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- [02:00]
Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to Revolutions episode 11.21 the Republic of Mars. Thanks to the unexpectedly fortuitous run by Booth Gonzales that fatally crippled convoy group 11 at the Battle of Phobos on July 16, 2250, Mars was saved from a looming apocalyptic peril. All three components of Kamal Singh's plan to reclaim control of the Red Planet had now failed. The firewall stood, the Loyalist insurrectionaries were all in jail. And now the nuclear threat was dead in space. In this short but dramatic fight between Omnicore and Mars, Mars won. But as I said last time, perhaps the biggest impact of The Battle of Phobos was not so much the short term deliverance of Mars from the immediate threat of nuclear apocalypse, although that was very important, but rather on the long term impact it had on the political and economic order of the solar system. When Bicor and TCOR took the Martian victory at Phobos as their opportunity to recognize Martian independence and declare that they no longer recognized Omnicorp claim to monopoly beyond the line of lunar orbit, it upended an economic and political order to the solar system that had prevailed for more than 150 years. It was in fact the only economic and political order the solar system had ever known, and though it was not inevitable and historical contingency remained a potent force in coming events. The Battle of Phobos is pretty much the moment everyone points to to say, and that's when Omnicorp's monopoly ended. At least that's the answer you should write down if you're asked that question on a test. Omnicorp's response to this direct provocation from Bicor and T Core ran through CEO Kamal Singh, the author of the failures that invited the provocation in the first place. That was because the one part of Singh's plan that had worked was his coup against Jinwang. Singh had been hoping he would not have to answer for the coup until after he announced that Mars was now back under Omnicorp's authority. But now that wasn't going to happen. So there was only one reasonable thing. He could dig his heels in even deeper and keep pushing forward. Sing trumped up some charges against Wong and her closest allies in the Board of directors, accusing them not just of criminal negligence, but active participation in the plot to break Mars away from Omnicorp. Singh's allies on the manipulated bear quorum presently allowed to meet as the board of directors voted to expel Wang and her allies and replace them with more dependable members. Did this completely bypass the shareholders who were supposed to be the ones voting on board seats? Yes, of course. But Kamal Singh shook his head with feigned regret and said, since we are now under direct attack, the regular functioning of the corporate code will have to be suspended, so at least temporarily insulated politically. Singh then relentlessly flooded Omnicor's communications networks with the message that Convoy Group 11 had no nuclear device devices and the Martians had launched a reprehensible ambush that killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocent spaceshippers. As we speak, they are probably rounding up and slaughtering innocent earthlings on Mars, because that's the kind of people we're dealing with, if indeed we can even call them people anymore. If you were living under Omnicorps corporate umbrella, then you were saturated in this propaganda. Bicorps and T Corps recognizing Martian independence was portrayed as those corporations pushing their own greedy self interest while recklessly risking Earth's phosphide supply. In truth, Omnicor was the persecuted victim, guilty only of the crime of trying to protect and care for humanity. The Martians don't care whether you live or die. Bicor and T Corps don't care whether you live or die. But Omnicor does. So if you were inside Omnicorp, that was the message that was being pounded into your brain and they believed it through sheer repetition. But I will say before we move on that internal support for Omnicorp wasn't just about being universally propagandized. Plenty of people had ways of accessing outside sources of information, thinking critically about recent events and concluding, wow, I think we're the bad guys here. But the options on the table after drawing this conclusion were defend the monopoly on phosphide that underpins every aspect of my life or let Bicor and TCOR take it over and allow every aspect of my life to be destroyed. So even if Omnicorp was wrong, even if Omnicorp was to blame, the direct impact of losing the monopoly was so great that you just swallowed your criticism and rallied around the flag. Plus, speaking of direct threats, there was no greater direct threat than speaking out against Omnicorp in this moment. It was a great way to get a not so friendly knock on the door from security services. Bicor and Tcor meanwhile, saturated their networks in messages that sounded almost exactly the same as Omnicorps, just swapping some nouns around. It was Omnicorp who started all this. It was Omnicorp who had violated the agreement of 2248 and launched an unprovoked attack on Mars. It was Omnicorp who were pursuing their own greedy self interest while recklessly risking Earth's phosphide supply. Our recognition of Martian independence is about ending