11.26-The Invasion of Mars

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For the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world?

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Hello friends, couple of notes to start this episode.

The first is that unfortunately inspiration struck a little too late and I couldn't quite get my act together to do a live reading in New York for the final episode.

But the response was tremendous and I understand that there is demand for this and I will keep an eye on how to do something like it in the future.

But unfortunately for now, that is off.

But What is on is that as of right now, we have Martian Revolution merchandise in the shop.

I know you have been asking for it.

I know you have been begging for it.

Well, now you're going to get it.

So, okay, what do we have in there?

Well, first of all, we have an Omnicore logo.

You can get Omnicore branded swag.

Next, we have the Mabel Dore in 44, a Voice for Mars campaign shirt.

That's the one that people were wearing around defiantly when she was up on trial.

So now you can show your support for Mabel Dore.

She is, after all, a Voice for Mars.

Next up is the one that's probably gotten the most requests over these months, and that is Mons Cafe merchandise.

We designed a Mons Cafe logo.

It's gats, it's on t-shirts, it's awesome.

You'll love it.

You will also love our Stockade 7 Museum and Gift Shop shirt, because the Stockade 7 Museum and Gift Shop is one of the places you absolutely have to go when visiting Mars and have any interest at all in the revolution.

And then finally, we have something Timothy Werner designed himself.

It is a shirt celebrating the launch of the new protocols, which he issued to all employees present for the new protocols launch event in 2245.

So that is five great options to choose from.

I encourage you all to right now go to cottonbureau.com slash Mike Duncan.

I'll put the link in the show notes too, but that again, cottonbureau.com slash Mike Duncan, and get all the Martian Revolution merchandise you could ever hope for.

Well, that part might not be true because there probably will be more in the future.

Oh, and one more thing: all of the shirts come in multiple colors, and if you look at the colors, they also come in long sleeves, and sweatshirts, and hoodies.

So, there's like a lot of options to choose from.

It's not just the first thing you see.

Okay, on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions,

Episode 11.26 The Invasion of Mars

The disaster left OmniCorps in full control of the space around Earth and Luna.

The ships of the Martian Navy were either destroyed or in full flight.

Some III Corps ships managed to escape their side of the disaster, but their facilities, orbital platforms, and docks were either destroyed or forced to surrender.

It was as absolute a rout as you can imagine.

Omnicorp was left in a commanding position from which they would be able to wreck 3 Corps communications and military satellites, which would have disastrous consequences for their war effort on the surface.

The Martians weren't the only ones to refer to this as the disaster.

It looked like 3 Corps was well and truly cooked.

It also looked like the Martians were well and truly cooked.

Their whole long-term plan was to have 3 Corps replace Omnicorps, their link to Earth, and that plan had just been blasted out of the sky.

Somehow, OmniCorps was now even more dominant in space than they had been before the revolution.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, two weeks after the disaster a fleet of Omnicore ships detached from Earth orbit and began heading for Mars.

It appeared OmniCorps not wasting any time making their bid to reclaim Mars and the FOSS-5.

According to Martian scanners, it looked like about 200 ships in all, all of them more powerful than anything the Martians could muster to fight back.

And it was now only a matter of time before the Omnicore fleet arrived.

The surviving ships of the Martian Navy, meanwhile, were presently scattered haphazardly across space.

Some ships had fled Lunaport by plotting an immediate course back to Mars.

Others had fled Lunaport by plotting a course to anywhere that wasn't here, just to get out of danger.

The carnage and damage they left behind would take some time to fully comprehend and sort out, but in the end only about 250 of the 800 total ships of the Martian Navy came straggling home to Mars.

Among the most significant casualties was Admiral Way.

She had been commanding a group of ships on the Martian top flank that was destroyed by Omnicorp missiles shortly after the battle started.

Admiral Cartwright, meanwhile, had turned the Nemesis around, pointed it back to Mars, and had not looked back.

The Nemesis would in fact be among the first ships to make it back to Mars.

