This will be a brief recap of events in the History so far; for the details (if you’re up for a lot of reading), the original blog posts are all still available.
The Story So Far: 2182 – 84
In the fall of 2182 election season is in full swing. The Born To The Earth party is polling unexpectedly high in both the presidential and parliamentary races, but without much realistic prospect of winning. For the last twenty years or so, the Sun has been in a period of unexplained variability, fluctuating enough to cause severe effects on Earth’s weather, leading to crop failures, storm damage, and other effects that have severely impacted the Terran economy. Born To The Earth is a single-issue party that has claimed these problems are caused by the “drain” of resources sent to support the offworld Colonies. Their nominee for President, Alexander Monroe, has vowed to end all offworld activity if elected.
On October 24, 2182, exactly two weeks before election day, the Sun undergoes a massive fluctuation, suddenly dropping to less than one percent of its normal brightness for a period of several minutes, followed by a bright flash before settling back into the normal range of variation it’s shown for the last twenty years. With a degree of graveyard humor, the event soon comes to be known as “The Hiccup.”
During the Hiccup, an engineer with Star City’s power systems named Eric Ivanov manages to stabilize the city’s power by activating a program normally used when the Colony passes through a Solar eclipse. He never tells anyone, but the idea was suggested to him by another engineer named Michaels— who no one else seems to remember was ever there.
Meanwhile at Star City University, a physics major named Linda Ryder looks at the data recorded during the Hiccup and thinks she recognizes the shape of the Sun’s energy drop and recovery: it reminds her of a graph in an old, long-discredited paper she read once which had proposed a theory about hyperspace. She shares it with a circle of friends but even she thinks it’s no more than a fanciful thought. Still, she never quite forgets about it.
Panic in the wake of the Hiccup gives Monroe and the Born To The Earth party a surge in popularity. Scientists (and of course rival candidates) emphasize that their claims have no rational basis— but they have no alternate solution to offer. The truth is that the Earth cannot possibly survive if the Sun starts to regularly show behavior as wildly variable as the Hiccup. Faced with fears of disaster, and no one else promising any protection from it, enough people turn to Monroe’s promises to give him the victory in the presidential election.
At his inauguration in January 2183, Monroe makes good on his promise to shut down the shipment of resources to the Colonies, taking the extraordinary step of signing an executive order during the inauguration ceremony, after taking the oath of office but before delivering his inaugural address. This will kick off a year of legal and political wrangling involving the offworld population and their representatives, the Continental Directorates that have jurisdiction over the Colonies, and the private (but large and powerful) corporations that own the factory platforms where most offworlders work.
On the colony of Star City, a former colony engineer named Charles Safreth is elected governor in the 2182 election. A strong supporter of the move to reorganize the 24 Colonies into their own Continental Directorate, Safreth now becomes the lead figure in the offworld attempts to maintain their Colonies. He orders his engineering staff to begin researching ways to keep Star City and the other Colonies functioning without supplies from Earth.
President Monroe eventually declares a global emergency. The Charter of the Terran Federation, written in the immediate wake of a devastating war, gives the president sweeping powers in that circumstance, unless any two Continental Directorates veto the declaration. With Monroe’s popularity surging as he gives increasingly desperate populations on Earth a scapegoat, the Directorate governments fail to muster the political will to veto his declaration.
Under the emergency powers, on August 3, 2183 Monroe orders the Colonies entirely abandoned by a deadline of January 1.
Safreth responds by calling a public referendum among the citizens of Star City on rejecting the evacuation order. The referendum passes with 80% of the vote, though legally it has no force. The other Colonies follow suit with similar votes.
During the fall months, those who choose not to defy the evacuation order leave the Colonies for Earth. Roughly 20% of the offworld population elects to obey Monroe’s order— the rest choose to stay.
Among those who choose to leave is Jenny Terrell, one of Linda Ryder’s circle of friends. In their senior year and looking ahead to grad school, Jenny is accepted at MIT, and chooses to transfer there immediately. Linda and the rest of her friends prefer to stay, planning to remain at Star City University for grad school.
