Kilrathi War
The Kilrathi War was a fictional interstellar conflict that takes place during the majority of the fictional Wing Commander (computer game) series. It starts before the events of the first game, Wing Commander I (1990). After several sequels, novels, and other games that while related to the main games were focused outside of the main storyline, the war ends during the events of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger.(1994).
History
In the fictional Wing Commander universe, in the year 2629.105, the TCS Iason, a Terran Confederation research vessel, encountered an unknown vessel. The ship was the KIS K'rath'kan, a Kilrathi destroyer. This was the first time that the two races met each other. The human crew on board the Iason sent a non-verbal, international wide-band greeting to the vessel. The Iason did this for twenty minutes, and did not activate their guns for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the Kilrathi detected a wide-band radiation from the message, forcing the Kilrathi to believe that the signal was a device trying to lower their shields. The KIS K'rath'kan then attacked and destoyed the TCS Iason.
The next year, the Terran Confederation Congress tried to create negotiations with the Kilrathi, but these efforts failed. The humans created a non-aggression policy in a failed attempt to soothe the faltering relations between the two sides. From 2629 to 2634, the Kilrathi conduct numerous raids on Confed vessels, so Confed threatened to intervene. Finally, during the year 2634, the Kilrathi destroyed the TCS Anna Magdalena, a civilian transport carrying orphans to the planet Dieno. Everyone was killed. Confed finally had had enough of these attacks, so war was declared against the Kilrathi on 2634.186.
Early years of the war
The Kilrathi were the first to launch a major attack against the enemy. The Terran Confederation got wind of enemy plans to attack the human colony of McAuliffe in the first year of the war, and they assembled a fleet of warships twice the size of the suspected fleet to protect McAuliffe and Alexandria Starbase. Unfortunately, the Kilrathi come in with a fleet four times the expected size and, using their latest technology, destroy a great deal of the human fleet. Kalralahr and Crown Prince Gilkarg nar Kiranka was the leader of this attack, with his son Rath nar Kiranka on the battlefield. The Kilrathi had to regroup, however, for they too suffered sizeable losses. Confed deploys its newly launched Concordia class fleet carriers, the TCS Ark Royal and the TCS Concordia, to attack the Kilrathi forces at McAuliffe. They destroyed several enemy transports and damaged a carrier, but soon had to back off. The Concordia is taken down before it escapes. Ratha nar Kiranka dies. Then the planet Enyo is invaded in the Enyo Engagement, leaving a quarter of a million colonists on the planet imprisoned by the Kilrathi. Fortunately at Enyo, Confederation forces, using the Raptor-class Heavy Fighters, destroy a great deal of the Kilrathi and save almost all of the 250,000 people on Enyo.
In Wing Commander I, the year is 2654, twenty-four years since the Kilrathi War had began. Christopher Blair is assigned to the TCS Tiger's Claw, where he played a vital role in the winning most campaigns in the Vega Sector for the Confederation. It is also at this time that the Firekkans from the Firekka system ally themselves with the Terran Confederation and when Kilrathi lord Ralgha nar Hhallas defected to the Confederation. In 2656, the TCS Tiger's Claw was ambushed by an unknown enemy, later to be revealed as Kilrathi Strakha stealth fighters, and Blair was the only survivor in the immediate vicinity. His missing flight recorder disc and stories of invisible stealth fighters earned him the scorn of Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn. He was convicted of negligence and relegated to the backwater Caernarvon Station in the Gwenydd System for some nine years.
In Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, in the year 2665, a fluke attack near Caernarvon Station forces Blair to come to the aid of the flagship TCS Concordia under the command Geoffrey Tolwyn. Wing Commander Jeannette Devereaux helped Blair stay aboard the Concordia, where he was able to clear his name by proving Zachary Colson framed him for the TCS Tiger's Claw's destruction. With Blair's help, the Concordia won the Enigma Sector by destroying the base at K'tithrak Mang, although it was later revealed that was a strategic move on the part of the Kilrathi to take the Confederation's Headquarters in the Deneb Sector.
Battle of Earth
In 2668, the Kilrathi found themselves in a losing situation. Though their military outnumbered the Terran Confederation, the Confederation's percentage of trained personnel exceeded that of the Kilrathi's, and their technology was becoming old and obsolete. Because of a successful raid on the Kilrathi home planet by the TCS Tarawa, which destroyed a number of dry docks and the nearly-finished carriers within them and a sudden shortage of transports, forcing the carriers to return to base for supplies and putting further miles on spaceframes that were already overworked, the Kilrathi Empire was on the verge of defeat. Crown Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka revealed to the leaders of the eight Kilrathi clans the reason behind the transport shortage. The majority of the Kilrathi transports were transporting materials in the outer reaches of Kilrathi space, where the new Hakaga-class heavy carriers were under construction. These new carriers were far more powerful than any capital ship the Kilrathi had and with this in mind, Baron Jukaga nar Ki'ra suggested an armistice and promising peace with the Confederation. Because the Confederation was in a similar losing situation, they accepted the peace terms, although many speculate this because the Kilrathi were warriors that were against surrender.
