History Literature / EmpireFromTheAshes

* JustOneLittleMistake: Delivered oh-so-smugly at the end of the series to "Mister X", who otherwise might have escaped detection completely thanks to elaborate contingency plans and preparations. The mistake? [[spoiler: Making absolutely no mention of orchestrating the heirs' assassination--what should have been a crowning achievement--in the supposed diary of the guy set up to take the fall]].

** Humanity has avoided Total Extinction four times, and was brought BackFromTheDead the one time they didn't avoid it. [[spoiler: The BackFromTheDead case was after their first war with the Achuultani, with a later race bringing them back. The first two cases of avoiding extincion were due to the Achuultani not missing a world. The third was because at least two worlds, Pardal and Earth, avoided being infected by their own bioweapon for different reasons. The fourth was humanity destroying the Achuultani invasion fleets.]]

-->"Case Omega executed," Mother said emotionlessly. "The Emperor is dead; long live the Emperor!"

* ReassignmentBackfire: Sergeant Tibold in the third book was a former officer in the [[ChurchMilitant Church's Guard]] who had offended a high-ranking captain and been [[ReassignedToAntarctica banished to the most miserable post that captain had been able to find- Malagor.]] When the schism begins, he becomes the military leader of the Malagorian forces (alongside Sean and Tamman) and proves himself ''devastatingly' competent.

* AlternativeChess: Imperial Battle Chess. Apparently, players can afford to take heavy losses without losing the game.

* AlternateChess: Imperial Battle Chess. Apparently, players can afford to take heavy losses without losing the game.

* {{Unobtainium}}: Mycosan, a synthetic element required by SubspaceAnsible transmitter qualifies. Especially since the CrazyPrepared CoolStarship carries everything '''BUT''' the ability to make more. And couldn't build the necessary equipment in 50000 years, at least not without attracting unwanted attention. Even after loyalists recovered stolen spare parts from the mutineers, Earth could not build the second communicator in over a year while Dahak was away.

* SubspaceAnsible - interstellar FTL communication is possible but very cumbersome, not available in sub-lightspeed craft and requiring exotic synthetic materials that starships aren't equipped to make. The mutineers sabotaged Dahak's and stole the only spares, so ''Dahak'' was forced to throw together a mundane lightspeed device instead in his attempts to phone home. [[spoiler: The ridiculously short range of Achuultani's ansible is one of their greatest disadvantages, forcing them to slowly advance through a system of preplanned rendezvous points and delaying reports back to their homeworld by centuries.]] Short-range "fold-space coms" are simple and common, though.

* AbsoluteXenophobe - the Achuultani. Full Stop.
* AIIsACrapshoot - Dahak is smart and good; he became fully sentient thanks to tens of thousands of years of unsupervised operation. Battle Fleet computers are stupid and good, with obedience to Battle Fleet Central enforced (and sentience blocked) at the hardware level. The second book reveals that [[spoiler: the Achuultani are controlled by an ''evil'' AI that exploited emergency protocols arising from their near-extinction to seize absolute power and sends out the periodic genocidal waves to perpetuate the "crisis". And also that Dahak has advanced enough to disregard his core programming, which ''isn't'' hardwired. He's loyal because he ''chooses'' to be]].

* AncientConspiracy - The mutineers have been manipulating human civilization from the beginning, for fun and profit, with agents in all the major governments and militaries. [[spoiler: And the mutineer-mutineers have been waging a secret war against them.]]

** The planet Pardal underwent Planetary/Societal Collapse to pre-agricultural level [[spoiler:as a result of a civil war started solely to reduce the society to pre-agricultural level to prevent people from leaving Pardal and contracting the bio-weapon.]]

* TheBattlestar - The various planetoid class ships, each at least the size of the Moon with extensive energy and missile batteries and a complement of parasite craft, which in turn consist of separate battleships (50,000 to 80,000 tons), cruisers, two-man fighters and other additional assorted small craft.
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy - In particular, Hitler was one of the mutineers. That's why he was so ''evil''. And why [[{{Film/Valkyrie}} that bomb]] didn't kill him.

* BigDamnHeroes - In the second book, [[spoiler: Colin appears just as humanity is about to be obliterated by Achuultani scouts, with the resurrected ships of the Emperor's personal guard in tow. [[CurbStompBattle Curb-stomping ensues]].]]
* BodySurf - [[spoiler: The mutineers' inner council managed their constant manipulation of the human race without going into stasis by transplanting their brains as necessary into the bodies of lesser mutineers who had obediently gone into stasis. Less important mutineers had to make do with regular human bodies.]]

