Cosca

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

(This article includes ideas, technology, or events which have been declared "Heresy", or not true in the Swarm Cycle's universe.  These concepts cannot be used in a story claiming to be 'canon'.)

(This article has had the "Godfather" article tacked on at the bottom.  Someone interested in this series of stories should probably organize this better. -ZM)

The Cosca

For a full background see the section below on the Godfather.

With an intention to bomb the Sa'arm into submission they developed the Asp bomber and the Nagina carrier/delivery ship.

Security for these craft is active and lethal. Both the ships and the HSIT devices have embedded thermonuclear devices, and are designed to self-destruct if the hulls are compromised. While in dock, security systems are under the control of the carrier transport. Away from dock, there are only two ways to safely board the craft:
*If the on-board crew authorizes entry
*If the command AI receives an encrypted keyphrase via a particular communications channel. The keyphrase and encryption key are changed for each mission.

Tactics are fairly standardized. A Nagina transport travels to the Oort cloud of a target star system, and releases the number of Asps required by the mission in that system, then travels on to the next target. The Asps hide out in the Oort cloud, selecting targets, and waiting until the group leader judges it feasible make a bombing run. The pilots then use short hop FTL methods to pop into realspace at an appropriate distance from their primary target (usually a Sa'arm-infested planet), and deploy one HSIT device. If there is an assigned secondary target, the second HSIT is deployed as well. In the absence of an assigned secondary target, the pilot may use the device to take out a target of opportunity, like a hive-ship if one is nearby, or he may use the device with a time delay in hyperspace to cause further damage to the primary target. All action is pre-programmed, and usually under the control of the shipboard AI. Immediately following deployment of the payload, the Asp proceeds, via short-hop FTL, to a rendezvous point back in the Oort cloud, to await pickup.

Strategy: For as long as the Navy is able to interdict the advance of the Sa'arm toward Earth, the Cosca will not interfere in their conduct of the war. Instead, they will target systems at the rear of the Sa'arm expansion bubble, and in a direct path to Earth. As they work forward toward the expansion front, the Navy should face fewer and fewer reinforcements, because the occupied worlds providing them will cease to be usable to theSa'arm. There will likely be some fill-in from surrounding Sa'arm-occupied systems, but that just establishes another set of targets for the Cosca. Given their limited resources in terms of pilots, the intent of the Cosca is, at a minimum, to create a "hole" in the Sa'arm front, which would permit Earth to pass through it unmolested.

The Godfather in Outer Space

Origins

First Contact with the Darjee , although not public knowledge for some time, was no secret from members of what was formerly known as La Cosa Nostra. Neither was the news that they brought humanity, concerning the Sa'arm, and the likely fate of earthbound populations. The so-called "legitimate" governments of the earth, rather than spending valuable time and resources preparing the world for the invasion, instead undertook purges with the goal of eliminating, not only the families, but any and all competition for power within their borders. Those purges were made possible by the availabllty of alien technology, provided by the Confederacy, and by the complicity of its human agents. Those human agents could see nothing of value in history, customs, and culture of the families, viewing them as "organized crime."

Reaction among the families was swift and diverse. To be sure, many of the families themselves had lost touch with their roots. They had become thugs, and many thought that they could bully their way off earth, pretty much as they had always done business. They died. Others accepted their fate, as they were consigned to the middens of history by the Confederacy, determined to hold their places for as long as they could. A few, however, sought other solutions.

One group, the DiCatania family, or Cosca, possessed alien technology from another source, that they had been holding and hiding since World War II, but they had not fully exploited it. Following First Contact, with the knowledge of the upcoming invasion and the policies that excluded the families from emigration, it became crucial to their survival to exploit that technology to the greatest possible degree. That exploitation became the major focus of their efforts, eventually leading to the development of hyperspace drives, independent of the Confederacy. With practcal space travel available, the decision to establish the family off-planet was a no-brainer, thus the colony known formally as Catania, or more familiarly to its inhabitants as Home, came to be.

The Colonies

Basic Info

As the oldest colony, Catania is the headquarters for the Cosca, and the base of operations for the top boss, Joseph Fanelli, or as he is known withing the Cosca, Don Giuseppe DiCatania. It is also the largest colony, with a population of approximately 750 at the time of writing for Family Values. There are four other colonies: Syracusa, Vittoria, Agrigento, and Trapani, each with a population of under 500 souls. There would be more colonies, but for the shortage of both habitable worlds in the right location, and people with which to fill them.

