Operation Hammerhead - 1. Introduction

The Alliance wasn't at all prepared when the enemy slammed into four of the Rim Sectors in 2568. For a year and a half system after system fell until the Alliance finally got its act together and stopped the advance at the Battle of Omicron Ceti in 2570.

In the three standard years that followed, the war devolved into a bloody stalemate in which neither side was able to establish clear dominance. The war became nip and tuck across a front 150 light years across.

Three years of constant warfare had ruined some of the richest systems in the Alliance and killed or made refugees of millions of its citizens. The enemy used engineered biological weapons that wreaked entire planetary ecosystems. Planets that had taken decades to terraform were rendered lifeless and barren in a manner of a few months.

As rich and established as the Alliance was, the war had stretched its resources to their very limits. The Alliance, as an institution, had always been very democratic and as politically neutral as possible to address the needs and concerns of its thousands of planets and colonies. With its very existence on the line, the Senate enacted Draconian measures to address the threat. In early 2569 Emergency Powers Act was passed, and the Alliance geared up for the fight.

Although the measures of the EPA were uniformly hated by civilians, soldiers and businesses, no one complained too loudly. The enemies’ early successes and complete lack of mercy bred a powerful resolve. Rationing of strategic materials, mass conscription and even the nationalization of most interstellar capable star ships were met with grumbling but no real opposition.

At the beginning of the conflict, the Alliance military was ridiculously small. Some high-value systems were protected by nothing more than police cutters or customs frigates. Thousands of experienced Bluejackets and hundreds of ships of the Alliance Fleet were sacrificed for little more than to buy time.

All attempts to communicate with the enemy had failed. In fact, close inspection of wreckage of their ships and ground vehicles yielded no clues to their species or origins. The rumor was that the enemies were all machines. Even worse, whispered rumor was that they were extra-galactic. They seemed to be based in a satellite galaxy, a globular cluster about 290 light years off the plane of the elliptic.

The Alliance was in the fight of its life with an enemy that had no face and there was no end in sight.