Cartwright would argue that it was imperative he get back to Mars to help organize a defense, but he did not exactly endear himself to the crews of the ships scattered behind him, some of which needed repair and rescue.

Cartwright left them to fend for themselves.

Captain Booth Gonzalez, meanwhile, had been commanding the Dapple during the battle, and was among those who followed the anywhere-that wasn't here logic to get anywhere-that wasn't there.

Once the Dapple was safely away to a random pocket of space, they started linking up with other Martian Navy ships in the vicinity, including those captained by Coyote O'Hara, Billy Shrimps, and Abilene Wren.

They did their best to answer distress calls, and though there was only a limited amount of time to repair damaged ships, they could at least link up and evacuate crews rather than leave them behind.

They got as many people out as possible before they two picked up the Omnicore fleet leaving Earth and realized they needed to go.

It was six weeks back to Mars, with many of the ships overcrowded from the rescue operations, and nobody was was impressed that Cartwright had bailed on them all.

About a week after the OmniCorps fleet left Earth, it broadcast a vid message from our old acquaintance, Lancelot Schmidt.

We remember Lancelot Schmidt, right?

He's that third-generation Martian who had chosen exile on Earth rather than accept the verdict of the Martian Revolution back in 2247.

He'd become the leader of that group of exile Martians who wanted to return to Mars, but only under Omnicore's rightful authority.

Returning Schmidt and the exiles to Mars had first been a part of the schemes of Kamal Singh, but Singh had risen and fallen before Schmidt could even think about getting off Earth.

After Singh's arrest, Schmidt was in the wilderness for a little bit, before the competence who now ran OmniCorps came around.

Once OmniCorps cleared out three corps in the Martian Navy, they planned to immediately retake possession of Mars to secure the FOSS-5 line that was essential to winning the corporate war.

They wanted Schmidt to be the Martian face of this operation, and in August 2251, they secretly appointed him to be the new director of Mars Division.

The message Schmidt broadcast said, My fellow Martians, I am one of your oldest sons, and I believe in the greatness of the Martian people.

But that greatness can only be achieved after Mars returns to its proper place within OmniCore.

Only OmniCore has the resources, power, and ability to protect us and nurture us.

Please rest assured that by peacefully returning to OmniCorps, every Martian will keep their jobs and their positions.

There will be no reprisals.

There will be no deportations.

We know that there have been many changes on Mars, and OmniCorps Board of Directors is willing to adapt its management strategies to recognize those changes.

But I must also tell you that failure to return peacefully will have dire consequences.

I expect a people as wise and practical as we Martians are to make the wise and practical choice.

This broadcast set off an explosion of chatter that consumed the Martian communication networks.

The Martian Assembly was flooded with people who wanted to speak and respond and be heard, with sentiment running 10 to 1 in favor of resistance to Omnicor.

But an emergency this dire required prompt and direct leadership.

So after several days of chaotic discourse that accomplished very little, A red-cap ally of Jose Calderón rose and proposed that for the time being, an emergency executive triumvirate should be appointed to lead Mars through the crisis and that portions of the Constitution should be temporarily suspended.

To quell protests from certain corners that this was a red cat power grab, the three triumvirs would be Calderón, obviously, but also Marcus Leopold and Ivana Darby.

Worried that if they refused, it might well turn out to be a more overt red cat power grab, Leopold and Darby backed the plan, because at least this way they'd always be able to outvote Calderón 2-1.

Calderón, of course, was perfectly comfortable because he had all the authority he would ever need, thanks to his ongoing command of the Martian Guard.

So, on November 14th, 2251, the Martian Assembly voted to suspend the Martian Constitution and instead allow themselves to be led by the Martian Triumvirate.

The Triumvirate was not just going to give Mars back to OmniCorp without a fight.

They did not know exactly how they would fight, but if they could make the reacquisition of Mars stubbornly painful, they might be able to force Omnicor to make a deal rather than truly attempt total re-envelopment.

