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by [[Mark Singleton]]

[[File:SSILecture.png|right|300px]]
<big>'''Great War Strategies, Real or Imagined?'''</big><br />
By Dr Helgan Kalzid

Years ago the species known to us as the Sathar, came
seemingly from nowhere to plunge the Frontier into a war of
epic proportions. Or did they? This examination will follow
the three phases of the war, the initial surprise, the continued
attack and the "retreat", I will then offer my comments and
then conclude with a summation. I do warn, that some of the
material presented may challenge what you hold as
inescapable truth, but the victor, always writes the truth.

The system of Zebulon had just been established as being
close enough to travel to and thus was given a name, but it
took decades for any Frontiersman to attempt it (in fact we
are just getting to it now). Just as we were getting
comfortable with our surroundings and general life in the
Frontier, another species made it's presence known. We call
them Sathar, what they call themselves we don't know but
we do know they took offense to our presence. Without
warning, ships appeared just off of Pale and moved in to
attack anything and everything in sight. If it were not for the
fact that two freighters belonging to the Pan-Galactic
Corporation had already completed calculations and were
powering up, no one would have escaped. Several shuttles
were able to dock with them and these few represent all that
escaped, but not all that survived.

Planet-side, most of the citizens fled to the surrounding area
when news of the attack first reached them. The exploding
ships could now be seen in the sky and the debris streaked
down like fiery rain. These survivors would unknowingly be
the only force at the end of the war to rid the captured
planets of the vile creatures.

With Pale taken care of, the Sathar Fleet (SF) deposited a
small contingent of troops on the surface and moved on to
New Pale. With virtually nothing there to slow them down,
they again placed some troops on the surface and moved on
to their next target. This 'surprise' phase was accomplished
in under a day, several freighters, system ships and shuttles
were destroyed (exact number unknown) and many lives
were lost. Warning went out to Dixon's Star as soon as the
hostility of the Sathar fleet was determined in an effort to
keep ships away from the system. One ship was in transit
but arrived after the SF had moved on and was able to
provide some assistance in recovering trapped personnel
from dead and dying ships.

With warning sent and received, the people of the Frontier
banded together to form a fleet of what combat ready ships
could be gathered as quickly as possible. As every person in
the Frontier knows, command was given to a Human, Vincent
Morgaine. Now we have a fleet and an 'Admiral', so what
now? With some quick glances at the current star chart,
Morgaine made the determination that there were two
courses of action available. First option, the SF moves on to
Dixon's Star, which is 5ly from Truane's Star, meaning that it
takes 50 hrs for calculations and 5 days of travel, so
hypothetically he has 7.5 days before they would emerge in
the system. The second possibility is that the Sathar travel
to Cassidine, which is also 5ly from Truane's Star, so the
bottom line is that in 7.5 days the SF could be at their next
target. Prenglar is 7ly from Cassidine and 5ly from Dixon's
Star, time to target is 10.5 days for Cassidine and 7.5 days to
Dixon's Star. So the variables to consider are how long will
the SF stay in the Truane's Star system, how fast can they
calculate jump data and how fast are their ships? A lot of
variables, especially when you consider that it could take up
to 10.5 days to correct a mistake in logic.

The fleet moved out for Cassidine (this was hotly contested
as being the wrong choice, but Morgaine is rumoured to have
stated that the Sathar did not have our star charts and thus
did not know where they could and could not go), one ship
was also dispatched to Dixon's Star to act as an outpost (OP)
in the event that the SF chose it as a target instead. Of note
here, with out knowing what the composition or capabilities of
the SF were, Morgaine only took half of his available fleet and
hoped that additional ships could meet him in Cassidine from
Dramune or Madderly's Star. This was a compromise largely
due to the fact that if the wrong system was chosen, they
would not have enough time to get back to Prenglar which
would result in Morgaine being totally out of position and
begin playing a loosing game of catch up. The Frontier Fleet
(FF) reached Cassidine and no SF was in sight, mildly
concerned Morgaine called his outpost in Dixon's Star, they
signal back that they are in location, but no Sathar.
Assessing the battle area, Morgaine decided to use the
asteroid belt on the edge of the system towards Truane's Star
in order to see if he could conceal the fleet from the SF and
strike the rear. Keep in mind that Morgaine's command ship
was a "heavy" cruiser and one of the few ships made for
battle.

