Tex Talks Battletech: The Wraith

Chapter 1: A Dream

The unification of all Humanity into one realm is an obvious path. What I don't understand is why we broke up into petty realms in the first place.

— Lord Ian Cameron to his High Advisors, quoted in The Statesman of the Stars, by Duke Torrence Ferl, Belgrade Press, 2599

The Era of the Star League was the most prosperous period for all of Humanity. We pushed the very limits of Science and Technology further than any other era before. The only limitations that we knew of were funding and our imagination. For as long as those weren't a problem, anything was possible.

Our stay on colonizing uninhabitable worlds proved to be only temporary. Eventually, we figured out a way to extend our reach across the galaxy. It seemed like no one could stop Humanity's march across the stars.

How wrong we were.

The Amaris Civil War was the beginning of the end. The most advanced state in all of the Sphere, the Terran Hegemony, was conquered in totality overnight. Amaris didn't just conquer the planets that made up the Hegemony, he conquered the people too. Somehow, he convinced the majority of Hegemony citizens he was their rightful leader.

Apparently, pretty words and a show of force were all that was needed to conquer the most technologically advanced state in the entire Sphere. And, if that was true, the rest of Humanity wasn't far behind.

The end of the Amaris Civil War truly brought home the sheer ugliness the leaders of the Sphere hid behind a mask of civility. They stripped the Hegemony of defenses, threw down Kerensky for saving the Star League, and then squabbled over the seat of First Lord like children over a shiny toy.

The Succession Wars started not long after. Petty grievances reopened with stunning gusto. The very technology we put to use improving the lives of every living being in the Sphere, to secure our future in the stars, was put to work burying worlds under an avalanche of atrocities.

As a consequence of our failures to be worthy of our awesome powers, we were doomed to lose them. The Sphere's arm extending across the stars was forever crippled. Knowledge was lost. LosTech became a fact of life.

The dream we took for granted was gone.

Except for one, small, exception.

The Terrans of the Koprulu sector continued on with their lives, heedless of the carnage happening in the old worlds of Humanity. They continued to push forward the very frontiers of science and human space. As descendants of the early Terran Alliance, they knew only one thing: the frontier was there, go.

And, go they did.

Chapter 2: The Ace

"You know who the best star fighter in the fleet is? Yours truly."

—A Wraith pilot

In a mirror of what happened to the Sphere during the Age of War, the Terrans colonized every habitable world they found and even those that weren't. It was a land rush, pure and simple. No one wanted to be left behind. To miss out on easy riches from just being the first to sit your ass down on a hunk of dirt.

As they expanded their territories, there were less and less easy worlds and asteroids available. New prospectors and colonists had to range out further and further to find lands they could claim as their own. Sometimes they would land and only find out later the rock was already claimed. Disputes became common, and people found ways to settle them.

Settling land disputes were commonly fixed by just talking it out. Talking was cheap and becoming a landlord was easy. But, not everyone wanted to talk. Sometimes disputes would be handled violently.

It's easy to trace the evolution of the Terran militaries professionalization. First came the land disputes and volunteers coming out to shoot each other. Whoever wins takes the land. That became more complex the more people were added. Suddenly it was town guards, and then planetary militia and corporate mercenaries, until finally you culminated in a volunteer professional soldiery backed by the state.

Just like biological evolution, artifacts of previous iterations would stick with each progression. Sometimes, that was deliberate. There were advantages to having it stay on. Other times, it was just pure coincidence. What was supposed to be gone, made its way back.

For the professional militaries of the Koprulu sector, that artifact was Billy the hillbilly hick, the village idiot, that dumbass, getting recruited on. Despite their best efforts, Billy would find a way on board. The reasons were manifold, from manpower constraints of the Umojans, to the lax recruiting standards of the Confederacy, or the nonexistent ones of the Kel-Morians. Billy always found a way in.

Allowances were made explicitly to handle these recruits. Remember, in the Koprulu sector, neosteel is cheap and lives are precious. If Billy the village idiot was willing to fight and die for you, then bless his heart, take him on and suit him up. Just do the sensible thing and keep him away from the important gear.

As a consequence, Terran militaries all had a similar cultural theme. The further away you got from the dirt, the more expensive the gear. The more expensive the gear, the greater the demand for professionalism to handle them.

In short, the further away you got from the dirt, the more professional the soldier.

Now, Terran militaries, like everyone else, absolutely love their professionals. The most common complaint all foot sloggers have, is that the Vehicle crews get first class shit. First class. That means reinforced neosteel walls, comfortable single person bedding, fucking toilets so big, they're removal allowed Siege Tanks to be made straight off the line with Siege mode complementary.

As for the Aerospace crews? The amenities get even better the more important the war machine. Amenities designed to keep naval personnel as fresh as possible. Just the ASF personnel alone get a lounge with cold complimentary beer, that's on top of everything the vehicle crews get.