* CargoCult / GodGuise - In the third book, the people of Pardal worship an ancient defense computer, using the "Holy Tongue" (the language of the Fourth Empire) to speak with the voice of God. Sean and Crew get mistaken for demons by the population in general and angels (and their champions) by the rebels. Harriet and Sandy insist that they not be called angels, but the locals only humor them to their faces, and aside from the insistent terminology the crew largely goes along with it anyway.

* ChekhovsGun - In the first book it is mentioned that ''Dahak's'' Enchanach Drive could make the sun go supernova if it was used too close to it; guess what humans do to blow up around one million enemy ships whom they lured deep into a uninhabited solar system.
* TheChessmaster - "Mister X" in the third book, whose plans stretch back ten years or more and involve minions buried everywhere in the government and military.
* ColonyDrop - The Achuultani are big fans of this. Dahak speculates that they were responsible for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. In the second book, [[spoiler: the Achuultani scouts steal [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_%28moon%29 Iapetus]] from Saturn, equip it with [[DeflectorShield shield generators]] and engines, and aim it at Earth.]]

* CoolStarship - All the characters agree: Dahak is a kickass ship.

* DeflectorShields - Shields can block things traveling in hyperspace, but hyperspace consists of multiple "bands" that the overall shield strength (a huge energy drain) must be distributed among.

* DistressCall - The Fourth Imperium littered the galaxy with probes designed to detect incoming Achuultani ships, broadcast a warning to anyone in range, lure them in, then self-destruct in massive explosions. ''Dahak's'' communications were sabotaged during the mutiny so that the Imperium would assume the ship lost, the last communication sent having been a damage report.
* EarnYourHappyEnding - Humanity suffers ''heavy'' losses against the Achuultani in the second book, [[spoiler: with {{heroic sacrifice}}s galore, most of the military--including Colin's reinforcements--destroyed, and a death toll on Earth exceeding 500 million people]].
* EmergencyTransformation - In the second book, [[spoiler: Dahak manages to transfer himself to a newer model just before his original body's destruction]].
* FeudalFuture - The Emperor is absolute in military matters but a kind of limited monarch in civil. The ships of Battle Fleet, however, are hard-wired to obey not the Emperor, but rather a massive supercomputer orbiting the capital, leaving him largely impotent if he is voted out of office until a new Emperor can be put into power. This was arranged by the first emperor (elected by the Senate to stop the civil wars) as a check against absolute power, and nothing short of complete reassembly of the supercomputer's core can change its mind.

* ForTheEvulz - Speculated as one of the mutineers' motives for constantly tampering with human society. It turns out to be more complex, but Anu did acquire a taste for murdering random "degens".

* GenericanEmpire - "The Fifth Imperium of Man" is pretty generic, and.the species-qualifier is usually omitted, making it seem even more so.

* GoOnWithoutMe: Dahak tries to get Colin and Jiltanith to head for Earth on one of the [=FTL=] capable ships. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming They flatly refuse]].

* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse - God ''damn it'', [[spoiler: [[WhatAnIdiot Gus]]]].
* HeroicSacrifice - ''Many'', starting with the original captain in the prologue.

* HumansAreWarriors - The Achuultani refer to the human chunk of the galaxy as the "Demon Sector" for a good reason.

* InstantAIJustAddWater: [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]]. Take a starship [=AI=] the size of a large warehouse, let it run unsupervised for 50,000 years and hey presto! You get a starship the size of the [[ThatsNoMoon moon]] that can think for itself and ignore its [[RestrainingBolt core programming]] at will.
* InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien: - One of the perplexing aspects of the genocidal Achuultani invaders is the odd patchwork their ships exhibit, mixing superior and inferior technologies in defiance of what the natural progression of technology should have resulted in. For instance, "they appear to possess only a very rudimentary appreciation of gravitonics and their ships do not employ gravitonic sublight drives, yet their sublight missiles employ a highly sophisticated gravitonic drive which is, in fact, superior to that of the Imperium." [[spoiler: It is later theorized that the ships were deliberately handicapped by their overlord AI, thus perpetuating the "crisis" that enables it to exercise emergency protocols to maintain control.]]
* JustOneLittleMistake: - Delivered oh-so-smugly at the end of the series to "Mister X", who otherwise might have escaped detection completely thanks to elaborate contingency plans and preparations. The mistake? [[spoiler: Making absolutely no mention of orchestrating the heirs' assassination--what should have been a crowning achievement--in the supposed diary of the guy set up to take the fall]].
* LateToTheTragedy: - First book: "What happened to Dahak's crew?" Second book: "What happened to the Fourth Imperium?" Third book: "What happened to Pardal's techbase?"

