Haedus

"The first decisive engagement of a war with the Confederacy will be fought at Haedus, because the Legion cannot leave it and the federation cannot pass it."War Plan Purple, General Staff of the Navy of the United Nations of Earth, 2320

Haedus is a star system on the Voor side of the Ciriban Gulf, one Voor jump beyond Cirban and one from Exedor, the Voor capital's system. Its third planet is Indata Mog, a steppe world that held 200 million Voor and the Voor Legion's Gulf headquarters in 2318. The Voor call the system and the planet alike Indata Mog. Records of the Unified Solar Republic from 2428 onward spell the system's name Haedius.

Haedus was the Voor Confederacy's forward base in the Gulf and the first Voor system humans entered, when the survey ship Grissom arrived there as the Voor's guest on 20 October 2317. War Plan Purple named it in 2320 as the place where a war with the Confederacy would be decided. The Grand Armada broke the Legion's Haedus group at the system's edge in the Battle of the Mog in February 2334, and took Indata Mog in September. The Treaty of Ximpok annexed the system in 2341, and from 2343 it was the Haedus Territory of the Unified Solar Republic.

In 2428 Haedus was the Republic's front line against the Red Khanate. The First Battle of Haedius, from 6 to 14 August 2428, is the largest fleet engagement in the Republic's history. The Republic held the system and lost 220 of its 520 hulls. In the Second Battle of Haedius in September the fleet withdrew, and Naval Station Paldron was destroyed covering it. The Khanate held the system until the Retribution Fleet retook it in the Third Battle of Haedius in May 2451. From 2466 Haedus has been the seat of the Joint Command of the Fevarian Accords.

Name

Haedus is the system's name on human charts. When the Voor survey cruiser Lorni Indur invited the Grissom there on 14 October 2317, it gave the position as a star one jump beyond Cirban, which the charts called Haedus and the Voor called something the Grissom rendered Indata Mog. The Voor use that name for the star and its third planet together. The Navy's shortening of the planet's name, "the Mog", became the name of the battle of 2334. Republic records spell the system Haedius from the Khanate war onward, and the older spelling survives in the names of the Haedus Territory and the Haedus Territorial Legion.

Astronomy

The star

Haedus is an orange dwarf of spectral type K2 V, of about 0.80 solar masses and 0.38 times the Sun's luminosity. It is about 6.1 billion years old and quiet, with few flares. It lies about 52 light years from Sol on the Navy's charts, and 17 light years from Exedor.

Planets

Haedus has six planets. Indata Mog, the third, is the only one with a native biosphere and the only one settled.

Sel Kaduur keeps one face to Haedus and is bare rock on both. Ora Mindt is wrapped in cloud that no Voor or human probe has seen through to the ground. Tavren Sul is a cold desert world with ice in its craters and under its plains, and the Legion's tenders carried that ice to Indata Mog for the yards. Gharuun's rings and moons sheltered the skimmers that took on the Legion's fuel. Ennu Var, the outermost, has never been worked.

The edge

No ship can jump inside a gravity well, so every arrival at Haedus is made at its edge and every fight there is fought at the edge or in the fall inward. In 2334 the Legion kept a shell of 140 sensor nodes and satellite platforms at about 60 astronomical units, spaced so that any arrival flash would be seen by at least three of them. The system's Pillai radius lies at about 38 astronomical units. Naval Station Paldron was built at the Pillai radius on the approach from Exedor in 2424 to 2427, and its successor of 2453 stands at the same radius.

History

The Legion's Gulf

The Voor say that the clans burned a world in the Gulf in the Fevarian wars, about 1,100 years before contact, and that the Legion dug the tunnels under Indata Mog against the Fevarians in that war. The hearth the Navy later called the Acheron founded the colony on Indata Mog. By 2317 Haedus held 200 million Voor, the Legion's Gulf headquarters, the yards that maintained the Gulf formations and the anchorage of the Haedus group. It was the Confederacy's forward base toward the region where humanity would arrive.

Contact, 2317 to 2318

The Grissom jumped for Haedus from Cirban on 20 October 2317, in company with the Lorni Indur. She arrived at the system's edge six hours later and found the Voor ship already there, after a jump of forty minutes. The Grissom spent November and December 2317 in orbit above Indata Mog and was, on every account, treated as a guest. On 9 April 2318 the first human mission to the Confederacy, the Asimov and the Unity, met the Grissom at Haedus before going on to Hiverion.

The treaty line, 2319 to 2333

The Voor-Solar Treaty of 3 January 2319 gave Haedus to the Confederacy. The treaty line ran through the middle of the Gulf, between Cirban and Haedus at its narrowest. It gave the federation a frontier it would have to hold, a day's Voor jump from Indata Mog and three weeks' human torch from anywhere. War Plan Purple named Haedus in 2320 as the place where the war's first decisive engagement would have to be fought. When the war began on 7 August 2333 the Legion's Gulf formations concentrated at Haedus and Swur, and the Haedus group held seven hearths under General Volar Vex.