Now the Martian Navy obviously wasn't going to be of much use anytime soon, so when it came to planetary defenses, they really only had one thing to rely on.

Well, technically three things.

The three nuclear devices they had found aboard Convoy Group 11.

After the discovery of the Convoy Group 11 nukes, they had been transferred to an orbital platform above Olympus under the protection of the Martian Guard.

It had been determined that the nukes should not come to the surface.

It was simply too dangerous.

This was all in the aftermath of the loyalist uprising, and it would be indefensible to bring weapons of that singular, destructive power anywhere near one lone saboteur's ability to end everything at the push of a button.

So, The three nukes sat on the orbital platform above Olympus.

Admiral Cartwright had tried to get the Martians to give up the nukes to the Navy to be used against OmniCorps back on Earth, but the Martian leaders had rejected that plan.

If nukes were going to be used in the space battles around Earth, III Corps had an ample supply you can get some from them.

These three will stay here with us.

Now that the OmniCorps fleet was on the way, the Triumvirs discussed what to do with the nukes.

They couldn't really detonate them anywhere close to Mars, as the resulting blasts and electromagnetic pulses would fry vital electronic systems both in orbit and on the surface.

So it appeared that the only way to use them effectively would be to try to launch them at the Omni-Core fleet and blow it up before it arrived.

So the Triumvirs put in motion an operation to create small enough but strong enough long-range torpedoes to load with bombs and aim them at the Omni-Core ships, hopefully catch them by surprise and blow them out of space.

And that would have to be done in less than six weeks.

This operation was handed to an engineering team spearheaded by a pair of sisters named Tay and Kira Kito, who were drone bot propulsion experts, and there's a great book by Pistcher Wollodark about the design and construction of these torpedoes called Long Shots, The Race to Save Mars, about those six intensely packed weeks of work.

Meanwhile, everyone else prepared for the likelihood of some kind of invasion.

and everyone recognized the necessity of setting aside brewing internal political conflicts.

Calderón had already magnanimously let himself join a triumvirate that he would not dominate, and then he went a step further.

He suspended the investigation into Kenji Grew's death and announced that all those recent personnel decisions, that is, the systematic purge of the black caps, would be reversed, as the Guard would need to be strong and unified now more than ever.

But Calderon was still worried about the influence and power of Alexandra Claire, and he wanted to keep her out of Olympus, where she might cause him headaches.

So he pitched the other triumvirs on the idea of making Claire the senior commander of the guard in Elysium.

And they were the ones who took this idea to Claire, who agreed, in the name of Martian solidarity, even as she remained intensely distrustful of Calderon's ultimate intentions.

In mid-December 2251, the first Martian Navy ships that had fled Earth returned.

led by Admiral Cartwright and the Nemesis.

The triumvirs called on him to immediately come to the surface for emergency planning meetings.

And Cartwright complied with this, naively believing that his position was totally secure.

But when he arrived on the surface on December the 11th, 2251, it turned out the meeting was more hostile debriefing than emergency planning meeting.

You lost your entire fleet, Admiral.

Care to explain yourself?

And Cartwright was like, what could I have done?

And then he was asked why he was back when all these other ships trailed behind.

Had he just left them there?

Cartwright got blustery and heated words started flying.

He said, hey, I'd led the shippers into mutiny in 2247 for you.

You can't talk to me like this.

You would be nowhere without me.

And eventually he said, I've had enough of this treatment.

I'm going back to my ship.

And that's when Calderon said, no, actually you are not.

And he had the Martian guard arrest the Admiral right then and there.

This caught even Darby and Leopold by surprise, who were like, is that really necessary?

And Calderon said, we're going to find out.

I'm invoking my authority over all matters involving suspicion of treason.

Treason, Cartwright yelled, what treason?

And Calderon said, that's exactly what we're going to find out.

Cartwright's arrest obviously sent a major ripple through the fleet.

His most loyal officers on the Nemesis and adjacent ships were outraged and demanded that he be returned.

But others weren't quite so personally loyal to Cartwright, and they weren't thrilled by his recent conduct.

