Vrox Rampage

"A storm is loosed upon the sea, a wretch hell-bound and bent on blood"

- Fleet Admiral Frank Cooper, upon seeing the first invasion fleet coming through the Penthe wormhole.

The Vrox Rampage was a major interstellar conflict, fought from 2321 to 2324. The conflict included and affected almost all major powers in the known galaxy. The war was marked by massive military and civilian casualties and infrastructural devastation, including the systematic decimation of the population of the A.S.F. member world Concordia, and the absolute destruction of the Urseario system, capital star system of the Ursear Republic.

The war was the absolute deadliest and most destructive in modern galactic history.

Discovery of the Vrox
After the discovery of the unstable Penthe wormhole in 2313 thanks to published findings of the Deep Science Institute, the Allied Systems Federation began building a 'hyperspace highway', connecting the Federation to the approximate location of the wormhole. After this enormous infrastructural project was finished, work could truly begin on stabilizing the wormhole, which took years of study and huge amounts of highly specialized materials and equipment.

After stabilisation was finally complete, and the wormhole was mapped, various science ships and exploratory vessels traversed the wormhole and found themselves in a unknown area of the universe. After a few days of exploration, the vessels found themselves to be in the territory of the highly xenophobic robotic Vrox empire. The Vrox ships effortlessly destroyed the newcomers and decided to investigate the wormhole.

On the other side, in known space, all contact with the exploration fleets was suddenly lost and a contingent of military vessels were requested to guard the wormhole. Among this task force were Jake Creen and Fleet Admiral Frank Cooper in the newly refitted VSS Nabulon.

After crossing the wormhole, the military task force began investigating the other side and found the aggressive Vrox almost immediately attacking the ASF contingent. Narrowly surviving, the Nabulon crossed back into known space and sent a warning to the Allied Systems Federation, requesting immediate backup from the Federation Navy to safeguard the wormhole.

Open war
After two weeks of silence, the exploration fleets were declared destroyed and various space fortifications and defensive platforms began to rise in front of the wormhole, alongside a collected ASF military fleet, supported by loose elements of the Ursear Republic Navy. At the dawn of the third week of a tense waiting game, a large Vrox fleet suddenly came through the wormhole. Fleet Admiral Frank Cooper sent a message to the invasion fleet, telling them to stand down or be fired upon. In response, the Vrox fleet immediately opened fire on the defenders.

The battle was fierce and was only narrowly won by the defending Allied forces, mainly thanks to the established defensive platforms which had all been blasted to nothing more than derelict scrap. The allies barely got time to regain their breath as a second invasion fleet began pouring through the wormhole. Admiral Cooper ordered a full retreat using the hyperspace highway. After the allied fleet had been evacuated from the Penthe system, the entry jumpgate was sent hurling into the lead Vrox ships to cause maximum damage to their fleet, as the rest of the highway was self-destructed.

Now without a quick route between the wormhole and civilized space, the Vrox were stuck taking the long way. This allowed the A.S.F. to prepare for the coming storm. However, the Vrox now had full control of the wormhole and were now reinforcing their beachhead with a steady supply of ships and equipment.

Almost two months after the first battle, the Vrox fleets were spotted heading towards the A.S.F. member world of Concordia. Overwhelmed by the large alien fleets, the planetary defenses fell quickly, and the Vrox began landing troops on the planet. In a horrible act of genocide, the population of the planet was decimated. This was widely broadcasted by the Vrox using strong subspace transmitters. This show of horror was their propaganda to convince known space to surrender. In response, the Ursear Republic officially declared war on the rampaging invaders, now standing side by side with the Allied Systems Federation. While the K'adurbian Stellar Empire could barely keep itself in one piece due to heavy rebellions within its territories, the state supported the A.S.F. and the U.R. where they could.

After the decisive victory for the Vrox on Concordia, they had their first defeat at the invasion of the Loval system. A sizeable vrox contigent was faced with the wrath of the Ursearian navy. The large battlecruisers of the Ursearians proved a worthy opponent for the Vrox warcruisers and capital carriers. Despite the victory, the Ursearians took heavy losses and realised they could not keep throwing their entire navy at the hell-bound opponent. The victory was a huge boost in morale for the allied forces, and showed that while the Vrox were formidable, they were not invincible.

The Ursearians continued to take heavy fire from the advancing Vrox armada. Supported by reinforcing contingents of A.S.F. fleets, they fought and fought the everlasting pressure of the invaders. Eventually, the combined forced had to fall back to the capital system of Urseario. The first battle of the Urseario system erupted here when several large Vrox fleets beelined for the Ursearian homeworld. The combined defensive power of the orbital defense network, the majority of the Ursearian navy and the support of the A.S.F. proved too much to take, and the invading fleets were severely thinned out and repelled. This defensive victory allowed Ursear scientist to take a closer look at Vrox technology and provide countermeasures by reverse-engineering the advanced technology.

