Atlantean–Lunar Crisis

The Atlantean–Lunar Crisis was an international and interplanetary conflict primarily involving the Lunar United Nations and the Atlantean Station Republic beginning in the late 2180's and claiming the lives of over 810,000 people.
==Background==
 October 31, 2000, was the last time all of humanity was together on Earth. Since then there was always at least one person in space, with that number set to multiply many times over in the next two centuries. By 2200 AD, 30-35 million humans and AI lived and worked in space, with half of that living in Earth's Orbit and on and around Earth's Moon. First colonized in the 2050s, Earth's Moon was home to a permanent population of just over 11 million, with just over 2 million of that living on Selene station, first built in the 2120s. Six major space habitats existed in Earth's Orbit by 2200, the oldest being Voyager station and Pioneer station, first built in the late 2020s. Axiom-II was launched in 2031, to replace the ailing International Space Station. It would maintain a constant presence of 36-24 people aboard, the second-largest of its time, behind Voyager which could house up to 400 passengers. Axiom-II would be partially deorbited in the late 2090's.
In 2057 the hulking Lodestar station was launched, able to house a whopping 18,764 people which consisted primarily of space tourists. In 2089, making use of the first space elevator over Japan, Gaia was launched, beginning construction in the 2050s. It would house a permanent habitat roughly 400 km above the Earth's surface of around 800,000 civilians. This would be surpassed in 2118, when the American States launched the Atlantis habitat. At around 162 km in length by 27.3 km in diameter - or 4,430 square km - Atlantis was a nation-state unto itself, housing 4.2 million and Atlantopolis - a city of 2.6 million, around 950-1,200 km above the Earth's surface, Atlantis was tethered to a space elevator with loci in San Francisco, Mexico City and Ober Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Built with much help from the Lunar industry, Gaia and Atlantis would face significant territorial claims from the Moon Lobby by the late-2160s, early-2170s, with Lunar claims extending from between 50 and 200 km on Atlantean territory, and up to 12 on Gaian territory.
By 2200, 16 million humans and AI lived beyond the Moon, with 8 million of those people living on Venus and Mars, 5.88 million on and around Venus and 2.2 million on and around Mars. Less than 1,000,000 humans and transhumans had been beyond the Jovian Moons by the 2200s (excluding extrasolar descendants living in the Gar, Fomalhaut and Epsilon Eridani systems at roughly 1.8-2.7 million, 500,000 and 4.2 million respectively), with the largest demographics beyond the Asteroid Belt being AI and transhumans that had been genetically enhanced to live in those environments. The population of the Asteroid Belt was over 370,000, with 254,000 on Ceres and Pallas, most of them on Ceres. The Axis of Martian Republics and the Jovian Union shared competing claims over Pallas and Vesta, and the fate of over 100,000 humans and AI were on the line by the 2190s and it could affect Jovian-Martian relations for decades if not centuries to come.
==First orbital combat==
The first combat in late 2211 would be a disaster for the E7 forces as the first Lunar-aligned AI from Mars and Venus arrive and begin a surprise attack on the Earthlings and Atlanteans. Losing 4 warships in the opening salvo of drone attacks, the pro-Atlantean forces were able to launch a successful counterattack forcing the enemy vessels to retreat with minimal casualties in Atlantean space. The situation within the O'Neill cylinder itself is not so tame, with more than 5,000 civilian casualties in sleeper cell terrorist attacks. 
The Lunar government had been radicalized by pan-Lunar terrorist attacks throughout the mid-to-late 2100's, and had thus resorted to extreme measures themselves, up to and including state-sponsored terrorist attacks against would-be terrorists on the Moon. This has led to comparisons being drawn between the Lunar UN and the State of Israel in the 21st, both being societies wrought by extremist xenophobic and robophobic attacks forced into extremist countermeasures by their enemies. 
==Conflict of 2213==
First established with the Armstrong Treaty drafted in August 2149 and ratified in January 2153 as the Armstrong-Asteroids Treaty is a collective and mutual defense intergovernmental organization headquartered in Beijing, China of the Asia-Pacific Treaty Organization - the inspiration for the alliance along with NATO - with the goal of peace and security while preventing interplanetary conflict in the 22nd century. The original signatories to the treaty are Mars - seeking to prevent another interplanetary Martian War - along with Venus, Earth and its moon. Although there would be more conflicts on the Red Planet, the organization would - for the most part - succeed in its mission to prevent interplanetary conflict in cis-Asteroid space. 
In the late 2180's, Lunar territorial claims affecting nearly 2 million people in the Atlantean Station Republic would escalate into a full-blown annexation as LUN forces "Trojan Horse" their way inside the O'Neill cylinder. In a conflict that claims over 1,000 in total, mostly civilians, all of the Solar Republics save Earth condemn the LUN's tactics, damaging the E7's reputation as a neutral arbiter of interplanetary law. In what would come to be called the Atlantean–Lunar Crisis, already the conflict had become one of the deadliest in the history of space warfare, a disaster for the reputation of CATO as protecting civilian lives. Later, beginning in the Winter of 2211, an outbreak of violence would unfold once again between pro-Earth and pro-independence secessionists. 
In a conflict leading to the involvement of multiple nation-states, Atlantis would become the site of conflict once more, even deadlier than the last, in which nearly 5,000 people are killed instigated this time by dozens of sleeper cells penetrating into the habitat over the course of decades. The E7 and interplanetary support of Atlantis against the Lunar fleet is instantaneous. Sanctions are levied against the LUN and a reassessment of the CATO terms takes place. Although heavily-outnumbered, the Lunar fleet inflicts heavy casualties on Earthling forces, primarily with the assistance of an Yx starship, a terrifying mountainous instrument of trans-temporal warfare which inflicts a devastating defeat on CATO forces in the 17 February 2213 orbital attack on Patagonia, penetrating orbital defenses and killing over 100,000 people instantaneously in an explosion just shy of a teraton in yield. Another 700,000 would die in the fallout and the planet would be subjected to over a year of nuclear winter, effecting agriculture the world over.
It is unknown exactly how the Earthling fleet was able to defeat the hulking Yx warship, but most available information points to a SWORD team possibly hijacking Yx, Zetan or Programmer technology - all of which possessed time-travel qualities and features - to go back in time and defeat the ship's pilot, a disembodied Yx-controlled Jovian nervous system, thus removing the threat that the Lunar-aligned Yx warship posed to Earth's defenses. It is unknown if this exact series of events unfolded, however, as evidence still exists of an Yx attack on Earth, despite the supposed temporal methods that were used in the elimination of the Yx.
Category:Events