When the SF entered the system Morgaine was proven correct in
his gamble, but why did it take them so long to get there?
Morgaine almost expected to emerge into a battle and instead he
was waiting for them, do they have slower engines or astrogation
computers? Putting that aside, he waited for his chance to strike
the weaker (hypothetically) end of the SF. This gave the FF the
first chance to see the ships of the enemy and they quickly
determined that these are battle craft, designed to fight and that
they outgun anything the FF has. This is not the best situation to
be in, since they also outnumbered the FF by a fair margin.
Approximately one third of the SF was destroyed in less than an
hour, the Sathar suddenly jumped out of system in the same
direction they came. Losses to Morgaine's fleet were relatively
minor, but now there was concern. FF ships dump data on a
jump and have to recalculate, but it seems that the SF data
might be saved and valid for a quick return trip, or is there
something else at work here? Did they plan an escape route
back before jumping in? This battle added more questions
instead of answering them.

The next move was easy to make, taking the FF plus the few
additions that joined it in Cassidine, Morgaine returned to
Prenglar. The OP reports (while Morgaine is in FTL travel) that
the SF is in system and striking anything and everything that did
not already flee. The OP went silent in mid-transmission and the
waiting game began. Reforming his fleet and adding some new
arrivals, the fleet was almost back to full strength (approximately
7/8 by estimation) and again choice of the engagement area was
his, open space. Days later, the SF emerged in the Prenglar
system and the two near equal fleets moved in for the final
battle.

[[File:SSWIship.png|right|300px]]
This battle lasted hours and saw the near total destruction of
both fleets. The remaining jump capable SF ships are reported as
"scattering in all directions". Attempts to recover the crippled
Sathar ships resulted in self-destruction of them and the boarding
vessel, a much more common event than we have been lead to
believe. The remainder were then destroyed in place without
further attempts to capture. In this battle, Morgaine and his
command ship were lost with all hands and the war was over. Or
was it?

We have covered the "known" facts of the Great War, but what of
the unknown? Above, a few questions should be sitting in the
back of your mind, and I can assure you that you will discover a
few more in this next portion. We know nothing about the
Sathar, so we only have what we have observed as a basis to
create fact. First, let us deal with the facts then we will move
into the other "facts".

FTL travel is taken as 1 day per light year travelled. This is a
constant to us now and has been a constant since all four of our
species took to the stars. Calculations take 10 hours per light
year to be travelled, we can do them faster at a risk of misjump
but in military operations, you want to hit what you are aiming
at. So if we return to the invasion and take the time spent on the
attack of Truane's Star as one hour for one hour with the
planning and raising of the FF, the SF could have been in either
Cassidine or Dixon's Star after 50 hours of calculations and 5
days travel totalling 7.5 days. With the fleet in Prenglar, quick
calculations would put the fleet in Dixon's Star in 7.5 days or
Cassidine in 10.5 days. These are all facts, so why move the
fleet to Cassidine and potentially arrive 3 days after the Sathar,
instead of moving to Dixon's Star and into a possible meeting
engagement? Not the best option, but when trying to stop an
invasion, it is usually best to get somewhere before the enemy.
Keep this in your mind and read on.

