Synopsis - Uprising - Book 2 of the Alliance Chronicles Universe

Spoiler: Spoiler The Day After the battle in lunar orbit following the return of the Tau Ceti and their new friends, the surviving population of Earth is waiting in a subsurface lunar area, waiting for new of what is to come. The crew of the original Tau Ceti mission try to deal with the aftermath in their own ways, while also having to deal with the widespread implications of the last fifty years of events on Earth. The planet is incapable of long-term habitation. Virtually all life has gone extinct. Human beings have attempted to subsist on a combination of increasingly-rare canned goods, and the few remaining species of life that they can ingest. People have reverted to a tribal existence as a consequence, with some notable exceptions that become obvious as time goes on. The Tau Cetian allies propose a long-term solution that is multifaceted. On one end, an environmental recovery effort is launched. Terraforming of Earth to accommodate life again, and introducing a combination of Tau Cetian and Earth-derived flora and fauna is suggested, the details to be worked out over the coming weeks as Tau Cetian scientists begin to obtain samples of the surviving and extinct lifeforms from the planet surface. The human members of the Tau Cetian contingent, those who were on the original Tau Ceti expedition, begin planning a single government structure that initially involves martial law and military oversight in order to prevent rioting, looting or bloodshed. While this is an extremely unwelcome move even among their own numbers, it is deemed necessary. It takes effect immediately. This causes a series of humans within many populace zones to go off the radar and begin planning their own coup. This, combined with unrest, results in the first of a series of terror incidents that result in major crackdowns. In turn, these crackdowns cause the activities of the groups to escalate. One attempt to cause a terror related incident takes place during the relocation of humanity to a Tau Cetian garden world, when a group attempts to take control of one of the transport vessels. A team of Tau Cetian soldiers takes control back from the insurgents, although some casualties result. While the incidents are partly contained by an overwhelming presence of Tau Cetian personnel who have now been loaned on detachment to the human leadership while they settle on their temporary home planet, many of the groups are captured, disbanded, and guilty parties brought to face justice before the leadership. A few of these groups manage to evade capture, and go dark for a while. They would resurface later. Meanwhile, a campaign of information dissemination on the nature and threeat of their greatest enemy is planned and executed, with everyone shown raw footage of the enemy capabilities taken while on the surface of Earth, as well as from various spacecraft that had encountered their ships over the millennia that tau Cetians had been dealing with them. Earth begins to undergo the first of a series of planetary atmosphere clean-up missions, the most destructive of all, but the most crucial. The atmosphere is stripped by massive numbers of vacuum drones sent by a terraforming bioship provided by the Tau Cetians. Additionally, a leadership council is discussed, the initial members yet to be decided. A consultation is held on Tau Ceti 5 with Tau Cetian Prime Hendirim, Ship Commander Miradima, and the four remaining survivors of the original Tau Ceti mission. This meeting proceeds without issue, and proceeds with some changes to the ranks (the prior Fleet Commander officially retired due to ill health, though unofficially became the Director of their own Fleet Intelligence. The De Facto leader of the North American contingent is displeased that she was excluded from the meeting (although every survivor on Earth was excluded from this one), but accepts that she had not been singled out. Her place in the leadership was peripheral at the time, though it would gradually change, including her in more meetings as her hotheaded tendencies eased off and her ability to reason developed along with her intelligence and health. Shortly afterward, training for the first Earth-based military would begin, with able-bodied candidates selected and then placed on specially-adapted Tau Cetian diets and training regimens. Stephen Hayward joined these groups, along with Walter Davidson. They were the only two from the Tau Ceti that joined, the others were all survivors from the surface of Earth. With Walter Davidson's background in the US Army, he already knew military protocol, and was in a good position to take a leadership position in the ranks. Stephen, nominally a civilian, joined purely for the fitness regime. Three new projects were launched shortly afterward. The first is a rudimentary shipyard, so that Earth can build its' own spacecraft again, as a stepping stone to building more in the future. The second was an expansion of the lunar complex on Earth's moon, making the incomplete spaceport functional so that it can be used to ferry people and cargo between Earth and the moon. Finally, the third was the construction of a subterranean habitat on Earth that would function as a monitoring station, base of operations, and transport hub for vessels travelling to the surface for