Fiction:Attero Dominatus/Alternate Histories/Tears of Obsidian

Premise
"Brodo the Regent, commander of a lone Obsidian, bravely making a suicide attack against that Abaddon Class Flagship and saving the Emperor’s Palace Ship from annihilation. That image would be seared into the memories of the Gigaquadrantic community for ages to come. Many however, forget that a Gargantuan had distracted one of the Tyranny’s Apocalypse Class Doomstars from destroying the Obsidian. This is the story of a Deathstorm in which the DCP was not so fortunate."

- Preface to Tears of Obsidian, the #1 in Alternate History Novels, published 2810

Brodo watched in raw horror as the Apocalypse Class Doomstar fired its entire arsenal not on the desperate Gargantuan trying to save his Obsidian, but his own ship. In a single instant, the already damaged Obsidian was fully consumed by the raw power of the armament. In the ensuing chaos, the faltering Delphan battle-line desperately tried to save the Emperor’s Palace ship from the lone Abaddon Class Flagship that was literally bombarding it into oblivion. They were too late, and too outgunned however, to prevent the Palace Ship from being utterly obliterated, and thus came the death of their Emperor, Wormulus II. With the elimination of their Supreme Commander, the Delphans either stayed and fought, or retreated back across the Deathstorm.

The Tyranny’s fleet was very bloodied, and was thus unable to give immediate pursuit. But later in October of 2793, they led an offensive through Delphan territory and destroyed Mirenton. The Undying Council had ordered that the fleets be carefully husbanded and kept from battle so that they could be rebuilt, even if it was at the expense of the Core Worlds, and thus October saw the Core Sector suffer the same fate as Sector Ossuarium. In early November of that same year, Terrae fell, and Elethien was killed. While the New Cyrannian Republic had arrived, the force was too little and too late to defeat the Dominatus onslaught. With the death of their leadership, the Allied Terran Republic was dissolved and replaced with a military junta that would continue the fight. Meanwhile, members of the Orion League retreated back to their sector to fortify it against the inevitable Dominatus invasion.

This unstoppable rampage only ceased on December 7, 2793, when the Andromedans began their counter-attack against the Tyranny. The most elite of the Milky Way fleets were rapidly recalled while the rest carried on their offensives so as to keep the Tyranny’s foes in the Milky Way unbalanced. While the far-flung fleets were not able to save Angrus or Hedon, when Invictus fell on Feburary 7, 2794 they were able to launch a successful counter-attack in which they forced the 1st Battlefleet back and enabled a successful fighting retreat and scorched earth campaign for some of the Tyranny’s most advanced forces. Whereas in our universe, 80% of the Tyranny’s Andromedan Invasion Force was destroyed, in this universe, only 50% of this force was destroyed and the rest was able to retreat to Mirus due to Dominatus fears that such a logistical debacle would cripple them if it happened again.

Araveene had been destroyed while many more of the Crown Worlds had been sacked, and the industrial heartland of the Draconis almost gutted. Further, Gravius and a large contingent of the Tyranny’s super ships in Andromeda were able to retreat. Indeed the Allies only stroke of luck at this point in time was that Archon Stahl was executed by Drachon Dis Brutalis for disobeying Medusa’s orders and organising a fighting retreat in Andromeda while the ULE rapidly prepared itself for war. When the exhausted Draconis reached the Hypergate again, they launched a counter-offensive against the Dominatus forces in Bunsen, preparing to defeat the weakened Dominatus forces there before going on to the Milky Way. In Plazith however, only the increased sacrifices of the New Cyrannian Republic and the Delphans prevented a complete collapse, as more fleets were brought from Cyrannus to Plazith, increasingly leaving the Republic undefended. While the Levisala had been beaten back by the Dominatus and the Tyranny’s fleets were besieging Tropicana, the Dominatus were unprepared for such a surprise attack in Bunsen on April 2974, instead anticipating the Draconis to attack in the Milky Way. This happened in lockstep with a massed offensive by the ULE in May 2794 to attack the Dominatus industrial base. As the Tyranny needed to deploy its Mark 2 reserves against the ULE, the Dominatus in Bunsen were exterminated in much the same way they were in our timeline’s Andromeda, being completely obliterated by July 2794, one of the first complete Allied victories of the war. The Draconis had already gotten deep into debt borrowing to replace equipment and ship losses while the Delphans were nearly insolvent due to the ongoing fury of the Milky Way campaign.

