First Contact War

The Great Defensive War
Date	April 22, 2090 - December 23, 2097
Location	Earth, Sol System

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</noinclude>The Great Defensive War, otherwise known as The Tyrum Invasion, or simply as The Invasion, was the invasion of Earth by the Tyrum Consciousness between 2089 and 2097. The invasion resulted in a defensive victory for Earth and was instrumental in creating the Greater Terran Union.

History of the War

On April 22nd 2089, space surveillance satellites from nine different nations detected large, artificial craft quickly approaching Earth. Terrified, the nations of Earth quickly attempted to create an orbital defense grid, but their primitive constructs were easily destroyed by the greater Tyrum forces.

The invasion began on February 17, 2090 as cities were destroyed in an apocalyptic opening volley from the attacking craft. The Tyrum followed a policy of directing their attacks upon regions of the earth with the greatest ambient light, as an indication of that regions economic, population, and political importance. As such the Tyrum directed the vast majority of their fury at East Asia, utterly devastating China and Japan. Europe and the United States were not spared however, with attention directed at the American Eastern and Western coasts, along with most of the primary European cities and all major human population centers in South America and Africa. The only exception to this was London, which had enacted archaic laws dating back to the second world war to declare black out provisions after the tyrum fleet had been detected. This resulted in the city being largely ignored in the opening barrage.

The destruction of the major population centers one earth coincided with the decapitation of much of the central authorities on the planet, though enough of the military command survived the opening barrage to launch a counter attack. Mainly in North America and Russia. While Washington DC was destroyed, along with the Strategic Command Headquarters bunker located in the nearby Bull Run mountains, the vestigal North American Aerospace Command bunker at Cheynne Mountain Colorado was ignored. As part of standard NATO practice, the second in command of NORAD was a Canadian General, in this case Lieutenant General Mark Templin. With the absence of communication from Washington DC and the clear indication that the alien invaders had initiated strategic strikes on the Earth, General Templin ordered nuclear retaliation. Hard line communication links with Russia, a product of the Cold War remained, and surviving military staff in the Russian Federation rapidly coordinated with Templin for a joint ICBM strike. The missiles were rapidly reprogrammed for orbital targeting, and launched at the Tyrum fleet.

To the shock of all, the Tyrum warships had no point defense systems and were utterly defenseless against the sudden ICBM barrage directed at them. The largest and most powerful ships were soon taken down, as a coordinated launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles disabled the larger ships, limiting the Tyrum's ability to bombard the planet from orbit. Undeterred however, the Tyrum brought up their nesting ships and launched a ground invasion, focused primarily upon the regions they had managed to devastated before their primary warships were disabled. Landing in Australia, Germany, Virginia, California, Rio de Janeiro, Japan, Manchuria, and Sichuan, the Tyrum swarms rapidly began to spread out, constructing massive terraforming spires as they went to fundamentally alter earths biosphere to better suit their needs.

Russia, and at what at this point constituted a military union of Canada and the United States unleashed what remained of the earths nuclear arsenal, this time at the ground landing sites. The result of which plunged the planet into a nuclear winter but also caused spectacular damage to the Tyrum swarms and allowed for the Human armies to rally. The Indian Republic, bolstered by reinforcements from the Middle East mounted a powerful defense of the Himalayan Line, while a Joint Army of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay engaged in furious resistance within the Amazon rain forest. General Templin, now declared Marshall of the North American Union attempted to hold the line on the North American Heartland using the Appalachian Mountains and Rocky Mountains as a buttress. Initial efforts failed, and Cheyenne Mountain had to be abandoned following the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Denver. The subsequent retreat, all the way to Edmonton was finally halted when the Canadian 2nd Armored defeated the swarm at Boise, Idaho. A counter attack by the American 10th mountain and 101st Airborne at the battle of Pittsburgh also halted efforts by the Tyrum to breach the Appalachian line. The Russian Tomoskya Division also held on the Dnieper river.

