Typhon Frontier - A History

 History hasn't been of much concern to the folks living on Bellerephon, especially those living on the Frontier, but here's the story as it's told.

Leaving Earth:  The colony ship Zaratan left Earth to get away from what its builders believe was the ultimate failure of human society - the tendency to cling to ideas and actions long after they're no longer of any benefit.  The wars between Earth and the orbital colonies at the time didn't help either.  Built in secret, the Zaratan was only revealed to the public on the day of its launching - after it had passed out of Earth's interception range.  Its destination - Alpha Centauri, to find a new home for humanity (preferably one without politics).

The Wandering:  Alpha Centauri was a bust, as were the next ten star systems.  In over three centuries of exploration, the Zaratan and its people kept travelling from star to star, looking for a world that could support human life.  Generation after generation was born, grew up, had families, and died within the great ship's city sections.  Cultures and ethnicities mingled, and an obsession with a three-dimensional sport called Spherix took hold.  As century after century without meeting another living thing passed, the Zaratan's defense force found more and more of its budget being rerouted to the exploration corps, until finally only a small handful were left.

The Arrival:  On arrival in the star system designated Chimera, Captain Arturo Wensleydale ordered the Zaratan into a synchronous orbit with an asteroid belt, to be mined for the materials to begin a massive program of rebuilding and upgrading for the aging and outdated colony ship.  The great nuclear engines were allowed to cool down, the first exploration teams were sent out to start surveying the belt, and then the utterly unexpected happened.  They discovered life.

The Colony War:  It is still unclear if the Typhons originated in the Chimera system or migrated from elsewhere, but the humans' first inkling of their existence came when an exploration team was attacked by a pack of enormous cybernetic crab creatures.  There were few survivors, but their reports threw the ship into a frenzy of speculation.  The Defense Force was ordered to mobilize, but since their numbers consisted of six people with three battle machines the Exploration Corps was ordered to start arming their vehicles as well.

The first few skirmishes of the Colony War went well, with the Defense Force proving to be far more capable than anyone expected, part from raw talent and largely because of the twisted genius of their engineer, a woman named Uchiko Levinson.  Levinson, largely ignored by her commander, had rebuilt the Defense Force's battle walkers again and again, each time improving their design and technology, until finally they reached a level of genius and capability unmatched by anything else on the Zaratan.  The Mobile Units were wonders of design, capable of combat in space, atmosphere, and on the ground, could change their configurations to alternate forms, and hosted a devastating array of weapons.  The Exploration Corps clamored for the plans and technology for her creations but Levinson refused due to a long list of past insults.  When ordered to give assistance by Captain Wensleydale, she grudgingly handed over some of her basic weapon designs, insisting the Exploration Corps would only hurt themselves if given anything better.

After several battles in the asteroid belt, the Defense Force (its three lady pilots becoming known as the War Angels) were able to locate a command post and capture it as well as several Typhon prisoners.  The Typhon leaders - apparently a higher genetic caste of similar cybernetic crustaceans - were uncommunicative though hostile, but further sweeps of the area found an escape pod containing two aliens almost identical to humans in appearance.  The pair, once rescued, used their psychic abilities to quickly learn human language and named themselves Helix and Rewind, identifying themselves as members of the Ametyn, a race enslaved by the Typhons to use as components in their psychic hierarchy.  The two aliens insisted on the death of the Typhon commander to negate its ability to psychically dominate them, and after some explanations Captain Wensleydale reluctantly concurred.

Helix and Rewind proved to be both a tremendous help to the Zaratan and the first steps toward its doom.  Their explanations gave the Defense Force great insight into what it was exactly that they were fighting and identified the planet tagged as Bellerephon as the home of the ultimate Typhon leader, the God-Pharoah.  Now understanding the danger of their situation (120,000 humans to several billion Typhons, all of them willing to kill), the decision was made to fire up the main engines and get the heck out of Chimera.  The Defense Force and the armed but inexperienced Exploration Corps readied themselves for a fighting retreat, but the response to the destroyed command post was greater than even Helix and Rewind expected.  The Defense Force beat back the massive attack, but not before a large part of the Exploration Corps was wiped out and the Zaratan's engines sustained enough damage to make leaving the system impossible.

Realizing that the situation was now win or die, the Zaratan's command staff decided to take the battle to the God-Pharoah.  Setting a course for Bellerephon, the thrust produced by the damaged engines would get them there in roughly three months.  While the occasional attack interrupted the journey, the Defense Force held off the Typhons while the Zaratan prepared.  With Helix and Uchiko Levinson working together, a fourth Mobile Unit was built for Helix and a large weapon took shape at the front of the Zaratan, the Psychic Cannon.  The Exploration Corps rushed to build point defense cannons on the Zaratan's structure and man them with anyone who showed any aptitude for gunnery.  Rewind located and began training every psychic human he could find.  The citizens of the Zaratan readied themselves for what would be (one way or another) the end of the war.

