Since 1910, Newgate, New York had been a full supporter of the work the Alien Cooperation Enterprise was doing.  People were shifted to the dimensions where it operated and many research projects were done at the University of Newgate. 

Evil alien races looked at earth as a place where raw materials were abundant and the primitive people would pose no problem with an invasion.  What the people weren’t counting on was the resistance the other dimensions would put up to protect this planet.  The people in Newgate were some of the first in this dimension that contributed in the defense of the earth. 

There was one earlier war that took place at the time of the American Civil War.  But it was minor and was quickly resolved.  But the all-out war that nearly allowed a combined federation of planets and empires to invade earth happened between June 8, 1938 and August 4, 1949. 

The Kuyper Belt War, or KBW 2, began when a small fleet of starships that were a part of ACE came in contact with the Dorellian Fleet in the Kuyper Belt on June 8, 1938.  It was on its way to invade the earth and take advantage of the turmoil the Japanese caused by invading China and the Germans and Soviets being involved in the Spanish Civil War.  With the world about to enter a world conflict, the Dorellians headed toward this planet to conquer it. 

What they didn’t count on was a fierce defense by ACE.  There were a dozen starships of various sizes that were navigating the Kuyper Belt when the Dorellian Fleet made up of a dozen heavy cruisers and twenty shock destroyers met them.  Since the ACE commanders were very familiar with the belt, they broke off into small three-ship attack formations that combined force fields to make three ships fight as one more powerful ship.  

The heavy cruisers were lumbering beasts that couldn’t maneuver all that well amidst the rocks and planetoids of the region.  They were easy targets and were taken out early.  But the shock destroyers that were smaller and more agile gave the starships quite a fight.  They hadn’t mastered the technique of field combining to make the ships more potent, so they had a tough time with the ACE starships. 

After losing 15 destroyers, the Dorellians retreated and headed back toward their home worlds with the ACE fleet in hot pursuit.   The alien crews knew about the Dorellian technique of drawing enemies out beyond their normal service radius and before they could call for reinforcements would be attacked and usually destroyed by overwhelming force.  But if the ships could be destroyed before they returned to the Dorellian System, there could be no counterattack waged against the pursuers. 

ACE systems along the path toward the Dorellian System were alerted of what had happened and squadrons of starships and support ships were sent out to try and stop the escaping crafts.  When the Dorellians realized what was happening, they contacted allies that were in the region and they dispatched ships to take on the ACE ships.  The minor skirmish became a full-blown war quickly. 

There are four bases in the Kuyper Belt that are manned by ACE personnel from this dimension.  They are Siberia, Yukon, Tibet, and Patagonia.  They are named after four severe regions on earth that are isolated and accustomed to very cold conditions.  These stations were positioned to administer and patrol a different quadrant of the belt.  The starships had come from Yukon and were joined by starships from the other three stations to assist in the defense of the solar system. 

The much larger Oort Cloud was defended by various races that worked with ACE.  Since so many of them were in other dimensions, they were able to hide from attackers by shifting into their home dimensions and performing hit-and-run attacks against them.  Often the ships weren’t as potent as the front line ACE ships that remained in this dimension most of the time. 

There were a handful of major battles during the war.  Most of the progress one way or another was determined by long campaigns into various territories.  Sometimes a campaign would last for months and nothing in the end would change except the body count.  Entire planets were destroyed and one complete star system ceased to exist. 

There were seven major battles that shaped and eventually decided the outcome of the war.  All but two of them were fought in the Kuyper Belt.

NORGREN’S BLUFF:  November 19 – 25, 1939

An Admiral Sergrun Norgren from the Barian Federation held off a much larger force in the Kuyper Belt by letting on that he had an even larger force than those trying to penetrate the Kuyper Belt.  By using replicated ships and those that shifted between dimensions in the Oort Cloud, a vastly inferior force held off over 300 Dorellian ships and 1500 others from their allies.  A series of attacks caused the Dorellians to call in allied ships to help them.   

One thing Norgren did was use Kuyper Belt material for raw materials for the replicates.  He only had a little over 20,000 crew members on 80 ships with 17,000 being synthetics and robots.  But he was able to produce 9000 replicates and used image projection globes to replace the rocks and planetoids to make the enemy think all the ships they faced were front line ships.  Synthetics were the ones that manned the replicates which to the enemy was unthinkable since they thought synthetics were only useful as slaves.  Their success during the war was one thing that convinced the people of Newgate that maybe they should get the vote and be declared citizens in 1944. 

The ships that shifted between dimensions bedeviled the enemy because they would shift into this dimension, inflict some damage, and then shift back.  A ship no larger than a shock destroyer could shift into this dimension in the midst of an enemy formation, destroy three or four ships, and shift back before the enemy could respond.  They didn’t know where the ships would appear and were always on the edge psychologically. The hit-and-run attacks became a pattern the Dorellians and their allies had to get used to.         

Norgren lost 42 primary ships and 7833 replicants before the Dorellians and their allies called off the attempt to penetrate the Kuyper Belt.  They lost 84 Dorellian and 1308 allied ships before retreating to Allied territory.  It took the Dorellians a year before they dared wage another major battle and even that one wasn’t as large as Norgren’s Bluff.  The strategy became an EPU program that people have been using ever since. 

