MEET THE TITANS
The Titans are a stratocracy formed from military leaders of the former United States Armed Forces (mostly from Marine and Army forces) and populated entirely by military/ex-military personnel. They are governed by a ruling military council of seven senior officers. It is not a dictatorship, as there is no single figurehead, and the government is not simply a vehicle to facilitate the military regime, rather the society is indistinguishable from the military and the military is in place to defend that social order. Their laws, though draconian by most standards, is still devoted to basic principles that existed prior to the separation from Earth and US laws. A person is still considered innocent until proven guilty, beyond ANY doubt, and must be judged by a jury of their peers. However there is no option to reduce a sentence nor is there any opportunity to "plea bargain". The innocent are released back into the population. The guilty are executed, as resources are crucial and this society will not waste them on a criminal. Civil matters are presented to the council, and can be presented by any soldier in the Titans, and are then decided upon by the council, with a majority vote being required to institute new mandates.
A few years after the Deucalion Expedition left for Pandora this group of military personnel broke away from the US government, declaring themselves an independent social order, and commenced to attacking strategic targets within North America. As the entirety of the group was comprised of defected military personnel, complete with a mass of stolen military hardware, they knew when and where to strike. The effect was that they forced the USA to recognize their autonomy and authority.
The Titan's had only one demand. They wanted the remaining USMC to release control of the USMC space fleet, that had been under secret production for almost a decade (at a space dock behind the moon), and the supplies required to abandon the Sol system forever. The Joint Chiefs of Staff initially refused this demand, along with the president, until the Titans detonated a nuclear device above Andrews AFB (with Airforce One sitting on the airfield awaiting the president). This attack was followed by a threat that if the Titans did not have their demands met they would attack the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, as well as four State Senate buildings in a single coordinated attack. The presidency was given nine hours to turn over the access codes for the fleet, at hour seven the Titans detonated a nuclear weapon that destroyed Richmond, Virginia (to ensure that their threat was anything but a bluff) and the Virginia General Assembly building, as well as killing four state senators. At the zero-hour the president complied, the codes were turned over, and a strike force (already in place aboard the fleet) moved immediately to secure the vehicles and claim them for the Titans.
Shortly after that coup the Titans attacked and commandeered a civilian colony vessel, one that was built by a conglomerate of private investors (some of the wealthiest corporate executives on the planet), and executed every individual that was preparing the vessel for departure from the L4 Lagrange point. This vessel was renamed the Iwo Jima and would then be used as a colony vessel for the vast majority of the Titan personnel. Lifts to the fleet and the Iwo Jima were coerced from Eurozone platforms as well as the Kennedy Orbital Elevator and Lift Facility (commanded by a small group of retired military personnel that were sympathetic to the Titan mandates).
Some four years after the Deucalion Expedition left Earth the Titan Expeditionary Fleet followed, bound for Poliphemus, and the last hope of a military industrial society. Due to the Iwo Jima being built as a luxury vessel, with no provisions for cryogenic suspension (the rich passenger/colonists intended to treat the expedition as a kind of pleasure cruise), and no pressing need for top superluminal travel, the trip lagged far behind the velocity of the Deucalion vessel, and reaches Poliphemus many years after the colony had been established. The fleet, comprising the Iwo Jima, a single battleship called the Corregidor, and four heavy cruisers, then set up orbit around Poliphemus and started to monitor the events of the Deucalion colony on Pandora.
For several years the Titans have done nothing but spy upon the colony. Mostly from orbit, but recently by deploying small scout teams to do surveillance from the ground. The restoration of the colony has been of little interest to the Titans, but the near complete abandonment of the former mine site, along with the machines that performed those operations, has been carefully recorded by the Titans. As Unobtanium is a crucial part of the Titans agenda they have particular interest in the abandoned mines.
Plans are being drawn up for a military invasion of Pandora. The population of the Titans is about 15% larger than the Deucalion colonists, however they have no capacity to deploy that many troops at a time, and can only field a force a little less than 60% of the colony population. Therefore they are not planning a massive military campaign, but rather a series of guerrilla raids and surgical strikes. Along with this campaign against the colony the Titans have planned a series of attacks against the local Na'vi clans, severing relations between the humans and the natives, and prepping for the planned genocide of the species that stood in the way of the RDA.
The Titans are military to the core. They see the Deucalion colony as an obstacle to their ultimate plans, and thus must be removed. They see the Na'vi as a threat, and therefore the entire species must be eliminated, as one does not declare war on a society without acknowledging the need to eradicate every last component of that society. They have no remorse for this immoral plan, they see nothing wrong with dedicating themselves to the absolute obliteration of those that stand in their way. In the view of the Titans "might makes right" and to the victor go the spoils, they will not stop until either they are dead or their enemy has been burned away from the moon of Pandora. They are not foolish, they are not brash, but they are also without mercy and without sympathy. They seek to strip Pandora of its raw elements and forge a new world for their order among the stars. In this they will not be dissuaded short of total destruction.