It's not like he'd led them to glorious victory or anything.

They were a defeated navy.

And the admiral who had just led them to defeat was being arrested.

Honestly, yeah, okay, I could see that.

And any sympathy Cartwright might have had was eclipsed by the heroic return of Booth Gonzalez and the last survivors.

Booth Gonzalez made sure as many people got back safely as possible, and those he'd helped sang his praises.

The Triumvirs immediately seized on this, and on December 29, 2251 put Cartwright out of everyone's mind by naming Booth Gonzalez the new Admiral of the Martian Navy.

Gonzalez's first orders were depressing but realistic.

There was little the ships could do against the incoming OmniCorps fleet, so Gonzalez was to prepare the ships as much as possible for a prolonged voyage and then lead them away from Mars to prevent them from being destroyed or captured by OmniCorp.

He was further ordered to find some way to arm the ships so that they could fight Omnicore somehow, and then as soon as that was done, come back and join the fight.

Meanwhile, the OmniCorp fleet just kept getting closer.

Throughout these weeks, Lancelot Schmidt continued to broadcast messages, saying how great it will be when Omnicore is back in charge, how Omnicor is winning the corporate war, and the Martians really don't have any alternative.

And he always signed off with the hope that the Martians would come to their senses.

But after that first response back in November, the Triumvirs had steadfastly refused to engage with him.

On January 3rd, 2252, when the fleet was roughly 10 days away, they finally sent a second message.

This one was also short and sweet.

They said, turn around immediately.

Do not come any closer to Mars.

You have been warned.

Schmidt responded to this with an hour-long sermon about the difference between a mature and an immature society that no one really made it five minutes into without turning off.

So it looked like OmniCore was coming no matter what.

So with that settled, it was time to turn to the Keto sisters team and their torpedoes.

They had built three and rigged a launcher on the orbital platform above Olympus, but unfortunately one of the torpedoes kept failing basic diagnostics, so really they only had two.

But these two were fitted with nuclear warheads.

Two hours after that return sermon from Schmidt arrived, the Triumvirs gave the go-ahead, and the torpedoes were launched.

They were specifically designed to avoid any kind of long-range sensor, and would hopefully not appear on OmniCore screens until it was too late, but that meant Martian sensors couldn't pick them up either.

Now they had done all the math, and had very strong predictive models, and the OmniCore fleet's trajectory was steady and predictable.

But after they were launched, everyone just had to hope the torpedoes would actually be where they were supposed to be when it was time to detonate.

It would take five days for the torpedoes to reach the OmniCore fleet on an intercept course, five days during which the Martians could see they were still active without knowing precisely where they were in space.

On January 8th, the simulation model said, this is it.

The torpedoes are about to intercept the fleet.

Control operators working directly under the triumvirs waited until the torpedoes were timed to be right in the midst of the OmniCore fleet, and then they were ordered to press the detonate signal.

Now according to the model, that would wipe the fleet out.

But when they excitedly looked at the actual long-range scanners, they realized something was off.

There was an explosion, clearly, they could see that, but it was off target.

Clearly, they were close to the Omnicore ships because they were being thrown into some kind of disarray, but most of them appeared to be moving on their own power, neither disabled nor destroyed.

There was also, so far as anyone could tell, only one explosion.

And that's true.

There only was one.

Whatever happened to the second torpedo is anyone's guess.

It was just never heard from again.

And it was quite a mystery.

That torpedo still showed as being active and powered on for a full year, but its location was totally unknown, and it was never recovered.

It might even still be out there floating around in space somewhere.

So, unfortunately, the Martians watched all this with deep dread as the OmniCorps fleet recovered from their near miss and rearranged their ships to be more spread out in case the Martians fired another shot, and then they just kept coming.

Lancelot Schmidt issued a further broadcast telling the Martian people that they had clearly become the victims of fanatics who would rather all Mars burn than accept the easiest, safest, and sanest course.

So please find these extremists and stop them before we arrive.

