Update! Here is ye ole new and complete SCRA History, written from the PoV of... Someone.
The Coalition. A name that has inspired fear and terror for followers of the Alliance since time immemorial. A name around which the Alliance mind conjures red stars, hammers and sickles, and blood. A name so feared, in fact, that in House Liberty, mentioning the name in unguarded conversation can lead to a quick trip to a prison planet; no trial, no parole. No other name has plagued the Alliance for so long, and no other shall plague it again, for this time, the Coalition will not let its prey escape so easily.
The Sirius Coalition Revolutionary Army, the fighting arm of the Coalition, is a secretive and dangerous breed of killers. They fight for freedom and justice for all people, for equality among men and women alike, for plunder, for their uniform, for their friends, their families, their loved ones. They fight for the fight alone; for there is nothing else like the thrill of sudden death in vacuum, for their enemies, or themselves.
The SCRA was formed, many years ago, as an exploratory force of the Coalition survivors in the Sirius Sector. Those survivors were the descendants of those who detonated the charges aboard the Hispania, crippling it and nearly denying the Alliance of a precious house. After the charges were planted, these brave fighters jumped ship and landed on Nova Terra, known to the Alliance as Gran Canaria. After five hundred years of small developments and hard work, the Coalition decided to strike back into space, and so the SCRA was formed. From its humble beginnings as a dozen recon craft, similar to modern gunboats, The SCRA quickly adapted into fighters and carrier ships, as pirates, the Alliance, and Nomads began once again to plague them.
The SCRA, ever since that first change to a fighter-based fleet, has stayed that way. No massive fleets of capital ships, no gargantuan floating installations. The SCRA has prided itself on having the best fighter pilots and tactics in the sector. However, shortly before the modern era, the SCRA suffered an upset that would turn it from a desperate force whos only goal was self-preservation into a ravaging crusade of communism.
The leadership of the Coalition Remnant in Sirius, commonly known as the Remnant, had been a council of nine members, chosen by that body, each from different areas of industry or agriculture, with two members representing the military, and one representing the Commissariat, who were charged with ensuring that the Remnant didnt stray from the true path of Communism. All members were known as Chancellors, excluding the representative of the Commissariat, who held the title of High Commissar. There was a Chairman, a Party Secretary, and a Vice-Chairman. The three of them, in theory, held the leadership of the Remnant in their hands. However, of all the chancellors, only the High Commissar held the power of veto on any matter. This, effectively, meant that the Commissariat held ultimate power over the Remnant, even if they often chose not to exercise it.
A dozen years ago, a new man was appointed to the position of High Commissar, a man with ambition. High Commissar Aeon, who held limited experience in the military, as a gunboat commander, and who had later transferred to the Commissariat, where he served in increasingly key points. Shortly after he took over as High Commissar, he pushed through the promotion of a key ally, then Acting-Commodore McIntosh.
McIntosh was, at the time, one of the few professional military officers serving in the SCRA. Born Bretonian, he had been a Commander in the Bretonian Armed Forces. Although not from a noble family, he was well respected in the BAF as a combat commander, before the day he snapped and began butchering members of his flotilla in a fit of belligerent rage. Nearly eight hundred pilots and crewmen were massacred by his destroyer, the BAF-Terra, before he fled into the Dublin system, and vanished. He re-appeared several months later, leading a counterattack against BAF incursions into Coalition space. His destroyer was repainted in deep red, with the corpses of those among his crew who had opposed him lashed to the hull.
Aeon saw in McIntosh a man who possessed such ambition as himself, and would refuse to let anything get in his way. Aeon had McIntosh promoted to Admiral, and then created a new position, Grand Admiral, leader of all Coalition Military Forces, which included the Naval Forces, the Land Arm, and the Sirius Coalition Marines. McIntosh filled this new role well, better than his patron had expected. He opened recruiting to anyone who wished to join, lifted the restrictions on ideology, and acquired the newest and best equipment for his men. Skilled mechanics and pilots flocked to the fighter corps, mercenaries and defectors swaggered into marine and army barracks. The SCM, or Sirius Coalition Marines, had been more of a Military Police force than anything, maintaining order on the capital ships and stations. Now, they grew into a devastating strike force, including Marine Drop-Troop Assault, Marine Recon, and Marine Deep-space Boarding Troops. Every man and woman among them was a fighter of the highest calibre, and would stop at nothing to accomplish the goals of the Coalition.