However, later that year, the Hakaga fleet is discovered, but it was too late. Thrakhath already had several of these new carriers fully operation, and had formed a massive fleet that was in a direct course for Sol. The fleet first entered the Sirius system. At Sirius Prime, the first of the Confederation's inner colony worlds, Geoffrey Tolwyn had a small fleet to protect the colony worlds. The fleet consisted of four old carriers, less than two dozen support crafts, and perhaps three hundred fighters. With a small fleet that wasn't fully prepared for the large Kilrathi fleet, Tolwyn lost. Only one Hakaga carrier was crippled and another significantly damaged, but none were destroyed; where Tolwyn lost most of his bombers and fighter-bombers, two of his carriers, and almost his flagship, the TCS Concordia. Because of his loss, the inner colony worlds on Sirius were sterilized by the Kilrathi's thermonuclear missiles loaded with strontium-90, a loss of almost two billion lives. The Third Fleet retreated to Earth. By 2668.365, Thrakhath's remaining Hakaga fleet, still strong, entered the Sol system, where the Confederation would make their stand. A heavy battle followed, resulting to heavy losses in both sides, mainly the Terrans. The Kilrathi were able to destroy the majority of the Confederation's industrial sites, including shipyards and starfighter factories. Confederation marines were assigned to board and plant bombs on Kilrathi carriers, which were successful in destroying many Kilrathi ships. With the arrival of the TCS Tarawa and several more reinforcments, the Kilrathi cruisers orbiting Earth didnt have a chance to launch thermonuclear warheads towards Earth. Thrakhath, seeing as that his mighty fleet had incurred heavy losses, ordered a retreat. With this, Earth was saved, but at a heavy price. The majority of Confed's fleet was crippled as well, along with their shipyards and factories.
The end of the Kilrathi War
Because the Confederation suffered heavy casualties after the Battle of Earth, Confed officials were starting to get desperate. With most of their starships and fighters lost, Confed started production of newer capital ships and fighters (WC3 era ships). They also have been secretly developing a few new weapons in hopes of ending the war in desperation. For now, the Confederation assigned older carriers and other older capital ships from secondary duties to the front lines in order to make up for their capital ship losses from the Battle of Earth indefinetly. One such carrier was the famous TCS Victory, where Christopher Blair was assigned to and played a vital role in the final times of the Kilrathi War.
Several attempts were made to find ways to end the Kilrathi War for the Confederation. In 2669, Jeannette Devereaux, aka Angel, embarked on a Special Operations mission assigned by the Confederation, aimed to secretly penetrate into Kilrathi territory. Flying a captured Kilrathi transport ship, Devereaux and her crew reached Kilrah, the enemy home planet, and conducted a geological survey, confirming that the planet was, from a seismic standpoint, ready to fall apart at the seams. They then set up three secret asteroid bases within the Kilrathi star system for use in a future Temblor Bomb strikes, which would prove vital in the end of the Kilrathi War. In Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, the TCS Behemoth, one of the largest spacefaring structures ever built by the Confederation, its major weapon, a planet-killing superconducting particle beam cannon, was successfully deployed against the test planet Loki VI. However, a traitor amongst the Confederation had leaked the weak points in the TCS Behemoth's defenses to the enemy, and a massive Paktahn bomber squadron attacked the Behemoth and destroyed the her. The TCS Victory, the carrier in charge of overseeing the Behemoth's success, was forced to retreat, suffering a major blow to the Terran Confederation.
With almost all hope abandoned, the Confederation turned to their results from Angel's Secret Operations mission. Through her findings, Confed was able to determine that the Kilrathi homeworld, Kilrah, was seismically unstable. Thanks to the information provided by Angel, Confed began plans of a weapon that would use this information to their advantage. Thus, the Temblor Bomb was made. The Temblor Bomb was a weapon that, once deployed onto a fault-line, would disrupt seismic activity on a planet, destroying it. Christopher Blair, along with Todd Marshall, personally flew into Kilrah in a F-103 Excalibur Heavy Fighter and deployed the bomb onto Kilrah. During his flight to Kilrah, he manages to eliminate Crown Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka, and the Confederation traitor, who happenes to be the Kilrathi defector Ralgha nar Hhallas. After the delivery of the Temblor Bomb, Kilrah was destroyed, along with the Grand Fleet of the Kilrathi which was stationed in Kilrah's orbit. With the heavy loss of their homeworld, the Kilrathi had no choice but to surrender. Melek, a servant for Thrakhath, declined to take revenge for the loss of his homeworld. Instead, he offered the Kilrathi's surrender. Melek believed that the Kilrathi had paid the price for their bloodlust and corruption,and that the Confederation and the Kilrathi may have to work together in the future against the races harrassing the far side of the now fallen Empire. He asked Blair to carry the offer of surrender to his superiors. A Kilrathi delegation, which included Melek, met with Confederation officials on a Confederation carrier, where they signed the Treaty of Torgo. With both sides signing the treaty that insured long-lasting peace between the two sides, the Kilrathi War had finally come to an end.
References and sources
Links
- Wing Commander CIC Encyclopedia
- Wing Commander CIC Timeline
- Wing Commander CIC - Melek article
- Wing Commander CIC - Christopher Blair artivle
- Wing Commander CIC - General game backgrounds
Novels
- Freedom Flight novel written by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon.
- Wing Commander: End Run novel written by Christopher Stasheff and William R. Forstchen.
- Wing Commander: Fleet Action novel written by William R. Forstchen.