As long as the passenger ships were full of offworlders heading for Earth, President Monroe took no further action. But once that 20% has departed, the liners stand empty and the Colonies’ defiance of the evacuation order becomes plain. Monroe gives orders to the Terran Military to compel the evacuation.
He leaves it up to the commanding Admiral, Richard Gali, to decide how to do so. Since Terran unification the military has served primarily a Coast Guard function: interdicting smuggling and piracy, enforcing shipping regulations, conducting rescue operations. It has been nearly a century since there was any combat on a wartime scale.
On November 1 Gali calls his aide and protégé, Warren Armstrong, to a meeting where he gives him command over all offworld military forces, and orders him to travel to the Colonies with a large number of troops to reinforce those already there. Each Colony has a small military base, mostly crewed by native offworlders who enlisted, and were trained, aboard their home Colonies. Gali knows they are not enough to force the evacuation if there’s resistance, and isn’t sure where their loyalties would lie if it came to that.
Warren Armstrong was himself born offworld, and Gali believes this will give him the insight needed to broker a peaceful resolution— while the extra troops will give him the needed force, if necessary. Armstrong, following the same line of thought, selects as many offworld-born officers and crew to make up his force as he can. It’s still less than fifty percent of the whole, but in the political climate of the Born To The Earth movement, Armstrong hopes their presence will help defuse tensions.
On December 15, 2183 Armstrong’s Offworld Force launches from the Pacific Ocean. His transports divide his troops among all 24 Colonies, while he establishes his headquarters at Star City, recognizing it as the center of the Colonies’ refusal of the Presidential order.
On December 16 Armstrong meets with Charles Safreth, who freely makes available to him facilities to address the whole Colony through their public information system. At this point, the Colonies are engaged in a legal battle to challenge Monroe’s evacuation order and Safreth is very careful to declare he will do nothing illegal— but that Star City police won’t let the Terran forces do anything “illegal” either. Both leave the meeting knowing that the other will not budge.
On January 1 2184, Monroe’s deadline for evacuation of the Colonies expires. For the moment, nothing very decisive happens. Armstrong addresses the Colonies, urging them to obey the presidential order, but he orders all military forces to remain on their bases.
In the early months of 2184, the Colonies continue their court fight and look to gain political support from the corporations that own the offworld industries. Monroe continues to denounce the Colonies in speeches but issues no new deadline. It’s a period of uncertainty when many believe that Monroe’s actual agenda is to keep the status quo, the Colony’s continued resistance giving him a villain to shore up his political support. However, Monroe eventually sets a new evacuation deadline, May 3, and issues orders to Armstrong and his military units to enforce it “by any means necessary.”
Wanting to avoid bloodshed, Armstrong comes up with a plan for small commando units to sabotage and destroy the algae tanks that provide oxygen recycling for the Colonies, in simultaneous strikes across all 24 Colonies. Stored oxygen would last long enough for an orderly evacuation but there would be no chance of rebuilding the carefully-nurtured biological systems before supplies ran out. The offworld population would have to leave, with no need to use force directly against civilians.
Armstrong submits this plan to Admiral Gali, who at first approves it. But President Monroe immediately rejects it and orders Armstrong to deploy his troops to forcibly remove the offworld population, beginning on the May 3 deadline. Armstrong becomes convinced that Monroe wants bloodshed more than he wants the evacuation: the more violence the better, as fodder for his speeches and to further build his political support.
On May 3, police forces of every one of the 24 Colonies line up to block the military bases, warning that any soldier who leaves base will be arrested. Armstrong orders his troops to form up at all base exits, facing down the line of police, but to take no action.
The standoff continues for a week, neither side willing to either step back or be the one to begin violence.
