The Cybernetic Rebellion

The Middle War

The cybernetic phase of the war began in earnest in 3012 when the first Grand Alliance cybernetic fleet, attacked Naplian forces in the Attwa Starsystem. The Naplians were victorious in the engagement and in several later encounters. However, by 3021, Cybernetic squadrons were engaging and defeating Naplian task forces with surprising regularity. As time passed and the number of Grand Alliance victories mounted, the human races and their alien allies began to believe that, although there had never been any offer of peace by the Naplian Empire, the war had run its course. An armistice, even a unilateral decision by the victorious Grand Alliance to end hostilities, would be in the best interests of all and in 3275 the Grand Alliance took the decision to unilaterally call an end to the conflict.

The Palatrian Incident

In August of 3275, a Lotharian fleet brought the allied directive to cease combat operations to a Gedi task force in the Palatrian star system. The response of the Gedi commander was immediate and violent. Gedi warships opened fire on the small Lotharian squadron within moments of receiving the transmission and soon forced the surrender and subsequent harvest of the Lotharians. Within a few weeks, nearly all cybernetic forces within the theater of operations had turned on their biological masters. An estimated three-quarter of the cybernetic forces engaged in the invasion of Naplia turned about and began to assault Grand Alliance starsystems. The remainder, consisting of loyalist Truppen and the Symbiotic League, which were more mech than cyber, remained faithful.

Realization

The attacks sent shockwaves through the Grand Alliance. The cybernetic conquest, harvest, and conversion of Naplians and their allied populations had been remorseless. They were, after all, the enemy and, since the desperate days of the Naplian invasion of the Inner Rim, the allied worlds had not given a thought to the fact that those enemies and their families were fellow “biologicals.” Now the full horror of what they had unleashed became clear. The cyborgs, knowing that the cessation of hostilities meant that there would be no processing “material” to maintain and increase their numbers, turned upon their makers as the logical source of new material. They brought death and destruction down upon the humans and their alien allies throughout known space.

Flight

Those who could fled from the advancing cybers. To escape the cybernetic horror, the Phantatwain, an alien race of the Grand Alliance, went so far as to attempt to repair the ancient jump engines that their ancestors fitted to their worlds to turn them into giant mobile arcs. The technology for the ancient Nomad Worlds or “Platforms” as they came to be known was a closely guarded secret held only by a relatively few empires. It gave them a marked advantage over most of the allied races in the struggle to engage or avoid the cybers but it was not enough. The cybernetics were relentless, replenishing their ranks with the conquered, they spread across the galaxy in a war that raged for over a thousand years, moving outward to regions so distant that no name exists for them in the historical record.

Next…The Need for Victims

END TRANSMISSION

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