The Battle of the Mog, 2334

Operation Mirage drew two of the Haedus group's hearths south to Swur in November 2333. Two Navy stealth corvettes lay cold at Haedus's outer edge through December and January and counted the five that remained. On 26 January 2334 Alpha and Bravo Fleets struck the system's southern edge as a decoy and destroyed 51 of the sensor shell's 140 nodes. Vex took his five hearths out of Indata Mog's orbit on 30 January. The Home and Binami Fleets arrived unseen at the northern edge on 31 January and attacked the Haedus group from three directions on 2 February. The Acheron was destroyed at 1158 with Vex aboard, and the four remaining hearths, left without a General, were defeated one at a time. The fifth, the Lethe, reached Indata Mog's orbit.

The Grand Armada held Haedus's orbit from 1 February and blockaded Indata Mog. The battleship Onyx and three battlecruisers engaged the Lethe on 19 August 2334, and her crew scuttled her with 90,000 aboard. The Unified Solar Marine Corps landed on 20 August, and New Indata Mog fell on 12 September 2334.

Annexation and the Territory, 2334 to 2427

The Corps governed Haedus for ten years without an incident. The Treaty of Ximpok of 21 January 2341 annexed it, with Kastaba and Myrum, so that the Gulf's trade would flow through every system the Grand Armada had fought for. The Voor Territories Act of 2343 made it the Haedus Territory, the first non-human member of a human state, and the Territory's council was elected in 2344. The treaty line was redrawn at Kastaba and Myrum.

From 2415 Haedus was the Republic's door to the Confederacy's war with the Red Khanate. The High Council sent its request for aid of 2 December 2415 through the Territory's council. The Mutual Aid Act of 2416 admitted Voor refugees to the Territory without limit of number, and 8,000 Republic volunteers passed through it to fight for the Confederacy. In July 2422 the refugees' recordings of the burning of Vur Duri reached Haedus, and the Territory's council put them before the Chamber. Between August and December 2427 six hundred Voor ships and 30 million Voor reached Haedus from Hiverion.

The front line, 2427 to 2428

The Grand Armada moved to Haedus in September 2427, when Hiverion fell. Naval Station Paldron had been built at the system's Pillai radius on the approach from Exedor between 2424 and 2427, under the Rearmament Acts. It was the largest station of its kind the Republic ever built and the Corporate Consolidation Scheme's largest single product. It massed 90 million tonnes and carried twelve plasma projectors, eight mega mass drivers, 2,000 missile cells and a field of the Vindication pattern powered by six plants, with docks, magazines and hangars for 3,000 strike craft. A ring of eleven smaller stations surrounded it, among them four starforts that the Haedus Territory's council named for the burned Voor worlds. A fleet arriving from Exedor's direction had to reduce the ring before it could fall inward toward Indata Mog.

After Myrum fell in July 2428, the Binami, Geronth and Gagarin Fleets joined the Home Fleet's forward strength at Haedus. On 6 August 2428 the Grand Armada there was 520 hulls under Grand Admiral Amara Ndambiri in the Vindication: six Vindications, four Ciribans, 40 battleships, 60 Sovereigns and 12,000 strike craft. On Indata Mog stood the Haedus Territorial Legion of 2 million Voor, ten ROD divisions and four Marine divisions. It was the largest deployment of military force in the Republic's history.

The First Battle of Haedius, August 2428

The Red Khan's fleet arrived at Haedus's edge from Myrum at 0300 on 6 August 2428: 240 monoliths, six captured hearths, 40,000 tributary hulls and the clans' swarms. It fell inward at 0.2 g, and the monoliths' lances opened on the ring's outer stations at 0900 from 320,000 kilometres, beyond the reach of anything the ring or the fleet carried. Ndambiri's plan was to fight at the ring, with the stations absorbing the lances while the Vindications' projectors engaged at 250,000 kilometres. The lances reduced four of the stations by the 8th, and the fleet, which could not reach the monoliths from behind the ring, came out to fight.

The battle ran six days. A monolith that took four projectors' fire for ten minutes lost its ancient shield and then its hull. The Vindication destroyed three monoliths on the 9th before her own field failed. The Khan's lances opened her from bow to stern at 1440 on 10 August, with Ndambiri and 11,000 of her crew. Admiral Stjepan Kvoravich took command at 1500 from the Onyx and fought the remaining four days from the ring's inner stations and Paldron's field. On 14 August the Khan's fleet withdrew to the edge, having lost 41 monoliths, two captured hearths, 14,000 tributary hulls and 3,000 prowlers.

The Republic held the system. It had destroyed a sixth of the Khan's monoliths in a week, more than the Maweer and the Voor had destroyed in thirteen years. It had lost 220 of its 520 hulls, three Vindications, two Ciribans, seven of the ring's eleven stations, 7,000 strike craft, its Grand Admiral and 140,000 dead. Paldron stood, with its field down and two of its projectors gone. The Khan's fleet sat at the edge for twenty days, charged, and did not leave.

