The Perpetual War is how 30th century historians labeled the conflict between the Core of the Solar System and its Periphery.

The expansion

In 2110, after a process that lasted several decades, the confines of nation-states eroded until they united under the same government, which called itself the Solar Empire. It laid claim to the entire Solar System, and the new Emperor swore to conquer and terraform it all. The official ideology that was the foundation of all of the Empire’s doctrine was called Humanism¹, a belief system that placed the human being at the center of the Universe as the highest form of consciousness. This ideology was accompanied by religion that quickly gained popularity, Eudemicism.

During the next few centuries, the Empire would push scientific, particularly technological, development to the limits to quickly develop space travel. The forces that motivated this race to the stars was the rampant overpopulation and the overconsumption of resources that risked turning Earth into a barren land. In 2209, the Solar Empire founded its first colony on Venus and, at the same time, on Mars and shortly after on Mercury. The terraforming of these planets took place for approximately the same period of time, about five decades before completion. Soon after, the Solar Empire began colonizing the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. All were successfully terraformed except Ganymede, whose atmosphere was turned into a violent and inhospitable blender of winds that made intervention with machines impossible. Lastly, in the 2300s, colonies even reached the ice giants, Neptune and Uranus, but they never grew as prosperous.

The Emperor assigned each colonized planet or moon as a fief to a family of noble descent, the official leader of each fief would therefore inherit the title of Baron. Some leaders holding the title of Baron still remain to this day, while many have made themselves kings of their moons, or have been overthrown.

The Nebulous Period

The Empire unified humanity under a single banner with a single goal in 2110, but this order quickly fell apart when the Expansion reached beyond the Core². The interests of the human population were now split on different surfaces, where they were effectively governed separately from the central rule. This made it so that when the Empire overextended in the 2400s, causing failures in the supply chains that supported its colonies, the people in the Periphery began holding resentment for the Empire. The unity the first Emperor brought had already been compromised.

Because of the uncertainties faced by the Empire, which had gotten addicted to success in the last two centuries but was now experiencing severe management problems, this period was named the Nebulous Period. Some also emphasize this name in regards to the lack of detailed historical records on this period, likely purged by Emperor William III.

The year 2412 was conventionally chosen as the beginning of the Perpetual War, that is the date of the Farmers’ Massacre. That year, on Titan, farmers had been suffering from a devastating drought that made their land useless. This was caused by logistical problems in mining and allocating water from the rings of Saturn to each moon. The farmer’s strike demanded that Titan led its own mining operations, and refused to work their land. The Emperor William III, fearing this would cause a food shortage back in the Core (which it already had) ordered the violent repression of the farmers, which resulted in the death of approximately 90 000 people. This was the first recorded event of a harsh clash between the Periphery and the Core, which became a repeating pattern for the rest of human history.

Secession War

Most of the evidence of this period that our historians have been able to get their hands on is in regards to the Secession War, a conflict started by the Baron Ming of Mars, who had suffered severely due to the management failures of the Emperor. In 2415, Baron Cheng Ming declared himself Emperor of Mars with support from the Imperial military stationed on the planet. This schism created the first planet-state in history: the Martian Empire. However, the Third Emperor immediately denied Cheng Ming’s rise to power, and sent more troops to Mars to arrest him and restore his rule. The Secession War was fought in three battles, the first ever military conflict in the orbit of a planet and between two planet-states. Not much is know about the events on the battlefields, but the total death count was estimated to be in the two to four millions, as Earth often bombed Mars’ surface. At the time, orbital combat was unexplored, and the two factions fought each other with weapons not optimized for space. In the end, the Martian Empire emerged victorious and was capable of forcing the Solar Empire’s forces to retreat.

The Imperial War

After its secession from the Solar Empire, Mars declared itself as its own empire, with Cheng Ming, the former Baron from House Ming, as its Emperor. At the beginning, the “Empire” only controlled Mars, its core, and had no colonies. From what the historical records show, Cheng Ming was a megalomaniac, and could not stand the Solar Emperor’s control over what he considered his planet. However, he was also a political and strategic mastermind.

