Mankind was always fascinated by space. The infinity that extended in this cold, harsh environment was the last frontier our race had to travel through. And we effectively began our expansions.
Mankind wasn't torn by war then. We went through an era of peace and prosperity, an era where things finally began to become stable everywhere in the world. This "new" race to space was a sane competition between many nations -for scientific progress, and glory and fame.
But our Sol system only had that many planets to colonise, and soon, extravagant plans were drawn to extend our exploration outbound, toward the other systems...
We were thinking, Alpha Centauris, Barnards, we were thinking, Sirius B, Wolf and Lalande.
Scientists world-wide began on the development of a revolutionary hyperdrive. The first solid theories for the hyperpsace travel truly began to emerge while Sol system was colonised in its whole. The human race truly entered the space age.
Tensions was already rising between the nations when the Greek declared its own solution to outbound colonisation. A theory that only a few nations desired to venture in; cryosleep colony ship. Because of the high hasard risk, the long lenght of time to reach any destination, few invested in this unconventional, yet simple method.
Hence, in the beginning of a new era, taking the international community completely by surprise, the Greek nation launched the largest colonial vessel ever built from the Pluto orbital shipyard, setting off toward the unknown...
toward the brightest sun visible from our solar system: Sirius B.
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The lenght of the journey was estimated to be close to a century. Propelled by primitive hyperdrives (for at the time, the first generation of hyperdrive were invented, but not efficient enough to make an extra-solar journey in reasonable amount of time), the volunteers of this first human expedition outbound were composed of many scientists and military (for above everything, the program needed to be led by a strict discipline only the militia could provide), as well as every personnel a new colony needed; this included mere citizens who held profesionnal status as varied as cooks, teachers, farmers, etc. They were young men and women of equal numbers, chosen through a vigorous examination of competence and physical capacity. And of course, everyone of them needed to be able to reproduce among themselves - for ultimately, the Greek authority at the time dreamed to revive the old might of their people, even if it meant far away from the craddle of humanity.
An old dream from a people that still remembered and cherished the memories of an era, millenias ago, this was perhaps the best - and only, occasion for them to do so.
For, if the shadow of war was yet to be seen, the shadow of tension was clearly visible; the first outlines of the future Alliance and Coalition could be seen drawn by the ambitious politicians, a rise in nationalism world-wide was observed.
--
Not as advanced as the later sleeperships of the Alliance (ironically, the Alliance nor the Coalition will ever have the time or ressources to further develop hyperspace technology, and thus the reason why the Alliance remnants still had to flee their homeworld borrowing the idea from their greek predecessor: cryosleep technology), the greek sleeper ship was incredibly slower and its automated system wasn't trustable enough so by an interval of 10 years, a group of technicians (never the same twice) would be awakened to make an inspection and make sure the course set was still right. Then, they would go back to their frozen sleep for another few decades until it was their shift again. Thus, when the colony ship arrived at destination, these men became the eldest of the colony because their sleep wasn't constant.
In this trip of 100 years, everyone aged from 5 to 15 years, whereas the interrupted "guardians" sleep left them age up to 30, 35 years.
In hommage to these men sacrifice of over decades of their life for the welfare of all, they were held with high respect - for they preserved the dream of the colonist and the Greek nation, but also saw the long road that took them to their final home. This will later become an interesting part of the future neo-greek society, however, we shall come to this later.
--
The place where they finally landed wasn't exactly Sirius B, although it was within the immense' star sector. Without that much fuel to make a return trip home, the colonist had the choice to either land on a colonisable planet (the best event) or set home in orbit of another planet (a somewhat not-so enjoyable thought). Hence, when the awoken technician-guardians saw a seemingly habitable planet on their scanner range, they immediately changed course and dropped out of hyperspace.
It was a fairly beautiful jewel of pale blue sea and large islands. The concentration of air on the planet was somewhat different from that of Earth - but breathable and not too dangerous. They had the tools to perform some minor geo engineering, so the next generation would be living in an exact Earth-like atmosphere.
