Mesonoxian: The Eleventh Hour - A Multicross/Fusion Fanfiction (Patreon)

Slayer Anderson

03/02/2019

Entente Governmental Structure:

-Judicial Branch

--High Court (Superior Court & Court of Nobility)

--Court of Guilds

--Military Court

--Civilian Court

-Legislative Branch

--Assemblage of Land & Titles (Upper House) [Appoints Ministers]

--Assemblage of Governors (Middle House) [Ratifies Appointments] (Heavy Military Backgrounds)

--Assemblage of Electors (Lower House) [Appoints Judges]

-Executive Branch

--Ministerial Congress (War/Economics/Education/Etc...) [Power of the Purse]

--Grand Admiral

--Grand General

--Grand Couturier (Mobile Suits)

ARMS – Automated Resource Mining Satellites: Dual-purpose bodies designed to both harvest usable resources within asteroids as well as provide numerous false-positive heat-signatures to enemy scanning efforts.

Not multiple currencies, but multiple types of currencies – created by the Entente in order to manipulate a unified system of value.  Government-Bills, Entente-Bills, and Resource-Bills.  Government Bills have stable value accounting for inflation, Entente-Bills are civilian current which fluctuates without extremes, Resource-Bills are directly backed by stock values of different materials and fluctuate greatly in some areas.

Coordinator Treatments secretly created to nullify the effects of Indoctrination and Eezo-related mind control.  Installation of the second 'guardian strand' RNA mechanism referred to as 'Amplification,' involving the awakening of genetic memories.

Staged application of Newtype generational improvements, 'patches' meant to eventually bring humanity up to the point where there is universal resistance to Indoctrination.

Gundam Seed/Gundam Wing/Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans/Avatar/Mass Effect

Na'vi: Achieve spaceflight around 1700, FTL 1800, discover Humanity 190X, observe until WWI.  Put First Contact off until they can understand humanity properly.  WWII happens.  Debate between interventionists, abandonment of FC altogether, and obstruction of violent human social development.  Debate continues into the 1960s, when humanity starts making strides towards space, much faster than the na'vi did.

1970s: Eventually decided upon releasing a retrovirus to cut birthrates, revert humanity to an earlier stage, slow their growth, and give them a 'second chance' at development.

1990s: Retrovirus begins deploying, despite (or because of) shifting opinion of the consensus after seeing humanity pull back from the brink of nuclear armageddon between the USA and Soviet Union.  Initial observations go well, birthrates begin a slow decline.

2000s: Virus mutates due to contamination with eezo module in the dispersal craft.  Humanity begins to die in a variety of horrifying ways.  Initially mistaken by humanity as outbreaks of pandemic variants of avian flu, antibiotic-resistant STDs, and other virulent agents.

2005: The na'vi, having established discreet observation posts within the Sol system, become concerned, then horrified as it is discovered what they have wrought.  Three separate attempts over the next years to acquire samples of the diseases and halt their weapon's proliferation result in the contamination and painful deaths of all crews involved, including one case where the vessel in question crashed into Luna.

2010s: Human population numbers begin to decline, globally, as deaths exceed births.  Panic sets in as national quarantines are enacted and social order breaks down.  The na'vi, increasingly appalled at what they've inadvertently done, shut down all observation stations and abandon Sol and humanity to its fate, unwilling or unable to cope with watching a civilization die by their own hand.

2020s: Casualties from the dozen-plus 'mystery illnesses' mount into the millions, then tens of millions.  Specialists from every nation attend hundreds of teleconferences monthly in an attempt to cooperate.  Simultaneously, national government crack down on press organizations which attempt to blame minorities, rival nations, and various secret societies or fringe religious groups for causing the diseases.  Mainstream religious figures blame sliding morality and anti-religious behavior for the situation.  Blame also circulates towards genetic research and development groups, the backlash against the possibility of contaminated gene-modded crops creates food shortages that exacerbate the death toll.