Note

The details of Emperor Ming’s character are mostly derived from accounts of prominent figures of his time who had the rare chance of meeting him. The conflicting moral claims are a typical cultural norm of the imperial epoch of Martian history. In their commentary on any given situation, Martian intellectuals would often frame their claims in a way that appeased all sides of the public opinion, this added a neutral quality to their works, and made them more palatable to the average person.

Under his guidance, the Martian Empire helped disenfranchised Solar colonies to secede from the Solar Empire and join theirs or at least become strong allies of Mars. This constant competition between the two empires would become known as the Imperial War, a series of conflicts part of an overarching war that went on for four centuries, from 2415 to 2820.

The events of the war were neatly separated in theatres for each gas or ice giant they took place on. Mars was the first force to stand up against the Solar Empire and win decisively, this would be fundamental in obtaining the favor of disenfranchised colonies and separatist groups.

Saturnian theatre

Saturn was the most troubling theatre of the war for both the Martian and Solar Empire, but it was also where Emperor Ming won his first colonies. Saturn’s rings were (and are to this day) a big environmental complication for both militaries. Piracy had become common on Saturn and the Belt because of the protection offered by asteroids, which posed a major obstacle to conventional militaries, especially due to how inexperienced they were in space warfare at the time. Military vessels were often targeted by pirates and terrorist organizations, and the environment made it difficult to efficiently fight back.

The Martian Empire was seen in a positive light by House Konrad, which ruled Rhea. Baron Konrad I had the full support of the local military and had fomented a network of conspirators in the Solar Military stationed on Rhea. When Mars agreed to support them, and sent their ships, the Baron declared Rhea’s secession from the Solar Empire, and the Solar Military was disabled from within. With some concessions, Emperor Ming was also able to convince Rhea to join the Martian Empire, becoming its first colony.

Jovian theatre

Unlike Saturn, Jupiter was inhospitable to the aims of the Martian Empire. The Jovian moons suffered less under the Solar Empire thanks to Europa, which guaranteed an abundance of food and water. House Negev, which ruled Ganymede, was the most loyal and fierce defender of the Solar Empire’s power, and was allowed to have extended military presence to deter Martians from Jupiter’s orbit.

In 2502, after being fought off several times, Mars tried to take control of Callisto, the weakest large Moon ruled by House Alister. Baron Negev immediately stepped in to support his ally, and the battle was drawn out for two decades. Emperor Ming was obsessed with securing victory on Jupiter, which he believed would crush the morale of the Houses. He planned to conquer Europa and force the entire planet to secede. His plans failed miserably, as Mars could only keep control of Callisto for a few years before being defeated and kicked out of Jupiter.

Nepturanian theatre

The Nepturanian³ theatre is mostly undocumented, as laser communications with that area of the Solar System were highly complicated for both Mars and Earth. The source we have compiled point to brief conflicts or long uneventful ones. This is likely due to the strictly economic relevance of the two planets, which had a small population and whose exports were severely diminished during the Imperial War.

Fallout

In the 2760s, the United Earth ordered the construction of a massive array of reactors spanning the entire surface of the Moon that would maximize its industrial production. To this day, the Moon is Earth’s natural hangar for building large space ships. In order to maximize its productivity, the United Earth ordered the construction of a massive array of reactors that would span the entire surface of the moon. Construction began immediately, and 340 reactors were built on the moon every year. However, in 2791, the Moon was infiltrated by a terrorist group that was set off by Earth and Mars’ invasive presence on Saturn. The group sabotaged hundreds of reactors, which were enough to generate a cascading effect on the entire grid. The over 3000 reactors turned on and detonated all of their fissile material simultaneously, causing a meltdown and an emission of magnetic shockwaves for weeks. By the time the meltdown stopped, the shockwave had destroyed all electronics in the Solar System along with their data. The infrastructural damage was incalculable, and hundreds of millions of people died from the radiation.

