Earthfleet

Earthfleet is the military arm of the Brayburn Society and is tasked with the defense of Earth, and all of Sol Sector, but most especially Sol Space. The fleet itself was born in 1807 and consisted of just four starships, one of which was the famous and renounced staship Destiny. It's first Admiral was Edmond Clayton, and it worked in partnership with the Gayik'Von for nearly two centuries to defend Sol Space until it was big and strong enough to stand on its own. It still partners with the Gayik'Von for mutual defense even now. But most of what it does it's able to do on its own. Earthfleet itself consists of two branches of service. Namely an armed "Marine" corps, and the Fleet itself. The Marine element is primarily tasked with special boarding and interdiction activities, ship and facility internal security and defense, limited ground assault, and as security for Society and Fleet officials and officers, as well as visiting dignitaries and diplomats.

Earthfleet's area of responsibility is the entirety of Sol Sector, which is broken up into 8 regions of responsibility, consisting of four regions above the ecliptic plane of Sol Space, and four below, each commanded by an admiral who reports directly to either the Grand Admiral or the Vice-Grand Admiral. The fleet's list of active combat vessels includes numerous Dreadnought's (such as the Spartacus), battleships (such as the Skipjack and the Nova Class), various Frigates and Destroyers, and three classes of Shipkiller, including the Sergenious, Samurai and Pegasus. These are all later replaced by the Raven, Wolfpack and Mythos class starships. These ships are also later joined by the United Sol Fleet and their ships as they take their first steps into space in the years after the incident with Black Orchid during the events of Homeworld in which Earthfleet's existence is revealed to the people of Earth.

Earthfleet was built, and is entirely maintained, as a self defense force with no intentions to grow beyond Sol Sector either now, or in the foreseeable future. And, while it is incredibly strong, it's only purpose is the defense of Earth and all humanity.

History of Earthfleet

The story of Earthfleet begins well before there was an Earthfleet. Shortly after the return of the starship Destiny to Earth, the Society, having just freshly come into the possession of radical new, and highly advanced (from Earth's perspective) technology that they had never seen, nor dreamed of before, the first few years afterwards were spent just learning about, studying, and understanding this new cornucopia of information they'd just acquired. It was then decided shortly afterwards that the Society needed to put this new technology to use and expand upon it by building three more Destiny class ships to both protect Earth, as well as explore the newly opened expanses of the galaxy around them.

With the help of Pelk, Taria, and their friends, as well as Six Paws, the Yandians, the Gayik'Von, and others, Earth was quick to get its feet under it. However, due to the massive gap in technology and understanding between Earth, and the rest of the galaxy, in order to fully outfit the three new ships, the Society was forced to buy in the parts they needed to build and equip these new ships. The basic spaceframe, hull, and so on, was built by the Society, and sourced from local technology and materials. But the warp drive, impulse drives, shields, torpedoes, and other high tech parts were purchased from merchants across the nearby worlds, and in a few rare cases, outright stolen when there was no other way to get a hold of the things they needed. And, while the thievery was limited, it was still used when nothing else would work.

It was during this time that the Society formed the "Society Space Force", an umbrella organization under which they placed their newly minted fleet. Captain Edmond and the Destiny served as its leader, and flagship, for the first nearly decade of its existence. During this time they spread out across the galaxy exploring, interacting with, and getting to know the neighborhood under the continued protective wing of the Gayik'Von. It was also during this time that the Society was able to quickly catch up with, as much as they could, the technology that was available in the wider galaxy on the civilian market. By doing this they were soon able to begin building their own warp drives, manufacture their own anti-matter, and do all the other things that they needed to do to maintain their tiny space fleet.

Once they succeeded at this, they commissioned a new class of ships, dubbed the "Stellar Class", to replace their tiny, and very frail Destiny class starships. These new ships were purpose built corvettes constructed with the defense of Earth in mind. A total of 16 ships were built, which were easily 4x's larger than the Destiny class, and served alongside their ancestors in the defense of Earth. Once the Society Space Force had proven itself worthy, and having need of larger, more substantial ships to help defend Earth, the Gayik'Von chose to step in and gift Earth a fleet totaling 16 of their soon to be retired Yav'lik class destroyers that had recently becomd technologically obsolete, and thus were no longer useful to the primary Gayik'Von fleet in their original role. However, because of how much more powerful, and advanced these ships were, compared to what Earth currently possessed, the Gayik'Von chose to include, with their gift, extensive academy and hands on training for the Space Force, ultimately transforming them from a back water civilian defense fleet into a well tuned, and well trained military force.

It was during this time that the Space Force was transformed into Earthfleet, to which Edmond became its first admiral. The only problem that Earth had during this time of growth and transition was that they lacked sufficient personnel to staff more than four of their new Yav'lik destroyers at any one time. So the others were put in mothballs for a time, and looked after by the Gayik'Von, until the fleet's personnel strength grew sufficiently enough to fully staff all the new ships they now possessed. On top of all the training they'd been provided, these ships also came with a complete library of information on how to operate and repair them, build spare parts, and much more, as well as a substantial stock of spare parts, most of which had to be stored out on Mars due to lack of sufficient storage room on Earth at the time, which also did much to help spawn the creation of the Mars colonies.

Once Earth was able to fully take over all of their newly acquired starships, the Gayik'Von left Sol space, and its protection, save only for extreme emergencies, in the hands of Earthfleet. For another almost two decades Earthfleet put their new Yav'lik class destroyers to good use, renaming them the Titan Class for their god like abilities when compared to their Destiny and Stellar class starships. Once Earthfleet had fully utilized and integrated the new Titan class destroyers into their numbers, and defense doctrine, the Destiny class ships were downgraded to training ships for the remaining years of their lives before eventually being decommissioned. Out of the four ships of that class which were built, only the Destiny was preserved, and mothballed for a time before being moved to the Society Starship Museum once it was later built. The other three ships in the class were ultimately scrapped. At this point the Stellar class took over all fleet training duties until their decommissioning some 30 years later.

The Titan class was then later on superseded by numerous other classes of ships, designed and built exclusively by the Society, as the fleet continued to grow. These included the Korban Class (cruiser), the Neptune Class (battleship), the Hercules Class (dreadnaught), the Nemo Class (frigate) and the Orion Class (corvette). These were later replaced by other classes in the five main fighting ship types, which were then replaced by still others, and so on, as the fleet continued to grow, and the Society's grasp of both Gayik'Von, and other technologies and sciences grew. Among the most famous of these classes was the Romano (dreadnaught) and the Omega (battleship) classes, which greatly distinguished themselves in various skirmishes with pesky neighbors (not the Gayik'Von, but rather smaller, bothersome neighboring races), the Juinah, and others. These ships were eventually superseded, and then completely replaced by the Sergenious, and its sister class, the Samurai, both of which are shipkillers.

And, while the shipkillers didn't completely replace the bigger fleet ships at first, after the disastrous Battle of the Oort Perimeter, the fleet's doctrine quickly shifted from fielding large, clumsy, crew heavy starships, to the smaller, lighter, more powerful, and more agile shipkillers, which are basically just an extremely overpowered corvette with the ability to kill a battle cruiser. Other ships came along after the Sergenious and the Samurai, including the Skipjack class, the Pegasus, and several others, all of which ended up being dismal failures. It wasn't until the Raven, Wolfpack, and Mythos classes came along that the Society saw success again in building entirely Earth originated starships for the defense of Earth, and all of Sol Space, ultimately superseding all other ships that were, at that time, still in service.