Without much of the technology that the Confederacy has gifted its own colonists, the colonies of the Cosca had to exploit the resouces of the worlds upon which they exist. Housing, infrastructure, and feedstocks for the replicators are all derived from the existing biosphere and mineral resources of those planets. Much of the material gathering and production is mechanized, mercifully, but things would happen much more smoothly if more skilled workers were available.

Location

The colonies are deliberately placed on worlds nearer Earth than those that have been or are being estblished by the Confederacy. Being close to Earth and in the direct path of the Sa'arm, those worlds are unwanted and largely ignored by the Confederacy and its Navy - a "hide in plain sight" strategy - and the colonial populations can't get too complacent. If the Earth falls, the colonies will have to be abandoned fairly quickly. The near proximity to Earth, however, is useful in that it makes it possible to continue to engage in business there.

Customs and Social Structure

Each of the five colonies is led by a Capo, or boss. The Capi are semi-autonomous, but still subject to the Don's authority. The form of government used in the Cosca colonies is best described as syndication fused with feudalism. While what the Capo says, goes, he usually seeks a consensus from among his charges before making any decision. In the event that this is impossible, the normal procedure is to put a decision before the group for ratification, as soon as possible, afterward. The term of a Capo is indeterminate, but Capi who exhibit poor leadership skills, or antisocial behaviors, usually have a very short career... and often, life.

Mafiusi and their families are nominally Catholic. When the Cosca leadership decided to try and obtain a priest to minister to the colonies (see Changing Priorities), the Church unexpectedly escalated the request into formation of a new branch, with its own customs, traditions, and Patriarch. There were two major modifications of rules demanded by the Pope for the new branch:

• Whenever possible, each adult man must find, marry, support, and beget children with as many as four wives; and
• no adult men, not even the priesthood, is exempt..

Putting it mildly, this caused a lot of concern among the more traditionally-minded members of the Cosca, but it was eventually accepted as the status quo.

Behavior of individuals who inhabit the colonies is governed by the law of the cosche. Mafuisi are expected and required to exhibit courage and strength of character, and to adhere and enforce adherence to a rigidly defined code of ethics. Violators are not tolerated, and for adults, retribution is final.

Outsiders are rarely allowed to become full-fledged members of a Cosca, although there are mechanisms and rituals available within the culture to accomodate such. There is a definite preference for Italian or Sicilian extraction in new recruits.

Technology

The Cosca had recovered the wreck of a small alien vessel, as a result of its contact with nervous military forces based in the United States, during World War II. Understanding it was not immediately deemed important enough to justify investing large amounts of effort, so only a low level of research was supported, prior to First Contact with the Darjee. That is not to say that nothing was discovered about the craft - rather, that the intensity of research was relatively low. Nonetheless, before First Contact, the Cosca researchers had uncovered the secrets of the origin and probable fate of the vessels prior owners, their teaching and learning systems, their Artificial Intelligences; in fact nearly everything that could be, had been determined from the vessel, save only the operation of the hyperdrive.

News of the coming of the Sa'arm, as well as the expressed reluctance of Earth governments to allow emigration of mafiusi, gave a certain urgency to the discovery of the theory and operation of the hyperdrive. Clearly, moving off-planet was not enough. One had to be able to move far enough off planet, and that mean FTL travel. The Cosca threw every resource that it could lay hands on at the problem, and less than a year after First Contact, they fielded their first successful hyperdrive spacecraft. In all they built a total of four such craft before considering emigrating off-planet.

In the early days of cooperation between humanity and the Confederacy, there was little concern for information security, as it was widely believed that the Sa'arm had no use for or means to collect military intelligence, and humans on Earth... well, they were on Earth, and not a threat! The humans of the Cosca, however, were not confined to Earth, and made good use of the information that was available for the taking. As a result of that intelligence, the Cosca was able to locate and exploit abandoned and obsoleted equipment, i.e., the Confederacy's junkyards, and thus obtained many kinds of critical advanced technology, such as that used in replicators. In the process of developing their own versions of these technologies, the Cosca invented useful new applications, such as shielding to interdict communications with Confederacy AI's. Duplicating the AI's though, proved to be infeasible, because only bits and pieces of their supporting hardware ever showed up in junkyards. That technology would remain out of reach for some time.

Finally, the Cosca closely followed weapons development by the Confederacy Navy, and by shadowing Navy vessels, managed to acquire some unspent ordnance suitable for replication. By this means they were able to arm themselves with nearly any weapon they felt would be useful. Since they had no intention of engaging in pitched battle with anyone, much of what they saw was of relatively little use to them.

