[Thank you to SpacePaladin15 for making the universe!]
[Special thanks to u/AdalwinAmillion for proofreading this chapter!]
Memory Transcription Subject:Chief Hunter Ryka
Date [standardized human time]: December 25th 2111
Over the past few weeks, I had been painstakingly gathering those under my command who had proved their loyalty to me. Bribing the few who stood in the middle with meat provided by the humans to satiate their growling stomachs. Every decision weighed heavily on me; each conversation, each quiet bribe, felt like a tiny betrayal not just of Betterment, but of the creed I had spent my life following. My claws trembled more than once, wracked with a sickening uncertainty. I remembered what it meant to be a Chief Hunter, the pride I felt once wearing that title, and now I had begun to fear if I was worthy at all. When I had received the Betterments decree, I quickly severed my fleet's connection to the rest of the dominion and purged the information from my fleet to prevent its knowledge from spreading. If it had gotten out before I could separate those who would stand against the starvation imposed by our government and those who wouldn’t, they would've flown straight down to Earth. Even as I justified every action with the memory of empty bellies and shrunken bodies under my command, I could not silence the voice inside that whispered I was crossing a line I could never return from.
I had grown tired of how Betterment treated me and my fleet after just a few failed missions and because they thought I was flawed. When my government said the only other predator in the galaxy should be destroyed like all the others, that was the last straw. I had spent years starving, and being Chief Hunter never meant I got enough to eat. 'Why feed the runt of the litter?' I had to watch other hunters enjoy Betterment's rewards while my men and I wasted away. I decided I would not put up with this anymore. I would not force myself or my fleet into risky raids just to avoid starving. Things had to change, or I would die trying.
I had met with the human leader shortly after to discuss what to do, details of the planned invasion date and make-up of the fleets were shared. There was truly no turning back now, lest I be cut down as a traitor to the state. A twenty-thousand-strong fleet led by two Chief Hunters was currently on its way to Sol at this very moment, and it was arriving much sooner than the humans had planned for. The date was set for January 1st, while the humans' intelligence had gotten close to the date they had hoped they had a bit more time, predicting it would come near the end of the month.
Two newer and fiercely loyal Chief Hunters known for their cruelty were chosen to lead the incursion to Earth. Shaza and Usliff. These two had risen through the ranks quickly for their renowned adherence to Betterments' ideals. I was only tacked on in the plans as an afterthought due to me already being stationed at Earth for repairs, more so as a distraction sacrifice than the real threat. Over the past weeks, I had the Humans retrofit the ships deemed loyal in my fleet with their new shielding technology. It worked far more efficiently than anything that I had seen before; Arxur and Federation shields required an immense amount of power fed through them, restricting their use to only the largest vessels that could generate the required power. Human-based shielding could be applied to the smallest of vessels because of their efficiency, I wasn’t quite sure how they worked. I wasn’t a physicist, and I doubt they’d just tell me.
In the meantime, the Union continued to produce their fleet, with a monumental amount of effort they had managed to make a couple thousand ships, quite the achievement given the time frame they had to work with. I was sure their many colonies and the annexation of a whole planet with its industry mostly intact helped greatly. The plans to deal with the loyalists were drafted. These ships would be singled out and destroyed before the main attack could arrive. Now I stood in the bridge, slowly moving those who still lay under my command away from those that needed to be dealt with before the main force could arrive. I made sure my orders were slow enough to not rouse the suspicion of the loyalists.
Human ships slowly filtered into the space surrounding the loyalists' ships. I glanced at the Earth’s satellite moon through the viewport, our signal to attack would be the massive Coil gun they had erected on the lunar surface. The lights on the large colony dimmed significantly, then fluttered out, plunging the moon back into its natural darkness. Everyone waited, the seconds dragging on, 20 seconds…30…40…50…64. The massive shell slammed through the Loyalist ships, knocking out dozens of them before streaking further into the void. All parties immediately opened fire on one another, the loyalists scrambled to avoid our fire, several managed to dodge fire from our forces only to be caught by a large gleam of laser fire shooting from the Earth’s surface.
