Interstellar Assault by Vaughn Heppner

Author:Vaughn Heppner [Heppner, Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

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EARTH

10 YEARS AGO (THE YEAR 2050 A.D.)

From A History of Space War, by Bjorn Valentino Larson:

It is interesting that Earth history has an event that shows, in a broad strategic sense, what happened with the arrival of the alien Valiants when Earth was at one of its weakest moments. Even though the arrival was ten years in the future, 2050 A.D. was a pivotal moment for humanity, with a historical analog.

Back in time, during the 7th century A.D., two empires squared off against each other. The Eastern Roman Empire, or what became known as the Byzantine Empire, fought against the Persian Empire. The two had been struggling against each other for what seemed like time immemorial. In the heyday of the united Roman Empire, the legions and their centurions hadn’t been able to subdue the Parthians, and later the Sassanids, who controlled ancient Persia.

In the era of the early 7th century, the Persians had gained a psychological and military edge over Byzantine armies. Winning one victory after another, the Persians occupied critical parts of the opposing empire in Egypt, the Levant, and Turkey, or as it was known then, Anatolia.

In response to all this, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius threatened to move the capital to Carthage in North Africa. The Patriarch of Constantinople extracted an oath from him that he would never abandon the city. After Heraclius made this oath, the city’s populace was filled with a sudden outburst of religious zeal and a desire for a crusade against the infidel Persians.

Despite that, in 626 A.D., hordes of Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, and Gepids laid siege to Constantinople in concert with the Persian forces at Chalcedon. By dint of hard fighting and due to the city’s massive walls, Emperor Heraclius saved the city and the next year launched an invasion of Persia by way of Azerbaijan, using the Black Sea to get there. The Byzantine Empire always had the better navy. Instead of facing the hardened Persian horsemen ravaging the Byzantine Empire, Heraclius swept through the enemy country and won a critical battle at Nineveh.

The key point here was that both empires ravaged the other, exhausting one another in brutal and devastating war.

Heraclius slew the nobles and knights that made up the core of the Persian kingdom. Unfortunately, the Byzantine Empire lost much of its land, gained a debased coinage and lost far too many cities and soldiers. The two empires were like wrestlers who had fought to the finish where neither could raise his arms to pin his foe.

That was the state of these empires when a prophet named Muhammad passed away. Afterward, what were normally rabble Arab armies were unleashed upon the world, beginning with the nearby Byzantine and Persian Empires. The early Arabs, with their fanatical zeal and contempt of death, fought several close battles with both Persian and Byzantine armies. In each case, Islamic valor overcame Persian and Byzantine professionalism and their superior armor and armaments.

Though these battles were near-run things, in each case, the Arabs won, unleashing a new and powerful force upon the world: Islam.

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