2030s: The death toll reaches one billion.  Even with the best efforts of quarantines, the near-complete cessation of trade, and authorization of lethal force against those attempting to cross borders, martial law has been needed to maintain a semblance of order.  Where nations still survive, curfews in all urban areas have been put into force in an attempt to curtail looting, crimes of opportunity, and mob violence.  Having seen the benefit of enormous sums of money directed to spaceflight, genetics research, and agricultural production to survive the seeming-apocalypse, mankind begins to move to a newly-constructed moon base as a last defense against their own extinction.

2040s: A man with one of the rarest medical cases in human history, Stoneman Syndrome, is discovered to be completely immune to many of the current super-plagues ravaging humanity.  The discovery is kept top secret as scientists the world over study and analyze medical samples.  Eventually, this chance find becomes a key piece in a series of treatments designed to combat the plagues.  By altering the calcium-replacement process which resulted in ossification to a carbon-replacement process, a paradigm shift in developing a plague-resistant human genome occurred.  It was decided, at the highest levels of surviving governments, that the CURE Project would now incorporate any and all genetic improvements they found as a byproduct, not merely the publicly-stated goal of resolving the disease-crisis.  This decision would later come under heavy fire, but only after a leak revealed it long after the majority of the individuals involved had died.  Due to the lack of evidence, many have speculated that the decision was made to better enable the next generations to survive in the hostile environments outer space and other planets offered.

2050s: With the death toll of the super-plagues and resource wars now standing at 6 billion and counting, the breakthrough cure has been found.  An invitro treatment for human embryos allows the next generation of humanity to be born free from the worries of the vast majority of diseases and cancers.  Almost universally stronger, faster, smarter, capable of enduring greater pressure, gravity, and temperature differentials, and, as would eventually be discovered, significantly longer-lived many of the surviving older generations question if their progeny remain human.  Facing down lingering fears of genetic alteration and apocalyptic religious zealotry, the governments of the world distance themselves from any talk of a 'next evolution' or a 'superior gene-line' and instead judge that these children are merely a 'New Type of Humanity,' eventually coining the milder term 'Newtype.'

2060s: Although the Newtype-Proliferation had begun a decade earlier, efforts are ongoing to contact extremely isolated, militant, or otherwise incommunicado groups of humans.  In the public eye, though, the secondary conflicts brought about by the immense death toll, take the predominance in focus.  Over the past decades, fuels requiring transportation and a net of human contact to spread the diseases, had fallen out of favor.  Renewable fuels and the cutting of trade routes began a downward spiral in less-developed countries.  Combined with ongoing ecological problems and lower agricultural yields outside of multi-story farming 'plants' result in an often-overlooked series of conflicts beginning in the 2030s and lasting through the 2080s, collectively called 'Resource Wars.'

2060 – Secret Files: A long-distance resource evaluation and colony-site appraisal-team orbiting Saturn, use a lander probe to explore Titan.  A huge, incredibly advanced starship is found, crashed on the moon.  On-site observations predate the vessel to mankind's infancy, some fifty-thousand years before the current age.  The data is classified top-secret and the obvious potential of the find spurs humanity's space efforts to greater heights.  Numerous advances in the coming years, including element zero technology and directed-energy weapons are reverse-engineered from the crashed ship.  Eventually dubbed 'Titans,' the race which piloted them remains a mystery.

2070s: With the revelation of alien life and their culpability in the 'Great Dying,' the human war machine begins to unify and ally the disparate factions of the world once again.  Bereft of purpose after the creation of the 'Newtype Treatment,' the surviving governments of the world now push for a stronger unified front against the monsters who had killed over 6 billion people.  Secretly, research begins on a slate of genetic modifications to be made to the soldiers who will fight in the upcoming war of vengeance.  Given the unassuming name of the 'Panel for Greater Troop Coordination Studies,' the resulting gene-modded soldiers are eventually labeled as 'Coordinators' and perform at a level above even Newtypes.