The United Kingdom for its part, having avoided the vast majority of the orbital bombardment rapidly established itself as the center of human command and control, with the scattered war fleets of the United States, Russia, China, and Japan rapidly relocating to the British Isles for protection, while simultaneously protecting the archipelago from invasion by the Tyrum swarm which had overrun France and Spain. With masses of Refugees pouring into western spain and Portugal, an emergency council of war declared in the same bunker that had once housed Winston Churchill during the London blitz. The British Officers demanded immediate action to save Portugal, England's oldest ally. They were backed up by the American contingent led by the acting commandant of the US Marine Corps, who by rank also by the archaic vagaries of rank structure in the US military was the senior surviving officer of the US navy. The decision was final. Humanity would counter attack in Europe. Despite its protestations as part of United Nations disarmament treaties, it was revealed the United Kingdom still possessed 12 trident tipped nuclear weapons. On August 7th, 2091, British Submarines launched a nuclear barrage on the Tyrum swarm in Spain, followed up by landing by the British Army, and the Royal and United States marines at Lisbon. The Tyrum swarm in Spain and Portugal would be halted by counterattack of the Royal and United States Marines that held the invaders outside of Lisbon, preserving not only Portugal's primary city but also the massive swarms of human refugees that had been chased all the way to the Atlantic Coast by the invading swarm. A subsequent spearhead by the 2nd Royal Grenadiers Regiment in the north rushed largely unopposed to secure the northern coast and open up the Tyrum Swarm in Spain to attack from its flank and rear.The 2nd grenadiers would overtake the advancing American Marine Expeditionary Force and reach Madrid first, cementing its position in the annals of honor of humanity and continuing its existence as a division of the GTU.The Joint American and British Army, now bolstered by Spanish, Portuguese and surviving units of the European Federation would hold the line in the Pyrenees mountains.

With the major Army formations forcing the Tyrum into a stalemate, their invasion faltered, and soon came under massive attack by surviving human populations within the occupation areas. Six years of Guerrilla warfare followed, along with hit and run attacks that eventually weakened the Tyrum. Their inability to destroy the central Asian, North American, and Indian manufacturing centers that were not colocated with major cities allowed for ever greater amounts of war material to be produced and used against the invaders. A strengthened humanity, now under the direction of the Emergency Provisional Government launched a counter offensive on all fronts, to the point that they could reclaim the occupied third of the planet and dismantle the terraforming spires that had been constructed and ending the war with the death the remaining Tyrum.

The Final battle on Earth would be the battle of Darwin, where the forces of Fleet Command, which at this time would constitute a solely water borne force as opposed to its later space force, would initiate a forced invasion of the entirely occupied Australian continent. The liberation of the ruins of Melbourne, which had since been converted into a hive warren of the Tyrum would witness the first instance of the flag of the Greater Terran Union, which at this point, would be the flag of the Emergency Provisional Government, raised over captured enemy territory.It would also form the core mythos of Fleet command as its founding operation, and the flightless Australian bird, the emu, would feature prominently in informal fleet unit insignia, despite efforts by the national council to discourage it.

Aftermath

Following the defeat of the Tyrum, the various military commands would relocate to the United Kingdom which remained one of the few places left on Earth with developed infrastructure relatively undamaged by the war. London would play host to the Emergency Provisional Government, which at the time had been a largely loose coordinating body directing the various human militaries and resistance organizations. With Earths biosphere in collapse and a full third of the human population dead, along with the collapse of virtually every national government, the Emergency Provincial Government became the de facto world government . It was led by the executive council representing the principle military commanders, with General Templin chosen as its head with the rank of "Marshall". It would form the core of the future human government that would be known as the Greater Terran Union. The Final act of the war, and arguably the first major act of the Greater Terran Union would be the battle of Titan. Not a battle per se, but more a mopping up operation carried out by a GTU force dispatched to study the moon and discovering a Tyrum observation post on it. Upon terminating the tyrum in the facility, Military Intelligence would seize records consisting of Star Charts, mentions of a network of "gates" created by the "masters" and combat logs with species known as the "Pux" and "Ru".