Naval personnel get all the cool shit. As always. It's no exception there in Koprulu, as it is here.

The cool shit wasn't just in amenities the rocket jockeys get to enjoy. Everyone, especially the Terrans, both Koprulu and the Sphere's, invested enormous sums of money to ensure their navies were top of the line. The best sensors, the guns, the best armor, the best everything. Because, if you didn't have a navy, you didn't have a state.

The most powerful demonstrations of this were the warships. Corvettes, Frigates, Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships, it doesn't matter what class they were, every single one was the epitome of human technological and military might.

Being so expensive and so important, they were kept well away from the riffraff and were similarly well protected. Whose job was it to protect these Gods of war? For the Terrans, it was originally Gunships, wide medium-sized warships meant to work in conjunction with the capitals. Their job was to shoot out so much damage a Battlecruiser would think twice before pressing an attack. They worked on the old logic that bigger was better in space. That was before the complexity of war hit a haymaker in the face of spacers.

Eventually these Gunships would be replaced by smaller, lighter, faster, and more agile spacecraft, what we know today as the Confederate's Avenger and the Kel-Morian's Hellhound aerospace fighters. The new ASF weren't just nimbler, it also put out just as much damage as the Gunships of old while being able to dodge a capital's defensive fires. It created a paradigm shift. Terrans went from using fairly large, expensive war machines alongside the capitals to cheaper, smaller, dynamic, high-speed fighters.

Using these war machines, not nearly as important or expensive as warships, meant that ASF personnel didn't have as much pressure put on them as warship crews do. It also meant the interacted with us humble ground pounders more often. That's why we know they get a lounge with cold beer, the Marines literally saw them sitting in lounges with ice-cold beer.

While the titanic shift in doctrine did result in a great deal of change, what didn't change was that ASF personnel were still considered naval personnel. There was always that edge of professionalism just beneath their relaxed exterior. Traditions established by the Avenger and Hellhound would be carried on to their successor, the Wraith.

The Wraith would first see action in 2485, the beginning of the Guild Wars. First used by the Confederacy, the designs and specifications would then be stolen and used by every power in the Koprulu sector. Especially pirates. They loved that thing.

Now, before we talk about the Wraith itself, I think it's essential to talk about its pilots beforehand. Just like the Hunchback, or the Goliath, the Wraith attracts a specific type of soldier.

Wraith pilots, like Avenger and Hellhound pilots, are heavily lionized. The image of a Wraith pilot was as carefully built and curated as Terran Destroyer Captains. All Wraith pilots are chosen for being nearly unflappably serene, even as they dive straight into a squadron of Battlecruisers. If they weren't they would quickly learn to be. It's rare you ever hear a Wraith pilot's tone deviate from that deadpan drawl everyone's come to associate with them.

Similar to vehicle crews, that demeanor and stereotype was made and maintained on purpose. Where the Goliath and the Siege Tank were the face of Terran ground forces before the Great War, the Wraith and the Battlecruiser were the face of the Terran navy. You couldn't trust the all important navy equipment to just anyone. They had to be specific people, people whose temperament and personality matched the equipment they were in charge of.

All Wraith pilots had to be certified combat pilots before being trained in the machine. That wasn't a small thing to ask. In a sector where neosteel is cheaper than lives, demanding specific personalities with even more specific qualifications, was looking for a needle inside a grain silo. Doable, but painful.

Those pilots did exist, they also existed in sufficient numbers to outfit the large professional militaries of Koprulu's big three. However, the big concern for them wasn't whether the pilot was worthy of the machine, as it is in the Sphere.

For the Terrans, it was primarily a question of whether the machine was worthy of the pilot.

Truly eye-watering sums of money were burned on the pyre of Research and Development to make sure they were.

They succeeded.

Chapter 3: The Phantom

Pilot Alpha: "What the fuck was that?! What the hell is blowing us up?"

Pilot Beta: "I'm seeing laser bursts and missiles Jump in from nowhere. And there ain't nothing on my sensors!

It's a ghost. It's a fucking ghost!"

—2485, the Kel-Morian's first encounter with the Wraith

The Wraith is among the lighter side of ASF. Their loadout isn't something to write home about. Powerful anti-capital-and-aerospace Gemini missiles on the wings and a whole lot of speed. All of this came at the expense of armor. The thing was absolutely fragile by both Terran and Sphere standards.

If it were just those things, the Wraith would have been rightfully canned as an embarrassment to aerospace fighters across Human history.

If it wasn't for one specific reason, Cloaking Technology. Somehow, the Terrans figured out how to make an aerospace fighter invisible to both standard sensors and the naked eye. An ASF, with a fusion torch exploding from its ass, is somehow stealthier than a Maskirovka agent.

They then slapped this new fancy technology together with the new Apollo Reactor, and put them all inside a space superiority and anti-capital fighter. A fighter whose primary job is to gain space superiority by hunting down and killing capital ships and all their friends.

