Volume XLIX: After the Storm—The Dawn of ComStar

The technology is as old as mankind’s Golden Age, and rarer than even the mighty BattleMechs spawned from that same era, yet all of us rely on it in some way, shape or form. Indeed, even these words, written here on Mother Terra, have traveled through dozens—if not, hundreds—of star systems, to reach your eyes that you might learn from them. Of course, I am speaking of the communications network of hyperpulse generators that bind our worlds together and link us to the universe beyond. Communications, the lifeblood of any great civilization, has always been one of mankind’s most overlooked yet most critical achievements. Thanks to the determined organization of a chosen few, you and I can see, hear, and learn from each other, even over the gulf of interstellar space, where radio waves would take years—even centuries—to reach.

The organization known today as ComStar formed from the merging of two major Star League–era interstellar communications conglomerates known as Communications Enterprises, Incorporated, and Starlight Broadcasting, Limited. Contrary to popular belief, this organization, often referred to as the Order of ComStar, was not the first steward of the hyperpulse grid, but it has certainly been the longest lasting. In its long history this Order has evolved from a mere corporation with a monopoly on the communications service into a political and military power in its own right that has at times been mankind’s greatest champion as well as its worst enemy.

But what is ComStar today? And how did it come to be?

To understand where ComStar came from, we must first acknowledge the state of the hyperpulse generator network and what a monolithic system it had become under the Star League. Indeed, it took the scientific and technical resources of the Star League to even develop the system at all, much less distribute it among the worlds of the Inner Sphere. Prior to the HPG, communications between worlds were limited to laser-pulse messages, beamed to courier DropShips and JumpShips in a Pony Express system, or simple faster-than-light transmitters that were limited to scanned or text-only transmissions. Messages took months to reach Terra from the worlds of the Periphery. Obviously, this made running any star-spanning empire difficult, to say nothing of the Star League. Thus, in 2614, did the League commission the development of FTL communications based on the theories of Cassie DeBurke, a professor at the prestigious University of Terra. The theory was simple enough: to transmit messages in the form of energy pulses in the same way that JumpShips travel through hyperspace. The result, first successfully tested in 2630, was the hyperpulse generator (HPG), effectively a huge “gun” capable of “shooting” complex messages as far away as fifty light-years. To reach the entire League, a network of these HPGs was then put in place, based on a simple two-stage system of primary HPGs (the First Circuit), and a secondary network of hyperpulse relay stations (the Outer Circuit). That the Star League footed the bill for the development of HPGs throughout all its member states was arguably its most magnanimous and longest-lasting contribution to human history. On a more practical level, it also allowed the Star League’s ruling family, House Cameron, unparalleled access to all of the Inner Sphere, which they studiously maintained by developing a massive bureaucracy of technicians and communications specialists to run this network, the Star League Communication Network (SLCOMNET). By the 2750s, SLCOMNET had become so huge and so specialized that no one could argue its vital importance to the Star League. The network was so large as to be almost incomprehensible, handling all data transmitted across interstellar distances—from letters between families to urgent orders from Terra for the massive SLDF. Transmission volume included signals as short as a single word of text, to as large as a three-hour holovid program, shared with every world in a given region. Security and privacy became paramount concerns, as much as the technical expertise and the mathematical skills to assure that signals reached their destinations intact and ungarbled. This tremendous undertaking was beyond any one mere bureaucracy, and so, by the closing days of the Star League, SLCOMNET was heavily reliant on the support of such private companies as Starlight Broadcasting and Communications Enterprises just to maintain operations at a cost-effective rate. These companies would eventually prove vital to the survival of the network long after the Star League that put it together had crumbled to ash. —Vladimir Toolippi, Enlightening the Dark Age: A ComStar History, New Avalon Press, 3125

By the time of Stefan Amaris’ coup, the Star League’s communications network was at its peak of development, linking every single inhabited world throughout the Inner Sphere and Periphery, backed up by mobile transmitters aboard many official Hegemony civil-service and military JumpShips and WarShips. It was a network entirely dependent on the technical expertise and massive bureaucracy that only the Star League could fund and maintain, and for that reason most people took for granted that the League would endure forever. With a single laser blast, however, Stefan Amaris proved such people wrong. As the Star League began to crumble like a house of cards, finding someone willing to maintain this vital, yet wholly overlooked and incredibly massive apparatus, became one of the last things the various House Lords could agree on.