A first scan revealed primitive alien lifeforms - from animals to vegetations. A new fauna.
The chances of falling on such a near-perfect planet were slight, thought the colonist, but it seemed luck, god, or whatever was controlling human destiny, smiled upon them. And on this new planet which they named "Athens", was established the first human colony outside Sol system.
Meanwhile, on Earth, the shadow of warfare was showing up already...
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Planet Athens was made of 5 large, continental-sized islands, each located less or more close to the planet' equator. The twin sun (a white medium and a red dwarf) provided a hot temperature, and rain occurred often, especially near the coasts. For this reason, the first establishment of the neo-Athenians were close to the seas - not merely because it was refreshing from the hot and humid environment, but because agriculture could be practiced at a very rapid rate. 10 years passed by, and multiple colonies were established on all 5 islands in the coastal regions - much like the ancient Greece city-states.
The first step of colonisation having been accomplished with much success, it was decided to establish a civilian government to replace the military direction in order to transform the colony into a new world. There wasn't much complaints from the local militia, who didn't had much to do but serves as the law enforcement unit. As in a democracy that was the republic of Greece they've left behind, the Athenians attempted their own elections.
The colony had about 10 000 citizens by then, including the new borns.
However, the elections weren't satisfying to all; for already there were those who clinged for power, each colonies wishing to retain more freedom instead of a centralized government. This new generation of politicians convinced their people with such arguments that with more freedom, they could expand faster, or that a centralized government would create too much bureaucracy, slowing down their progress, etc.
Basically, hypothesis. But in the colony ship came many brillant men and women, and for some of them, power had never appeared so beautiful to their eyes on this new, pristine world where the craddle of the western culture was rebuilding itself.
Some already dreamed to see their name as one of the first foundators of Athens, the new human bastion lightyears away from Earth...
As such, the first election ended with a total failure, with the highest results (applicable for 5 parties over nearly 45) as 6.75%. A general accord was passed down, and it was decided that the new colonies (there were now 21 of them) would be self-governed for the time being, the people seemingly not yet ready to make a choice. It proved to be a wrong choice as each small colonies became isolated from each other, more than busy to expand its own land.
Of course, the first colony of Athens, Accropolis, was the most powerful; for it was developped first, and for it held the largest amount of developped land and the largest population, Accropolis became in no time, from a coastal farming colony, to a small, modern city (modernity is relative, as the colonist' technologies didn't evolved at the same rate as that of Earth. Meaning, a whole century with no technological advancement for the colonists.).
Accropolis was also the residence of the guardian-technicians (60 of them in total), who were now nearing the 100 years of age (if counting cryosleep, they would nearly be 2 hundred years old!). As such, they were often consulted by the colonists for their so-said, legendary, mystic wisdom. And indeed, these old men did looked wise and powerful, still wearing the clad white uniform of the guardian-technicians in rememberance of their role, and seemingly always reading - for books were one of the only activity available when your body was nearly 2 centuries old. And especially when one of your only entertainment during the long journey, were books.
Yes, these were books bought from Old Earth, recounting the history of the mighty Greek people so the colonists will never forget what were their roots.
And these old men were certainly impressed and proud of all this ancient history their people represented, a fact few even cared to remember when they launched from Pluto - for we know that as science advanced, humanity began to look in his future, and forgot his past history. (later, some Alliance historian makes hypothesis this might be partially a reason for the Alliance-Coalition war, which certainly held very strong ressemblance with the Cold War.)
And these old guardians began telling the people who came see them, the tales of an ancient Greece, a glorious empire so old no one remembered, they taught their people of the Great Philosophers, they recounted the epic battles fought by their people against a foreign mighty empire, against their own people, they talked of the gods, of Athens and Sparta - and so much, they began to believe this was how their new world should be.
Resurect the might of Greece as it once was, at the beginning of western civilisation.