THE BATTLE OF SENSHROW’S REVENGE: March 9 – 11, 1940

The war sometimes destroyed entire planets.   One such planet was Vengren III.  An experimental super weapon meant to end the war early was sabotaged by the forces of ACE.  A planet with a population of over 3 billion people was reduced to rubble when the weapon exploded and cracked the planet open to the core.  The secondary explosion sent debris out as far as the next star systems.  

Colonel Senshrow of the Dorellian Alliance as it was known by then lost all his family on that planet and was utterly enraged.  He took his fleet and four other fleets into the heart of ACE controlled territory and the Kuyper Belt to inflict as much damage as possible.  Even peaceful planets that were neutral were attacked and laid waste.  It was a brutal battle that was mercifully short. 

By the end of the battle, over 12 billion people, mostly civilians, were dead.  Only 22 of the 2000 Alliance ships that saw action survived to fight again.  3700 ACE ships were destroyed and twice that many were damaged.  But it took years before the Alliance was as strong as it was before the battle.

THE DRORVAN AND KANOLIAN SYSTEMS BATTLE: May3 – October 29, 1942

The Drorvan and Kanolian Systems were on the front line of the war.  The citizens of both systems moved away before the battle began and surrendered the planets to the ones who fought over them.  The battle consisted of scores of smaller battles that were fought on the planets and in space between Alliance and ACE fleets.  Ground forces lost more men in those six months than what were lost during the rest of the war.  Even the space fleets lost half as many ships as what were lost during the entire war. 

It was a back-and-forth battle that was never decided one way or another until late October.   By then, ACE had the upper hand and helped the Drorvans defeat the Kanolians when they destroyed the capitol of the system and destroyed about a third of the home world.     

THE HIDE-AND-SEEK BATTLE: July 14 – 19, 1945

With hit-and-run attacks becoming so common, one decisive battle was a series of hit-and-run attacks between the Alliance and ACE.  All four stations were involved and one skirmish took place near Uranus.  That was the closest a fleet of Alliance ships came to earth even though some ships made it as far as the moon where the ACE base on the back side of the moon repulsed them.

A fleet would near a planetoid and their enemies would appear to fight them.  No one actually won the battle.  The people just got tired of fighting one another and not knowing where one side would appear in sufficient number to wage a skirmish. 

Eventually ACE won the battle and kept the Alliance from getting any closer to Earth than the moon.  None of the fighting was viewed from earth because the combatants made sure they weren’t observed. 

THE GALACTIC BATTLE: December 11, 1942 – March 30, 1946

This battle stretched from the Kuyper Belt to the edge of the galaxy nearest earth.  It was again a series of hit-and-run attacks that involved thousands of ships on both sides.  It was a battle of attrition.  The side that had the most ships remaining at the end would win it.  Fortunately it was ACE. 

THE BATTLE OF THE ADMIRALS: November 9 – 19, 1948

This battle was between fleets and some of the most important admirals on both sides of the war.  There were pitched battles in the regions between systems so that the ships would have maneuvering room.  There were few hit-and-run skirmishes.  

It was one of the last battles that pitted a massive number of ships against another massive number of ships.  The admirals fought it for pride and for glory.  Synthetics engaged in the close-quarters fighting between smaller attack crafts.  They also attacked the larger fleet vessels.  But they often were destroyed in one blast by a ray cannon or plasma discharge gun.  A few though managed to inflict major damage before they were destroyed.  But since they were controlled by synthetics they were considered expendable. 

THE PHANTOM BATTLE: May 13 – August 4, 1949     

This battle was mainly fought by ACE and Alliance forces in other dimensions.  The Alliance toward the end of the war had finally mastered the art of shifting in and out of dimensions to wage hit-and-run attacks.  Also, the importance of synthetics was finally realized by the Alliance.  Neither realizations came in time to turn the tide of the war in the Alliance’s favor. 

A huge attack was waged in the Kuyper Belt.  But ACE was waiting for the attack and knew the ships were coming.  The Yukon station that had sent out the original ships that fought in the first skirmish of the war was in the thick of the battle.  In a suicide attempt by the Alliance, another 400 Dorellian heavy cruisers and 1000 shock destroyers tried to penetrate the Kuyper Belt by shifting to another dimension.  But sensors warned ACE of what was happening and by the time the ships reached Yukon, 3000 ships shifted to engage them in battle. 

The last decisive battle was large enough to be seen from earth.  But since it was done in other dimensions, no telescope except those in other dimensions viewed it.  The fleet was reduced by nearly 95% until the remaining ships had to surrender to ACE. 

The battle that won the war was fought in the Dorellian home system and three member systems of the Alliance.  Overwhelming force overcame a valiant defense of the systems.  But since there weren’t near as many ships in the Alliance as there were at the disposal of ACE, the Alliance surrendered. 

After nearly a decade of occupation and cooperation, the Alliance joined ACE to make that organization a very powerful force for good in the galaxies.