...and yet as they surrounded the heart of the Alliance, that which would eventually cause the GTA to triumph over its enemies was born, in the Altair system. Their ship destroyed, a group of Vasudan refugees had evacuated to a planet in Altair, where they discovered ruins that were neither Terran, nor Vasudan, nor Shivan in origin. And in these ruins they discovered that which would end up saving the Alliance from destruction - the knowledge that in subspace, the Shivans' shields did not work... and into subspace, they can be tracked.

The GTA very nearly missed its chance. The Lucifer evaded GTA attempts to destroy it in the Sirius-Delta Serpentis jump node, and so the Alliance had but one opportunity left to destroy the Lucifer and save Earth from the fate of Vasuda Prime - while the Lucifer was making the jump to Sol. The consequences for failure would have been immense, but thankfully a small squadron of pilots managed to engage and destroy the Lucifer in subspace before it could arrive in Sol and become nigh-on invulnerable once more.

However, the destruction of the Lucifer in the subspace node damaged it so that the node became completely and utterly unusable. Too unstable even for subspace communications to get through, Sol was cut off from the rest of the Alliance. Worse still, when the news was broken to civilians still nervous over the (no longer) imminent Shivan invasion, panic and civil unrest suddenly cropped up everywhere. An already battered and bruised 1st Fleet was forced into a police role as civilian vessels suddenly turned on the GTA and Earth.

Sol quickly degenerated into nationalistic chaos. The first instance was of the GTA task force sent to evacuate the Neptunian science colony being thwarted first by those they were sent to rescue, then by ships purporting to be from Jupiter who claimed the science station for themselves, and then finally by more ships from Neptune coming to the rescue of the beleaguered scientists. Soon after Jupiter declared independence from the Galactic Terran Alliance, reverting to its old pre-Alliance name of the Jovian Coalition.

Following initial strikes against secondary installations, 1st Fleet prepared a full-scale invasion of Jupiter in order to clamp down on these rebellious feelings throughout Sol once and for all. Unfortunately, as they were about to make the jump to Jupiter, Martian guerrillas staged a surprise attack and took out several of 1st Fleet's cruisers, greatly weakening the loyalists' offensive power. The Terra, 1st Fleet's flagship, crawled back to Earth slowly as GTA forces across the system were ambushed and fled back home to Earth.

Greatly diminished, GTA Command decided to try and even the playing field a bit. With only a few cruisers and a heavily-damaged destroyer to work with, Earth could not withstand an assault from the now-independent rebel planets, and so the plan was to 'bleed the enemy white' by taking out as many of their ships as possible, using their pilots' superior skill and armaments to do so. The hope was to prevent the rebels from attacking Earth due to a simple lack of firepower. However, the plan didn't work - the rebels gathered together as many ships as they could, in the name of eliminating a common enemy, and launched an assault against the Terra, now in orbit around Earth.

Thankfully, where the superior pilot training of the GTA had not helped previously, it did help here now. The Terra and her escort wiped out the rebel fleet in a massive battle that saw the deaths of many pilots and cruiser crews. With their fleets all but destroyed, be it by the GTA or by the various (other) rebel powers, a cease-fire was signed between the GTA and the various powers, with Mars, one of the more prominent rebel powers along with Jupiter, acting as the main focus of the treaty.

Although Earth would be completely isolated from the other planets, left to suffocate in its lack of any resources left to use, it would be left alone. This would prove to be a fatal mistake...'

Excerpt from TP Andersen's 'The Sol System 2335-2372'