Collective punishment is in no one's interest.

As soon as it was clear the shots had missed, newly minted Admiral Bruth Gonzalez led his ships away from Mars.

Not just the survivors of the disaster, but also the container ships that had been left behind.

They plotted a course away from Mars and away from Earth and towards the asteroid belt.

On January 13, 2252, the OmniCorps fleet reached the environs of Mars.

The Martians had intended their next line of defense to be sabotaging Phobos station.

But, after the experience of the Battle of Phobos, this new fleet was outfitted by OmniCorps they could bypass the station and proceed directly to the planet.

So all those lines and systems and docks at Phobos station that had been rendered inoperable were inoperable for no appreciable gain.

When the fleet arrived, they broke into four groups.

Three proceeded to synchronous orbit above each of the three colony cities.

The fourth plotted a course away from Mars entirely, immediately recognizable as a course that took them in pursuit of Admiral Booth Gonzalez.

Now in a position in a ship above Olympus, Lancelot Schmidt issued yet another statement, I am a Martian too, it doesn't have to be like this, etc., etc., etc.

Absolutely nothing new.

The Triumvirs responded with another characteristically terse reply.

We will negotiate with you as the independent Republic of Mars, but categorically reject any attempt to integrate Mars into OmniCore.

Anyone from OmniCore who sets foot on the surface without our permission will die down here.

To which Schmidt responded, I can see that you aren't taking this seriously.

I now must inform you that the Board of Directors have approved an unlimited rebuilding and reconstruction budget for Mars Division.

Do you understand what that means?

Let me spell it out for you.

We will drop nuclear weapons on your cities until you surrender.

Damage is immaterial to us.

The rebuilding and reconstruction budget for Mars Division is unlimited.

We will simply rebuild.

Surrender within 72 hours or face total destruction.

This was obviously very alarming, but Martian sentiment and network chatter remained against surrendering.

Surely this was all a bluff.

Omnicore would never be so stupid as to actually bomb the Martian colonies.

The infrastructure is simply too valuable.

But they did not realize that the competence who ran Omnicore now had a different vision for things.

Their goal was to reacquire the monopoly over FOSS-5 no matter the time or expense.

They certainly did not want to blow up valuable infrastructure that they would then have to rebuild, but they would.

And the Martians did not realize that yet.

But even though the Martian leadership thought it was a bluff, just to be on the safe side, they evacuated all the upper levels of the three colonies and set people deeper into the cities.

Projections had shown that even a full nuclear blast on the Prime Dome, for example, would take out the surface and most of the A levels, with the B levels severely compromised structurally.

But deeper than that, the supports would be able to withstand such a blast.

But this was all precautionary.

It's not like Omnicore is going to do it.

Some people tried to refuse Martian Guard directives to leave.

Some people, I frack you not, actually tried to go up to the domes.

out of a mixture of defiance and curiosity.

After stubbornly waiting out those 72 hours, the Martians got their first inkling that maybe Omnicore wasn't bluffing.

The next time they got a broadcast from the fleet above their heads, it was not from Lancelot Schmidt.

It was from some guy they had never heard of called Commander Barlow.

This Barlow character said, We are deeply disappointed in your decision to resist.

Everything that happens now is on your hands, not ours.

Many Martians later said this was the first time they really considered the possibility that the threat was real.

And the thing is, they never heard from Lancelot Schmidt again.

What none of them knew or could have known was that among the Martians who believed the threat to nuke the colonies was a bluff was Lancelot Schmidt.

In her book Lancelot Schmidt, the last director of Mars Division, Eitan Bremer published the logs between Schmidt and OmniCorps headquarters back on Earth that show him clearly under the impression this was all a negotiating tactic.

When the order came through to proceed, he was shocked.

He refused to issue the final statement.

Yes, he wanted Omnicorp to retake Mars, but he didn't want to drop nuclear weapons on his own people.

And so when Commander Barlow issued that final statement, Lancelot Schmidt had been fired as director of Mars Division and was presently sitting in the brig.

