The Imperial Armed Forces, Part 2

Alongside an approximation of the Ctarl-Ctarl order of battle, here I finally attempt to address the major mission of my posting to the 181st Royal Guards Combined Task Force: the comparative military strength of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire versus the Combined Space Forces of Terra—that is, the unified military forces of Einhorn Reich, Pyotr Empire, USSA and Tenpa Empire.

The most basic unit of Imperial Navy is the line of battle, which consists of three or more, though usually under seven, ships. In the rather fluid organization of naval doctrine, lines are typically populated by ships depending on their intended roles: aggressive, defensive, pursuit, planetary invasion, blockade, skirmish, and so forth. For example, in the Imperial Navy, a cruiser represents a particular compromise between maneuverability and firepower that makes them popular in aggressive lines. Larger battleships and carriers, being slower and boasting more firepower, are popular in defensive lines. Smaller than cruisers, destroyers and frigates are common in pursuit lines. Squadrons consist of multiple lines, and a task force consists of multiple squadrons permanently organized together, usually geographically. A larger, rarer organization unit, the fleet, is similar to a task force but with two or three times as many squadrons, dependent on its mission type: fleets are rarely organized outside of wartime, with the notable exception of the Royal Home Fleet, a prestigious unit which permanently remains in orbit around Home during peacetime, even as ships are rotated in and out of it for different assignments.

The military ranks of the Imperial Armed Forces are fairly simplistic, and very conveniently translated to match their Space Forces counterparts. Since there are only two real "branches" of the armed forces, the army and navy, you can interpret these as land and deck ranks, accordingly:

(Imperial Naval Rank) (Imperial Army Rank)/ (Terran Navy Rank) (Terran Army Rank)


(Nitto-Nitto Hei) (Nitto-Nitto Bing)/ (Sailor) (Rifleman/Riflewoman)
(Itto-Itto Hei) (Itto-Itto Bing) / (Superior Sailor) (Corporal)
(Jotoh-Hei) (Xia-Bing) / (Senior Sailor) (Junior Sergeant)
(Gun-Hei) (Zhong-Bing) / (Petty Officer) (Sergeant)
(Cho-Hei) (Shang-Hei) / (Chief Petty Officer) (Master Sergeant)
(Jun-Hei) (Zhun-Hei) / (Midshipman/Midshipwoman) (Warrant Officer)

(Jun-Jun) (Wei-Wei) / (Sub-Lieutenant) (Junior Lieutenant)
(Jun-Sho) (Wei-Shoa) / (Lieutenant) (Senior Lieutenant)
(Tai-Tai Jun) (Tai-Tai Bing) / (Captain-Lieutenant) (Captain)
(Tai-Bang) (Shosa Bing) / (Captain, Third Class) (Major)
(Tai-Sa) (Chu-Liguo) / (Captain, Second Class) (Lieutenant Colonel)
(Tai-Jo Hei) (Shang-Liguo) / (Captain, First Class) (Colonel)

(Jo-Jo Hei) (Jiang Bing) / (Counter Admiral) (Major General)
(Jo-Sho) (Sa-Jiang) / (Vice-Admiral) (Lieutenant General)
(Jo-Chu) (Da-Jiang) / (Force Admiral) (Colonel General)
(Jo Kwoto-Kwoto) (Ming Guo Yuan-Yuan) / (Grand Admiral) (Vice-Marshal)
(Jo Kwoto Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl) (Ming Guo Zhong Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl) / (Admiral of the Fleet of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation) (Marshal of the Grand Army of the Hashiyo Hashiyo Nation)


While some of those translated ranks are no longer in service, particularly in the Space Forces, this should be enough to give the reader a general idea of the rank structure, fairly similar to our own military forces.

(Figure 14: Photograph of three top officers on the HIMS Orta Hone-Hone, posing at a naval review: a female captain-lieutenant, a male lieutenant, and a male senior lieutenant.)

If we were to combine the population of the four sovereign Terran interstellar entities that make up the extent of human colonization of deep space, we would account for more than ninety percent of Terrans in the known universe and would actually outnumber the population of Ctarl-Ctarl by perhaps as much as a third. Of course, the very nature of Terran political orders and the alliance forged between them, the distribution of political authority among the autonomous rulers and governments, means that the real extent of military mobilization among all of the Terran space is substantially lower than that of the Ctarl-Ctarl. A brilliant example of this is the fact that perhaps as many as one in five Terrans live in so-called Guild space: planets and moons outside spherical domains of the great nations who usually enjoy complete political autonomy but are economically involved in the Great Guilds. The border worlds of Sentinel, Heifong, and Oracion are counted among these. Most obviously, the Sol System sits just outside the borders of the USSA and Tenpa Empires as a matter of diplomacy. The Guilds themselves act as loosely-linked confederacies that do not contribute to the combined military efforts of the Space Forces in a military sense.