their catastrophic mismanagement of that all important ingredient to life on Earth. Omnicorp doesn't care whether you live or die, but Bicorp and T Corps do. So in the two weeks after the battle of Phobos, both sides engaged in a war of contradictory propaganda aimed not only at their own people, but all Earthlings. Remember, there are five major corporations on Earth and though they've fallen out of the narrative because they don't have active space operations. Calcor and Mass Corps were still powerful forces in Earth's corporation corporate politics. And though all five of these corporations were designed to be their own self contained, vertically integrated systems, there was still critical crossover in their economic relations. And everyone had the means of causing everyone else distress. So both Calcor and Mass Corp were pressured, threatened, bribed, begged and cajoled to either accept or reject Martian independence. But the bottom line was always the same. You have to pick a side, and it had better be us. While the corporations of Earth fought this war of words, through July 2250, the Martians grappled with the aftermath of the Battle of Phobos. This was made slightly more difficult because the aftermath of the Battle of Phobos involved grappling with an unprecedented wave of hangovers in both quantity and severity that were the end result of all the victory celebrations. But even through bleary eyes and pounding heads, there was work to be done out around Phobos station. People who had very recently been willing to do anything to stop convoy group 11 now switched to rescue and retrieval operations. The damage to the convoy was bad. Each of the nine ships had an officer and crew complement of about 350, and they all needed to be accounted for. The ship Gonzales had hit with his drone bombs was effectively destroyed before anyone could abandon ship and was now just debris and bodies. But the others were in various states of disrepair and damage. Sections had been opened up to space. Basic controls were dead. Some had been abandoned completely with survivors floating around in escape pods. Other crews had ridden out the immediate collisions and still huddled on their basically intact but inoperable container ships. With life support systems possibly failing. The question that faced the Martians was what to do with all these survivors. After the final death toll was calculated, those survivors numbered about 2,200. It was finally settled that the surviving crews would be put to work repairing and salvaging their damaged ships, while the 400 or so surviving officers would be placed under guard on a requisition passenger transport where they would await some kind of tribunal for their actions. While this was being sorted out, Mars was presented with a new cause for wild celebration. Ever since the Battle of Phobos, everyone wanted to know the same thing. Where is Captain Booth Gonzales? Get the hero of Phobos down here so we can fet him properly. And so they did. Gonzales and the crew of the Daple were excused from rescue and retrieval operations and brought down to the surface of Mars. On July 20, the Martian leaders staged a huge ceremony on the fields of Earth, presided over by newly installed director Ivana Darby, with elite Red CAP units serving as an honor guard. After a bunch of celebratory and congratulatory speeches, Gonzalez himself was finally called forward to speak. He waited through a 10 minute long deafening ovation before he could say a word. But when he did start speaking, he was forthright, humble and direct. He said, all I did was see an opportunity and take it. I expected to do some damage, but I didn't expect that. The Martians more or less resumed their applause after every single line, but never more enthusiastically than when Gonzales finished by saying, I was born a spaceshipper and I'll die a Spaceshipper, but I am for Mars and I am for the Martians. We are now all in this together. This ceremony kicked off another round of partying, but the Martian leadership did have to focus and address their new position inside the solar system. Representatives of Bicor and TCOR both transmitted their recognition of Martian independence and said that they looked forward to negotiating a mutually beneficial relationship with the Martians. But the Martian leadership was wary of these other corporations trying to take Omnicorp's place as corporate overlords of Mars. So Ivana Darby made it very clear that this was not just rhetorical flourish. Mars was now an independent sovereign entity willing to do business with anyone who recognized that they were an independent sovereign entity. This was a message transmitted not just to Bicor and tcor, but to all the corporations of Earth. Omnicor did not even respond to this message. Bicor and TCOR both said, yes, of course, of course, of course. Calcor and Mass Corp both weighed what to do. On July 27, the Shippers out salvaging Convoy Group 11 helped bring those internal debates to a close when they disclosed the bombshell discovery they had just made. On one of those damaged ships, they found three nuclear devices. They documented this, packaged it up into a damning vid and transmitted it back to Earth on all channels. Surely there could now be no doubt that Omnicorp had been lying, that they were the duplicitous aggressors, not the Martians. But