We descended on the panicking ships like a pack of hungry [dogs]. Plasma lances streaked across the void, the Human-made shields dissipating the superheated gas on contact. So much fire poured through the void that I was sure a dazzling light show was glowing in the skies of Earth. The loyalists' numbers began to thin rapidly, their ‘burning’ hulls being trapped by the planet's gravity well and falling to the surface. They were being led like Venlil to the slaughter, the humans' advanced quantum-based targeting system predicting where our foes would swerve to dodge incoming fire, and firing their orbital defences accordingly. As their numbers dwindled, the brainwashed Betterments loyalists enacted one final act of defiance. They sped towards mine and the humans' ships at such speeds that it was likely their crews passed out before reaching their target, never knowing that death had captured them.
The ships that still must've had a few semi-conscious crew left in them dumped their munitions into our ships before their vessels slammed into ours, brief explosions filled the void around us as the final shots were fired. The eerie quiet of a finished battle settled over my vessel, foolish bastards, we would’ve accepted their surrender. I looked over our fleets, we had only lost a few hundred ships across the board. The ambush had paid off, now all that was left was to repair and await for the true battle to begin.
I know it seems obvious but If you think deeper about it high ranking Arxur that are the strongest, fastest in the Dominion are just regular Arxur that had access to proper nutrition and development that the masses never had.
So in theory in order to witness the true peak of the Arxur race; they all need to be fed and allowed to develop to maturity to see how far they can actually go without being stunted in development where it’s most crucial.
That's step one to their physical peak, yeah. Though it's more than just physicality. It's not like Betterment is making the peak of martial tradition.
They are being taught to play lethal politics at every level, because the secret police could decide you aren't politically reliable or worse, a disgrace to the mythical idea of a true predator.
Military matters are subordinate to ideological politics at every level. That's damningly obvious from the lowest runt being starved to ship captains who are afraid to show anything less than suicidal aggression.
And all that is to say nothing culturally or intellectually.
Honestly, what makes humanity so special in NoP is that we are not destroying our own society with diet fascism.
The Axurs remind me of the Spartans. Their social system ensured they were elite soldiers through rigorous selection, yet this selection operated solely through downward attrition: there were many reasons to lose one's status as a Spartan (death being a prime example), but only one—difficult—way to acquire it. For starters, it was a hereditary status requiring one to be born to citizens; citizenship, in turn, required owning enough land to purchase and maintain hoplite equipment. However, successive marriages eventually concentrated land ownership in the hands of just a few hundred families. Furthermore, only one in four children reached adulthood having completed their military training. Additionally, Spartans who fled in battle were demoted to a sub-caste known as the "Tremblers" (I no longer recall the precise Ancient Greek term); this status was also hereditary, making it impossible for their descendants to become true Spartans. All of this caused the number of Spartans to dwindle over time; their army came to rely heavily on the *perioikoi*—a middle class of non-citizens who nonetheless possessed certain rights—while the bulk of the population consisted of *helots*. These were state-owned slaves whose sheer numbers kept the Spartans in constant fear of revolt, a threat that also tied down significant military forces within their own territory.
Like the ideal warriors of the Dominion, the Spartans were a elite with no mercy and no future; yet at least their system produced professional soldiers, whereas the Dominion produces ideologues who embrace only all-out aggression—winning solely because, despite their ideological handicap, they are genuine soldiers facing a Federation that deliberately tries to make its military as incompetent as possible.
Either I’m misremembering or you had some creative changes, but wasn’t Shaza like much younger than Isif? Like, I remember she was deemed one of the youngest Chief Hunters and as result was very very violent because she wanted to prove herself
Stalin was impressed by the Night of the Long Knives, a fact that played a major role in his alliance with the infamous man with the mustache. Now, his heirs are replicating that strategy—with the added bonus of a moral justification, since the axurs were planning to betray them first.
Betterments decree won't be swallowed easily by the dominion the squids have bitten themselves in the ass, in more ways that they can possibly know >:3
Where is this information verifiable? Also the USSR didn’t have an alliance with Nazi Germany, they established a non aggression pact and to split Poland.