Due to McIntoshs rebuilding and refitting of the SCM into an elite force, most of its members held a deep and personal loyalty to him, and this would aid him in later days
Aeon, with his newfound power, persuaded the Council to switch from a passive defensive role to the aggressor, striking into the Sirius sector to confront pirates, terrorists, and the corrupt houses alike. However, hed shown his hand too soon, and quickly the SCRA was pushed back. Nova Terra was under weekly assault, and even the new Dreadnought Class capital ships, Terra II and Aeons Dreadnought, couldnt stop the mighty Alliance war machine grinding at the Coalition fleet. The Terra II, McIntoshs personal flagship, was sighted in New London, battling the Sirius Federations extensive fleet, with hordes of Bretonian fighters picking at the massive hull. McIntosh, in the midst of the battle, tapped into the Alliances inter-house communication system, and sent the message that would signal the start of a new revolution, and place a reward of over one billion Sirius Credits on his head
Brothers and sisters of Sirius! Heed my words, and heed them well. I am McIntosh, and I fight not for myself, not for profit or glory, nor for any house or group. I fight for you, The People, for your freedoms and rights! Join me, join the Glorious Revolution, and you will be remembered for time immemorial, for your name will be recorded in the annals of the Revolution! Oppose us, and you will be remembered only as one of the millions who died by the sword of The Coalition as we brought peace and unity to this sector
I jest not, people of Sirius. The Revolution is at hand, and if youre not with us, youre against us. There will come a time when I will not allow you to come over to the winning side, so do so now, before that time arrives, for it is soon. Join us, join me, or die. Be assured of that, you WILL die, whether it is in the blackness of space, choking on vacuum, or in the arms of your loved ones when the marines burst into your home and perform instant justice for your crimes against the people.
Goodbye, people of Sirius. I will see you again, one way or another
Immediately after that transmission was made, McIntosh vanished, taking with him his most trusted retainers, and a goodly portion of the fleet and SMC. Aeon, believing his Admiral had been killed in some kind of freakish accident or ambushed by Alliance or outlaw forces, began to create a series of compromises and treaties, ending (temporarily) the war with the Alliance, and banding himself in with several large criminal organizations, hoping to create a balance of power among the lot, with himself holding a seat at the table.
But McIntosh hadnt been killed. Hed taken his fleet to a system named Galloric. Galloric was a hellish place, full or explosive hydrogen clouds, roving aliens, and little habitable space. They made landfall on the sole planet, Gallaire, habitable only for a twelve hundred kilometre strip along the equatorial belt. Much of the surface of the planet was water, made both undrinkable and impassable by the presence of a variety of hard metals, and gargantuan, freakish animals that feed on each other in that polluted, worldwide ocean. In that godless place, the Sirius Coalition Revolutionary Army trained. To this day, Gallaire is the only place where a Sirius Coalition Marine may complete his or her Basic Training, and it is the place where theyre all buried, if any body remains. The only ships that pass to and from this system can be used for no other purpose, if they deviate from the proscribed course they will self destruct, and their crews know it when they sign on. The location of the Galloric system is still the most closely guarded secret of the SCRA.
Now, McIntosh, although possessing large numbers of both Marines and Fighter pilots, did not have the support of the majority of the civilian members of the Coalition Remnant. Aeons control over the media of Nova Terra was too complete, and the planet itself was bristling with everything Aeon could pull in. Mercenaries guarding the true people of the Coalition! As if anyone who fought for a quick buck could be trusted with such a position
For years, rumours had abounded within the fleet of another group calling themselves The Coalition being spotted in border worlds, firing strange guns from stranger ships and retreating into blackness. However, these ships, although powerful, had high emissions, slow speeds, and all the other distinctive features of old, old star ships from the Alliance-Coalition wars of the Sol Sector. Suspecting some kind of Alliance trickery, McIntosh dispatched one of the oldest and meanest men he possessed, a man named Totenkopt. Totenkopt had been with the Revolution since he was thirty seven, nearly thirty years ago. Although not an exceptional fighter pilot, he was the best scout the SCRA possessed, and with his hand-picked band of fighters, he left for parts unknown.