The borders of Ctarl-Ctarl space, particularly those adjacent to the Ban, Acid-B, Krauss and Kei Guilds are lined with so-called fortress worlds, worlds the Empire has occupied and industrialized for no other reason besides their strategic location on the Outer Periphery. While the worlds themselves are militarized, particularly those with high indigenous non-Ctarl-Ctarl populations, their point of interest are the massive taskforces anchored in orbit of habitable worlds, comprising tens of thousands of ships of varying classes and hundreds of army groups. In these times of peace, it's easy to forget those task forces, by themselves, very likely equal the whole of the Space Forces. Consider the remarkable success and proliferation of the three largest Terran guilds, whose influence, despite decades of trying, abruptly comes to an end before the borders of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. With the exception of the fringes of USSA and Einhorn Empire space, every Terran lives in the shadow of one of the Great Guilds—unless they reside in Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. Without going into too much depth, guilds do not exist in the Empire: formally, the Empire controls a mandatory trade bloc, which in reality if not law exists is comprised of either three or four loosely defined common markets through Ctarl-Ctarl space.

If the union of the Space Forces is not an match for the Empire's might, as the last Terran-Ctarl War seemed to demonstrate, the private militaries and pirates are certainly no match, even if we acknowledge the rumors of the enormous might they do exert in the shadows. Even if we went as far as to assume that legendary Kei Pirates under the infamous Pirate Lord Hazanko are the greatest military force known to humanity, even more than the Space Forces, there is no evidence to suggest they could fight the unified military assets of the Ctarl-Ctarl. The century-old sea of legends, hushed rumors, and religious dogma that circles the Kei Pirates is not as impressive when considered alongside present state of affairs, reported daily by news media. More than even their past war with Terrans, the Ctarl-Ctarl relish any opportunity to engage in small skirmishes with slightest hints of provocation: Outlaw Companies attempting profitable but dangerous contraband runs (which I will elaborate more on later chapters dealing with the Ctarl-Ctarl economy), private military companies fighting corporate wars in independent states too close to their own space, or pirates simply being pirates. Since the pirate navies of the Great Guilds are the most likely rivals to the Space Forces, I'll pay special attention to them.

The Imperial Navy appears to derive great enjoyment in its extensive pirate hunting operations and campaigns, to the point of regularly mobilizing considerable military assets purely for that reason. Practically speaking, there is not a lot of military advantage to this: the Imperial Border Navy and the integrated fortress worlds are more than capable of policing the borders of the Empire and said borders seem far less permeable than those of Terran space. The huge operations launched by the rest of the Imperial Navy, costly and uncharacteristically unorganized above the level of task force, seem waged purely for the sake of pirate hunting (piao piao wei wei chango), building confidence and experience among military units, and the fact that piracy is illegal, just as it is in Terran space. Were the Ctarl-Ctarl to launch a single, concerted effort involving any substantial portion of the Imperial Navy, they could probably obliterate the whole of the Guild Pirates off world, much less any individual Pirate Clan. They came very close to doing so, as a secondary objective, during the Terran-Ctarl War. Instead, the Empire engages in hundreds of small skirmishes, obliterating informal pirate squadrons that are relatively easily replaced by the guilds. The same scenario plays out every day, dozens of times: a single Ctarl-Ctarl cruiser will respond to a distress call from a registered merchant vehicle, disengage its Sub-Ether engines dangerously close to a pirate group, and fight them until one side is obliterated. By what accounts we have, the Ctarl-Ctarl never retreat. The pirates typically do, if they can.

(Figure 15: HIMS Orta Hone-Hone charges directly into the Ban Guild Pirate Fortress at Sabo's Fall, 30 LTY outside Heifong, weapons blazing.)

Why is this of interest to us? As the Ctarl-Ctarl fight these small wars for their amusement, we can formulate some idea of their military strength in practice—factoring in that any actual military conflict would be an organized, concerted effort, not a hodge-podge of impromptu raids waged by glory hunters and bored commanders. Indeed, the Ctarl-Ctarl are doing the Space Forces a great service in inadvertently assisting in our regular anti-piracy campaigns. Speaking less cynically, piracy is a moral scourge on the human species, unparalleled among the other spacefaring peoples, and even the Ctarl-Ctarl kill and arrest more Terrans on a daily basis than the great wars during the early Towards Star period, it is difficult to criticize them for endeavoring to do so of their own volition. The Ctarl-Ctarl Navy is the single greatest threat to piracy in Outer Space, even before ourselves, and it is left for the Ctarl-Ctarl themselves to explain the perhaps unnecessary deaths of conscripted men and women who are killed or maimed in provoked fights with pirate forces.

While they appear useless and disorganized from our practical standpoint, in reality, they do probably serve a number of purposes not immediately apparent to us beneficial to the Ctarl-Ctarl themselves. Most obviously, after the inevitable casualties of these pirate wars, the Ctarl-Ctarl have a surefire method of keeping their soldiers and warriors in fighting condition during peacetime, adding to the legend of the Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl, which I will address next.