On May 10, President Monroe loses patience. Bypassing the military command structure, he issues orders over public address directly to the troops, ordering them to open fire on Colonial police and also on any officer who fails to show “required aggression.” It is an order designed to cause chaos and mutiny. Armstrong is finally fed up: he orders his troops to stand down.
May 10 is a day of confusion and skirmishes. Armstrong’s original plan to keep things calm by including as many offworld troops as he could backfires— unless, as some historians controversially suggest, he intended all along to disobey Monroe’s order if it came to it. None of the Colony-born officers and crew support Monroe’s Born To The Earth party, and even among the planet-born there’s no appetite to actually open fire on civilians.
Across the 24 units spread through the Colonies, some captains try to follow Monroe’s orders, some Armstrong’s. Junior officers and enlisted crew are equally divided. Some shots are fired but there are few injuries except on Nova Colony, where Captain Jeanette Wheeler leads most of her force to follow the Presidential order and becomes involved in a gun battle with Colony police.
In the end, fifteen members of the Terran military, and five Colonial police officers, are wounded, but there are no fatalities and the offworlders prevail. Colony police move in and take control of the military bases, as Armstrong issues repeated orders to his force to stand down and cooperate with Colonial authorities.
Any military personnel who choose to do so are escorted to their transports to return to Earth. Any who wish are invited to remain, though confined to their bases in case any would-be saboteurs are among them. About half of the force, including Armstrong himself, choose to stay aboard the Colonies. Armstrong sends a private message his former commander, and his friend and mentor, Richard Gali, which includes his resignation from the Terran military. Whatever else the message said, no history records.
In the wake of the confrontation, the Colonial legislatures convene emergency sessions and over the course of May 12-22 every Colony declares its independence from the Terran Federation.
On June 23 the Colonies vote to join together as the United Offworld Colonies, and on July 12 they ratify a provisional constitution based largely on the former plan to reorganize as a Continental Directorate. Charles Safreth is named as President of the provisional government.
Knowing that the Terran government will not simply sit back and accept this result, Safreth’s administration immediately begins negotiations with the corporations that own the industrial platforms for their support in recognizing the new independent UOC.
In the weeks following independence, offworlders in contact with friends and family on the planet begin to notice strange things in their messages. Those on the Earth increasingly parrot Born To The Earth propaganda, and some start to warn of some imminent danger but are cut off by unseen censors.
One such message comes to Linda Ryder, from her friend Jenny. Jenny urges Linda to leave the Colonies and come join her at MIT. Her call follows the pattern others have reported: repeating Born To The Earth’s claims, while glancing offscreen as if someone is watching her and dictating what she can say. But during the call she shows Linda a set of very strange calculations she says she’s been working on. The equations are gibberish but in puzzling over them Linda finds that Jenny hid a message: PRISON CAMP. DON’T COME.
Observations of the planet show preparations at old missile launch sites dating from before Terran unification, and these combined with the strange messages soon have rumors flying around the UOC that the Terrans are going to destroy the Colonies with nuclear missiles. Safreth and his officials believe that this is all a propaganda effort by the Terran government to frighten the offworlders into evacuating.
While this is going on, the factory platforms have stayed in operation, under the auspices of the corporations that own them. Largely automated except for small crews of a few hundred each, they daily receive shipments of raw materials carried by automated freighters, which after unloading their cargoes receive the factory’s manufactured goods for transport back to Earth.
On August 2, Industrial Platform 380A/X, a shipyard owned by EarthArc shipping, receives what seems like a routine such shipment. But when the freighter docks, instead of robotic systems transferring raw materials, the freighter reveals it is carrying a huge force of Terran military who quickly seize control of the platform, arresting its crew.
In command of the attack are Admiral Richard Gali and his new second-in-command, Jeanette Wheeler, former commander of the Nova Colony division of Armstrong’s force. As they await word on whether similar attacks on other platforms have succeeded, Techs with the Terran force begin downloading a new program into the factory’s automated systems. Platform 380A/X will soon be making a different kind of ship than EarthArc’s passenger liners.
TO BE CONTINUED