Other than the first, short-term effect, the Fallout had even more serious long-term ones. Most infrastructure became inoperable: vehicles, devices, communications, cybernetics, etc. Most importantly, space travel was impossible for a decade, since all spaceships were destroyed and their crews killed by radiation or starved to death. This caused shortages and famines everywhere.

The Modern Age

Humanity was able to recover from this disaster, and rebuilt what they had lost. By that time, however, the two great empires had lost all their colonies. The Solar Empire succumbed to a republican uprising, which created the United Earth, while the Martian Empire continued on.

Laser communications had been established immediately after the radiation from the Fallout had subsided, but space travel began again only in 2802. By 2819, the interplanetary economy was restarted. The wrecks of the old spaceships were recovered and repurposed to quickly rebuild fleets, the same was done with other infrastructure.

This, however, was the catalyst for a new world order. The ex-colonies used the fall of both empires to declare their own independence, dozens of moon states rose, forming a political mosaic. The United Earth was still thriving, strengthening relations with other states and rebuilding as fast as possible thanks to their optimal environment. Mars, on the other hand, went on a slow reactionary decay. The Emperor Ming’s cyber-body had been fatally damaged by the Fallout, but he refused to give up his throne. He crushed the growing dissent, which bought him a century of shaky rule as Earth re-established itself as a hegemon.

In 2812, in order to strengthen its hegemonic position, the United Earth founded the Solar Assembly, an intergovernmental institution whose purpose was to facilitate diplomacy between states.

Martian Revolution

The Martian Empire was overthrown in 2919, after a brief series of uprising that ended in the execution of the Emperor and his family. Erika Althaus, the leader of the revolutionary movement, became the head of the temporary government, which was in place until 2925, when the Gestalt was officially founded as the new ruling government of Mars with an anti-imperialist communist doctrine.

Fifty Years Struggle

The United Earth, dissatisfied with the events that took place on Mars, placed an embargo on the Gestalt and declared it an enemy of Earth. The choice was made after the revolutionaries made it official that their goal was to eradicate capitalism and imperialism in all its forms, and to abolish private property, class, and planet-states. Between 2925 and 2977, Earth and Mars were engaged in a cold war called the Fifty Year Struggle. The republic did not wish to allow the young planet-state to become a communist super power. But Mars’ foreign policy was much more convenient for other states than Earth’s, thus representing serious competition to the United Earth’s hegemony.

During the 52 years of indirect warfare, the two states gathered proxies and both tried to build a strong coalition against the other. Tensions became particularly high during when Mars began distributing high-tech interorbital weapons to its allies, breaking international law. The United Earth initially brought the issue up to the Solar Assembly in 2955, but Mars denied and their evidence was deemed insufficient. They tried again in 2956, and this time the Assembly sanctioned Mars.

Another disaster occurred two decades earlier in 2932, shortly after the Jovian Union was founded, a small runaway House holed up on Ganymede and formed its own kingdom. A brief war between the two began, as the Jovian Union wanted to eliminate all the remaining members of the royal family that ruled them. The United Earth sent ships to defend Ganymede, while Mars sent their own to help the Jovian Union. But before they could invade the moon, the United Earth bombed the capital of the Union, causing 20 000 deaths, 100 000 injuries and massive infrastructural damage. They then signed a treaty with Ganymede, recognizing its statehood.

In 2966, the United Earth began sending dozens of their ships to Ganymede and Io. The movement was noticed by the Jovian Union, who suspected an imminent invasion and called upon the Gestalt for aid.

The Fifty Year Struggle ended in 2977, when the United Earth and the Gestalt signed the Ceres Convention, vowing to end their hostilities and commit to peaceful relations.

Footnotes

1. Humanism is an ideology that places the human being at the center of the Universe as the highest form of consciousness. ↩

2. The Core is the area of the Solar System contained within the Belt, which includes Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Everything beyond the Belt is called the Periphery. ↩

3. Nepturanian, pertaining the ice giants of the Solar System, Nepute and Uranus. ↩