--
Half a decade would pass as the planet' population grow exponentially - now, more than half a million inhabitants. It is past the time of the Guardians, each of them found their final resting place in a beautiful cemetery, built much in the architecture of ancient Greece. An architecture of white stone and beautiful statues of nudes found everywhere in the colony.
If an Earth tourist travelled to planet Athens, he would think it would be a replica of heaven, for this new world was truly beautiful, and the Athenians took care of the environment they colonised. However, the exotic beauty of the colonies didn't reflected their political situation. Definitively lacking unity, the colonies were nearly all a city-states scaled democratie, mostly corrupted and bickering with its neighbor. Only, Accropolis was led in a very strange fashion, for it was inspired by the tales of the Guardians, its populace gave birth to a council-like government, led by a group of elected citizens, judged to be virtuous and wise.
The following will briefly resume the complicated story of Planet Athens for the next half of a century, as it would be too long to recount the story of each and every city states (now numbering 112), all the political and military intrigues would take too long....
Because of the hundred independent colonies now existing on Athens, we will only name the important ones; namely they were the citizens of Acropolis, the origin-city, or the City of the Guardians; then there was the mighty Troy, its territory covering nearly a third of an entire island by itself; then there was Corinth, which was in fact a group of colonies close one to another unified under one name, and finally, Lacedaemon, a small colony north of Acropolis where most of the militia descendants established home - as it once was a small military base. Sons of Lacedaemonians were trained since their youth to honour the "warrior'" ways of their grand parents, and the influence of Spartan culture was proudly displayed in this city.
Due to the complexe nature of the first war, it is yet uncertain who, or which party started all, but generally it was accepted that the ambitious Acropolians, being the origin point of this whole new civilisation molded after their image (which ironically was itself molded after their ancestors millenias ago) began an all out conflict, assimilating various small colonies under its flag. It didn't began as much with weapons as with threats, but when Corinth and Troy became aware of this hostile invasion, they joined in their own agenda of conquest - an agenda barely denied by their respective authority. All three power hungry colonies began rallying more and more colonies under their flag until nearly all became either satelite nations, allied in league or was simply submitted through weapons.
Note that Lacedaemon decided to join force with Acropolians, but their objectives weren't fully clear to all; among their requests, that the military operations be led by their people. To most Athens people, Lacedaemon lived a near-primitive lifestyle of warmongers who fought only for the thrill of a fight. At such simple demands, Acropolis agreed and received a hundreds of the finest soldiers on all the planet at their service.
In time of despair, the league of Corinth and Troy saw their own demise and allied among each other reluctantly. And there ended the first conflict, separating the new world of Athens in 2;
from north to south in the central islands, Acropolis was the master of 67 colonies, while Troy and Corinth surrounded the super-colony from west and east with roughly 45 cities but larger population.
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The first few years of this new domination was all about bloody coup and assasination, murder attempts and double crossing alliances. Corinth and Troy turned against each other as often as they could until the Acropolian (but mostly, the Lacedaemon threat) menace became too strong. In the subdued colonies, riot was common everywhere as the unifiers loyalist (for there were those who supported an entirely unified planet) and the independentists foughts to the early hours of the morning. These were years of fear, and it seemed like whole Athens became a death trap, the once pristine white marble of the buildings were now stained in the crimson stain of blood as fire burned its way along the uncontrolled rage of human violence.
This highly unstable situation led to another major crisis, named the Thebes incident.
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Thebes was a small starport city in the southern hemisphere, situated right between the western Corinth and the eastern Troy. Note that, starport by the time were mostly used to ferry orbital satellites and some small orbital laboratory facilities. Space exploration didn't even began yet, always slowed down by political trouble.
Thebes was officially under the control of Acropolis, although an accord was passed down that since the city was situated exactly in the middle of both Corinth and Troy, and as such, close to Acropolis as well, which was located slightly a bit more north and east of the city, Thebes was to be a neutral city for future diplomatic congresses - for there was still hope to resolve all in a civilized manner after all.
