Part 6: Demons in Apollo, by Flat Earth Games originally published by Objects in Space Website

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Citizens living in the central systems or anywhere in the colonies of Sagan's Lights, Magella, Tega or Leo had been living for years as pawns in a larger political game. Many bought into the bogeymen their leaders provided to justify their land and power grabs against one another, while many more just pragmatically sought the best ways to profit during the war. As their ideologies and cultures grew, they grew apart. When war was afoot, these distinctions were never more stark.

In 22a, two women named Xiaoli Yu and Tari Nystrom, a pair of pirates preoccupied with sabotaging Magellan war efforts and shipping lanes, boarded a large freighter being run by Zola Sane, a freelance trader from Leo. Sane had been siphoning money out of Magella during war time and had no particular allegiance to the Empire. She had one bargaining chip for dealing with the pirates - knowledge that De Vass' Star, the system red-flagged years before due to the destruction of the scout ship Toulouse, actually harbored natural wealth. She proposed that the three of them escape the embrace of the central systems and create - using the ample cargo of the ship - a modest colony together - a home base out of which they could launch from nowhere and disappear back to nowhere. Their disappearance was unceremonious and only known to a few, but this mentality of justified violence against central system shipping lanes and bases marked much of the 20s.

At the same time, Tega's workers were in open revolt; Markowitz was the leader of an empire barely able to function. Leo was taking full advantage of this by generously helping to bail Tega out as necessary, chipping away at Tega's independence as it did so. Re-building was happening in the major systems of the war between Leo, Magella, Maru and Cansa, while remote outer colonies in systems like Diwali, Galileo and The Two Sisters were going through their maturation phase and needed all the help and resources they could get.The footprint of perceived corruption left by the Apollonian Authority collapse and the subsequent Leon-Magellan war provided a hotbed for piracy throughout the cluster. Smuggling had become an accepted part of being a merchant, and piracy was beginning to feel like an occupational hazard rather than a problem in urgent need of quashing. Sagan's Lights had begun to accept its role as an independent system fighting to survive like any other. Its lofty goals of building Earth Gate and terraforming Cassini were becoming harder and harder to manage as its economic position in the cluster weakened. It had lost any legitimate power and authority, and simply couldn't compete with the ruthless expansionist colonists so eager to eke out a living on their own terms.

There were now 10 star systems in the cluster with their own concerns and worries, not to mention the 11th - the pirate colony of De Vass' Star which was becoming a more and more common rumor among those who earned their living not in colonies but trading in space. But there were bigger problems. An Adarian entrepreneur in charge of dealing with overpopulation in Diwali named Rinchen Tsering was collapsing under the pressure. Magella may not have been actually occupying Diwali directly, but his hands were tied every turn he took to try and revitalize the Diwalinese economy and account for the number of Cansan refugees. In his desperation he established a floating labor force. He would guarantee work to those who agreed to become a transient workforce for hire which could be shipped around the cluster as needed. The central systems had a lot of work to be done, and his was the only way Tsering could think to get the people back to work and avoid starvation.

"For some of us, you have to remember this actually seemed like a better life than we'd had before," explained area man Namon Feltz, someone who had spent years working in such a workforce. "We were protected. We could bring our families. We had guaranteed work. After years of war and decades of short supplies before... well, you give up a lot sometimes, for your family."

But the conditions these people would have to endure was worse than Tsering had imagined. A new slave class was fast becoming real. Qimmiq Okpik, still managing the failing system, blamed Magella.

"If Diwali were truly part of the Magellan Empire, then the Empire was responsible for its starvation and should be condemned," he accused. "As such, Diwali is, and always has been, an independent republic."

Dr Afua Ba, then head of the Magellan Empire, saw his opportunity to finish what had been started by Governor Karev several years earlier. Hell once again came to Apollo. Ba declared how enraged he was with this insult from Diwali in 26a, and pompously brought the Magellan fleet to bear on Diwali by way of Cansa. Leo, having repaired itself since the first war and also backed by a culture seeking revenge, sent its fleet to Cansa to stop the Magellan aggression. It arrived to find a fleet not mid-transit but fully prepared for battle and was beaten back to Maru, only to find another Magellan fleet which Ba had sent in.

"They called it the ten-second battle," said retired Captain Jesserina Po. "I knew men who cried in the bunks that night. Somehow, seeing so much destruction rained upon even our worst enemies felt wrong for many people. They jumped in and within seconds, we had locks and missiles were firing."

"I heard the first officer of another ship say that so many missiles were fired they literally had no more sensor readings. Nobody could tell what had happened until after all the explosions were done."

Magella secured a huge victory in Maru, but at the same time, a similarly huge loss in Cansa while their fleet was busy winning the ten second battle.Cansan rebels re-took colonies in their home system after years of strife and hardship in Diwali, but their victory wasn't without cost. Magella became even more violent with them for their impudence, and after re-capturing a major colony, renamed one of the brightest and most beloved planets, signifying the beginning of a campaign to strip Cansa of its culture. So many Cansans had left their home behind that those willing to return were few and far between. As it turned out, the second Leon-Magellan war, sparked by a Diwalinese desire for independence, had nothing to do with Diwali and everything to with Maru and a legacy of violence.

When the tide of violence finally broke in 29a, Magella still held parts of both Cansa and Maru. The winners in this was were a class of privileged pirates. People who had been betrayed and left behind by the whims of the powerful in the central systems and had made themselves strong enough to fight back. Piracy operated heavily in most systems, and De Vass' Star was growing fast. It maintained an anarchistic self-governance, but it was quickly becoming a known force to be reckoned with. The losers in this war were those deemed collateral damage. The Cansan civilians, the Maruvian workers and an almost invisible casualty: the inhabitants of the Two Sisters. The Two Sisters system had been coveted by the Parssus Peoples' Union for some time, and paper-thin excuses were made to justify an invasion which took place in the shadows of the Second Leon-Magellan War. It was fast and brutal. Parssus' influence was growing. Marcela Caro, the young woman who had tried to fight for a better life for her people in Parssus, had lost control of the Union and stepped down. As it became a violence and dominant force in the region, she fled to Galileo to start a new chapter.
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