Using our own star charts as a reference, if we moved the FF to
Cassidine and the SF moved to Dixon's Star, they would be in
Prenglar before the FF could return. Potentially the Sathar could
gain two systems and be enroute to a third before we knew what
was going on. There is one possible fact to insert here and that
is that the Sathar came from beyond the Zebulon system, so they
have knowledge of other systems and routes. This leads one to
think that the choice of Cassidine over Dixon's Star as a target
was made as simply as how one would determine which shoe to
put on first in the morning. This leads to a very frightening
realization in the way the war was waged and won. It also raises
the potential that the Sathar knew it was not a "known" route,
this would lead to the possibilities that either they had spies
already in place or that they had scouted it out prior to the
invasion. Also keep this in the back of you mind and read on.

The next fact we have is that the Sathar made Cassidine the
second target system and played into the huge gamble that
Morgaine made. Further to that, they bypassed the asteroid field
and homed in on the habited planet. Was this because they were
focussed on the planet, or was it that they had reason to believe
that the FF would move to Dixon's Star? The attack on the rear
of the SF fleet was swift and decisive, so much so that the Sathar
left the system in short order. So this brings us to the next odd
realization, the Sathar can either calculate jumps in under an
hour, or they have computers that can save a return trajectory,
or they arrived after Morgaine because they plotted an exit vector
before departing Truane's Star. The third option would change
the time of travel to Cassidine from 7.5 days, to 10 days. This
may begin to explain the way the FF was able to arrive first,
despite the longer distance to travel. Maybe add a day to the
calculations to account for the fact that they were functioning
based on calculated data and not observed information and you
would get the FF arriving first. This "fact" leads you to the
conclusion that the Sathar can store two sets of data in an
astrogation computer, this is a very interesting and frightening
conclusion. The dangers of these assumptions are that we are
making the data fit our observations and extrapolations, very
dangerous if one wants to draw accurate conclusions.

It certainly adds some interesting possibilities to the pile of
"facts". It is generally accepted that the Sathar returned to
Truane's Star and moved on to Dixon's Star. I say "generally
accepted" since there were no ships in the Truane's Star system
to observe this occurrence. This trip would have taken 5 days
travel, then 50 hours of calculations and 5 more days of travel.
Potentially add another 50 hours plus 1 day if they plotted an
escape vector back for each move. The FF returned to Prenglar
taking 10.5 days in travel time to do so. Morgaine received word
from the OP in Dixon's Star (while enroute to Prenglar) that the
SF was attacking there and devastating the area, taking no
prisoners and then the OP went silent. So the SF was on time
for a direct move from Truane's Star with no time taken for
reverse calculations (or whatever they were doing), maybe. So if
the SF was in Dixon's Star at approximately 12.5 days after
leaving Cassidine, that would mean that Morgaine's fleet would
had been out of FTL and in Prenglar for 2 days, or were they?
How could he have received this information enroute to Prenglar
if he left immediately after the battle?

We know that the FF tried to board several disabled Sathar
vessels and that all attempts were met with destruction of both
ships. We also know that attempts were made to recover
Frontier personnel and that after seeing the SF up close and
having experienced it's capabilities, Morgaine waited for
reinforcements. This may be where the realization of Morgaine's
plan to stay in Cassidine first appears. Hypothesising that the
Sathar would take at least 12.5 days to get to Prenglar from
Cassidine (if they travelled to Dixon's Star, up to 20 days if they
went back to Truane's Star first) and he knew that he could get
back to Prenglar in less than that, he used as much time as he
could to allow ships enroute from Dramune and Madderly's Star
to join the fleet. This estimated time buffer would be longer if he
could be guaranteed that they always plotted an exit route before
moving to a new system. Unfortunately, at this point it has only
happened once and is not yet a pattern. Having used up all of his
estimated time, Morgaine moved the now reinforced FF to
Prenglar to meet the SF in what he now calculated to be better
odds, but still on the disadvantaged side (not many ships made
the effort).