They are coming. Like army ants, a trickle of invaders that precedes the swarm, that will viciously and totally devour everything in their path, with mechanical precision and awesome devotion to their own kind. The best military machines manufactured by the United States (and arguably, from Earth as a whole), wielded by those men and women that seek nothing more than a life of selfless devotion to their leaders, to the honor of fellow soldiers, and to their vision of a utopian society. A society that they see as pure, ordered, unabashedly lawful, and the only viable option for the continuation of the human species across the vast universe.
They know the colonial radio frequencies. They know the security details and the general schedules for patrols. They knew the names of key players and how the colony goes about their day.
They know the Na'vi are still savages, that have forgotten that when they beat the RDA they overcame mercenaries with outdated technologies. They know they are still facing tribal aliens with a stone age technology level and no real globalized unification. When the Titans turn their eyes to the Na'vi, with no more concerns for the colony, they will carpet bomb the aliens into dust, and burn every clan forest to the ground. It will be unrepentant genocide, and there is very little the Na'vi could do to stop it.
What is their chief weakness?
The Titans are suffering from the same maladies that plague the colonists. This disease has been exacerbated by the fact that 59% of the Titan population spent the trip to Alpha Centuari fully awake. Suspension seems to have delayed the disease, saving many of the infected colonists from the slow development of the degenerative disease. The Titans had not had this kind of delay, and many of them are at a stage where the disease will soon kill them. Thus they find they are on a kind of accelerated timeline. This has made many of them suicidal, accepting that they would rather die in combat than waste away in pain and a pour of their own fluids. Soon their numbers will dwindle and their technological advantages will mean nothing without soldiers to operate those machines.
THE TITANS WAR MACHINE
The Iwo Jima. A Cardinal Class inter-stellar vehicle (or ISV) built by the Everstar Consortium as a luxury colony ship. Capable of 0.37 times the speed of light after standard 1.5G acceleration over 5 month period. This vessel uses a quantum-caterpillar drive system, which is more efficient than the particle acceleration drive used on faster ISV systems (such s the venerable Venture Star), but is significantly slower. As a luxury vessel the crew accommodations are spacious, as are the passenger accommodations. No suspension sleep capsules were included in the design, as the crew and passengers were intended to remain active during the 7 year extended voyage. There are accommodations for entertainment and physical activities, including a 1G pool and full gymnasium, as well as four full kitchens. The bulk of storage capacity, not used for fuel, is taken up in food storage and other luxury perishables. The vessel has no weapons and no support mechanisms other than its berths for two trans-atmospheric shuttle craft, which have been occupied by military shuttles since its capture. Due to the low troop capacity of even massive military vessels, such as the Corregidor, a full 59% of the Titans were forced to travel aboard the Iwo Jima, and live out the 7 year journey. Though there is no age difference between those that traveled in suspension, and those that remained awake, the boredom and opportunity for continued training has marked a considerable personal difference between the two groups. The communications systems on the Iwo Jima are some of the best and communication with Earth remains possible, but unused, rather the ship acts as a command and control center for Titan operations in the system. It's massive database serving to collect and correlate the data from surveillance of Pandora, and acting as a relay point for all secured/encoded communications in the system. The Iwo Jima, having one of the largest hydroponic farms ever built (encompassing and entire ring section of the habitat ring), is also the principle food production facility for the entire Titan population.
The Corregidor. A Leviathan Class ISV, a massive battleship that serves as the military HQ of the Titans. Capable of 0.9 times the speed of light, one of the fastest vessels ever built, the bulk of the ship is comprised of the drive system and the fuel containers. The dorsal and ventral sections contain other components and systems, but the entire central axis is almost entirely comprised of the drive system. The vessel also hosts a massive production plant, a complete sterolithography facility, and can manufacture modern military equipment as long as there are sufficient raw materials. Another large component is the vehicle bay, making this craft just short of gaining a carrier classification, and only the number of heavy weapons made this vessel meet the requirements of a battleship classification. The Corregidor hosts eleven wings of interceptors, seven wings of drop ships, and four wings of assorted other aerospace vessels. It also carries two of the huge Pentagon Class command & control drop ships. For weaponry the Corregidor boasts four LRSM (long range strategic missile) batteries, eleven MRSM (medium range strategic missile) batteries, fourteen SRTM (short range tactical missile) batteries, twenty heavy gauss cannon turrets, and forty light gauss cannon turrets. This one vessel is capable of rendering as many as twenty cities, on a full planetary hemisphere, into rubble within an hour of missile launch. It requires a crew of fifteen, and can support as many as two-hundred troops for a period of nine months. As it was not intended for inter-stellar conflict resolution it only has suspension facilities for a company of eighty troops. Due to the needs of maintain fleet coherency in transit, the Corregidor had to match the 0.37 light velocity of the Iwo Jima, and could only sustain the required crew and the maximum suspension occupancy, thus it could not be used as a troop transport for the journey. Regardless this vessel remains the single most important asset the Titans possess.
