HIstory of Empire, Part II

Unbeknownst to the scientists who were tasked with implementing the terraforming procedures on Mars, the red planet was already home to a highly advanced species. Tall and thin, with wedge-shaped heads and large eyes, these Martians were at first simply curious about the newcomers to their homeworld. Curiosity turned to alarm when the first systematic attempts at terraforming began to take hold, and the Martians decided that if they were to survive as a people then they would need to take decisive action against the invaders.

Martian technology was largely peaceful, but they did have some combat-oriented vehicles. Their primary law enforcement tools were bipedal humanoid mecha, primarily armed with low-power laser weaponry, intended as much to disable as to destroy. Against the unknown capabilities of the earth scientists, however, they decided to take no chances. They quickly modified their weapons, removing safeguards and power limiters to convert less-than-lethal police equipment into full-scale military hardware. The initial contact between the two species was brief: a scientific outpost was annihilated in mere moments. Further one-sided combats followed, and before long the Mars Mission was all but over.

SPACE was not to be deterred, however, and managed to piece together enough scraps of intelligence to make a preliminary judgement regarding the threat to the terraforming process posed by the Martians. A second expedition was formed, this time led by officers drawn from the armies and air-forces of the various SPACE member nations. New combat-ready vehicles with trained military crews assembled on Moon Base, tasked with escorting a new team of scientists with a batch of second-generation terraforming bacteria. The Martians were not idle during the this time, but rather began to militarize whole segments of their population. Genetic manipulation led to the development of new combat breeds, nearly twice as tall and far more physically robust than a normal Martian, while virtually every civilian vehicle was armed with at least minimal weaponry. A full-scale interplanetary war was brewing.

The second landing met with heavy resistance, but the superior toughness of Earth-designed vehicles allowed SPACE to land the bulk of their forces intact. Millenia of martial traditions similarly gave SPACE the advantage on the ground, with trained soldiers handily out-fighting inexperienced alien forces. Even the specially-bred Warrior Martians were unable consistently to defeat their human enemies. Despite this disparity, the outcome was far from certain until the SPACE scientists managed to deploy the new strains of terraforming bacteria using a new dispersal technique that saturated the planetary surface beyond the ability of the Martians to counter. From that moment on, the Martians were a dying people.

Rather than suffer a lingering death, the Martians decided to make a grand gesture. They worked in secrecy and haste until they had completed a massive vessel capable of unthinkable destruction. It required a sizable crew to run, and all those Martians who were not given that task died defending it as it prepared to launch. SPACE made a valiant effort to prevent it, but ultimately the Martian sacrifice held them off long enough for the massive vessel to reach orbit. Once there, it set out toward earth. SPACE analysts feared that it planned to orchestrate an extinction event, the very thing that SPACE had been founded to prevent. They scrambled to muster a response.

In the few short months that it took the Martian battleship to approach Earth, SPACE managed the impossible. They developed a prototype super weapon capable of drawing the power from a brikonite crystal in a single focused burst. The resultant beam of energy, though short-lived, was capable of immense destruction. Moon Base deployed the weapon as the Martian battleship neared Earth and managed to destroy the huge vessel, but not before it left large swathes of Earth uninhabitable. The devastation was so extensive that whole governments collapsed. In the aftermath of the Battle for the Homeworld, SPACE found itself to be the most powerful remaining administrative body, with the added credibility of having just saved the planet from total destruction. A new age began, with SPACE at the head of a unified Earth and the colonization of Mars beginning in earnest.