The First Wave
The First Wave is humanities first experience with hostile alien threats. The Wave is both a war and a thing. The Xenophage are known to spread via massive waves of hijacked ships, biological vessels and monster covered space garbage. This wave shattered the golden age of the United Earth Sphere. In doing so, brought humanity the knowledge that they were not alone, and much to their horror, they never would be again.
The Conflict
Outcome
Devastating loss of life, half of earth rendered uninhabitable by humans. The Afro-Eurasian continent and ocean became infused with refugees, blending cultures and breaking down some nationalistic pretensions. The UES lost most of it's fleet and power, and several colonies broke off to form their own powers. Many, many stations and colonies were completely abandoned, destroyed, or simply lost.
Aftermath
With the Xenophage came the Xenoinfection which caused mass deaths before treatments became practical and wide spread. Even then the genetic damage from the infection even without treatment would lead to the [Infected, a mutated off branch of humanity and the poor treatment of these descendants. The shock and horror of the event would leave immense large scale trauma on humanity. The golden age of post scarcity ended replaced with a fearful age of isolation. Previous societal rules against genetic modification and invasive cybernetics were abandoned as anything needed to survive became a priority.
Historical Significance
The Wave first struck several stations in the Kuiper Belt, but was ignored as an unimportant error or communication failure. The true horror stuck with the piercing of Neptune, all major ships and colonies stripped bare with only Triton surviving, and only due to hiding. The swarm would leave bloody swafts as segments broke off and struck Jupiter and Saturn.Meanwhile, shocked and unprepared, the largely poorly militarized UES gathered for a defense of Mars. There the second largest battle in human history was struck. Over a billion lives were lost at this point, a hundred thousand ships are said to have burned in Mars' orbit between the two sides. It was a planet wide warzone never seen before in the system. However after over one earth year of fighting, Mars moved out of alignment, allowing the swarm to simply skip the red planet. Panicking, humanities fleets were instructed to abandon it in favor of earth. Some did, but many didn't. Famously many Martian defenders split off to form the Martian Defense Front. Meanwhile, Venus and Mercury actively ignored the order, separating into the modern Human Elevation Foundation.
The fight for Earth became a bloody and near futile struggle. Humanities fleets chased the wave, while orbital stations unloaded into the wave. Despite its best effort. The wave would crash into humanities home. It targeted the cities of North and south America primarily. The reaction on the surface was devastating. Every civilian a soldier. The USA nuked several of their own cities in a vain attempt to stop the infection. Yet when all was said, slowing down the pace of earths infection became a question of saving refugees, islands, and quarantine. Over two years of fighting eventually, grievously, forced most of humanity from North and South America. Earth had half surrendered to the swarm.
Technological Advancement
The first wave would lead to the development and wide use of Lancer Mobile Platforms as an effective counter force to the usually multileveled battle field that the Xenophage created. The alien wreckage brought in with the wave would lead to new developments in technology long term, as well as the greater focus on purely military vessels which were not as wide scale before this wave.
Conflict Type
War
Battlefield Type
Space
Start Date
2159
Ending Date
2165
Conflict Result
Xenophage Victory
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