That day, a large group of over 233 rebels from a colony under Acropolis' flag fled away, hijacking a shuttle craft, and headed with the little amount of fuel they had, for Thebes. They hoped to be protected by the neutrality of the territory, and their expectation came true, when the Acropolian fighter crafts came close to the city, it was already surrounded by Corinthian and Troyan air armadas. Followed suit a long and tedious argumentation with all parties involved, but neither Corinthian and Troyan wanted to leave the Acropolian take over even a centimeter of the neutral land, while Acropolian would never tolerate rebel activists to escape alive.
The conference would last 3 days and end in total failure when the Troyan fleet advanced slowly to push back the Acropolians, only to be answered by a salvo of torpedoes.
And thus the Thebes Incident initiated the second large conflict of Athens, plunging the whole planet in a state of open warfare.
Unlike the first conflict, no cease-fire treaty or peace treaty was offered, instead the war continued for nearly 3 generations, from large scaled naval battle to guerilla styled combat, everything was fair game.
What first began as a large scale conflict was finally reduced to smaller regional skirmishes, then reduced to ocasionnal incrusion in enemy territory. Athens, fully split in 3 (for Corinth and Troy weren't truly united anymore, but merely sandwiched one same enemy), was in the midst of a tiresome battle no one wanted to continue, yet no one wanted to abandon.
Meanwhile, advancement in space technology progressed slowly, but ironically, at about a same pace for every 3 super nations involved, since espionnage was so widely spread, the (relatively) primitive spaceships of Acropolis, Corinth and Troy all looked the same with only minor changes. Slowly, warfare included fighter crafts, bombers, then came in the heavier gunships, cruisers and then it was the battleships entering the scene, all these capable of hovering in a planetary atmosphere - for the objective was the planet. But one thing was settled, land warfare nearly all but disappeared or so from Athens, instead it was about planetary bombardment and atmospheric fleet battle.
A fleet of Acropolian battleships
At that time, a young Strategos (our equivalent of a fleet admiral or a general) of Lacedaemon by the name of Solon, fought by the side of Acropolis as they did since the beginning of the conflicts. Brillant strategist, he led his wings of Hoplite fighters from victory to victory - so powerful his success was, his dual Strategos (for there were always 2 Strategos for one fleet) attempted an assasination attempt out of jealous envy but perished instead by his own dagger; for Solon was mighty of the mind but of the body, too.
On the other side, it was the Strategas Hellenia, daughter of the King of Troy (Troy became an absolute monarchy with his official dissociation from Corinth), that led with brillance her own forces against those of the heroic Solon.
The Gods of the Old, some say, created these two legendary human beings at one same epoch - for they will indeed, become legends we will remember even today.
Solon and Hellenia will encounter each others only twice during the war, for so powerful each was, the other side feared to throw them against one another. The first time hapenned quickly, but already this encounter locked the fate of these two young people who were now bound to be together. Here's the tale of Solon and Hellenia during the Second Athenian Wars;
By an early morning of yet golden sky, Solon led his mighty force in an incursion against the invincible Ilos Fortress that protected the access to Troy. Trusting his divine skills, the Council of Acropolis sent their Hero against this bastion thought impossible to take over.
By Ilos, stood Hellenia, who taken by surprise, deployed her own fleet hastily. Her indeniable intelligence saves the better part of her men, but Solon would manage to cause the annihilation of thousands of men, giving him a breach to invade from within the Fortress. Hellenia, torn between recapturing the fortress or saving the life of the men that remained to her, finally decided to personally charge within and affront the invader, at the risk of her own life. And seeing her heroic courage, none stood behind to save his skin, all hailed her bravery, which would later be sung for eternity.
