NationStates Jolt Archive

*31 October 3390*

The date that Operation Harvest was enacted, the military component name for the Fourth Great Expansion. The final culmination of a century of planning and nigh endless diplomacy and painful secrecy, the moment Lady Seto had been personally waiting for, for that equal time frame.

And the trillions of souls it was all for.

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*17 August 3299*

The Expansion took it's nucleus from the end of the Eternal War, the Treaty of Tranella-Rei. The days following the end of the War, and the original plans for the counterattack against the Dark Eternals for the War previous, the First Dark Eternal War, all fell a rough death, when reality smacked the Gaians in the face.

The Gaians were still recovering from the Eternal War, far more slowly this time than previous wars, than expected. Then news of less than enthusiastic support from other nations, such as Abh and others note during a Christmas meeting, along with Angelic recovery operations of their own, led the Council to realize the time was not right for any major operations to end the Dark Eternal threat in any effective way. That plus the realization the Dark Eternals were not fully active either, led to the Excellency to bite ego, and follow the slow plans that the Cease Fire offered to them, not knowing such at the time.

As such, for the second time in Ascendancy history, they vanished from the universe at large, at least from the eyes that knew them best. They cocooned into their holdings, and recovered. Five years into the Long Calm, the recovery was complete.

By then, the peaceful ways of the Gaians and their Confederacy and celestial allies took hard hold, and war was in no real active conversation at even the crystal-roots level. Slowly the Council realized the opritunity was staring them in the face.

At the time, the Archonis Supercluster was also recovering still from the long war, but was projected after the five year recovery timeline, to maximize trade-economic and political lines and affiliations, as well as communication abilities, in only seven more years. This meant the Ascendancy as a whole would be effectively 'advanced' enough, along most of it's galactic to system links on all vectors by then. The penchants for large resources in such an environment, and expected future technological and other advancements beyond Scale-One Dimensional tech, where the quasi-ascended realm existed as, allowed for new expansions on all the same vectors within another fifty year timeframe.

There was plenty of that muscle then, projected at the time, to plan for the century after the Long Calm ended. This is the nucleus, and the nucleus was engendered with the shelved plans, and married to new ones for future expansion.

The Sphere knew expansion was a realisitc oppritunity, trillions of present Confederacy souls that for all intensive purposes were still 'adherent' to the Ascendant teachings, even after all these Eons, could be counted on to follow a plan larger than them 'all', Council included.

The long promise of the Guardianship, the empire of Light, as it were, flawed, idealoical and whimsical, was also a compass focus for others in the Alpha Universe, to show something out there was capable of being the good guys. And the good guys began plans to expand their influence, and began eyeing the original invasion axis the Dark Eternals took to access the Archonis Supercluster.

Operation Harvest was originally called the Columbia Vector Plan. Initially only the Coumbia Supercluster was eyed, but the resources of the Foreign Advisory alone was deemed sufficient to also send inital feelers and exploratory contacts into the Corseria Supercluster beyond Columbia's galaxies.

The only iota that Lady Seto demanded of the Council, was that despite the presence of DE forces in the two Superclusters, the entire operation would be conducted diplomatically, before military assets were considered. This was a long, detailed, and exhaustive cooperative effort between the Foreign Advisory, Exploration Corps, and FACAF Command. The missions became at first a trickle, then a light flood of missions to worlds and realms that the DE had little influence over, mainly due to lack of advanced technologies, as well as the fact the space in question 'still' prevented full control over it all by a force as chaotic as the DE.

*January 3306*

The initial seventy-five year period after the recovery ended, and even before full maximized operations in Archonis took hold, the Sphere began forays into it's Universal Left intergalactic sectors. They did this with at first, few contacts with the DE, and all such that did occur was hushed severely for security's sake. With time, and the apparent shift of DE forces towards the Eternal Empire, and lack of apparent attention towards the Gaians, signals that the Long Calm was bearing fruit, the Sphere increased diplomatic efforts on even DE occupied worlds. The more the DE shifted forces away from the Gaian eye, the more secret operations and Lady Seto's Corps struck deeper.

Nothing was held back, and even when a diplomatic venture failed, even as many as ten to twenty times, the Gaians kept pushing every now and again. The years had a way of changing many things, goverments and force compositions among them. Eventually, after literally tens of billions of missions by well overworked Foreign officials, some that didn't return due to various reasons, the Gaians quietly extended influence in over 1,500 galaxies, with at least 45% of a galaxy 'turned', as it were, or convinced of the Confederacy model.

