"Now it is your turn to serve; to protect this very liberty. We are living in a hostile galaxy and the next war will come soon enough. Wherever you will end up, either on a warship or as a fighter on the ground, you are expected to defend this liberty with the same sense of sacrifice and dedication. For the moment you step into this place, your life is no longer your own. You are now cadets of the Sol Federal Navy. The first and last line of defense for humanity"
—Admission Speech for Okamoto Fleet Academy
The first installment in Yui's Chronicle, a Space Opera and Military Science Fiction setting by W. Yu Phen
The Sol Federal Command was never meant to be a nation. It is an emergency wartime authority that should have ended along with the war. Yet, the world it had sworn to liberate is now a wasteland. The government it was supposed to restore is buried under white ash. Surrounded by a hostile galaxy, it has no other choice but to take up the mantle of governance.
For ten years, it has guided a new age of rebuilding and prosperity, but the time of peace is ending. Grand Admiral Zhang knows he doesn’t have much time left and he knows that when he dies, it will create a succession crisis that could end humanity. He has a plan though. He has long decided that instead of gambling humanity’s future on a random leader, he will instead create a perfect one.
Since she was ten years old, Yui has been trained in the best of warfare, politic, and science When other children were learning algebra, she was learning how to hit Ganymede with a rocket from Luna. When the others were getting their first vaccination, Yui was getting her first genetic augmentation. When they drove their first car, Yui was piloting her own starship. Her entire life has been about her destiny to take over the Grand Admiralty. There is only one problem. She does not want the job.
When Yui escapes the Fleet, she inadvertently sparks a series of events that put humanity on the brink of war.
The sequel, Soul of a Republic was released in 2023
The book, along with the sequel can be purchased in Amazon and Campfire, the latter which contains bonus contents for readers.
Provides examples of:
- Ace Pilot: Arguably, Yui's greatest strength. She is so confident in her skill that she took on a war cruiser in a lightly armed freighter.
- Action Girl:
- Yui has been trained extensively as this. She Curb-Stomp Battle the cadets facing her in the sparring matches. She notably still has difficulty facing far more experienced opponents.
- Alice and Lucy, having lived and fought during the occupation of Earth.
- A Taste of Defeat: Despite Yui's natural talent and training, she is still facing people who had fought a two-decade-long war.
- She was beaten by Alex and Jason who were part of the first Supersoldier program and had been fighting far longer than her.
- When facing Zhukov's force, despite her doing everything right, the enemy outsmarted her and left her with no other option but to surrender to Xin for protection
- The Alcoholic: Subtly implied to be the case for Fleet Admiral Sterling.
- Anyone Can Die: Lucy died when Asteria's reactor failed during a crucial maneuver.
- Apocalypse How:
- The Thraxos Empire dropped an asteroid on Paris when the resistance scored their first victory.
- When the Fleet arrived and the liberation of Earth seemed imminent, the Thraxos ships turned their gun on Earth and inflicted a Class 2: Planetary Societal Collapse:, forcing all of Earth's surviving population to evacuate the planet.
- During humanity's counterattack, they systematically wiped each Thraxos planet, ensuring they will never be a threat again.
- Applied Phlebotinum : Several to make the setting work:
- Super-efficient fusion reactor
- Phase engine that allows ships to access faster than light travel
- Several mentions of C-materials that were the basis of the Fleet advanced technologies.
- Armor Is Useless :
- The powered armors wore by several characters could essentially shrug off most fires.
- Ships' armor plating can deflect some of the missiles and small caliber weapons, but not main railguns and particle lances. Notably when the armor platings are damaged and needed to be patched up on the go, they become significantly weaker.
- Artificial Gravity: Two kinds:
- Thrust gravity provided by ship's engine with the decks arranged vertically on top of it.
- Spin gravity used by space stations and orbital cities.
- Badass Boast:
- "You all know who I am and yes, I can take out this entire room in under a minute" - Jason Shen
- Common Place Rare: With Earth completely rendered uninhabitable, a lot of stuff suddenly become rare. The most common protein here is now tofu and the entire booze industry is now starting from scratch.
- Cool Starship: A lot given the setting. Some notable ones are:
- The Phoenix-class cruisers. 350-meters long ships that are the backbone of the Fleet. They are all named after Earth's destroyed cities.
