Robomeck RPG: Robomeck Mecka-Space War III-Earth Expeditionary Force

Robomeck RPG Index

Earth Expeditionary Force Mecka

The war of the Hive against the Proto-Overlords started off badly.  Filled with remorse over the death of Qor, the Queen of the Hive “divorced” the King.  They divided the brood and the rest of the Hive’s assets.  The rumors of his wife’s infidelity (after she’d shapechanged into a form approximating Qor’s of course) all but confirmed, the King vowed to continued the conflict.  He still had billions of subjects.  The Queen, more addicted to the narcotic Proto-Flower than he was, vowed to find Qor’s lost ship and whatever un-germinated seeds it contained to ultimately achieve a “higher plane of enlightenment.”  Unlike your typical junkie, the Queen meant that in a literal sense, and dedicated her resources to that end.

The Hive King’s war was greatly aided by two factors hampering the Overlords.  One, the loss of the Proto-Loom on Qor’s ship meant they had no more seeds to construct any more Proto-furnaces for new capital ships.  The Overlords had tens of millions of Zee warriors to face the Hive, but it would be a losing fight unless they could find Qor’s ship or develop a new power source.  Two, suddenly nearly all of the Zee forces disappeared from the battlefront.  They’d found Qor’s ship and then found catastrophe in earth’s orbit.  The Overlord empire was suddenly wide open. 

The King had sublimated his addiction into conquest.  He took everything he could find that belonged to the Overlords.  But when he found Zirol, the Overlords’ homeworld, there was nothing more than token resistance.  The Overlords had fled.  After the King and his fleet left orbit to chase them, an armada from earth arrived at Zirol.  And they were spoiling for a fight.

The allies the humans had made among the Zee informed them of the Overlords.  With the failure of the Zee, they’d be coming for Qor’s ship themselves.  The Zee knew the ship was important, but may have had less knowledge of Proto-Energy, much less the Proto-Loom on the ship, than the humans.  The EMDF attempted to transfer the entire engine block, which contained the Loom, into a new SDC ship.  A Zee insurrection by Centaurus after the war would disastrously destroy both ships in a suicide attack with his own ship.  All three ships ended up buried underneath massive buttes as monuments.

Earth had been devastated by their war with the Zee.  A humanitarian crisis followed the near extermination of humanity, but the survivors from Crash Island aboard the SDC-1* knew a little something about perseverance.  Human civilization recovered to some small extent along the planet’s biosphere.  But just surviving was not going to be enough; they needed a goal in order to truly thrive again.   

(* A fold “bubble” of atmosphere protected the island and its population until they could be rescued on to the ship after its unexpected transit to Pluto.  It dissipated once the ship took off back into the system.  [I’m rolling my eyes while writing this.])    

 

Earth leadership could not imagine trying to defend the planet from another interstellar invader.  They wanted the next war to be on someone else’s planet.  To the stars would become the motto of the new Earth Expeditionary Force.  Using a captured Zee Orbital Factory, they focused the world on building a fleet to engage the Overlords in their home system.  Moreover, Zee allies had informed them of many unoccupied habitable worlds along the way to Zirol.  Here was a chance for pioneers to make a fresh start on a new world and distribute humanity among the stars.  Many survivors welcomed an opportunity to get away from a devastated earth, even if they had to serve in the military to get there. 

The Expeditionary Force was fully expecting stiff resistance in directly confronting the Overlords.  They built an SDC-3 along with a fleet of escort ships and colony vessels.  They still had tremendous stores of Proto-fuel from what was scavenged from derelict Zee ships.  Worlds were seeded with colonists in the migration.  Another Zee Factory was taken and rechristened Space Station Defender.  (Such facilities were now undefended.  The Overlords had simply written them off.  Any remaining fleets had been ordered into hopeless conflict with the Hive to cover the Overlords’ trail.)  SSD would serve as a communications hub and waypoint for the earth, her colonies, and the fleet.  It would also serve as a fallback position and a defensive fortress and an arsenal.  The final stop for the military fleet would be Zirol.  

It would be a long fold.  The fleet would functionally be on its own upon arrival.  Even interstellar communications would have significant delays at that distance.  EEF ships and their mecka were well-equipped to face a force of Zee and whatever the Overlords could field.  They were not anticipating waves of expendable Hive mecka coming up from the planet.  All of the fleet’s capital ships were damaged if not destroyed in the orbital battle.  The EEF survived and mounted a hasty invasion of the planet.  With a few remaining Zirolian rebels on the planet, they managed to take out the Hive Proto-Brain, which disabled the occupying Hive Automated Troops and forced the rest of the Hive to flee.    

