And Raise Your Head With Pride! Part 1
Posted By: Arthur Wellesly<arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com>
Date: 7 February 2003, 5:01 pm
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In the year 2159, slipstream space was discovered and the first manned flight to go beyond our solar system was made by the United States of America. In a ship with a cockpit only seven meters high and wide, Gerard Gambert became the first man to orbit around an extra-solar planet, Gliese 876. The trip there and back was made in less than four and a half years, and this opened the gateway for space exploration.
By 2197, the method of using slipstream space was modified and made better. Fleets of American vessels were sent out in all directions of the galaxy, most going to solar systems where Earth-like planets had been seen with telescopes. The trips were for the most part successful. By 2200 four ships had arrived in orbit around planets capable of sustaining human life, and two ships arrived at other gas giants. Messages of their success were sent back to earth via subspace and several astronauts actually walked on extraterrestrial surfaces without the aid space gear.
In all, six life sustaining planets were discovered by 2204, and Earth, which was bursting at its seams with over-population, sent waves of people to these planets to colonize them. American space explorers opted to go beyond their boundaries and find new planets and new systems. This proved to be quite difficult.
There was a large gap between the planets that had been discovered already and the new planets beyond. As the Americans prepared for the much longer trip, countries from Earth?s Eastern Coalition built several ships quickly and sent them beyond the reaches of American space and into the unknown. By 2217, after many ships were destroyed because of the rushed effort, two ships made it to undiscovered planets with Earth-like conditions. These two planets were named Ionius and Abakum, and the Eastern Coalition made a rushed effort to get the two planets colonized as quickly as possible.
The year is now 2399. The Americans have formed the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) to govern all seven planets in their territory. Two other planets, Jericho VII and Arreat V, were both planets founded and colonized by America?s allies and were not governed directly by the UNSC. Two other planets, Ionius and Abakum, became isolated pockets of resistance.
After 2379, when American forces attacked and successfully destroyed the Eastern Coalition back on Earth, Ionius and Abakum were cut off from their founders and thus formed their own government and own military. After about 150 years of constant colonization from mainly Russia, China, and the Middle East, both planets were heavily populated with a large ground army. The UNSC, however, had destroyed their entire space fleet in a brief but costly battle in the Epsilon Eridani System. The gateway for a UNSC lead invasion of the hostile planets Ionius and Abakum was now open.
A fleet of twelve UNSC battleships entered orbit around Abakum in July of 2399, but surface to orbit nuclear warheads destroyed one frigate and badly damaged another. The order for retreat of the badly planned invasion was called and the battlegroup?s admiral, Kenneth Alcolado, was forced to resign in disgrace. A new man, Admiral John Stevenson, was appointed to lead an invasion force onto the two planets by any way he saw fit. A very small battlegroup of only three carriers and two cruisers was assembled and they arrived in the Abakum System in October of that year. A new attempt to dislodge the two troublesome planets was about to commence.
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