*An Alliance of Hope, 3285*

The Confederacy was an alliance of billions of sentient realms and worlds, that were allowed self determinations and economic representation, even at the individual level. This amount of freedom, with proper large scale law enforcement and the vast resource viability the Sphere commanded, gave a great many hope, where the DE or their own limited goverments, well off or otherwise, could not as easily offer. With the power of the Fold drive and the promises the Gaians never failed to deliver on, even as mere demonstration, (such as humanitarian and disaster relief efforts on millions of worlds for many varied reasons,) the Sphere began to see a vast number of new allies to call upon. However all of this was mainly supplies and words.

*July 3379*

The Sphere at the point of the last decade before the Long Calm ended, didn't hold actual dominion over any of the galaxies outside Archonis. Plus many of the efforts were on worlds that were underdeveloped in most cases. However with the DE a serious nightmare on many of these worlds, others nearby, or just supersitious hints thereof, the protocols of nointerference were essentially already violated already. At least to the Gaian point of view.

All that bluster, and more all that work prior, was hollow in the end without the military might to enforce the changes seeked. That's when Operation Harvest came to the planning stages in the FACAF and CAG Command Centers. Lord Azusa supervised for the next ten years, a large series of operational models and timetables, based on a very large number of guestimation protocols, dependant on what the DE would react to, or proact prior to, any Gaian operational event. The main problem almost to the moment the Counterattack War operational predeployments began, was the fact the DE were not at war with anyone. The shift in forces were more likely for unknown conquests, or other concerns the Gaians tried to track.

*November 3389*

The truth came across very shortly before the War and Expansion commenced, in a way that the Gaians slowly took advantage of. About a year before the two hundredth year of the Sphere anniversary, the DE invaded the Eternal Empire in greater force than what was needed. It was obvious it was a war of annihalation, the strategic implications took hold quickly after when the Com-Orb networks relayed this, along with Eternal cryptic requests for help, reached the Council.

The diplomatic functions were essentially given a green light to act on everything, and the Touman was ordered to prepare in support of the operation, along side the plans of Operation Paladin. Harvest and Paladin became hand in hand, instead of seperate entities, within a few short days.

As the Long Calm came to an end, the Fourth Age began with events already being detailed as this is read.

What was missing was the assets that were needed.....

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((OC- More to come.. ))

*10 November 3390*

Operation Harvest was the operational result of three specific phases, the first alone taking over fifty years complete. The Sphere knew that to complete the work of the Foreign Advisory and Exploration Corps, the Sphere Forces would have to assert hooks into the fabric being worked.

The beautful thing about Comm-Orbs, was that they were terribly small, high portable, easily Foldable into specific coordinates, and could be mass produced to be effectively used as anything from mere communication repeaters, to gravity anchors, the latter from a use of gravity pulses that could be tracked by other Comm-orbs.

With enough, the Orbs could communicate through Hikari Net, between all the targeted worlds for liberation, and the Sphere Core Worlds. Over a period of said fifty years, once enough worlds had been contacted, small numbers at a time of Orbs were carefuly dropped in, using coordinates previous diplomatic teams used to reach certain worlds.

As more diplomacy progressed, so did more deployments of Orbs, done in a fashion where others were Folded in to distract where needed, or simply Folded in completely unpowered, save for a chonometer unit and a holo-rod as a 'battery' timer. Most Orbs were activated in such a manner, to avoid most detection by the enemy. As the DE regressed from the target theater, and the Long Calm came to an end, the other two phases were acted upon, almost on top of each other.

Lord Tenchi Masaki assumed formal command of Operation Harvest about a year before the War commenced, and was given command of Ruby Universe and Beta CAG Galaxy, 99th - 103rd Angelic Hosts and more than a hundred combat Universes/Armies of the Sphere Alliance TOE was assigned to assist. Dimensional Fortresses Doraii and Seresthri were slated for the area, and the Planet Foundry Complex was ordered to prepare fresh planet bodies to be Folded in a most unique manner.

Phase Two was the preparation of those planets, as most were primarily the size of Luna-Sol, large enough on their own, but only so to allow the least gravitational sheer effect, whole allowing the most Touman/Army troops to be sent at once. With the eventual practice of sending an entire rubble pile against one of the DE capital systems, the sending of a moon was essentially the same deal. With troops and cache stores in place within entire constructed crusts, like near endless layers of storage combs inside, a moon could deploy two whole Universes and have a supply base all in the same stroke.

A slate of ten thousand moons were constructed in a base manner, no convection core or molten activity, made of solid material, were made to survive the process, long enough to get supplies in place. The supplies could then be moved to liberated worlds in the two Superclusters and then the moons used as MO-Resource fields for Kushan tactic droid fleet construction.