you know what Omnicorp's response is going to be. The Martians fake that evidence, just as we predicted they would. The Martians are a truly deceitful people, if indeed they can be considered people at all. In the end, Kalkor and Mascor broke in opposite directions. The evidence of the nukes in Convoy Group 11 pushed CalCor toward the Martians. And on July 30, 2250, they announced their recognition of Martian independence and non recognition of Omnicorps monopoly. But though the evidence was looking awfully conclusive that Omnicorp was the bad actor in all this, Mass Corp followed Calcor's announcement by declaring on August 1 that they stood beside Omnicor. This decision had far less to do with the facts than with the facts, Capital F. And the facts were that Mass Corp was the corporation most entwined with Omnicorp, and thus the corporation Omnicorp could hurt the most. Plus, they were presently the fourth largest of the five major corporations. And if Omnicorp emerged victorious, there would be a wide open space for Mass Corps to move up that list. These declarations establish the basic framework for the coming corporate Omnicorp and Mass Corp on one side, Bicor, Tcorp and Calcor on the other. And to moderately complicate things, but hopefully simplify the verbiage, when we're talking about the corporate war, we often refer to that latter alliance as three Corps. And that's how I'm going to be referring to them much of the time. So does that mean that the alliance of Omnicor and Mascorps was called II Corps? No, that side is still just referred to as Omnicor. Which should tell you exactly where Mass Corps stood in that alliance. Not really an equal partner so much as a loyal crumb. But that said, even now, the corporate war wasn't really a war yet. It was just a lot of threats and saber rattling. Everyone had made their declarations of intent, but it wasn't clear if anyone was willing to follow through, to push the envelope all the way to open violence. Clarity on that was finally reached on August 7, 2250 with the evacuation of Lunaport. So let us turn our attention now to the evacuation of Luna Port. So the first thing to understand is that as we've discussed previously, both Bicor and T Cor had extensive permanent installations on Luna. And because of this, they had been running ships back and forth between Earth and the moon all the time. That meant they had their own space divisions, shipbuilding facilities, spaceports, orbital platforms, the works. And this was all out in the open. But behind all that was the long standing objective of breaking Omnicor's monopoly and moving out into the solar system themselves. So though the ships they built only ever traversed the short distance between the Earth and the moon, the engines, hulls and internal layouts of those ships were designed to handle transplanetary voyages. They were also designed to be tough enough and strong enough to prevail in direct contact with Omnicor ships guarding the Lunar Line, should it ever come to that. And now it was coming to that. The catalyst for bringing it to that were events inside Luna Port. Lunaport was Omnicorp's main base of operations on the moon. Populated mostly by Omnicorp spaceshipper community people from both the container fleet and the civilian cargo ships. Lunaport was tied directly to a constellation of orbital dockyards that housed all those ships as they came and went from here to there and there to here. Now, things had been pretty quiet in Luna Port since The agreement of 2248 was signed. That agreement had granted amnesty to all shippers who had taken part in the mutiny. And though there were low key instances of retribution, it had all been pretty tame. Commander Cartwright and Commander Wei, for example, had merely been reassigned, not fired, imprisoned or killed. But that was because Jin Wang had wanted the agreement of 2248 to work. She didn't want to provoke anything. But now Kamal Singh was in charge, and he clearly had a different set of priorities. The drama over convoy group 11 generated a lot of tension among the shippers. As the Convoy Group approached Mars, families that tended to harbor anti Omnicorps sympathies were angry. Singh was so brazenly attacking Mars. But there were plenty of Omnicorps loyalists among the shippers. And those 3,000 odd shippers in Convoy Group 11 all had friends and family in Lunaport. When news of the Battle of Phobos reached the moon, it caused a huge rift inside Luna Port. Because now the anti Omnicorps shippers were responsible for the deaths of the pro Omnicore shippers. Even as the anti Omnicorp shippers said, this is all actually Omnicor's fault, not ours. But to be connected to the anti Omnicore site at Phobos now exposed you to danger in Lunaport. This was especially true for families like the Gonzales clan, who were also directly complicit in treasonous activities with Bicor and T Corps. Prior to the battle, they had always been in danger, but now the danger felt visceral. The Omnicorps authorities in Lunaport, of course, flooded the networks with all the propaganda we talked about earlier and added a cynically successful twist. They staged a big public memorial for the crews of Convoy Group 11. Even as the fate of many of them were unknown, their families were invited to take pride of place at the memorial, where they were saturated in