That, is fucking terrifying.

When the Wraith debuted, it scared the crap out of everyone, too. Captains of capital ships especially did not like this fighter. At least with other ASF, you could see and fight them as they came in to wreck your shit. The Wraith, the "Phantom Killer", you were lucky to even know they were in the same system as you.

The only saving grace from this damned thing was that it didn't have a Hyperdrive installed. It was too light, and the chassis already near full. Not to say that was in any way merciful. These things were attached to capital ships as their fighter escort. A standard Battlecruiser is stuffed full of these little monsters. And, particularly sadistic and inventive Battlecruiser captains can play Hyperdrive games with Wraiths, the same way DropShip pilots play hot drop games with Thors.

Thankfully, the battle endurance of the design was also sacrificed. So you don't have to deal with a Wraith sitting in a planets' sensor shadow, waiting for months for the perfect hit. Just a Battlecruiser jumping in and dumping them on you.

Nothing too big.

The end of the Brood Wars only made the little devil worse. Come the start of the Second Great War, Wraiths would be outfitted with Tomahawk power cells to replace the Apollo reactor. The new power cell gave the Wraith a greater initial energy reserve, so they could cloak sooner and for longer than with the Apollo. Additionally, a "Displacement Field" was added to the craft, so they could dodge incoming fire better. Because the invisible monster wasn't already a nightmare to kill. It needed to be so much worse.

There are two variants of the Wraith:

The first original variant is the CF/A-17 Wraith. It was the earliest known model, and the one all new variants are based upon. It was solely armed with powerful Gemini missiles, powerful engines, and cloaking technology. It was an aerospace superiority fighter, pure and simple. That would change very quickly.

The second variant came about because the Terrans didn't have any good air-to-ground capability below warship weight. The CF/A-17G Wraith was outfitted with 25 mm burst lasers as a stopgap until a better solution came along. Additionally, it also featured the latest and greatest of Terran ECM and stealth technologies. This is the "standard" Wraith. The Wraith everyone knows as the Wraith.

The CF/A-17G was the main variant that participated in the Great War. It was during those harrowing years that the Wraith and their pilots truly made a name for themselves. That their reputation became more than just recruitment propaganda.

The Wraith would fight against the SLDF's deepest fears and Lovecraft's sickest monsters. When they fought the Protoss, they went against plasma armed and force-field bearing Corsairs, Scouts, Carriers armed with Interceptor drones, and space magic wielding Arbiters. For the Zerg it was Mutalisks, Devourers, Scourges, and the biggest of them all Leviathans.

Wraith pilots willingly dived in thin-skinned metal death traps, protected primarily by not being seen against the most technologically and biologically advanced weapons of war Humanity had ever seen.

They fought against Carriers, planet scouring warships with more ASF than entire army groups. They fought against Leviathans, moon sized biological organisms carrying entire broods of Zerg. They fought them like they fought Battlecruisers, diving in with an unflappable serenity.

After the Great War, statues would be made for the Wraith, the same way we make statues for BattleMechs. Only, I think Wraiths earned that right better than BattleMechs did.

Despite the incredible opposition, these were some of, if not the most successful ASF frame ever devised. By Terran reckoning, the Wraith proved to be such a unique threat for naval, aerospace, and ground forces it was the cause of its own downfall.

A Navy's capital ship was their biggest, most important investment. For Humans and Aliens, that was truth. The Wraith, a cloaked ASF specifically designed to hunt and kill capital ships, all but demanded to be dealt with specifically. Immense resources would be mobilized to deal with the Wraith.

The first solution, was more complex sensor nets that would see widespread adoption throughout the Koprulu sector. Professional militaries, irregulars, and aliens would start slapping detectors, anti-air batteries, and flying hunter-killer teams everywhere to maintain control of their local aerospace.

The second, more permanent solution was better sensors to detect Wraiths. The first generation cloaking field of the CF/A-17 was no longer up to the task of protecting its pilot. That's the reason the CF/A-17G got newer ECM and stealth technologies. Technology marched on. The Wraith cloaking field needed to keep up.

Those two solutions and their Wraith's thin armoring would be the death knell of its approaching obsolescence. Technology and doctrine were marching faster than the Wraith could keep up. By the start of the Second Great War, the Tomahawk power cell, and the Displacement Field were the last major upgrades the Wraith would see.

The Wraith would eventually be succeeded by better machines. Machines better suited for the demands their missions place upon them. The Banshee for its cloaked ground attack role, and the Viking, a successor to both the Wraith and the Goliath in aerospace superiority and aerospace denial operations. However, it would still see use amongst smaller commands, such as Raynor's Raiders. The old machine still put up a good fight, stealth technology was still as valuable as ever, and their pilots were among the best that Koprulu ever produced. Much like the Siege Tank, the Wraith left an indelible mark on history.

After nearly 20 years of service, the Terrans finally had their answer:

The machine was truly worthy of its pilot.