Inside, it was a close combat; so to kill efficiently, men abandonned their rifles to expose the steel of their blades: in such small environment, it was more efficient than sotisphicated weaponnery. A bloodbath it was, and it was a wonder how Hellenia managed to find Solon in the midst of the chaos, but no time was wasted on questionning destiny, for they immediately locked in a dangerous fight.
It is unclear who had the upperhand, for both Solon and Hellenia would later affirm they fought a duel in which such concerns never passed in their mind.
It is unknown either how the fight suddenly stopped, but Solon became aware the Troyan reinforcement were on their way, and within minutes, Acropolian and Lacedaemonian soldiers evacuated the fortress.
Both side claimed victory
An assumption that wasnt shared by the Strategos Hellenia and Solon.
For, certainly more than a sword duel hapenned within the walls of Ilos.
Nothing was more powerful than Love, and you probably have guessed it, so classical the outcome would have been when two great enemies' eyes meet each other and find the indescriptible little something that bond two individuals forever til death.
The second encounter of Ilos was fought by, for the Acropolian side, by Stratego Soron, Stratego Damokles and Stratego Lazarus, and on the Troyan side, Stratego Hellenia, Stratego Metrophanes, Stratego Pankratios and Stratego Zenon. Over 10 000 crafts were counted for Acropolis and 14 000 for Troyan, and second Ilos encounter would later become the largest planetary atmosphere war on Planet Athena ever fought.
Roughly 1.2 millions of men would have been involved in this large scaled battle.
Against a largely outnumbering force, Acropolian and its allied forces started at a clear disadvantage, constantly pushed away by the massive defensive Troyan fleet. However, Stratego Damokles would manage to stretch the Troyan fleet so much by dispersing his fleet widely in an illusion of an all out attack against Troy itself, an action that would allow Stratego Soron and Lazarus to penetrate the enemy lines.
And once again, the strategy was set to take over the fortress as soon as possible, but Stratego Hellenia awaited this time her opponent within the fort, sword drawn.
Outside, in the sky where molten steel was being rained over the lands and oceans, where flesh of slain men flew wildly ablaze, in the hell of warfare, against the will of the Strategos involved, the battle turned into a war of attrition so well entrenched each side were on their positions, the Troyan using an effective encriclement method that was tiresome to maintain while the Acropolians used the mass of Ilos itself to protect themselves.
Metrophanes of Troy was the first to perish as his battleship was destroyed by Lazarus. Subsequently, Lazarus, who advanced too far within the enemy formations, was slaughtered with its entire group by Zenon, who died in an attempt to repair the damage inflicted on their formation. Stratego Pankratios would finally charge recklessly in an attempt to gain all honour of defeating the enemy fleet, but doesnt breach Damokles' ingeniusity.
Meanwhile, a truly planet-wide war errupted, opposing Troy and Accropolis satelite nations and both superpowers directly, while Corinth, doubting both side and unwilling to risk his power - which has declined considerably with time, decided to stay out of the conflict.
Hellenia, on her side, would seriously wound Solon, but taking the young heroe in pity, didn't ended his life. Soron' hoplites, seeing her grace, apparently stopped combat as they escorted their fallen leader and the Troyan princess.
Aggresive Pankratios and Damokles would finally rush the remannt of their respective fleet against each other, but would only achieve in total mutual destruction resulting in their own death.
But the battle ended as the message was transmitted that Solon has fallen, and from then on, no shots, no swords, would ever be drawn near Ilos, except for one last time.
--
Acropolis and Troy entered full degeneration as true chaos demolished everything on both side. Second Ilos Encounter, which would be extended nearly planet wide, would last 2 weeks, that is exactly the time required for Solon to recover sufficiently from his wound, and to pronunce Acropolis' failure in their mission.
The Council of Acropolis, seeing their best Strategos and their Achilles fall along with the bulk of their fleet, committed suicide, while the King of Troy would be assasinated, by the final will of the corrupted men, a dark and sly assassin by the name of Poison.
And thus, these events will lead to the beginning of a new era...
The Hellenian League.
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