Operation King Drift

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Operation King Drift was the Kamian invasion of the M'KHaren Empire during the Kamian Succession Wars in A.Y. 6207. Or, as history would more accurately remember it, the Kamian "Invasion", since the Kami not only failed to capture any M'KHaren territory, but also didn't even manage to breach M'KHaren space.

Circumstances of the "Invasion"

Though widely regarded as a space power during the Mage Wars and Ages#The Golden Age, M'KHara had been using an unoficial policy of isolationism for the past five Ages. The border was mostly closed and protected by a wide demiliterized zone. Available inteligence indicated that this region was sparsely guarded, making an attak on the M'KHaren interior possible.

There were a handful of trade roots in and out of M'KHara which were controlled and monitored, but military presense along these lines was small. Kamian inteligence agents inside the M'KHaren interior failed to locate the bulk of the M'KHaren fleet, leading to the belief that they no longer had one. In all, M'KHara appeared as an open and inviting target.

With the war going well on other fronts, the Kamian's began to assemble a sizeable fighting force and prepare for a lightning assualt. This same tactict had served them well, and in 110 years not one attack force had been stopped.

Reasons Why the Invasion Gets "" Around It

Before even reaching the edge of the M'KHaren neutral zone, the Kamian fleet(Of some fifteen-thousand ships) had to cross through a large, sparsely populated region. Though they encountered no resistence, the growing length of the supply lines and lack of local access to resources greatly slowed their progress.

Eyes in the Darkness

This is where the first fundamental lack of understanding of M'KHaren tactics became a problem: the M'KHarens did not patrol their nuetral zone or the buffer regions beyond it much because they had deployed an extensive network of telescopes and sensor grids. Small, easily camoflauged detection systems told them the Kamian invasion force was coming well before they reached even the official doorstep.

The DMZ

The demiliterized zone itself, which was established ith a treaty signed by Uther of the Alliance, Laytami of the Gudersnipe Foundation, and the M'KHaren government ack at the begining of the Golden Age, was not chosen by politicians. It was chosen specifically by M'KHaren tacticians because of the navigational problems it presented. This region had halted M'KHaren expansion, and was selected for it's defensability. Though many habitable worlds and natural resouces existed beyond it, he M'KHaren's made a willing choice to draw the lines there, specifically to maintain a strong border.

The reason for so few "approved" trade routes into the M'KHaren interior was because they were the only safe routes. The DMZ was a quagmire of black holes, nebulas, X-Ray pulsars, and a variety of other stellar phenomina which made for hazardous travel.

Add to that the part where the M'KHaren's had been submitting inacurate maps which showed none of these hazards to the rest of the known worlds for the past five millenia, and you had possibly the best defensive strategy in history.

When the Kamians finally arrived at the DMZ, they found their already snail-like pace slowed to ab absolute crawl. They had chosen to avoid the "defended" trade routes and instead plunge right through the "open and inviting" DMZ, and lost several entire battle groups right into uncharted black holes.

The M'KHaren Fleet

Unbenounced to the Kami, the reason for the fleet's illusiveness and seemingly small stature stemmed from the fact that the M'KHarens actually did not maintain a large, active fleet. Relying on their remote location and early-warning-systems, the bulk of the fleet was kept as a "ghost fleet", unmanned and moared in out-of-the-way solar systems where a few carreer military personnel could maintain a large number of inactive vessels.

Having seen the Kamians coming from a long way off, the M'KHarens had had plenty of time to call up reserves, reactivate old ships(some dating as far back as the Mage Wars), and prepare a extensive armada.

In total, the M'KHarens reactivated 65,000 ships and called up 3.7 million soldiers to man them. Although the millitary force was made primarily of reservists and drafties, they had extensive time to train and prepare, making them already a skilled, if inexperienced, fighting force by the time the battle began.

The Home-Field Advantage

With the Kamians lacking unctional charts and the M'KHarens abounding in them, it was quite litterally a home-field advantage of M'KHara. Not only did they have maps which showed the dangers of the DMZ, they had hyper-accurate charts with pre-planned routes and precision manuvering plans.

This allowed M'KHaren ships to travel through the region over three times as fast as the Kami, and use the natural hazards of the zone to hide their paths. Combined with M'KHaren stealth technology, which while not advanced was a well-kept secret, and the M'KHaren's were able to choose exactly when, where, and how to meet the Kamians in battle.

The Battle of King Drift

The M'KHarens chose a narrow band roughly halfway through the DMZ. They had already predicted that the bulk of the Kamian fleet would rondevous here as it was a safe haven in an otherwise inhospitable region. The Kamians would stop there to let their supply lines catch up, refil consumables, and then prepare for the final assualt on the M'KHaren interior.

This proved far to tempting a target to miss, as for a breif window he 15,000 Kamian warships would be joined by an additional 5,000 support vessels. The M'KHaren fleet outnumbered them more than four-to-one in warships and three-to-one over all, and had used their advanced knowledge of the region to completely surround the Kamians.

The M'Kharens attacked from all directions with very little warning. At the time, it was the single largest space battle, yet lasted less than twelve hours. The M'KHarens suffered relatively few casualties, while the Kamian fleet was utterly obliterated.

Aftermath

While the Kamians were not foolish enough to try anything like King Drift again, their attack had a far more damaging side effect than the loss of 20,000 ships: it brought the M'KHarens into the war.

Prior to King Drift, the empire had been content to sit well behind it's lines, profiting from wartime trade, siding against the Kamians but not "with" anyone else. The attack, while an abysmal failure from the Kamian standpoint, was viewed as an outright insult by the M'KHarens. How DARE they launch an attack on the mighty Empire, which had endured then for more than eight millenia?!

The M'KHarens did not launch a counter-offensive as there was no need, their position was still remote and well-defended. And while their contributions to the war effort were small in comparison to other nations, it is important to note that M'KHaren ships were present at the Battle of the Don't Pass Line 29 years later, and made several confirmed kills.