The man entrusted with restoring the war-ravaged communications network was none other than Jerome Blake. As the highest-ranking member of the SLCOMNET hierarchy who was not captured or killed during the Amaris coup, Blake’s heroic efforts to maintain communications during the crisis, and to tap into the Usurper’s transmissions in support of the SLDF’s campaign of liberation, brought him notoriety and a reputation for integrity sorely lacking among other leaders of the day. Blake was named to head the reconstruction in 2780.

Yet, even as the House Lords approved his appointment to head the reconstruction of the Star League’s vital communications network—a choice, ironically enough, advanced by Nicoletta Calderon of the historically anti–Star League Taurian Concordat—the same rulers were also dismantling the nation that gave birth to it. Kerensky’s Exodus hammered the last nail in the coffin of the Star League, leaving Blake and the tattered remains of the SLCOMNET alone and unsupported as war began to grip the Inner Sphere.

By 2785, Jerome Blake did indeed manage the Herculean task of rebuilding the First Circuit of the former Terran Hegemony, linking the reconstructed A-stations on several key Hegemony worlds, but the accomplishment was a bittersweet victory. Already, tensions had escalated among the House Lords to the point where the only question was when—not if—war would come. With most of the SLDF gone—save those who turned mercenary, those who joined the regular armies of the Great Houses, or those who followed Kerensky’s suggestion to swear allegiance to Blake’s reconstruction effort—few remained who could protect the Terran Hegemony from absorption by its neighbors. Realizing that fact prompted Blake to work quickly on consolidating the gains of his years of effort.

As an entity, ComStar came into being in late 2785, when Jerome Blake gathered the chief administrators of all First Circuit HPGs and established among them a set of parliamentary rules and procedures for governing the interstellar communications network. His simple, two-page plan became the foundation of the Articles of ComStar, as the former Star League department of communications came to be known that same year. Having effectively transformed the bureaucracy into a loose corporate government, Blake gained the legitimacy and the support he needed from within the organization to not only better develop its infrastructure, but also to make use of its military forces, and to speak on behalf of his new organization in diplomatic relations with the other powers of the Inner Sphere. Among its first orders of business, this new order would seek to: establish its neutrality in the coming wars; assure its legitimacy—as master of the communications network—as a fair and impartial organization, to be dealt with and respected; and to secure a base world at the heart of the Inner Sphere, where it could maintain operations without interference from the House Lords.

Thus began Operation Silver Shield, the culmination of which included the occupation of Terra.

“People of the former Star League. I am Jerome Blake, Prime Administrator of ComStar. As of now, 0900 hours Terran Standard Time, military forces under my direct command have seized control of the Sol star system. ComStar is now officially in control of Terra and all former Star League facilities remaining in the system. From this time forward, I proclaim Terra and the entire Sol system as neutral under the protection of ComStar, under the terms and conditions of the Communications Protocol of 2787. As the previous broadcast has made clear, ComStar has sufficient military force to defend the homeworld of mankind from any aggressor. “Our goals are peaceful. We seek the unity and prosperity of mankind. This action was taken to save life in the devastating war that is unfolding. ComStar will continue to offer its communications services to all member states, as long as the Sol system and our neutrality are honored.” —Jerome Blake, 28 June 2788.

With Terra firmly under his control, ComStar’s neutrality assured by treaties with the Great Houses, and the introduction of the ComStar letter of credit (the C-Bill) as a common unit of exchange among all Houses and nations for ComStar’s services, Jerome Blake’s Operation Silver Shield was an unqualified success.

Join us next week for our second part of this fascinating four-part tale on the origins and evolution of ComStar through the dark years of the Succession Wars. I’m Bertram Habeas.