones nearest the other home-worlds first, and the ones nearest mine last. A good speed stat helped with that a lot, but now my colony ships would move only two parsecs a month, and I would have limited options for increasing that. So I put a lot of my remaining points into increasing Planet Quality, so I could eke the most out of the few planets I'd have. I plan to become a compact, but powerful nation.

So, my first research would be Interstellar Navigation - a gargantuan undertaking, which is still five months away, despite a year of research being put in! So I pumped out Arks like nobody's buisness and worked on making Homeworld a research powerhouse.

Luckily, I discovered five great planets within two sectors of my home planet - three of them being above class 10. Two Military Resources as well - the Commonwealth is already well-positioned to become the small military powerhouse I'm planning on it being. As long as the Terrans and Korx (the third scout I saw was Scottlingas, and not much of a threat) don't grab them before my Arks can haul their lazy asses to those juicy worlds...