Fiction:Federation-Antarian War

The Federation-Antarian War was a conflict fought between the otherwise-peaceful Merophian Federation and the aggressive Antarian Empire

Background
Official First Contact between the Federation and the Empire took place in 218 BPO (though unofficial contact was made earlier that year), when the USC Intrepid inadvertedly entered Antarian space and was confronted by another Tykarso-class ship, the IAS Vigilant. The Vigilant 's captain ordered the Intrepid to "stand down and prepare to be boarded". After a brief exchange of fire, the Intrepid 's captain convinced the Antarians to start negotiating instead. Though the Antarians ended the attack, they promised to destroy any Federation ship that entered their space again. They supplied the Intrepid with a current map of their territory.

By 31 BPO, relations between the two powers were very tense. More than forty skirmishes had occurred between the Federation and the Empire since the encounter between the Intrepid and the Vigilant, and the new Antarian President, Yomin Mosumn, promised his people to rid the Empire of the threat forever.

The War
A few months after Mosumn's rise to power, five Antarian battlecruisers destroyed a large Federation colony on Xan-3, killing over 11,000 colonists and losing only one cruiser, the IAS Galaxy, themselves. The Federation president declared war, and thus began a conflict that lasted almost thirty-years.

The Federation quickly gathered its forces around the Antarian border. A fleet of 12 cruisers and frigates engaged the four Antarian ships in the outskirts of the Xan system. Though they managed to destroy three Antarian cruisers, the Federation was eventually overpowered. The lone remaining cruiser, the IAS Frontier, returned to Antarian space for repairs.

Meanwhile, the Federations quickly began amassing their primary battle fleet, headed by the USC Valient, their flagship. After two weeks the Federation Starfleet was 1,500 strong and had branched into two fleets. The first, 600 ships headed by the Valient, would take an aggressive stance against the Antarians while the rest would position themselves along the border to guard against Antarian attacks.

The Antarian fleet quickly launched more attacks on the border, most of which were successful. However, their advance was halted in the Michelrom system when the Assault fleet moved in to help. From that point both fleets worked together to drive the Antarians out of Federation space. Once that was done and more ships had been launched and added to the Defense fleet, the Assault fleet took the offensive and moved into Antarian territory.

The Antares Supernova
In 1 BPO, Antares-B (the secondary star in the Antares system) reached the end of its relatively short lifespan. The resulting explosion destroyed two planets and heavily damaged Antares-A. Fortunately, the primary star was much larger than its companion and survived. The Antarian homeworld also survived, though its ecosystem was thrown into chaos and most of the planet became too cold to support standard life.

Meanwhile, the remnants of Antares-B had collapsed into a black hole. Since it contained about the same mass as the Antares-B had, for the most part the orbits of Antares-A's ten remaining planets remained as they had been before the supernova. The Antarian government went to great lengths to ensure that the mass of the black hole never changed, for if it did the respective orbits of the ten planets would be disturbed.

Hostilities between the Federation and the Empire ended with the signing of the Treaty of Polaris, as much of the Antarian fleet was forced to help with relief efforts in the Antares system. The Federation offered to help as well, which the Antarians (reluctantly) accepted.

Meanwhile, the newly-formed wormhole provided a shortcut to Grox space near the Galactic Core. The relationship between the Grox and the Empire started off rocky - hundreds of Grox fighters wreaked havok in Antarian space for almost a year and the Antarians were forced to collapse their end of the wormhole to prevent more Grox ships from coming through. But eventually they decided that their best shot at taking control of the quadrant (and possibly the entire galaxy, too) was to form an alliance with the Grox. They constructed a massive energy channeller on the first planet from Antares, Pyria, to reopen the wormhole and keep it open. After weeks of tense negotiations between President Mosumn and the Grox ambassador - a Murglbrg defector names Turgeongo - an agreement was secretly forged. The Antarians would allow Grox ships to travel freely through the wormhole, and in return the Antarians received cybernetic implants, incredible new technology on their ships and colonies, and the support of the most powerful empire in the galaxy.