more propaganda about the murderous perfidy of The Martians. And even worse than those treacherous Martians, the spaceshippers among us who are directly responsible for the deaths of your loved ones. The memorial created, as it was meant to, a combustible atmosphere of rage. It was now known which ships had been on which side at Phobos. And for example, the name Booth Gonzales was now as known on Luna as it was on Mars. In the days that followed, groups of mostly young men with ties to the shippers in convoy group 11, who came to dub themselves the Elevens, wandered around with increasing impunity both in Luna Port and aboard the orbital platform docks. Instances of vandalism, property damage and assault escalated as they identified, harassed, and attacked those guilty of what they called the slaughter of Phobos. While those unofficial attacks escalated, security services backed them up with raids and roundups of families and associates of known anti Omnicorps shippers. The Gonzales family went into hiding. So clearly it was not safe for any of these people to stay put. Some of them had already gotten pretty deep and legitimately treasonous relationships with Bicor and TCOR and had smuggled in caches of weapons, not just for their ships, but small arms, just in case. And now it was the case. They could either sit and wait to be beaten up or worse by the Elevens, or arrested and detained by the security services. But there was no scenario where they could just sit and do nothing and hope to ride it out. So they organized as best they could to improvise a breakout. The first step was alerting the outside world about what was happening. They funneled vids to their contacts in Bicor and T Corps, showing evidence of the assaults and all the damage. And they said, if we don't get out of here soon, we're not getting out of here at all. Omnicorp is going to stand by and do Nothing while the 11s kill us all. We have done nothing wrong. Our loved ones at Phobos did nothing wrong. All we want is to be allowed to leave Luna Port. And so now the brinksmanship went right to the edge because three Corps issued a joint ultimatum. Omnicor must allow anyone who wants to leave Luna Port to do so. And in fact, we will provide assistance and ships if necessary. Omnicorp fired back and said, if any of your ships come anywhere near any of our facilities, they will be fired upon. This is a purely internal affair. Stay out of it. This brinksmanship led to increased repression around Omnicor's parts of the moon. All shuttles off Luna were grounded. All requests to Depart the orbital docks denied. Then the security services commenced an even more aggressive sweep. On August 7th, this finally triggered direct fighting as the security services hit pockets of armed anti Omnicorps shippers, now forced to fight their way out. In Lunaport, a group of armed evacuees managed to seize a shuttle control pad and load three shuttles with a couple hundred people, including several members of the Gonzales family, and get them airborne before those left holding the station were overwhelmed, where they were transformed from ordinary shippers into heroic martyrs. Two orbital platform docks that happened to have a larger mass of anti Omnicorps sympathizers also took their stations by force and canceled all departure restrictions. Ships crammed with as many people as possible decoupled and flew away. As this unfolded, three core communiques offered them asylum at Bicor and T core bases and platforms around the moon. They warned Omnicorp not to do anything to hinder these flights. But Omnicorp had already promised to fire on any ship that tried to lift off, and now they needed to make good on that promise. So security ships guarding the lunar line redeployed menacingly towards the evacuees. Bicor and T core ships moved into position to screen the evacuees. And the next thing you know, the drone bombs are flying. The Omnicorps forces fired on the evacuee ships. The Bicor and T core ships intercepted those drone bombs with scramblers while launching their own barrage at the Omnicorps ships. And those were the first shots fired in the corporate war. The shuttles that blasted off the surface raced for a Bicor orbital platform because the shuttles were not built for anything but those short jumps. But the other ships were built for longer voyages, and as they scrambled away from the Omnicorps facilities, they hastily organized and plotted courses out of the environs of Earth entirely. While they did that, Omnicorps security ships started really taking a beating. Years of complacency from Omnicor meant that the Bicor and T Corps ships had weapons and defensive systems that were actually a notch superior to anything Omnicorps had. As Omnicorps redeployed more ships to try to hold their own line, it opened up huge holes that evacuee ships could aim for. It also didn't help Omnicor that when one cluster of evacuee ships reached the lunar line, the ships that were supposed to intercept and stop them instead refused an order to fire and just let the evacuees pass. As soon as these holes were identified, the Remaining evacuee ships raced away from the environs of Earth. Most of the Bicorps and T Corps ships stayed behind to defend their own installations. But a few were peeled off to act as armed escorts for what was fast becoming a refugee convoy heading