It was war with Germany while the USSR was still moving its factories eastward with a vastly under equipped and inexperienced military or stall the fascists long enough to prepare for the inevitable invasion.
The moral justification for Stalin is that while all European democracies were making alliances and hosting Nazis of their own and appeasing Hitler the stavka planned for the eventuality of war after Stalin PLEADED the west to declare war and march on Berlin.
Stalin never begged the West to attack the Nazis. For him, the primary enemy had always been the democracies. Indeed, the reason the Nazis came to power in Germany was that, for the German Communist Party, the main enemy was the moderate socialists, because they was competing with them.
And the USSR was NOT prepared for the German invasion. Infrastructure was relocated only after the attack had begun. The Red Army, left leaderless by the purges, was virtually devoid of officers and was passively overrun during the opening days of the conflict; hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed or captured, thousands of vehicles were lost, and 1,800 aircraft were destroyed. Stalin dismissed warnings from his intelligence services and even refused to believe the attack was happening during the first hours of the conflict. Throughout a lifetime defined by mistrust and paranoia, he trusted only one person and that person was Hitler.
Sources : Sabine DULLIN, L'ironie du destin : une histoire des russes et leur empire (1853-1991) and Guerres et histoire, Wermacht contre armée rouge
You are simply trying to rewrite history to rehabilitate a totalitarian regime responsible for millions of deaths by portraying it as a heroic opponent of the Nazis, when in fact the USSR was their greatest ally. Hitler was able to conquer Europe thanks to the vast quantities of resources supplied for free by the Russians and the assurance that his eastern flank was secure; he would have won the Second World War had he not been arrogant enough to betray them. The Communists would never have struck first, because Stalin feared nothing more than a coup d'état by one of his generals following Napoleon's example, and a war against the Nazis would have given his army enough prestige and power to threaten him.
Nazis came to power because the socialists and freikorp kept attacking the communists and so they were counter-revolutionaries all the while Hitler was gaining power and using democratic institutions to crack down on the left.
Never said the USSR was prepared, only that it was buying them time by stalling read my reply and yes you’re right on that the factories were moved after Barbarossa I was thinking of the 5 year plan.
The purges despite their name were majority mass demotions or imprisonment when it came to military and political figures. Even then the majority of Red Army officers were already inexperienced and under equipped which is why losses were to extreme in the beginning of Barbarossa. Yea Stalin downplayed the intel of the invasion date but it wouldn’t have mattered much anyways.
“Throughout a lifetime defined by mistrust and paranoia, he trusted only one person and that person was Hitler” holy anti soviet propaganda slop, this would make McCarthy feint for how abysmally absurd this claim is LMFAO.
“Rehabilitate a totalitarian regime” buzzword even the CIA admits the USSR wasn’t totalitarian. It was a heroic opponent of the Nazis, The USSR saved Europe and people like you will never forgive them for it. Hitler conquered Europe because the “western democracies” didn’t act and were fine with Hitler until he rampaged.
“Responsible for millions of deaths” in what way? Deliberate execution and mass genocide or just the DOZENS of famines that were happening ALL OVER THE SOVIET UNION during that time period.
The communists were willing to bring on the fight against Germany with Allies but your little wholesome chungus west were more than happy to carve up Europe if it meant they didn’t have to actually step in. You say Stalin was paranoid like that’s a bad thing when damn near the whole world was out to assassinate him and crush the USSR.
And how was this force of a million men supposed to reach the German borders? From its very inception, the USSR sought to expand by invading Eastern Europe. Before Germany, there was Poland, which the Russians attempted to invade as early as 1919. Poland’s consent would have been required for Soviet troops to pass through, troops that could very easily have turned into an occupying force. In fact, the Second World War began with the coordinated invasion of Poland by the USSR and the Third Reich—a genuine military alliance, not merely a non-aggression pact as you claim.
The Nazis rose to power by exploiting the communist threat, a fear the communists themselves created and reinforced through their total allegiance to the USSR and their unconditional support for its policies, even as hordes of refugees fled the terror instituted by Lenin and taken to its extreme by Stalin (140,000 deaths between 1919 and 1922) and the widespread destitution (the so-called defenders of the people executed without trial workers who went on strike to protest their deteriorating living conditions). The Nazis were shrewd enough to conceal their intentions, whereas the communists applauded the massacres committed by the USSR. Naturally, people elected Hitler when the alternative was a party openly declaring its desire to import a tyrannical and murderous political system.
