The Hellenian League

[Xing]

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.

TO BE CONTINUED

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