their tasks. The base on Earth was developed with a view to being completely vacuum-sealed and capable of simultaneously dealing with depth pressures when buried up to 100 metres below sea level, and at zero atmospheric pressure during the stripping phase of Earth's reseeding. The project was a long term solution to Earth's contamination problem, and was projected to take at least three decades to complete, assuming there were no problems. John volunteered to join the colonisation effort on Earth, along with a number of other volunteers, both Earth and Tau Cetian. He was assigned two guards to protect him against potential covert insurgent operatives, one of the guards was a Tau Cetian woman whom he eventually developed a relationship with. Helen, the only other medically-qualified member of the crew, elected to stay on Tau Ceti 5, citing that a subterranean habitat on an inhospitable planet was no place to raise the only child of the man she lost. Her legacy would be to raise the child who would become a scientific leader, and whose descendants would play prominent roles much later in Alliance history. It would only take two years for the first of Earth's combat vessels to be completed and ready for space trials, even though the foundations of the vessel's capabilities were laid down even more quickly, with a space-capable framework ready within eighteen months. Walter Davidson scheduled a visit to inspect this new ship. Meanwhile, Helen worked remotely with John and Edward, as well as a Tau Cetian researcher named Forin. They began looking into ways to adapt the human genome to better cope with the radiation that would no doubt linger on Earth's surface, despite the major clean-up operation in progress at the time. Their hope was to develop a means of both treating the radiation-induced cancers plaguing many people from the surface, as well as make everyone more resistant to radiation poisoning. In the course of this research, they had occasion to compare the Tau Cetian genome with the Earth genome. Aside from the clear indications of genetic engineering inherent in the Tau Cetian genome from thousands of years before, there were clear and irrefutible commonalities between the two genomes. The conclusion was inescapable. Tau Cetian and Earth people were the same species. This explained much, including why two separate civilizations on two separate planets in two separate star systems looked almost the same. This knowledge was deemed classified, and some obfuscation was needed to hide it. For once, everyone who knew about the link between Earth and Tau Ceti deemed this knowledge too sensitive and too dangerous to release during the current uncertainty, because while the Tau Cetians would have no issue with it for the most part, the people of Earth would be another story entirely... Especially the insurgents. One of the remaining insurgent groups planned in secret. A two-pronged approach was taken. The first was a diversionary tactic that would cause chaos on the Tau Cetian gardne world where human survivors were temporarily being housed, while the second was a covert action to sneak aboard one of the numerous transport ships sent to Earth to supply personnel and raw materials for the recovery program. The first resulted in many injuries and extensive damage as the insurgents fought with stolen items fashioned into makeshift weaponry. Stephen was again injured during this time, and for the first time in many months, Janet was sent into a rage. She would have killed those that had attacked Stephen, had it not been for the fact that his injuries were not so severe that he was incapable of stopping her from doing so. Relief at his well being warred with her need to exact revenge, but eventually, she stood down and sought his comfort instead. A large number of insurgent loyalists snuck aboard a shuttle bound for Earth's orbital shipyard at the same time, commandeered Earth's first large-scale spacecraft while the planned inspection was underway, kidnapping Walter Davidson and one of the Tau Cetian representatives hostage. Miradima had every intention of killing the kidnappers outright after seeing the torture they attempted to inflict on Davidson, but he dissuaded her from doing so once he was rescued, and instead had them all confined to a prison colony on the near side of the moon, tidally locked with the Earth so they could see the world they would never again be allowed to set foot upon, the price they paid for their nationalistic bigotry and terrorism. Meanwhile, from a far distance away, a mysterious space-borne force watched all of this with intense scrutiny, planning their next actions around what they saw. Two years later, the first of Earth's combat ships is complete. A frigate-sized vessel that became part of the newly-commissioned Earth Fleet, carrying the designation Sol. Mars was targeted for a colony, and a much longer term habitation project, as well as receiving the second ever shipyard, one that would be equipped to build far larger ships. Construction would begin on the U.A.S Mars within five years. A new calendar is instituted at the celebration of the formalisation of the Alliance between Earth and Klankharis Prime, one that had 360 Earth-length days in each year. The goal of the new alliance was to build their respective fleets to prepare for the coming enemy return.