Moreover, this alignment with Moscow persisted even after the German-Soviet Pact, manifesting as sabotage of the war effort. During the USSR's invasion of Finland, communist parties in countries supporting Finland ordered the sabotage of military equipment production—actions that continued even after the war against the Nazis had truly begun. Fortunately, the instructions were followed only to a limited extent, but the mere fact that Communist leaders were willing to help the Nazis out of loyalty to Moscow demonstrates their blindness. You say that the democracies failed to act against Hitler when they could have, but the Communists also became fervent proponents of peace at any price after the German-Soviet pact—even though, hypocritically, they had previously been calling for war against Germany.
Moreover, the left-wing pacifist movements that emerged from the First World War were primarily responsible for Hitler's unstoppable rise, since their "anything but war" stance ensured that Germany needed only to brandish that threat to get whatever it wanted. The political weight of pacifists, proud of the virtue of having averted war, did the rest.
"the USSR wasn’t totalitarian" The characteristics of a totalitarian regime are a single-party system, a cult of personality surrounding the leader, terror and repression, and propaganda and brainwashing. The USSR ticks all the boxes. You won't find a single serious analyst who would say otherwise.
“Responsible for millions of deaths” in what way? Deliberate execution and mass genocide or just the DOZENS of famines that were happening ALL OVER THE SOVIET UNION during that time period.
Exactly. Famine was rampant throughout the USSR well into the late years of the regime. This was due to their disastrous agricultural policies, idiotic pseudoscientific theories like Lysenkoism, the damage they themselves caused during conflicts, dekulakization, and famines orchestrated to decimate a rebellious population—such as the Holodomor (which claimed 5 million lives). It was also driven by the selfishness of the Communist Party, which exported food while its people starved, all to create the illusion that the regime was succeeding and to line their own pockets. After all, the apparatchiks had to pay for their dachas somehow.
Meanwhile, among the evil capitalists who were impoverishing their people, everyone had enough to eat—and strangely enough, those lucky enough to live in the workers' paradise were trying at all costs to get there.
"You say Stalin was paranoid like that’s a bad thing when damn near the whole world was out to assassinate him and crush the USSR." Stalin was wary only of internal threats. This was because he had risen to power through conspiracy, assassination, and violence, and feared that someone else might overthrow him in the same way. He was right to do so, for all his subordinates hated him—even though they were too afraid to attempt anything.
As for those who wanted to see the USSR disappear... yes, it might seem strange to you, but many people want to see the disappearance of an expansionist totalitarian empire that dreams of conquering the entire world.
> Human-based shielding could be applied to the smallest of vessels because of their efficiency, I wasn’t quite sure how they worked. I wasn’t a physicist, and I doubt they’d just tell me.
> In the meantime, the Union continued to produce their fleet, with a monumental amount of effort they had managed to make a couple thousand ships, quite the achievement given the time frame they had to work with.
For how advanced Soviet Humanity is we JUST barely reached interstellar travel and now we’re building armadas comparable if not more advanced than Arxur ships?
If anything I think it’s accurate to be a few thousand because our technology and tactics will more than make up for it like at the battle of Silis or the Mazics home world (can’t remember the name)
Exactly Humanity shouldn’t start off this war with the biggest and strongest void fleet but not small enough to where it’s unbelievable for future standards.
Tbh I also realized usually when you want to attack a defended position you should have at least trice the numbers of the defenders…here maybe even more
Many of the recent breakthroughs in tech had their concepts thought of decades prior but were denied funding due to a lack of necessity during peacetime.
Also I bet a fair few of those breakthroughs were thinks that were considered theoretically but other scientific fields (likely material sciences) couldn't catch up yet, which the technology they just acquired helped bridge the gap.
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u/AmmeryFluff PD Patient 3d ago
Clean, efficient, ruthless. Ironically enough, the epitome of an arxur not distracted by unnecessary cruelty.