for Mars. Their ships were the first non Omnicorps ships in history to fly away from Earth and out into the solar system. The evacuation of Luna Port marks the beginning of the corporate war, a war that would have devastating consequences for Earth. But at the moment, the evacuation of Luna Port Moor immediately caused a mass split inside the shipper community as there was no longer room for neutrality. You were either for Omnicorps or against them. There could be no middle ground. And so, just like during the mutiny of 2247, the officers and crews of individual cargo ships, container ships and entire convoys sorted themselves into two factions. But this time, they would not sit and do nothing. They would fight each other. The evacuation of Luna Port will also finally cost Kamal Singh his job. Because the evacuation of Luna Port was a final embarrassing debacle. There is a reason why the most famous biography of Singh is called the Best Laid Plans. He had set out to reclaim Mars and instead push them towards full independence while also triggering a massive war on Earth. But now that the war was on, even those who were about to throw Singh overboard didn't think they could back away from the fight. And so next week, a faction of executives who are going to dub themselves the Competents, who are going to seize control of Omnicorp with a mission to first win the war and then restore Omnicorp's rightful place as masters of the solar system. But I want to end this week by heading back to Mars because we have to establish what exactly this refugee convoy was flying towards. What was it that was going to be doing business with three Core as an independent sovereign entity? To answer this question, Ivana Darby gathered all the newly appointed department heads, plus a few select influential Martians like her old friend Zhao Lin, to discuss and debate what they should now be. There was no question they were no longer a subdivision or a subsidiary of anything. They could, would, and frankly must have economic ties with major corporations back on earth. The phos 5 had to go to someone, and they had to get vital supplies, parts and new immigrants from somewhere. But never again would they be a part of something else. So they cast themselves back through the annals of history. How had people organized themselves before the advent of the corporate age? There were tribes, kingdoms, empires, consortiums, free cities, republics, nation states. There was an array of options to choose from. But it was clear that given the mentality of the Martian way and the fact that the class system was about to be uprooted entirely, that they could not be some sort of hierarchical kingdom or empire. There couldn't be a king or a queen of Marsthat wouldn't do at all. But neither did they think it was wise to let each colony go off and be their own free city. The Martians needed to stay unified. And if you're wondering, yes, every person in the room, except for one, a woman from Elysium named Brill Pallone, were Olympians. And if you're further wondering, yes, that is going to become an issue. In the end, there was really only one thing they could possibly be, and that was a Republic. And so this group settled on asking the Martian assembly to found what they dubbed the Republic of of Mars. Its form and structure and constitution would come in time, but for now at least, the principle of the thing was set. And so, at a session of the Martian assembly on August 14, 2250, Ivana Darby presented a three part referendum. First, shall Mars Division be abolished and replaced with the Republic of Mars? Second, shall a committee headed by Marcus Leopold produce a draft constitution for the assembly to debate and approve. And then third, shall the present heads of the soon to be former departments of Mars division form a leadership committee called the Stewards to guide the Republic of Mars until the ratification of a formal constitution. The yes vote was effectively unanimous, because again, now is not really the time to be dissenting from anything. And so, on August 14, 2250, the Republic of Mars was founded. They transmitted their existence to the people of Earth, where they were recognized by three Core and ignored by Omnicorps. Next week, a new phase of the Martian revolution truly begins. The refugee convoy will arrive at Mars and the formal organization of the Martian Navy will begin in earnest, as it was the considered opinion of most of the officers to not just sit back, but to instead push out and go on the offensive. With fronts in the corporate war breaking out all over Earth, they saw an opportunity to squeeze Omnicorp until it cracked completely. Plus, they all had friends and loved ones stranded back on Luna who could not simply be abandoned. There was nothing for the Martian Navy to fight around Mars. There was everything for the Martian Navy to fight back around Earth. Meanwhile, the constitutional debate about how to organize the new Republic of Mars would reopen the question about who was really a Martian, which would be fed further fuel as the Martians finally moved towards dealing with all the prisoners they had in the stockades, which would result first in the trial of Bruno October and the Earthlings, and then the trial of Mabel Dorr and the Earth Wor.
- [29:54]
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