The Gran Canarian Army (GCA for short) is a militant and revolutionary movement that was formed shortly after the bloody Bretonian conquest of planet Gran Canaria in the Omega-49 system. The movement's forces consist mainly of Zoners native to Omega-49 and the planet therein as well as outsiders who had considered Gran Canaria their home prior to the Bretonian invasion.

The violent and unlawful nature of the Gran Canarian Army has earned it bad reputation among some Zoner circles that believe diplomacy to be the proper way to handle the situation regarding their now occupied planet. In return the GCA considers them as traitors to the idea of freedom and self-governance that the Zoners represent.

The GCA's zone of influence is highly focused on Gran Canaria (hence their name) and the Omega-49 system itself. Operations outside of this area are rarely ones of aggression, but rather to spread propaganda as well as to secure logistic shortages that the movement is facing. Inside the limits of Omega-49 the policy of "yield no ground" is often promoted by the revolutionaries, albeit in reality due to their shortages of combat assets this is often far from the reality due to the uneven strength of the two sides in the conflict.

In their fight against the Occupational Forces, the GCA has not shied away from using terrorist tactics such as burning and bombing of buildings associated with the Bretonian Crown as well as murder of civilians, considered associates or moles of the Bretonian Occupational Government. They have also voiced their threat to assassinate Governor-General Commodore Elizabeth Hall, should the Bretonians not agree to their demands for a free and Zoner Gran Canaria.

Origins

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The 21st December of 826A.S. was a dark day for the Zoners of Gran Canaria. The Kingdom of Bretonia, pressured by the Gallic advance from the Taus, proclaimed the annexation of Gran Canaria in the name of the Bretonian Crown. The natives of the planet were given mere minutes to prepare for the conquest from the incoming Stirling fleet bringing over 1.8 million soldiers. Initial resistance by any Zoners, Mollys or Corsairs planetside was quickly crushed by the much better organized and pre-planned annexation forces. The Coalition's betrayal of the Zoners was another stab into the back of the then peaceful Zoner population of Gran Canaria.


Seeing the hopelessness of the situation, a lot of the Zoner groups and factions quickly gave up and accepted the fate of Gran Canaria as a lost cause. This form of defeatism and pacifism albeit was not adopted by all of the Gran Canarian population. Together with some of the Mollys and Corsairs that still remained planetside, some Zoners formed rebellion units that continued to resist Bretonian authority. By early 828A.S. a lot of these units were united under the singular banner of the provisional Gran Canarian Army.

With each passing day the crackdown by the Occupational Forces of Bretonia on any resistance on Gran Canaria forced a lot of GCA members and sympathizers to flee the planet and move their resistance from the planet's surface to the cold and vast vacuum of space.

Assets and tactics

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Unlike the Bretonian Occupational Forces, most of the GCA's assets are re-purposed civilian tools, vehicles and machinery. This handicap when it comes to hardware has forced the only feasible approach of resistance to be guerrilla tactics. The GCA avoids direct conflict with the bulk of the Bretonian forces and instead picks on less defended targets of opportunity with the aim to mainly cause material damage to the Bretonian Crown with the hopes that the Occupational Government of Gran Canaria would reconsider the further colonization of the planet financially unfeasible for the Kingdom's current post-war economy.


Much like their planetary counterpart the space division of the Gran Canarian Army also focuses on hit and run tactics against Bretonian logistics as well as lightly defended combat assets. Due to their shortage of man and firepower the GCA does not look away from siding with foreign forces hostile to the Crown, such as the Corsairs and the Mollys. The Coalition while now hostile to the Bretonians again is still remembered as backstabbers that betrayed them when the invasion began due to their interest in evicting the Corsair influence from the system. As such the GCA is much more reluctant to side with the socialists of Omega-52.