Meanwhile, McIntoshs SCRA trained, sabotaged, and infiltrated. Within three months, he believed he had the resources to take back control, and restore the Revolution to its rightful path. Then, Christmas came early
Totenkopt returned. Short a few pilots, but leading a transport, a transport seen only in old Holo records of the Alliance-Coalition wars. The Transport was called the Comrade Lenin, and aboard it were the delegates of the old Coalition. Totenkopt had followed one of those mysterious raiding parties, taken note of their systems and ships, and decided that this was no ruse; they really were using ancient Coalition TX-14 FireFly fighter/bombers. Those ships had been nearly out of date before the saboteurs left the Sol system, so they had obviously not come from Sol to aid us. No, this was something else.
Apparently, the Coalition had dispatched two semi-sleeper ships, the Volgograd and the Jiangxi, crewed by thousands of loyal communists. They had no knowledge of the Saboteurs, and having arrived in Sirius approximately six hundred years after the first house was established, didnt have the resources and technology to become more than a shadow of their former selves. Although the Volgograd and the Jiangxi were powerful fighting vessels in their own right, the Coalition Database had been sabotaged, deleted from their records before they reached Sirius, and so their only other spaceships were the wing of FireFlys, and half a dozen transports of the Comrade class.
However, they had the thing McIntosh needed most, in spades: Believers. People devoted to the Communist ideal, people willing to fight and die against the hated Alliance. Men he could put in transports, in spaceships, in fighters and bombers and cruisers, and smash Aeons fleet to ashes. The leaders of the old Coalition were more than willing to absorb themselves and their followers into McIntoshs fleet, although many of their units remained intact for the meantime, to give the Coalition fighters time to adapt to the idea of fighting alongside former Alliance men, flying Alliance craft, and shooting, for the moment, their brother communists.
McIntosh, after scant weeks taken to train and equip the thousands of new men, sped straight to Nova Terra, in Omega 49. The Terra II rode at the crest of a Red Wave that consumed all before it, from freighter to battleship, and as they reached the planet, fierce fighting exploded throughout the system. The Sirius Coalition Marines, led by Brigadier General Bigeard, landed in force on Nova Terra, and slaughtered any and all members of Aeons army. Two thousand loyalist marines against a planet, and they won. They won so completely that before the space battle had begun to wind down, the orbital defence batteries had changed their direction of fire from McIntosh to Aeon, crewed by men newly loyal to the Grand Admiral, and held there under the guns of the Marines.
McIntosh, with his new flood of Coalition pilots and crewmen, sent every ship that could fly, and some that barely could, into the brawl. Holos taken in that battle show a weapon-less barge towing weapons platforms behind it, a cone of fire spreading from around the craft. One of Aeons pilots, with life support failing and not a gun left mounted, rammed his ship into the nose of the transport, sending a blast of fire straight through out the engines. The eight hundred SCM boarders that had been kept out of the planetary fray were sent spinning through the laser filled blackness to crash into the sides of Aeons capital ships, emerging into the interiors spitting death and blood at all in their way. Gunboats and fighters fought their own private duels between Aeons battleships and McIntoshs Terra II, pausing only to fire a torpedo into an unshielded flank.
McIntosh took the day. Somehow, outnumbered and outgunned, he won. Aeons dreadnought was a smashed wreck, and the Terra II wasnt much better. Aeon himself was brought before the Grand Admiral, and after days of brutal torture, was left insane, and strapped to the front of the Terra II before McIntosh slammed it into the Planetform operation on Harris, in Bretonia. It was a gesture of finality, for the Coalition would never be split again. With the technology of the SCRA, and the resources, manpower, and overwhelming work effort of the old Coalition survivors behind him, he would be literally unstoppable.
Soon, the Old Coalitions planets, Novy Leningrad and New Jiangxi, were opened to the denizens of Nova Terra. Pleased to have found such a defendable refuge for his people, McIntosh moved almost all of them to the Socialist paradise provided by the workers of the Old Coalition. Now, only a warrior-filled garrison and a training establishment remain, with a small support population of civilians. The People of the Revolution were safe.
McIntosh made war once more, cutting a swathe through the Alliance, and continues to as this record is made. I was there for all of it, and I watch it still. I am no man, no machine, no alien. I am all of it, and none of it. You will meet me later, when your rifle clicks empty and falls to the floor, when the Marines blow open your door and throw you to the ground, when Red Squadron blasts off your wings and leaves you spinning in the void.
You know who I am. You just dont want to admit it.
![[Image: Coalition-sig.png]](http://i926.photobucket.com/albums/ad103/cplydon/Coalition-sig.png)