He never did make it back to Mars.

On January 16, 2252, a small object was released from one of the ships ships above Elysium.

It was picked up immediately by Martian sensors and alarms sounded throughout the colonies.

The object entered the atmosphere, plummeted downwards, and after several minutes of freefall, connected with Elysium's central dome.

Everything on the surface was wiped out in a giant mushroom cloud.

The impact of the blast destroyed the A-levels of Elysium completely, leaving behind a huge crater.

where the elites of the colony had once lived.

Most of the population had evacuated deep enough that the loss of life was not of unimaginable proportions.

But even still, thousands died instantly in the blast.

The structural integrity of an entire wing of the colony failed and everything caved in all the way down to the lower sea levels.

Subsequent shutters and further collapses in cave-ins killed thousands more after that.

And then, thousands more died in various stampedes and panics as people tried to go even deeper all at once.

It's estimated that within the first six hours of the bombing of Elysium, something like 50,000 people died, and the rest were trapped underground.

The horror of the bombing obviously set off a panic not just in Elysium, but also in Tharsis and Olympus.

No one could quite believe what they had just seen.

Even the triumvirs couldn't believe Omnicore had actually done it.

They now faced the reality that their courageous freedom or death attitude suddenly meant they were choosing death.

They simply had to admit Omnicore was literally willing to kill them all.

It meant they had to rethink everything.

And so shortly after the mushroom cloud erupted over Elysium, the Triumvirs issued their shortest and tersest statement yet.

We surrender.

But that was not yet the end of the day's catastrophic horrors.

Commander Barlow accepted the surrender and ordered the Martians to peacefully relinquish control of all facilities in orbit and on the surface.

The Triumvirs followed this up with an order that all Martians should surrender their facilities, whether in orbit or on the surface.

It would be a long time before anyone knew what happened next, and even now it's mostly speculation what went on in the orbital platform above Olympus that day.

It's still possible it was an accident, but given that it was not until Omnicore ships and personnel arrived to take over the platform, that leads most historians to conclude that it was intentional.

Biographic analysis of the members of the Martian Guard on duty showed that that they were all fanatical red caps.

How could they not be?

If they weren't, Calderon would not have selected them for the all-important job of protecting the nuclear devices housed there.

And there was still one nuclear device left.

So if you accept that it was intentional, then the next question is, did they do it on their own, or were they ordered by someone higher up the chain of command?

But this is all pieced together from evidence acquired long after the fact, because all anyone knew at the time was that out of nowhere a gigantic blinding flash of light consumed the platform and everything close to it including half the OmniCore ships in orbit.

The blast not only destroyed most of the orbital facilities and satellites, but the electromagnetic pulse was strong enough that it wrecked the surface grids of Olympus too.

Communications went dead everywhere in the vicinity.

There was no way for anyone in orbit to communicate with the surface, and no way for anyone on the surface to contact anyone in orbit.

So it was just a bright flash of light, followed by a total blackout.

As with Elysium, the upper levels of Olympus had been evacuated so there was minimum loss of life on the ground.

And also like Elysium, the deeper levels were powered by redundant backup systems so they could survive down there.

But there was no way for them to know what was happening above their heads, or what had happened at all.

Meanwhile, over at Tharsis, the only colony that hadn't been hit with such a blast, well, their systems were also affected by the Olympus EMP, but they were able to fix their communications array quick enough to at least send one signal that sounded over and over again.

We surrender, we surrender, we surrender, we surrender, we surrender.

Next week, the revolution will literally move underground, as the Martians push deep into the Warrens grapple with the aftermath of all this nuclear holocaust.

Elysium was a smoldering crater.

Olympus was inoperable.

Tharsis was begging Omnicor to let them surrender and begging God to let Omnicor hear them.

It really looked like this was the end of everything.

The end of the Republic of Mars, the end of the Martian Revolution.

But here's the thing.

As it turns out, the Martian Revolution was not going to be the only revolution.

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