Economy

Initially, the Cosca financed its off-planet operations by diverting revenues produced by its earth-bound interests. This couldn't continue, however, so a team was appointed to determine a method for generating revenue using the technologies they now possessed. The only limitations imposed on the team were that the Cosca had to retain its monopoly on the technologies. After deliberating for a few days, the team asked for one of the hyperdrive ships, in order to investigate an idea that had been proposed. The idea was that the Sa'arm expansion front was little more than the skin of a bubble, and that there were vast amounts of space behind that front, that would likely be forever immune from Sa'arm attention.

The request was granted and the idea proved to be correct. At that point the team made its proposal. The basic elements of the proposal were:

• Dedicate the one ship to the purpose of locating habitable planets behind the Sa'arm expansion front. The reasoning for this was based on the proposition that the Sa'arm might have overlooked exploitable planets, or that they might have passed up planets which were short on resources that they required. Sort of a "gather the low-hanging fruit" approach to expansion.
• Catalog those planets by their potential for colonization; and
• Offer wealthy individuals, considered "undesirable" by the Confederacy, transportation to those worlds for the purpose of setting up their own colonies.

The Cosca leadership accepted the proposal, with one modification: only planets lacking in heavy elements could be utilized in this manner. The leadership reasoned that having few metals would severely check the development of an industrial society, thus preventing any of the "colonists" from ever becoming a threat to spacefaring races. It was hoped that this approach would facilitate a possible future reconciliation with the Confederacy, should that become desirable.

Two such planets were identified early on, and within six months the initiative was a booming success. The Cosca successfully financed all of its off-planet operations for a little over two years, until the discovery of rich sources of strategic minerals, in space near Catania, rendered this method of generating revenue obsolete. With those discoveries, replicator-assisted mining became the principal source of revenue for the Cosca.

Motivation

At the beginning of their emigration from Earth, the principal motivating factor for the Cosca was the continued survival of its members and culture. When they felt secure enough in their abliity to meet that need, they turned their attention to the plight of the remainder of the Earth.

Their examination of the means and methods used by the Confederacy in selecting volunteers and concubines left them with the impression that the Confederacy was attempting to breed a more docile version of homo sapiens. This kind of eugenics experiment did not sit well with either the leadership or the constituency in the Cosca.

They also examined the resources being committed to the evacuation of Earth, and concluded that the early estimates, stating that 30% or more of Earth's population would be saved, were not only wrong, they were deliberately misleading. The Darjee never committed enough resources to save more than two or three percent. If any more than that were saved, it would be because the off-Earth human population made it happen.

The human colonies of the Confederacy were. for the most part, little more than breeding grounds for cannon fodder. They offered little hope for the salvation of Earth, or even a significant fraction of it population. The Cosca itself didn't have resources, and in any case, any offer of assistance would have been ignored by Earth's governments. The leadership of the Cosca decided that the only feasible approach to resolving this issue was to make it so expensive for the Sa'arm to expand toward Earth, that they would change direction or simply bypass Earth.

In council with the full membership of the Cosca, the leadership made it a point of honor that the Sa'arm would not take Earth cheaply. The method adopted to accomplish this was a kind of guerilla warfare, striking at the Sa'arm population centers to destroy their ability to field ships, troops, and weapons. The weapon of choice was to be the HSIT, delivered by small, fast, maneuverable spacecraft that would appear out of nowhere, drop their greetings, and disappear again.

Having decided this, it was also determined that an attempt would be made to obtain better military support for the defense of Earth from the Confederacy. The reason for this was that it was well known that wholesale destruction of the Sa'arm worlds was contrary to the operating philosophy of the Confederacy, and if possible, the Cosca wanted to try and avoid alienating those who should be allies. Early efforts, however, showed little promise of progress in that vein.

Capabilities

As of the time represented at the end of Changing Priorities, the Cosca possessed a reserve fleet of some 500 Asp bombers and 50 Nagina carrier transports. The principal limiting factor in depoying these assets is the lack of trained pilots. The Cosca created its own combat flight school, capable of producing two classes of 20 trained bomber pilots per Earth year. Carrier transport pilots receive a different kind of training, and less of it, and are usually drawn from the ranks of cargo transport pilots. At that rate, it will take the Cosca over 12 years to fully man its deployable assets - not soon enough to assure the salvation of Earth on its own.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))