2080s: Militarization culture spreads rapidly among the remnants of humanity, a movement for global political federation, if not unity, induces mostly-successful attempts at bringing the Resource Wars to an end.  Although decried initially as a return to Western Imperialism and Empire-Building, this era is most-marked by organized humanitarian outreach using pacification and interventionism as a pretext for the start of cultural assimilation.  While 'industrial cloning' is in development utilizing artificial wombs to increase population numbers, there are worries that it will not be quick enough in the face of a possible alien threat.

2090s: The first spacefaring human warships finish construction, based heavily on na'vi designs lifted from the crashed vessel's computers.  Mostly prototypes used for training, many are tested to destruction and valuable lessons in construction and operation are picked up.  The first generation of Newtypes begin hitting their late twenties and early thirties in appreciable numbers, changing combat doctrine even further.  Due to the low overall numbers of personnel available, a decision is made to implement wide-scale training in heavy-combat exo-suits.  Information regarding the na'vi physical abilities is kept largely secret, but analyses of the bodies within the crashed ship inform as to their larger sizes, enhanced physical strength, and what will eventually be termed biotic capacity.

1.a

“Initially, the discovery of the species we would eventually learn was called humanity, was a joyous occasion.  Why would it not be?  We had answered the great question which, until then, had plagued even the great mind of Eywa herself.  We, the na'vi, had been roaming the forest of stars for some hundred years by that point.  The discovery of Earth, so nearby, gave my people great hope that we would meet other tribes of sapient beings with whom to treat with.  Humanity, though, was still in its pubescence, though growing rapidly.”

“We had chanced upon the humans during what they refer to as the early period of their 'twentieth century.'  Immediately after our discovery and the subsequent return to Eywa of our scouts, many wished to make first contact mutual, so that we might interact as siblings.  Had those voices prevailed... but, no, instead it was judged that we needed to learn their customs, language, and ensure contact between our peoples would go smoothly.  Cooler heads, we thought, had prevailed.”

“So we watched, carefully hidden behind their moon.  We learned of their culture, their ways, their great tribes, and their burgeoning population.  At first... all was good.  Their world was so different, orbiting a star directly instead of a gas giant as ours did, possessed of only one orbiting satellite, no great floating islands... but we saw many similarities.  The great cycle of life, the health of their world's creatures, the drive to artifice, the great migrations of peoples from one tribe to another.  We were perhaps a handful of years from preparing a formal contact mission we observed something we were not ready for.”

“War was not... unknownto the na'vi.  To the best of my knowledge, allpeoples have some manner of armed conflict in their past, but through the grace of Eywa and the wisdom of our elders, true organized bloodshed using the weapons of modernity has been truly rare.  The tribal conflicts of our ancient history aside, the only 'war' the na'vi can be said to have had was one of ideological differentiation on the will of Eywa.  Ultimately, though, even that was settled by an exchange of tsaheylu.  It was upon witnessing the seemingly senseless, grinding carnage, that we first began to feel something other than exaltation and curiosity at humanity.”

“We felt fear.”

-Ke'ey te Skohewakxìr Fuowaeytx'itan,

Tawkami Clan

*~*~*~*~*

“Uuuuughnahhhh...”

“Breakfast.  Eat.”

Cagalli Hibiki groaned again, but rolled toward the fragrant aroma of eggs, syrup, bacon, butter, and grease.  Hitting a lump of unmoving mass, she pushed herself up and over the form, ending up spread perpendicular to it.

“You know, it's really hard to sleep with someone on top of you like that.”

Him.  Perpendicular to him.

“Mmh.”  Cagalli grunted, sniffing out a piece of bacon blindly before stuffing it into her mouth.  Speaking around the morsel, she muttered, “now you know how I feel when you or Kira decide to just drape yourselves over me after you're done.”