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome - The Pardal plot in the third book ends abruptly during the climactic final battle, with only a brief transmission in the last scene to indicate that they succeeded and did not, in fact, die horribly. Can you say {{Anticlimax}}? [[spoiler: Sean finding the right access code to bring down the defenses]] Nope. [[spoiler: Bringing the full might of Imperial technology on those sorry zealot asses in a well-deserved CurbStompBattle]] Nada. [[spoiler: Taking total control of a global theocratic empire]]? Nothing.
* OlderThanTheyLook - As a combination of biological enhancement, suspended animation, and... [[GrandTheftMe other things]]...

* ShoutOut: In ''Heirs of Empire'', Sean and Crew spend 2 years traveling to Pardal, during which time, they watch countless hours of 20th century movies, including StarWars and MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail. They later spout lines and improvisations of lines from those same movies.

** Several pages after ''that'', there is the [[MemeticMutation memetic]] line, "This is madness!": [[HilariousInHindsight However]], this is [[DontExplainTheJoke NOT Sparta]].
* SomeoneSetUpUsTheBomb - It is inside the most heavily defended section of the palace, has an anti-tamper device set to go off if Imperial technology gets ''close'', and packs enough power in its bite-sized package to blow an entire planet to pieces. OhCrap.

* SubspaceOrHyperspace - Hyperspace comes in a variety of "bands", with the higher level bands allowing for greater speeds. Ships must maintain stasis fields during travel; if the field is broached, the ship is destroyed without a trace. Ships in normal space can detect ships traveling in hyperspace but not the other way around, allowing the creation of undetectable (to their targets) mines that warp into hyperspace to disrupt the hyper fields of ships passing over them in hyperspace. [[spoiler: Achuultani ships use the slower hyper bands, but their {{Macross Missile Massacre}}s cover all of the bands, making them much harder to block.]]
* TeleportersAndTransporters - In addition to standard FTL, the Fourth Empire also made use of a network of "mat-trans" devices that threw matter through hyperspace and caught it on the other side. [[spoiler: This caused the fall of the Fourth Empire by allowing the spread of a horrifically-effective bio-weapon.]]
* ThatsNoMoon - The Moon is no Moon; It's a CoolStarship!
* TransplantedHumans - All modern humans are descended from ''Dahak'''s crew.
* TrainingFromHell - What Colin has to undergo to master his new enhancements.
* {{Tsundere}} - Jiltanith starts as one towards Colin, mostly in jealousy at his FallingIntoTheCockpit and having the full spectrum of enhancements. Bonus points for her delivery in an archaic dialect of English. She's nicer to him after he does various good deeds, [[spoiler: such as pardoning the mutineers so Dahak won't execute them, helping them win the long war against Anu, and, well, ''saving the Earth'']].

* UpliftedAnimal - The royal hounds, after some genetic tinkering and the addition of military grade cyberware.

* WeCanRuleTogether - At the end of the second book, [[spoiler: Battle Comp, the AI commander of the Achuultani invasion,]] enthusiastically makes this offer to [[spoiler: ''Dahak'' after it realizes ''Dahak'' is a fellow AI. ''Dahak'' leads it on for a moment, then hacks Battle Comp's core programming into total shutdown]].

* WeDidntStartTheFuhrer - Hitler turning out to have been one of the mutineers in the first book.

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds - The Achuultani, once their backstory is revealed. ''Really''.
* YouAreInCommandNow - Colin gets instantly promoted to ''Dahak's'' captain because, as a descendant of the loyalist crew, he is the most senior loyalist crew member on board. Colin later promotes himself to governor of Earth on the same principles, and unwittingly [[spoiler: crowns himself ''Emperor'' by ordering the implementation of "Case Omega"]] in the second book.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness - The BigBad in the third book does this ''so much'' it's almost a RunningGag by the end. Sometimes, the "usefulness" was simply setting this situation up for ''other'' minions! [[spoiler: This comes back to bite him in the ass ''big time'', though it takes longer than one might expect.]]

* PointlessDoomsdayDevice: In the third book, the Fourth Empire's plans for an extremely-advanced gravitronic bomb capable of destroying a ''solar system''--all on its own--are discovered. By this time, [[spoiler: the Fifth Imperium is already well on its way to restoring its military might to the Achuultani-raping levels of the Fourth (with centuries to spare)]], so there's really nothing else to do with the plans besides let them fall into the hands of a highly-organized, widespread group of religious terrorists bent on toppling the government for allying with the ''minions of the AntiChrist!''