The Second Battle of Haedius, September 2428

A second Khanate fleet arrived at 0600 on 3 September 2428: the Khan's reserve from Exedor and Vi Simni, 120 monoliths and 30,000 tributary hulls. The Khan then had 320 monoliths in the system against 300 Republic hulls, three Vindications with their fields half repaired, and a ring of four stations. Kvoravich decided on the 3rd to withdraw. The fleet fell back under Paldron's guns to the inner system, charged at Indata Mog's Pillai radius on the far side of the planet, and jumped for Cirban in three groups on 5 September, with 250 hulls. Paldron covered the withdrawal. Its magazines detonated at 1520 on 5 September, when the last of its field generators failed under the lances of 60 monoliths, and its garrison of 30,000 died with it. The withdrawal saved the Republic's fleet and left Indata Mog and 240 million Voor to the Khan.

Occupation, 2428 to 2451

The Khanate landed on Indata Mog on 12 September 2428 and burned its towers on 6 November. The Territory's council and the survivors of the Territorial Legion fought from the planet's tunnels for twenty-three years, raiding the Khanate's orbitals and yards and killing four of the khans the Red Khan appointed to govern the world. The Khan kept 40 monoliths and 3 million troops at Haedius through the war to hold a planet that never submitted. From 2447 the Khanate's garrison held the planet's orbitals against the raids. In 2450 eight monoliths of the khans who had fled Cirban took Indata Mog's orbit as their seat.

The Third Battle of Haedius, May 2451

The Retribution Fleet came to Haedus on 4 May 2451 with 720 hulls, eighteen Retributions and 3,500 platforms. It fell inward with the platforms and made the khans come to it in Indata Mog's gravity well, where the monoliths could not jump. The Third Battle of Haedius, from 9 to 12 May 2451, destroyed five monoliths for the loss of 40 hulls and one Retribution, the Ijax. Three monoliths jumped for the Veil. The Territory's council came out of the tunnels on 14 May 2451. Paldron's wreck was surveyed in June, and the Territory's seats in the Chamber were restored on 1 September 2451.

The Accords' anchorage, 2451 to 2510

The fleet's new station at Haedius's Pillai radius was given the name Naval Station Paldron in 2453. In the occupation zones of 2460 Haedus lay in the Republic's zone, and the Fevarian clans the Khan had settled on its orbitals were held there under the Corps' military government. The Fevarian Accords of 20 June 2466 placed their Joint Command at Haedius, and the Veil Protocol was signed there on 2 September 2466. The Joint Command's first commander was Admiral Mei Zheng, and its command rotated among the parties from 2480. By 2480 it was a fleet of 400 hulls of five species. The Republic's yards at Haedius built the Dwaii's and the Ka-Dur's first fleets under the Accords' fourth article.

The monolith hulk that the Republic bought from the Veil Clans in 2474 lay at Haedius with 300,000 Fevarians of the clan D'Mareth's clients living in its inner decks. The Institute of Xenology established its monolith section at Haedius in 2475. The section fired the hulk's two remaining lance mounts at Haedius's edge in 2487, under the Joint Command's supervision and over the Veil Clans' protest. On 14 September 2489 the hulk translated from Haedius to Cirban and back, the first monolith to move under any but a Fevarian hand. Admiral Tomasz Okwuosa-Lindgren commanded the Joint Command at Haedius from 2492. The Republic's fleet of 2510 could reach the Veil's far side from Haedius in three jumps.

Government

Under the Confederacy, Haedus was governed from Indata Mog by the world's own assembly and by the Legion's Gulf General. The Corps' military government ruled from 2334 to 2344. The Voor Territories Act of 2343 constituted the Haedus Territory on the model the Belt had been given in 2290, with its own council, a path to area standing on a population test of 50 million, Chamber seats and five senators. The Territory's eleven seats in the Chamber were the first non-human votes in a human legislature. Its representatives held them in exile from 2428 to 2451. Since 2466 the Territory's Voor have held the citizenship of both the Republic and the Confederacy.

The Territory's flag is rectangular, in the human manner. It sets the Voor disc and spine inside the Republic's white ring, above three bars for the Haedus, Kastaba and Myrum Territories.

Installations

Battles

BOOK SOURCES

1. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.6 "Alone No Longer: The Voor Confederacy"
2. Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.2 "The Birth of Interstellar Trade" and §8.7 "The Ciriban Incident"
3. Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.1 "Operation Mirage", §9.2 "Clash of Titans: The Battle of the Mog", §9.4 "Interstellar Blitzkrieg" and §9.7 "Solar Ascendant: The Voor Surrender"
4. Solar Eternal, Part X, §10.5 "Republican Stagnation"
5. Solar Eternal, Part XI, §11.3 "Mutual Aid Act", §11.4 "The Voor Campaign" and §11.5 "A Giant Awakes"
6. Solar Eternal, Part XII, §12.1 "First and Second Battle of Haedius"
7. Solar Eternal, Part XIV, §14.3 "The Voor Worlds" and §14.6 "Broken Giant"
8. Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.3 "The Fevarian Accords" and §15.9 "The Hulk, the Fifth Drive and the Mardak Cluster"