There was a shift of muscle underneath her as Athrun's abs gave a quick heave in time with his snort.  Taking pity on her trapped boyfriend Cagalli cracked an eye against the painful morning sun, dimmed as it was by the tint of the smart-glass window and the drawn curtains.  Using that perspective, she grabbed another piece of bacon and guided it into his mouth, an appreciative tongue curling around her fingers and freeing them from sweet syrup and slick grease.  Abruptly, though, the faintest stirrings of her libido were wiped away as she felt a pair of thighs slide over the backs of her legs, effectively trapping her to the bed.

“Hey!”  The blonde complained, twisting awkwardly to glare at the other male now inhabiting the bed.

“You get Athrun as a pillow, I get you as a footrest.  Fair's fair.”  Kira smiled innocently as he set his own plate on the bedside table before reaching for the remote.  “Besides, you're getting breakfast in bed, be grateful.”

“I suppose there is that.”  Cagalli grudgingly admitted, sweeping a hand through her messy blonde hair.  “Thanks, bro.  I was just going to heat up some ramen otherwise.”  She paused, her arm still raised, and sniffed at her armpit, then the air.  “Whoa... this place reeks.”

“Yeah, it almost smells like three people got nearly-blackout-drunk and spent most of the night fucking before sleeping until ten.”  Athrun stated with a smirk.

Kira chuckled dryly as he continued to eat with one hand, surfing muted trideo display channels with his other.

“That sounds like a complaint.”  Cagalli snarked back, rolling up a piece of pancake with her fingers and feeding it to the black-haired boy before licking her own fingers clean.

“Nah, I think Athrun's just getting up for seconds.”  Kira stated slyly.

“Wouldn't mind that.”  Athrun swallowed.  “But we shoulddo something other than lay around all day in bed and have sex.”

“I'm fine either way.”  Kira shook his head, eyes affixed to the flickering display across the room.  “We're shipping out to basic next week, probably won't get many chances to do something like this for a while.”

“Mmmh, Athrun's right.  We shoulddo something.”  Cagalli sighed, rolling off and pulling herself out from underneath her respective boyfriends.  Standing, she stretched, allowing various joints in her back, neck, arms, and legs to pop and crack.  “Oh, that feels good... ugh, how about the amusement park?”

“Been there, done that.”  Kira shook his head.  “If we're going to be doing something before we leave for basic, it should be something special-oh, hey, look.”

Tapping the mute button again, speakers sang to life.

“-not affiliated with Terra Firma in any way.”  The woman on-display stated firmly.  Her regal demeanor was marred by a disapproving scowl.  She shook her head, sending the blonde braid trailing from her head swaying.  “The Peacecraft Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of humanity's heritage, including the improvements we have made to ourselves to survive the depredations the na'vi visited upon us as well as the harsh realities of space.  Unlike Muruta Azrael, my family's organization holds no pretensions to coerce, let alone attempt to at all, turn back the hands of progress.  If anyone within my organization has espoused any genetic revisionist ideology, they do so as an individual and not with the blessings of the foundation at large.”

“Director Peacecraft, could you state again for the record, your organization's stance on the coordinator treatments?”  A reporter called out from among the audience gathered.

“Certainly.”  The white-suited woman smiled slightly, obviously happy to move on from the current subject.  “The Peacecraft Foundation, in light of the approaching centennial of peace between ourselves and the na'vi as well as the vicennial of our peaceful contact with the raloi, are advocating the discontinuation of the coordinator treatments currently in use by the Entente military forces.”  She paused and took a sip of the glass of water on her podium.  “Similarly, my organization holds complementary views on the nature of combat cybernetics.  Notably, the foundation does not advocate the destruction of the knowledge or implementation process for these augmentations, merely the phasing out of their active use.”

Kira hit the mute button, sighing.  “I really thought they were going to cover new ground, too.  Everyone always asks the same questions.”

“We'd better make the G-class soon.”  Athrun sighed.  “If she gets her way, they won't be that much better than your average soldier.”

“There's more to the G-class than just their gene mods.”  Cagalli rolled her eyes.  “Besides, I don't know why you watch that dingbat.  Advocating disarmament in this day and age?  She's basically saying humanity should shoot itself in both feet given how little we know about what's out there.”

