Part 7: Eyes Sharp, by Flat Earth Games originally published by Objects in Space Website

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After two major wars, lines were being drawn around the cluster. Faithful adherents to their planets, their system or their nation were to be found in abundance, and the voices of radical true believers became louder and more potent. While the peace talks between Leo and Magella had been more fruitful at a political level than they had been after the first war, their cultures couldn't be more diametrically opposed:

Leo remained a free market-driven nation, insisting upon a lack of responsibility for its companies' actions when scrutiny arrived but being suspiciously good at organizing massive fleets or war campaigns at the flick of a switch. Magella's rhetoric became about fairness - harking back as far as the early days of colonization and the Apollo-Earth Authority and a greater share of aid being bestowed on systems closer to Sagan's Lights. But they always leaned on one major thing: in the first war, Leo shot first.

The cluster would continue to operate around the political machinations of these two giant Empires. Tega had imploded and become a husk of its former self through in-fighting and protests, and was now thought of as a puppet of Leo. Sagan's Lights continued its experimental technological projects as it had always wanted for the whole cluster, but hadn't the economic or political clout to shape major events or even properly fund itself. Still home to the biggest agricultural planet in the cluster, Sagan's Lights found its economic niche in supplying a very small amount of high-value luxuries, along with high-tech machinery and services as a result of its highly developed research and educational sectors. Maru lay fractured - a hugely-trafficked system and the microcosm in which all Leon and Magellan hatred festered and manifested, with hate crimes in both directions being a normal part of life. The Cansan rebels had re-taken part of their home system, but the wanton vice of Magella was felt so strongly that few of their disparate diaspora wanted to return. Diwali never recovered from the overpopulation problems, nor its reputation for cheap slave labor. Parssus had solidified its power through a reign of terror, and now fully controlled The Two Sisters. It had a culture and politics such that no interaction with the capitalists of the central systems was allowed.The 30s would bring tensions again between Leo and Magella. Controversial cloning technology, Galilean land rights squabbles and terrorism held enough potential to cause problems. Galileo, now a prosperous agricultural system selling its wares to almost half the cluster, had found hitherto unseen mineral wealth in neighboring Carruther's Circle, and had been expanding there at a faster pace than the cluster had ever seen before. Leo had fingers in Galilean pies through back-channels, stocks and funding deals, ensuring that it would be taken care of. Magella couldn't let that happen. The socialist republic of the Galilean Command hadn't cut its political teeth. It became another pawn in a larger game. Magella demanded fealty. Galileo resisted. Sanctions were in place. War loomed once more - until unexpected events happened to stall it.

In 31a, an unknown party destroyed the Leo-Magella jumpgate; both sides blame each other and to this day nobody knows who really detonated the nuke - or who had provided it. This renewed a focus by the two Empires on one another rather than on Galileo. At least temporarily. And in 32a, a missing ship named the SS Intrepid appeared out of nowhere in Tega and wasn't responding to hails or beaming out its required IFF beacon, a law which had been passed in most systems after the first great war. Before they could lock the jumpgate down, it was activated and the Intrepid slipped through into Sagan's Lights. A very quick message from Tega informed Sagan's Lights of the potential danger, and military vehicles were dispatched, the SMV Aspis and the SMV Cerestes intercept the ship. It was unresponsive on all radio frequencies, and two different tracking stations confirmed it was bound for Earth Gate.

Warnings were issued. The vessel continued to give no response, and so, as it got closer, then-leader of the Sagan's Lights Defensive Fleet, Admiral Kathryn Bryce, ordered weapons-open.

"You have to understand we had no radiological warnings. We had no idea just how dangerous the vessel was - and so our decision was based on... I'll just say it: naiveté. We didn't think anyone cared enough about Earth Gate to attack it, let alone to... it was a mistake. A mistake of hubris we haven't made sense."

Missiles from the Aspis and the Ceretes impacted with the Intrepid when it was still quite a distance out, and the hull began to break up. As those watching began to calm down, it happened: multiple nuclear devices stowed in the Intrepid detonated. It was a bomb so large that to this day debate rages as to how so much fissile material was put together by any of the separatist groups blamed for the incident. Regardless, the night sky of Sagan's Lights was given a temporary second sun.The cost of Sagan's Lights' attempt to siphon resources to the Earth Gate Project had been high - too high for many. But an attack on the gate itself was unfathomable. An allegiance greater than any the cluster had ever seen was formed. The High Trinity, as it was colloquially known, made up of the combined military might of Sagan's Lights, Tega and the Leon Empire, joined forces to invade De Vass' Star, find those responsible and bring them to justice. It was the largest cooperative alliance the cluster had known since the days of the AEA. Some even held out hope that it would bring about a second cluster-wide government.

Magella used the fact that it wasn't included in the alliance as an affront to help foster discontent and justify an invasion of Galileo. It captured several colonies and blockaded the newly-created Carruthers-Sagan jumpgate. All hands which might have been able to lend help were tied; the whole cluster was unified for the first time against a common enemy - and had no interest in the foundering colony of Galileo. What the High Trinity wasn't prepared for was the viciousness of the De Vass' Star pirates. Tactics they'd never seen before, the most inhospitable system in the cluster and an erratic informality to their fighting style made it impossible to progress. The largest trading body in De Vass' Star was the Rolond Consortium, run by a woman named Isabelle Sutherland. She had a vested interest in returning to a status quo for the sake of her business fencing stolen goods captured by her pirate comrades. Also, like her pirate comrades, the affront and necessity for violence in this war wasn't to defend the people responsible for the attack on Earth Gate, but simple defense of their homeland. These people wanted badly to hurt the central systems, and this was gave them their wish.

Meanwhile, a woman named Pania Laing was hiding out on a moon. She had been running a small feverish group of people who had an almost cult-like adherence to the idea that Earth was going to make Apollo subservient once Earth Gate was built. She and her followers were so certain of this that they wanted it destroyed. High Trinity ships captured her and she was unceremoniously killed, her body dumped into an asteroid belt near a Red Dwarf in an adjacent system. She was denied a place in history as either a martyr or a demon.After the war, the temporary alliance of three powerful nations quickly dissolved. It had been rocky during the war, and only got worse thereafter. All three were forced to concede that Magella, which had now occupied part of Galileo for several years, was there to stay. It was too powerful, to dogged in its determination that it was right in its expansionist tendencies. It was bargained with instead. The Magellan Empire became an economic and political power on a level it had never reached before as a result. It ended its blockade of the Carruthers-Sagan jumpgate and allowed the whole cluster to enjoy the minerals being mined there - at a price. With its newfound power it was able to complete its cloning program and became the only nation in the cluster to create fully-grown braindead human replicas of people at a cost - a backup should anything happen to their natural bodies. It had no scruples about its work and almost took pride in rebuking the other central systems.
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