The Unknown Union

UNKNOWN UNION

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Initially founded right before the Second Great Universal War, this faction, held under the sway of the Empire of Him, fought for and received its independence halfway through the war, which had not touched their part of the universe. Led by Richard Basques (known only as Commander today), they then proceeded to move off to as close to the edge of the Universe as possible. By the end of the war, the Unknown Union was a power to deal with. Of course, then the Shade were pushed back to the edges of the Universe, naturally right on top of the Union.

The Union, caught by surprise, lost ninety percent of its fleet and infrastructure but the flagship, Deathblow, formerly known as Wingman, escaped the chaos with Basques and Him (of the EoH) aboard. After several years, the ship stumbled upon the ancient, very deserted planet of Productor. Upon transporting to the planet, Basques found thousands of gigantic quantum computers in an idle state. After hacking the main frame with a few decisive moves, he installed a password that only he knew and then used the computers (all hooked up to a nanite building station disguised as a moon in orbit) to build a second ship, a factory ship, which then restarted the Union.

After several more years, the Union's technology had exceeded that of its predecessor and mini forges and replicators were in high use. Ships hundred, thousands, and even millions of miles long were built in days and months, and the Union returned to their homeland, now overrun with Shade, and reclaimed it. Due to the fact that nobody had yet heard of the Union but the Shade, nobody else (Unity included) know why the Shade haven't yet returned to siege the universe.

The Union uses several type of drive that the Unity (and everyone else, for that matter) have never heard of. Chief among them is Proto-Warp, a sub-type of Loop-Warp, it is a dimensional drive that allows instant travel to any point in the universe, coordinate not required. Very similar to the tunnel drive in theory, Proto-Warp uses laser emitters to make a gigantic rectangle of space into what is called a 'Gate', which the ship(s) then pass through to get to their destination.

The destination is given to the computers in the emitters via the wearer of the Headset, which intercept and form an image of the destination from brainwaves of the wearer. Due to this, it is nigh untraceable since the emitters are usually house within a ship, and near undetectable. Proto-Warp is also used on a much smaller basis, on the ground. It allows instant travel between planets and solar systems, by projecting the Gate onto a wall or floor (or anything else, for that matter), also giving the watchers the illusion that whatever or whoever is passing through is stepping through or out of the wall.

Due to the fact that they've never heard of the Unity, they are neither with or against the society. They are, however, a powerful, unknown class four society, and would probably surprise the hell out of the Unity if they found out about them. The people of the Union themselves are about eight to ten feet high, with a humanoid figure that has very long arms and legs, and a head much like a humans. They are nearly as diverse as humans as well, with many things being in common between them. However, they are asexual, requiring only to chop off an arm or a leg to reproduce (think of a starfish). This removed member then matures into a fully grown adult over about three hours, and a fully knowledgeable one in five. Each being is completely individual, due to Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) variations as their bodies mature.  

The people of the Union call themselves 'Unionians', and are based around war due to their constant contact with the Shade. Any member of the species can pick up a stick and defeat a Shade Elite soldier. This likely explains why they've survived so long against them.

The cities of the Union are gigantic metropolises, with the buildings (shaped like steep-sided pyramids) stretching miles into the sky. Complex systems of bridges and trams connect them, and floating buildings are not uncommon. Their armed forces are nearly as numerous as the Shade, and somewhat better equipped due to the availability of replicators and mini forges, both of which can produce a weapon of any type from any material (or no material, depending on the circumstances).

The predominant weapon of choice among the troopers is the gauss rifle, a rifle that fires a six pound depleted uranium slug in a ferromagnetic shell at SOL and above speeds. However, second in line are HDHC Plasma rifles, which fire hyperdense, hyper charged blobs of plasma at thirty thousand kilometer per second.

In terms of planetary defense photon cannons and ion cannons are primarily used due to the minor amount of damage to the atmosphere of the planet. As such, they are fairly advanced. In terms of armor for the ships, it is also very advanced, utilizing zero-gap metal, which is typically an alloy with no space between the nuclei of individual atoms, this making it damn near indestructible and fairly lightweight (make it from aluminum .

Their ships also use a honey-combed internal structure, often giving their ship characteristic hexagon-shaped passages. This also allows the ship to live through much more punishment than your average ship. Engines and power sources are Fission-Fusion reactor that split atoms, send the pieces to the counterpart, recombine them, then send them back to be split again, and vice versa. This both qualifies as perpetual motion and produces nearly endless energy.

Shields are made from a variety of things, with a favorite of small ships being the ProtoWarp shield, which projects a gate onto its hull that sends the rounds to another gate inches from the attackers hull, thus having them fire on themselves. Another is the kinetic shield, a concentrated sheet of photons that imitates a solid wall of immeasurable strength. Then the plasma shield is a layer of plasma at high temperatures sandwiched between two electromagnetic fields of a charge the same as the plasma's, holding it in place.

Finally, the graviton shield is a cloud of anti-gravitons around a ship's hull that both deflects low-velocity rounds into space and lessens the impact large ships have on solar systems, thus allowing them to get close to planets and celestial bodies without throwing them off their orbit and possibly destroying them. Computers are typically quantum, however on exceptionally large ships this may be replaced with an experimental atomic computer that uses instantaneous chemical reactions to transmit information.

Union Decinary code is standard on all Union-made computers. Decinary code is damn near un-crack able (as the Shade have learned well) and unreadable. Not only are Union military messages in Decinary code, but they are encrypted, then the encryption is scrambled and encrypted again, and then it is encrypted three more times, an scrambled again rendering it nearly uncrackable. The code can take the atomic computers several seconds to decipher, and they have the key, which changes regularly (i.e. Every other day). If a message is intercepted by most other computers, it comes across as gibberish that might have come from a neutron star or something. As to how messages are sent, a Proto-Warp gate is opened and a transponder sent through that broadcasts the message before self-destructing, the entire process of sending and destroying taking about half a second.