But at what a cost though.  The EEF was functionally no longer a fleet.  All of their fold-capable ships were incapacitated to some degree.  Not only could they not escape, they couldn’t even call for help with all their Mega-Wave transmitters damaged.  This was what prompted the planetary invasion effort; they wouldn’t have survived the Hive regrouping and attacking them again in space.

Into this situation came another alien ship.  The Overlords and the Hive had not made friends among their conquered worlds.  A network of rebels comprised of the species of these worlds had been trying to liberate their planets for years.  They had observed these humans driving off the Hive from Zirol inside of a week.  It was time for some deal-making.  These “Liberators” offered to help the EEF in return for their help in against the Hive on their worlds. 

It had been a long month of waiting at SSD and earth command before a message finally came from the fleet.  It could be summed up as, We’re at war.  Send reinforcements.   The message had the right ID codes, but had an odd modulation.  After confirmation by an SSD recon ship, which took weeks to get there because it was a long fold, the EEF confirmed the message and various commands were illuminated on the situation.  The fleet had to use an alien Mega-Wave to send the message and alien techs were aiding the fleet in getting their fold engines back online. 

These Liberators made a good argument for war against the Hive.  As the humans were using Proto-fuel, the Hive would eventually come after them, as they had their own Proto-fuel-using worlds.  The Hive were consuming captured stores on their occupied worlds for “enlightenment” in lieu of their precious Proto-Flower.  In any case, reinforcements would be needed to protect the fleet under repairs and to hold Zirol, which still held many technological secrets of the Overlords, including a Qor clone.     

If there was one huge leadership mistake here, it was that it had been assumed that the Overlords had been run down and destroyed by the Hive, since they were informed that their fleet couldn’t fold to earth.  The Zirolan rebels had lost contact with the fleet and hadn’t heard from them in nearly 10 years.  The possible threat to earth seemed to be here at Zirol, where it could be dealt with far away from their own home.  The Orbital Factory was requested for repairs and additional ship production, along with reinforcements.

In fact, the Overlords had totally eluded the Hive (their spatial drives were masking their Proto-fuel signature) and had gone incommunicado.  Hive forces were scattered everywhere looking for them.  The Hive did attack Zirol again, but not in full force.  The Liberators would help to protect the fleet, as EEF reinforcements had not yet arrived.  Once resupplied, the EEF would make good on their promises and help to attack the various occupied worlds.  The overextended Hive, weakened from their lack of Proto-Flower, was no match for them.  The Hive King nearly waited until it was too late before he regrouped his forces on Teroptera, not wanting to give up on finding the Overlords.  The Hive Queen refused to fight and left him, taking half of the brood off world. 

The final fight wouldn’t be in doubt with the Hive numerically weakened by war and suffering from lack of Proto-anything.  But before the end, communications with earth were suddenly lost.  When resumed, the horror dawned.  The Overlords were attacking earth.  Knee-deep in their own war and two months away by fold at the fastest, the EEF couldn’t let up and leave a dangerous enemy at their back.  A single recon ship sent to earth confirmed the worst before it was destroyed.  The Overlords were too powerful to be easily dispatched. 

Relief forces were gathered at SSD from the colony worlds and Zirol.  They would link up with ANS space forces in time for the final battle of the war.  It was this battle that cracked open the Proto-Loom aboard the SDC-1 ruins and sprayed spores of the Proto-Flower into the air.  It would take root shortly thereafter and would then be detected by the Hive Queen.  She folded her whole brood to earth immediately and made short work of all enemy combatant forces.  The Hive then distributed and nurtured their precious flower across the globe with human slaves tending to the corps. 

When the EEF next faced the Hive, it would be on earth.  These Hive were inspired to defend their new homeworld with their concentrated numbers and regenerated by fresh Proto-Flower.  The EEF would soon realize they were facing a much more capable enemy. 

Proto-Fuel Cells

Proto-fuel was not in short supply for the EEF.  However, they did rethink the micro-reactor design of their mecka.   In an effort to simplify the design of their next generation mecka, the Delta and other mecka (and even hand-held weapons) would use expendable Proto-cells.  Theoretically, it made the mecka easier to service in fleet operations.  (And a bit cheaper.  Keep in mind, the missile systems onboard Deltas and Omegas were very expensive to arm.) 

These cells would exhaust themselves after a few combat missions.  Mecka with the fleet would not have a Proto supply problem, but for plucky rebel groups in the field, finding Proto-fuel was always an issue.  Cells could be found around battle sites and supply dumps.  Even older mecka with their reactor intact could be jury-rigged to recharge cells.

[Note: this is an optional rule.  On the show, it was more of plot device, so I’m reluctant to make any hard-and-fast rules about it.  Deltas and Omegas have 4 cells and Typhoons have 1.  I’d say at full charge, they’d last about 10 missions with combat in each.  I wouldn’t make an issue of this more than a couple of times in a campaign.]