The losing side
Despite victories for the allied forces, the pressure was beginning to take its toll. The Republican Navy took heavy losses and the invading Vrox were keeping pressure on the defensive network of the Urseario system. The A.S.F. had lost many ships and many outpost had been captured or destroyed. But one of the largest advantages for the defending allies began to wane: The hyperlane network. The Vrox now had enough information to accurately calculate hyperlanes. The mobility advantage of the allies was gone. The Vrox launched new campaigns into A.S.F. and KSI space, claiming huge swaths of territory without much resistance. They also invaded the system of Etadiri, the Pirate Alliance stronghold. This united the various pirate factions under leadership of young Grand Pirate Nemo V, who now pledged allegiance to the allied forces. The pirates began a ferocious and bold guerrilla warfare against the Vrox.

The invasion of K'adurbian space was the trigger needed to temporarily re-unite the Stellar Empire. Now with full production focused towards the war machine and having military and economical support from the Bor Empire, the K'adurbian began to put up a resistance against the invaders. Despite this resistance, the K'adurbians were only capable of keeping the Vrox out of the most vital systems, and did not have the capabilities to protect lesser systems.

After weeks of intense fighting in A.S.F. space, now with multiple small member colonies occupied or destroyed, the resistance fleets around Bersalis began to crumble. The planetary defenses and infrastructure was bombed from orbit. This crippled any space operations from or to the planet, isolating it from the rest of the Federation. The first ground invasion of the Vrox troops was repelled by local militias. The second wave came a week later and managed to overcome the defenders and the Vrox were now in control of the planet, and began destroying cities and infrastructure.

Counterattack
Faced with eventual defeat, the allied forces put together a large taskforce with a single goal: collapse the wormhole to prevent that any more Vrox come through into known space. This fleet would be equipped with experimental cloaking technology and torpedo's armed with subspace destabilization warheads. The task force could be comprised of K'adurbian ships, as these were the only ships capable of using warp FTL and avoid detection by the Vrox.

Operation Collapse would turn out to be a success, although 90% of the task force would be destroyed by the Vrox upon collapsing the wormhole. The Vrox were now isolated from their supply lines and had no way of reinforcing their numbers. Despite this, their present numbers were superior to the combined forces of the allied states. A bloody and messy waiting game began where the Vrox would turn to more and more genocidal tactics while a guerrilla war would slowly eat at the Vrox's numbers.

The End
Main articles: Saris System and Battle of Earth.

With the Vrox now turning anxious, they used a superweapon that they had brought in with their equipment and turned the star of the Urseario system into a blazing supernova. This violate explosion destroyed all space infrastructure and all starships unprotected by the shadow of a planet. The explosion also killed around 5 billion Ursear civilians in the first hour, and a huge humanitarian crisis began to save as many Ursearians from their dying homeworld. After a few weeks, around 300 million Ursearians were saved and were evacuated to remaining Ursear colonies and A.S.F. space.

The final battle of the war was a succesfull ploy to lure the Vrox into a massive invasion of Earth. Captains Jake Creen and Belotja Taudan succesfully planted false intelligence that Earth was not defended by any defensive fleet but only its orbital defensive network. The Vrox fell for the lure and committed a significant portion of their remaining forces into this assault. When they arrived, it indeed seemed as if Earth was left undefended. The invaders began assaulting the defensive grid and orbital space stations, but then a large volley of nuclear missiles was launched from the planet below. The swarm of missiles was too large for the point-defenses of the Vrox and several missiles impacted on dreadnoughts and warcruisers. The resulting blasts and EMP shockwaves disabled or crippled many Vrox ships, and confused others. At that moment, the combined forces of the A.S.F. navy, the K'adurbian Navy, the Bor royal Navy and remaining forces of the Ursearian Navy arrived from a hyperlane exit point and began engaging the Vrox. The two largest fleets in modern galactic history began to duke it out while being supported by the orbital defenses and ground-to-orbit cannons present on Earth.

After a battle that lasted several days and spanned the entire Sol system, the Vrox fleet was defeated. With that, the majority of the Vrox was now destroyed and the remainders fled into unexplored space surrounding civilized space. While there were still a great many Vrox ships out there, they did not have the numbers anymore to be a threat to any interstellar state.

Aftermath
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The consequences of the war were unimaginable. After the destruction of the Ursearian homeworld and the decimation of several of its colonies, the Ursear Republic collapsed into anarchy and disarray.

The K'adurbian Stellar Empire fragmented due to full-scale rebellions that had been going on during the war and now had the opportunity to break away.

The Allied Systems Federation began to fragment due to its inability to protect itself against various alien threats and was seen as an ineffective nation.