Kira hummed, shrugging.  “I'm not saying she's got a point or anything, but I like hearing the other side of things.  As fringe as Relena Peacecraft is, she's put a reasonable spin on the movement and managed to cut a lot of Terra Firma' credibility.”

“I thought her father had pretty close ties with them?”  Athrun asked, sitting up properly and beginning to clean his plate.  “I remember my dad complaining about them when I was young.”

“They did, but Marticus Rex broke ranks with Terra Firma when they started pushing for a genetically-regressive political agenda in addition to a social one.”  Kira frowned.  “A lot of people don't consider it a coincidence that he and his wife ended up assassinated shortly after.  That was when Milliadro took the reigns and brought the criticisms of terrorism against Terra Firma into the mainstream.”

Cagalli sniffed.  “As interesting as stellar politics are, I thought we were talking about doing something other thanlaying around all day watching trids.”

“Well...” Athrun stated, rubbing at his chin.  “We've got most of a week left.  I guess we could take my dad's shuttle and do something.  We've pretty much done everything around Hygiea.”

“Oooh,” Cagalli cooed, “I like that.  I like that a lot.  Where do we go?”

“...we could try and pick out an asteroid no one's landed on before.”  Kira offered, considering the matter.  “If we set a beacon, register the discovery, and give it a proper name, we can claim joint ownership.”

“That's so you, Kira.”  Athrun snorted, but smiled gently.  “Leave a little peace of us all, together, before we ship out?”

Kira colored slightly as Cagali chuckled.

The blonde grinned.  “Well, I think it's a great idea.  We can pack a few days of rations and make a trip out of it.  Maybe we'll even get lucky and strike it rich!  We could find a nice chunk of gold or palladium!”

“The real money is in eezo.”  Athrun stated as he stood, stretching in the same manner as Cagalli.  “But if we find one of those, I'm buying lottery tickets when we get back.”

Cagalli and Kira snorted.

“So... clean up and meet in the docking bay?”  Kira asked, looking at his lovers.

“Sounds fun.”  Cagalli smirked, sauntering playfully towards the door with exaggerated hip-swings.

“I'm surprised you aren't sore from last night.”  Athrun remarked, picking up a shirt and giving it a sniff, then pulling it away from his face abruptly with disgust.

“My front is fine.”  Cagalli replied, sending her boyfriends a cool gaze.  “Neither of you two has permission for anything elsefor a few days, though.”

The boys chuckled and Athrun followed the blonde to the bathroom, stopping only when Kira didn't budge from the bed.  “Coming?”

Kira shook his head.  “Nah, I'll catch the next shower.  I wanted to watch this anyway.”

Ahtrun flicked a look towards the display, then shrugged.  “Just don't let Cagalli think you've got a crush on Peacecraft.  She's a blue-blood besides and you know how your sister gets.”

Kira rolled his eyes.  “Not interested in her that way, jerk.  Know thy enemy and all that.”

Athrun shrugged again and stepped out of the room.

Kira tapped the mute key again.

“-not against settling new satellites.  I, and my constituents, merely believe it would behoove humanity to develop more traditional colony worlds.  The Assembly and the Ministers have passed up a number of prime sites on-planet, all with compatible biospheres, which could be used to increase human population along a more traditional family focused approach in addition to, not instead of, industrialized cloning.”  Relena stated, her image shifting as she reiterated her point.

“Lady Peacecraft, what do you say to the concerns regarding the defensible nature of such colonies?  Many fear that the tactics humanity used during the human-na'vi war could be turned against us should hostilities break out.”  One reporter asked, raising his hand in the air.