With the death of Stahl, Gravius ordered a fighting retreat from the Milky Way while contemplating a plot against Medusa so as to save himself from execution. August 2794 saw the Dominatus begin their retreat while pressing on inexorably against the ULE. September 2794 saw the siege of Lanat Prime begin as the increasingly bankrupt Draconis attacked the Tyranny’s system of Hades Prime/Manticore. It was to their good fortune then, that October of that year saw the Junction attack Manticore itself from Borealis. Almost as soon as the Tyranny’s remaining forces in the Milky Way were cut off (though Gravius had taken many with him back to Mirus), the Delphans launched into a full offensive, obliterating the remaining Dominatus in the Milky Way.

No sooner had this happened than they had all joined the attack on Manticore, leading to it eventually being broken on November 2794, the same month that the Tralor Capital fell. Thankfully for them, the Tralor kept resisting, though the Allies knew that their likely fate would be the same as those unfortunate Mendel, Vanara, and Waptoria - completely exterminated. While Gravius succeeded in his coup, launched on December 2794, he did not possess Stahl’s political ability, and was thus deposed in short order by a Dominatus military junta. What would follow was a conflict that was even bloodier than the Mirus Campaign of our universe.

The Dominatus fell on May 2797, with Allied Invasion Force Demogorgon Prime having been reduced to 15% combat effectiveness. In the aftermath, the Dominatus did not even get a tribunal - anything that bore the mark of the Tyranny was to be exterminated. Many would credit this to the death of Uriel Ultanos in 2796 at the hands of the TIAMAT during its first deployment. The Allies, having deployed 5 Quadrillion Soldiers (4 Quadrillion in our timeline) lost 3 quadrillion (1.8 quadrillion in our timeline) while they had lost 15 quadrillion civilians (7 quadrillion in our timeline). Moreover, the end of the war saw each state declare complete bankruptcy and the Gigaquadrant fall into economic collapse. The Cyrannian Empire, one of the largest creditors, gradually repossessed assets while conquering the defenceless and bankrupt New Cyrannian Republic before soldiers could return for celebration.

The aftermath of the war saw complete social and national collapse in many a former ADC nation - while many of the ADC’s Mirusian constituents had been exterminated, fragmented beyond repair or reduced to nomadic groups, the Delphan Coalition of Planets almost immediately fell into a series of secessions and civil wars as the leadership that had so kept it together had been mostly annihilated in the war. A House War broke out in Andromeda as the leaderless Ultanos family was beset on all sides by their rivals. Tybusenia closed itself off to the greater Gigaquadrant while France tried in vain to build an international order from the fragmented Gigaquadrant. Perhaps their only respite was the reactivation of the Dominatus factories, but even then, greedy corporations would break away from their own, severely weakened empires and fend off counter-attacks with their own fleets, leaving their civilisations to perish. The Junction would leave the universe, as they did in ours, but in the face of the growing Vermulan menace, Plazith could only make haphazard attempts at resistance while the Empire plotted its next moves.

However, much to his chagrin, the Doomstar fired a half-charged up version and the resulting chain reaction took place where the resulting phenomena would damage both of them. Somehow, the Doomstar had also managed to get another semicharged Sphere ready before his gridfire was operational and for a moment, Brodo stared into the orb’s nadir, look at his oblivion. However, before it was fired, a critically damaged Gargantuan began to fire at the Doomstar with it’s remaining armament. The remaining armament was not sufficient to heavily damage the Doomstar, which outclassed the Gargantuan, but did draw it’s attention, and the orb was fired at the Gargantuan, completely consuming it.

I'd estimate that of all Mark 2s produced for the Dominatus War, 2% were produced in 2789, 6% produced in 2790, 14% produced in 2791, 20% produced in 2792, 28% produced in 2793, 20% produced in 2794, and 10% produced in 2795

The golden apple tree with its roots soaked deep in blood