- The Liberation-class Battleships. 900-meters long Behemoths are the big guns of the Fleet. They served as the flagship of each battlegroup. They one we mainly see in the story are the Liberation, the Thunderer, the Zhenghe and the Atlantis.
- The Aurora-class cruisers: A class of cruisers that the Fleet had retired but still served as training ships and being used by the Ionian rebels.
- Child Soldiers:
- The Sol Federal Command has enacted a universal conscription system that practically supplants the education system. Upon reaching 15 years old, all children are required to be enrolled in the Fleet Academy. It is implied that failing to graduate will result in being put into a hard labor camp.
- During the occupation of Earth, the resistance employed children out of necessity. Alice and Lucy are forced to be come one when they had to defend themselves.
- Yui is the more extreme example, having been trained up to be a soldier since she was ten years old.
- Dawn of an Era: The end of the novel marks the end of the Sol Federal Command and the beginning of the Sol Republic.
- David Versus Goliath: Yui kept on ending up in this kind of situation:
- Taking on a highly experienced Supersoldier one on one
- Taking on a state of the art cruiser with a mass-produced freighter
- Boarding a destroyer with only three people
- Taking on the entire battlegroup with 5 heavily damaged obsolete cruisers
- Taking on 2 cruisers and 2 destroyers with only 3 of the same obsolete cruisers
- Boarding the Liberation with only 23 people."For once, I want a straightforward battle."- Yui
- Heel Realization: Multiple occurrences throughout the story:
- In the prologue, Jason suffered one after listening to the Thraxos' confession.
- Yusuf after realizing Xin had to be stopped
- Xin in chapter 47:She stared down at her hands. She ran them under the water and scrubbed them against each other. Why wouldn’t it come off? Why? Xin scrubbed her hands harder and harder. The blood was still there. From the millions that had died when she ordered the bombardment of the cities. From the thousands who had suffered isolation and torture just because she signed an order form. From her comrades in the Thunderer, Sana’a, Wuhan, and Berlin. All of them left a mark on her hands. The death. The pain. The grief. It poured over her like ice-cold water. Her hands shivered. Her heart pounded like it was trying to burst out. When did I become okay with this? When did I convince myself that those lives did not matter? Her apathy broke and the tears flowed.
- The Dreaded Dreadnought: The Fleet Battleships certainly invoked this reputation every time they entered a battle.
- High-Speed Missile Dodge: Averted with ships as they can't possibly match the acceleration and the mobility of missiles. The missiles, however, do this to dodge the interceptor missiles sent against them.
- Impeded Communication:
- No faster than light communication means that inter-systems message needs to be carried by courier drones.
- In the Gateway system, normal communication range is restricted to 100,000 Km range due to the thick nebula.
- Powered Armor: Used liberally by several characters. Generally can't be taken out without the use of heavy weapons.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The story try to avert this:
- Space battles are typically composed of hours of trying to merge/intercept the enemy and seconds of engagement as two sides pass each in high speed.
- Despite having FTL tech, ships still need to physically cross the star systems, which would take at least a day or more depending on the ship's acceleration.
- Space Station: Okamoto Fleet Academy is a ring station. A bigger one is currently being built around Earth as the humanity's capitol.
- The War of Earthly Aggression: What the other nations saw when humanity sent in their Fleet to finish off the Thraxos Empire.
- Imaginary Friend: Either due to the stress of the situation or a reaction to a lifetime of trauma, Yui started conversing with her dead father.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Several
- Fleet Admiral Sterling seemed to be open to working with Xin and willing to overlook one of his ships being shot at for the greater good.
- Fleet Admiral Zhukov was implied to be impulsive, but he proved to be one, preferring to negotiate rather than shooting first. It was only after Xin proved that she has no plan to negotiate that he resorted to violence.
- Wham Line:
- "For too long, I have hidden behind the excuse that it was necessary; that it was the only certain way to ensure the safety of humanity. The truth is that no reason can justify our actions. No cause worth causing so much… pain. So here I stand. Here I denounce the action of Grand Admiral Zhang. Here I admit my guilt in full." - Xin
- “There is one place where I can make the most difference for the coming war. One single place where the future of the Fleet is being forged. I will return to the academy.” - Yui