Ships from the Timeon, Athor and Gruna Garu systems were
dispatched (or at least asked to go) to Prenglar as soon as the
decision to form a fleet was made and so when Morgaine
emerged, he had a fleet with firepower on par with the SF.
Things were looking up. The Sathar emerged 21 days after
departing Cassidine, and 8.5 after contact with the OP in Dixon's
Star was lost. The fiercest fight anyone had ever seen was about
to begin and it would rage on for hours. After all was said and
done, the SF as an effective fighting force was destroyed, but so
was the FF. There were some surviving FTL capable Sathar ships
that "scattered in all directions", as one of the more reliable
sources states.

This raises another interesting question on the established facts.
We know the Sathar were not moving as "fast" as we were,
unfortunately not one astrogation computer was successfully
salvaged from a ship to show us if this was because of slow
calculation ability or that they were plotting return flights as well.
What is of note, is that the Sathar took almost exactly the correct
time for a route from Cassidine to Prenglar via Truane's Star in a
series of one way plots and jumps, so this could support the
'return trajectory calculation' hypothesis for the delayed
appearance in Cassidine. The technology of the engines seemed
to be equal to our own, but again not one intact engine or drive
system was ever recovered. But if the retreating Sathar ships
went "in all directions", where did they go and how did they get
there?

There is nothing in the records (such that they are) to suggest
that the Frontier ships pursued the fleeing Sathar, so it is possible
that they simply travelled to a spot, calculated a jump from there
and returned to wherever they came from. Sounds nice and
simple, but I don't think it is. We have no way of knowing if they
went back, since everything between Prenglar and Zebulon was
destroyed. We know that the Sathar left troops on every planet
they attacked, but not enough to hold against a determined
ground attack. In fact, these were taken care of by the local
citizenry of the respective planets, so why do it? If we accurately
pieced together estimates from the few surviving records, the
numbers on each planet were in the dozens, not hundreds or
thousands, as one would expect from an invasion fleet.

In recent years, Star Law has been finding Sathar agents in some
rather unusual places, in very secure jobs and in very high profile
positions. What if the very Sathar that fled the final battle
trained these agents? We have no idea how long they live, but
what if it were hundreds of years? Dralasites can live for 250
years so it is not out of the realm of possibilities that the Sathar
could match or even exceed these ages. To extrapolate further
on this, what if the whole point of the war was to penetrate as
deep as possible, disperse as many spies as possible and then
erode us from within?

Let us really look at the numbers of the war, it only involved four
systems and resulted in the devastation of three planets, this is
hardly a proper invasion. Our fleet did not consist of every
available ship in the Frontier; it just consisted of the ones that
could make it into the battle areas. By far, Humans suffered the
most casualties as two of the three planets were Human
settlements and the third was a mix of all four Frontier species.
Had the Humans been alone and had all of the Human ships in
the Frontier been gathered in one place, I think they would have
provided the Sather with a fleet of equal strength in terms of
firepower and numbers. With that in mind, again by
extrapolation, it is not possible that the attack was not
representative of the entirety of the Sathar capability? What if
this was only one of other species in a similar arrangement to
ours, or one caste or clan of many? I think the war was actually
a battle that was designed to get Sathar spies and agents deep
into Frontier space with the intent to weaken us for the real war.

In summary and conclusion, the Great War involved much less
than 1/4 of the Frontier population, it spanned only four systems
and devastated only three planets. Wild gambles were taken and
assumptions were made that paid off in the end. The Sathar did
not employ consistent tactics and often appeared to alter them in
mid-stride. We have no way of knowing what the Sathar did
after their final defeat at Prenglar, but it is clear that they have
not left us alone. I don't think we won a war, I think we simply
ended the first phase of a larger plan. The Sathar will return, but
when and from where...

First Sathar War - Revision history

Terl obar: Created page with ' Top:Star Frontiersman main page | Up: Star Frontiersman Issue 6 main index ---- by [[Mark…'

Terl obar: Created page with '
Top:Star Frontiersman main page | Up: Star Frontiersman Issue 6 main index ----
by [[Mark…'