Relena shook her head, cutting a hand across in a flat, dismissive, motion.  “I would want to ask what manner of hostilities they are preparing for.  Although it is folly to expect violence to never again erupt within human space, both alien civilizations we have contact with show no signs of antagonistic intent.  Nor is there an extent friction within human society, even by the grandest exaggeration, which could deteriorate to internal violence of the scale needed for ground-orbital defense.  All I ask is that the Assembly recognize that humanity currently exists within the greatest age of peace it has ever known.  It is my belief that our time is better spent developing that peaceful world instead of preparing for a conflict which may not reveal itself for centuries to come.”

As she finished speaking, another hand went up.  “Lady Peacecraft, returning to you position against continued genetic alteration and enhancement for a moment.  Would you support continued limited development without production runs as a compromise measure with the bio-firms and the military?”

Kira watched as the blonde woman frowned for a moment.  “Let it not be said that I am inherently against such a compromise, though the degree of support I would give would heavily depend on the exact terms and conditions of the agreement.”

The young man continued watching the display for a few more minutes, but unfortunately the questions had shifted to human-interest subjects and soft-balled topics, moving away from the more pressured interrogation of the equally famous and infamous Peacecraft total-pacifism agenda.  Kira sighed aloud as he considered the topic.

Demobilization, decreased genetic experimentation, settling large populations of humanity on planetary bodies... it was so antithetical to the world he'd been brought up in that he couldn't help but find it at least morbidly interesting.  Growing up as a spacer on Hygeia, it was almost... alien to consider the distant horizons of Earth, Mars, and Venus.  Even the Jovian and Saturnian lunar colonies were based on satellites which were dozens, if not hundreds of times as large as Hygeia.  What would it be like to live in a world like that?

He flipped through channels until he hit one of the 'relaxing' nature scenes that usually played in the background within government structures.  This one displayed the turbulence of an Earth-based rainstorm, something he'd never experienced.  Sure, Hygiea's primary cylinder scheduled 'rain' to clear the air of particulates, but... it didn't seem like the same thing.

There were still a few hundred million people living on Earth, he knew, though it was considered something of a backwater in the modern Sol System.  Luna was the place to be, and failing that, Mars for the extensive military installations and fleet basing around the red planet's moons.  One of the major hubs of Sol System travel, it would be where he, Cagalli, and Athrun were likely to ship out to once they signed up.

Auspex Intelligence Report

Hierarchy Top Secret – Primarch Clearance and Above Only

To be perfectly clear, the material in this report and the deductions produced from such information are a combination of Sykia Ghost Units, Cohortes Vigilum, and Blackwatch INFOWAR units working in tandem.  The purpose of this repeated observation is to point out the costliness of said information, not to denigrate our own forces or their capabilities.  The level of difficulty in acquiring the abovementioned data should serve to drive home precisely how out of our depth our forces are in making determinations about the enemy ORBAT, general force composition, or methodology.  Contrary to all known schools of military tactics, strategy, and logistics, the new 'human' threat is an out-of-context problem in its most blatant and cryptic form.

The first topic of discussion regards the enemy's out-sized powered-armor.  Current sample size places most observed models between sixteen and nineteen meters with a classical biped body layout.  Logic, of course, dictates that such suits would be little more than awkward targets which would both naturally draw the eye as well as be incapable of either seeking cover or raising defenses against proportional fire.  In combination with the increased size allowing for greater surface area to fire upon, it would seem a forgone conclusion that such weapons would show themselves for the tactical suicide they appear to be at the engaging of combat.

It cannot be understated that this is not the case.

As aforementioned, humanity has developed an utterly unique methodology for industrialized warfare, unlike any seen in the galaxy to this date.  The closest apt comparison which can reasonably be made, for the sake of establishing both commonalities to known martial traditions and for ease of explaining the following points, would be the rachni.  Although no turian has ever faced a member of the insectoid race in combat, archives from the asari, salarian, and captured krogan databanks detail over-sized biological analogues to the human mechanical bipeds.  Although the rachni remain the more agile of the two, human weaponry maintains a distinct edge in durability and endurance, especially under heavy fire (compared with archival footage).  See attached files for detailed comparisons.