** The Fourth Empire manages to pull off a Planetary/Total Extinction on ''themselves''. On multiple planets. Imported flora and fauna do survive in sealed enclosures in Imperial Zoo on Birhat. After [[spoiler:the bio-weapon dies off]] zoo specimen manage to break free and repopulate the planet, making Birhat Planetary/Species Extinction.

About 50,000 years ago there was a mutiny aboard Fourth Imperium Starship ''Dahak''. This was a bad thing, seeing as ''Dahak'' was an Utu-class warship [[PlanetSpaceship the size of a large planetoid]], with enough firepower to very easily [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy planets]]. The ship's captain was taken by surprise and had only one option to prevent the takeover; he poisoned the air, forcing everyone to evacuate, and then directed the ship's AI to shoot down any ships that tried to reboard.

* {{Calvinball}}: Imperial Battle Chess. Apparently, players can afford to take heavy losses without losing the game.

* ShoutOut: Sean and Crew spend 2 years traveling to Pardal, during which time, they watch countless hours of 20th century movies, including StarWars and MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail. They later spout lines and improvisations of lines from those same movies.
* SomeoneSetUpUsTheBomb - It is inside the most heavily defended section of the palace, has an anti-tamper device set to go off if Imperial technology gets ''close'', and packs enough power in its bite-sized package to blow an entire planet to pieces. OhCrap.
* SpaceMarine: The Imperial Marine Corps. Played pretty much straight.

** For example, the line "May the Force be with us" is used jokingly, and two pages later, "Sean, it's a trap!" in a much more serious context.
*** Several pages after ''that'', there is the [[MemeticMutation memetic]] line, "This is madness!": [[HilariousInHindsight However]], this is [[DontExplainTheJoke NOT Sparta]].

* ShoutOut: Sean and Crew spend 2 years traveling to Pardal, during which time, they watch countless hours of 20th century movies. They later spout lines and improvisations of lines from those same movies.

** The third book splits between [[TheChessmaster Mr. X's]] machinations and moves to carry out the single most ambitious coup in human history, the efforts of the emperor and his friends and advisors to stop Mr. X and the trials and tribulations of the missing and presumed dead heirs and their struggle to gain access to a SubspaceAnsible.

* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: The moon is a really big space battleship.

* ColonyDrop - The Achuultani are big fans of this. Dahak speculates that they were responsible for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. In the second book, [[spoiler: the Achuultani scouts steal [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_%28moon%29 Iapetus]] from Saturn, equip it with [[DeflectorShield shield generators]] and engines, and aim it at Earth.]]

* {{Unobtainium}}: Mycosan, a synthetic element required by SubspaceAnsible transmitter qualifies. Especially since the CrazyPrepared CoolStarship carries everything '''BUT''' the ability to make more.
** Dahak was originally capable of producing more Mycosan, but Anu and his mutineers stole the production equipment; most likely to prevent any loyalists from calling the Fourth Imperium for assistance.

About 50,000 years ago there was a mutiny aboard Fourth Imperium Starship ''Dahak''. This was a bad thing, seeing as ''Dahak'' was an Utu-class warship [[ThatsNoMoon the size of a large planetoid]], with enough firepower to very easily [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy planets]]. The ship's captain was taken by surprise and had only one option to prevent the takeover; he poisoned the air, forcing everyone to evacuate, and then directed the ship's AI to shoot down any ships that tried to reboard.

''EmpireFromTheAshes'' is the omnibus re-issue of Creator/DavidWeber's ''Dahak'' trilogy, which consists of ''Mutineers' Moon'', ''The Armageddon Inheritance'', and ''Heirs of Empire''. The entire series was available for free on the Publisher's site. However, as of early February 2013, Baen's free library was "under reconstruction" and these items seemed not to be there.

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* ForTheEvulz - Speculated as one of the mutineers' motives for constantly tampering with human society. It turns out to be more complex, but Anu did acquire a taste for murdering random "degens".
** Motivation of demons according to the Church of Pardal.
** Inverted for Achuultani. They consider their actions to be pure self-defence.
* GenericanEmpire - "The Fifth Imperium of Man" is pretty generic, and.the species-qualifier is usually omitted, making it seem even more so.

* GoOnWithoutMe: Dahak tries to get Colin and Jiltanith to head for Earth on one of the [=FTL=] capable ships. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming They flatly refuse]].
* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: A small case, irrelevant to the greater story: ''Mutineers' Moon'' mentions Colin as having been selected for the first joint US-''Soviet'' interstellar flight crew.

** "Mister X" and his planting of a fabricated journal on his designated fall guy. The idea was good, but [[spoiler:the journal didn't mention the (failed) assassination of Sean and Harriet, that had drawn attention to "Mister X"]].