Phase two however was dependant on the main liberation forces that Lord Tenchi commanded, and as combat was expected to be seen at a minimum here, but also expected to be the formal holdings for the Sphere, operation orders were done diffferently here. Enough supplies and troop equipment was sent, in far excess of the actual troop numbers and pilots, with intention of crash training locals in both Superclusters on basic CAG doctrine. Despite the vast variety of lifeforms and civilizations encountered, most were easily adatable to Sphere conventions, and training could be done quickly enough.

At most only two Clusters were needed per world, in concert with basic planetary milita to hold a world, and that usually meant most adjoining moons along with it. As most control of planets meant only controlling local goverments with the promises delivered, whole systems could be converted in short spans of time, some even overnight. Those still controlled by the DE would get the most resources assaulted against them, using the same tactics that were employed in Operation Paladin.

Holding such amounts of territory was going to be 'far' from easy. The Gaians had to make absolute perfection of their delivered promises within a seventy-two hour time window, with anything beyond that considered failiure to the Gaians. That meant delivering all replication class supplies at the exact same time as the military, to deliver on hollow words. After that, was the rest of the Sphere prosperity the Sphere enjoyed, one only time would see done.

Adding a could thousand galaxies was also a treacherous proposition. All the celestial mechanics came to play, making movements in unfamiliar territory. Nebulae, simple celestial matter, singulatries, and just the vastness of space between stars could affect a great number of things.

None of it was easy, but it all really came down to evicting the DE, and then using time and lots of hard, hard work for the rest. It was expected a good hundred and fifty years would be needed to expand into Coseria and Columbia, the same as was done by trial and error in Archonis.

Phase Three therefore took place at 10 November 3390, at the same time Paladin took place. While the Sphere assaulted along whole Intergalactic Filaments, Tenchi moved his forces long seventeen major galactic gravity arcs, concentrating on a spiral pattern to spread out from, in essentially, two vast spirals. The moons were Folded along these spirals as anchors for the operation, and formal diplomatic teams that were once visitors, returned as official ambassadors, leading the humanitarian effort as the Sphere military acted against the largest DE concentrations.

Spirals along all seventeen vectors were seperated into sectors of hundreds of Systems, moons that were dropped in became command control until planets became communications viable. Orbs were supported by extendable array units, some as large as a cruiser, to boost communication effectiveness. Over a period of the same seventy-two hour period, Tenchi oversaw a steady influx of communication reports from both the military and diplomatic vectors, both seen as equal importance.

As the DE fell back to holdings well away from the two Superclusters, even in the first initial hours, Sphere core forces moved quickly to send, even as small as a Trinary to 'scout-hold' a System, so in as much to locate any DE targets, in so much as advance of further forces after Kushan operations moved forth nearby.

It all finally came down to a vast number of repetitive motions, large complex moves, and very large constructed numbers of droid troops, that began the slow process of holding key sectors of galaxies, and therefore the galaxies themselves. Those key galaxies over the next ten year period, the same as given to Paladin, would slowly act as the anchor for speeding forth more actions in other nearby galaxies, which would give reality to the bluster of Sphere cliams of it's expansion.

It was easy to make words, far, rediculously far harder to make it all happen. All of this done with very little bluster, and of note, no messages indicating any of this. The fewer that slowly realized the truth for the short term, the far far better securing everything would be.

The only message that was really sent out, was in a format like this.

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:: ~ GANN Havastra Galaxy Branch, 10 Nov 3390

News anchor Havastra Branch - "It was officially revealed today that Sphere forces under his Majesty's command, began long planned efforts to remove the Dark Eternal threat once and for all.

Massed allied forces began a long campaign that involved over a billion troops and armadas meant to end the threat without question. Operational secutiry orders prevent too much detail, but it is also known forces of a more humanitarian nature in concert with the military are moving into Columbia and Corseria Superclusters presently as well to secure our borders in that direction. However details are withheld there as well at present time.

Commerce and trade networks and the communications grid will not be affected this time, and foreign contacts are still being allowed. Travel between Archonis and the Virgo Supercluster holdings via vessel and Gate are also open, as is into the Intracel holdings and diplomatic contacts there.

No news is forthcoming from the Council, or the Representia or Senatoria, security also a stated concern. Stay tuned for more details of the progress of the campaign, but next we'll have stats from the local football tourneys and the economic watch, after these messages...."

End Havastra Branch holo-news release. ~ ::

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...and that was 'all', and only after victory was assured on 'all' fronts would anything of true detail be allowed. The best weapon unseen by the Sphere, was ambiguity. All the other star realms would have to find the truth on their own, or through teeth pulling of the likes of Lady Seto's machinations.

In fact for the moment, the Sphere didn't really care if the other realms believed this was all happening or not. A future time would better be used when it came.

But not here or now.

First came the work at hand.