The Battle of Planetfall:  When the Zaratan finally reached Bellerephon's orbit, the plan was put into motion.  As one last attempt at peace, a psychic named John Talbot volunteered to use a psi-amplifier to make contact with the God-Pharoah.  The contact was made, but within seconds Talbot began to scream and once the amplifier was removed he collapsed.  A few minutes later he tried to explain what he had seen inside the God-Pharoah's mind.  There would be no peace, for the God-Pharoah had neither interest nor understanding of the concept.  To the creature that was the pinnacle of the Typhons' psychic hierarchy, there was only domination or destruction.  Nothing outside the hierarchy could be permitted to live.  Also, the God-Pharoah had put forth the call for every Warrior and Berserker on Bellerephon to attack.  The last battle had begun.

The Battle of Planetfall, as it was later called, was long and brutal, with endless waves of Typhons  swarming at the Zaratan and every human who could operate a weapon taking shifts at beating them back.  The War Angels pushed themselves and their Mobile Units to the limits and beyond, slaying countless enemies.  Finally, the Zaratan achieved geosynchronous orbit above the God-King's fortress, and the ship's guns went silent - their power drain could no longer be spared.  The population of the Zaratan rushed to the shelters in the city sections, and the War Angels redoubled their efforts to keep the Typhons away from the ship.  Attacks still got through and damage was still done to the vessel, but the Psychic Cannon continued to charge.

When it fired, the Psychic Cannon turned the sky a brilliant white for several seconds but it did what it was intended to do.  A beam of pure telepathic energy struck the God-Pharoah's fortress, annihilating the mind of every living thing within a hundred miles of it.  The shockwave of pain that rippled through the psychic hierarchy crashed the entire system, destroying the control the Typhon overseers had over their workers and soldiers - but also freeing the Ametyn from their own psychic bondage.  The uncontrolled Typhon warriors went berserk, turning their confusion and fury on the closest targets they could find, often each other but mainly the Zaratan.  The War Angels did their best to scrape them off, but soon the ship had become so damaged that Captain Wensleydale gave his final order - to evacuate.

The Zaratan, designed from the first to be dismantled on reaching its destination, ejected its city section in six segments.  The War Angels did their best to protect the segments as they descended into the atmosphere of Bellerephon, but one by one their Mobile Units were overwhelmed and destroyed by the berserk Typhon warriors.  As for the Zaratan itself, the Typhons soon lost their fury and their ability to survive in deep space, leaving the battered hulk to its lonely orbit.

The Aftermath:  The six segments of the Zaratan's city landed safely in a high mountain valley, the former site of the God-Pharoah's fortress and easily the most comfortable piece of territory on the whole planet.  For the first few months, the survivors lived off the hydroponic gardens of their ejected segments while they cleaned up the valley.  The freed Ametyn gladly joined them, most of their population having been centered around the valley as well.  Before the first year was done the Pegasus Valley had been transformed into the new home of humanity and cities had begun to spread out from the crashed segments.

The three War Angels and their machines were never found, and they are presumed to have burned up in the atmosphere during Planetfall.  The only survivor, Helix, was found half-dead in the cockpit of her wrecked Mobile Unit.  Rewind and his circle of psychics perished firing the Psychic Cannon, though John Talbot was excluded from their number after his ordeal of touching the God-Pharoah's mind.  He had been sent to a hospital to rest, and as such was evacuated with the rest.  Although he did pass on the training given him by Rewind, it is believed that his experience within the God-Pharoah's mind twisted him, causing him to eventually turn against mankind and vanish into the Frontier.

The Typhons have never recovered from the loss of their psychic hierarchy.  Without a God-Pharoah and their highest echelon of overseers they have lost most of their overall intelligence and technical ability.  They can no longer build the cybernetic enhancements that made them a serious danger, though a five-ton crustacean can never be truly harmless.  The Typhons have broken into tribes, with some retaining more intelligence and technology than others (most notably the now-destroyed Fenrir tribe, who retained enough gene-sculpting ability to create the Valkyrie race), but while they still will not get along with humanity they never work together enough to overwhelm humanity.

Human technology has suffered as well.  While Uchiko Levinson never did share her designs, the standard level of technology has degraded.  Orbital and space flight has not been re-achieved yet, and energy weapons have slipped beyond their grasp.  Since the engineering and factory sections didn't eject with the city, it wasn't until the year 7 AP that the first combat frame (horribly weak compared to the Mobile Units but more or less sufficient to deal with the Typhons) rolled off an assembly line.  While universities have been founded, much of the thrust of research has been to aid in the survival of mankind on Bellerephon rather than trying to reclaim the stars.

Mankind has indeed survived and even thrived on Bellerephon.  After the end of centuries of careful population management, the birth rate exploded.  From 120,000 surviving settlers plus a few thousand Ametyn, the population of Pegasus Valley has risen to more than half a million.  The population of the Frontier is impossible to reliably determine, but it could be as much as the Valley or more.  The three races of mankind (Humans, Ametyn, and Valkyries) don't always get along, but they've made their homes on Bellerephon and there they intend to stay.