Ceres

**Ceres** is a dwarf planet and the largest object in the Solar Belt. At some point, after the Storm devastated the solar system in 2123, Ceres became the headquarters of the allied pirate gangs operating out from the nearby asteroids.

## Pre-Storm history

Early in human space exploration Ceres was studied to determine the plausability of the dwarf planet supporting life. By the establishment of the United Earth Council, Ceres had become the site of a planet-wide mining operation and strip-mined of its precious minerals. In addition to the mining, Ceres' supplies of water were exported off-world and converted into a usable form to sustain the growing colonies. Several attempts at building a permanent settlement on Ceres were launched by the UEC but ultimately all failed. The dwarf planet's temporary governors were chosen for the position due to previous failures in their careers.

Jupiter had a profitable trading system with Ceres before the Jupiter Revolution. In exchange for billions of gallons of water every month the dwarf planet would receive a shipment of military hardware. But when a glitch in the engines of the frigates and carriers Jupiter had delivered malfunctioned and blew up in the middle of a pirate attack, Ceres refused to give any more water to the gas planet. Weeks went by before negotiation offers were sent out and by that time it was too late. Seeing the democratic system as weak and inefficient at keeping its citizens protected and safe, a revolutionary group staged a coup doing away with the bureaucracies that couldn't deliver them water before thousands had died. In its place a militaristic society headed by a Warrior-Monarch negotiated for increased amounts of water in exchange for military protection personally overseen by the Jupiter Military Forces.

## Post-Storm history

When the Storm hit the solar system in 2123, Ceres was absolutely untouched. The strange phenomenon did no harm to the planet and there was no active colony at that time to face a revolt as other planetoids in the solar system did. At some point after the collapse of the UEC, an unaligned salvaging fleet made up of several thousand disgruntled laborers from across the colonies journeyed to Ceres to obtain leftover equipment from the old mining expeditions. While there the crew discovered and activated a lost colony's power system to access locked pathways, inadvertently starting up a Gaia pod. The terraforming device slowly began enveloping the settlement in a breathable atmosphere before reaching the city limits. Further exploration by the salvaging crew yielded the discovery of two other settlements on Ceres with functioning Gaia pods. The laborers eventually made the decision to turn Ceres into a haven for anyone fleeing the oppressiveness of the solar system's other colonies. The heads of each of the three work teams in the crew gathered and came up with a set of rules that everyone on the planet had to follow. Furthermore, it was decided that from then on a single team would inhabit each of the habitable settlements and elect a representative to speak for its population on matters that concerned it. However, the idealists' plans were soon shaken up by the discovery that Ceres' surface lacked any materials that the Gaia pods could convert into usable soil. Between starving to death and revealing their weakened colony to the greater solar system, some of the more radical laborers took command of a ship and chose to instead raid the first easily-conquerable vessel they came across for supplies. With nothing more than repurposed mining tools and a distress beacon turned trap, the extremists overtook the small crew of a UEC remnant cargo ship and returned to Ceres with a bounty. With each consecutive victory, few left in the colony disagreed with the morality of piracy.

### Revealed to the World

However, Ceres' successes did not remain unnoticed by the other colonies. Independent colonies and even remnants of the UEC thoroughly investigated reports of pirates operating out of the Solar Belt. Myths circulated of viscous, space-age tribals slaughtering ships full of people and absconding with the loot. All able colonies deployed small military fleets to find the pirates' hideout. The colonists of Ceres managed to destroy these ships using mines modified from broken down ships' gravity engines. The devices were set to trigger when a large enough object entered its proximity, pulling not just nearby ships but also asteroids together, crushing the pirates' pursuers. Stretching their already thin resources, the UEC remnants ended their investigation into the pirate stronghold, the independent colonies followed suit, paranoid that the pirate attacks were actually a diversion by their rivals. After a long silence from the Solar Belt, a story quickly spread that a lone ship searching for salvage on Ceres discovered the pirate hideout. Rather than being the hell-pit propaganda made it out to be, the world was supposedly a paradise that its inhabitants deemed the "last true bastion of democracy". Thousands of ships deployed to Ceres, some part of military fleets sent by the solar system's major organizations and others independent vessels looking for safety on the dwarf planet. While many ships were destroyed by the pirates' traps, and armed ships were forcibly boarded or destroyed by pirate gangs, a number of non-hostile ships managed to reach the planet. Pirate vessels escorted some of these crews to their habitable settlements to trade. As it was then revealed to the solar system, the pirates were far from the savages they were assumed to be.

### Conflict with Jupiter

While expeditions still tried to navigate the chaotic space hazards that led back to the Earth's orbit and hopefully the UEC if it still existed, other survey ships from Jupiter went out to locate the lost colony worlds and offer any aid they could. It was on one of these missions that a J-Corvette was attacked by the Ceres pirates. It was completely destroyed with its crew slaughtered after being stripped of supplies and parts. After two weeks had gone by and the J-Corvette had still not arrived back, Jupiter sent out another force this time of three corvettes. Again, they all suffered the same fate. But this time one of the ships was able to send out a transmission before it was destroyed telling of their destruction. In response, the attack fleets were readied again for combat; a move not seen since before the Storm when they had waged private wars against pirate groups and rogue UEC fleets alike. The next expedition went out with two J-Frigates and seven J-Corvettes. But it still wasn't enough. They suffered the same fate as the previous two expeditions had with total and utter destruction being their quick end. Again, the fleet was sent out this time with a J-Carrier, five J-Frigates, and twelve J-Corvettes. But in a surprising move the gravity engines in these ships were disrupted by the gravity mines above the planet below and they met the same fate as their predecessors. Determined not to be humiliated by such a ragtag and disorganized force, the Jupiter Military summoned a stunning seventeen J-Corvettes, ten J-Frigates, three J-Carriers, five J-Landing Barges, and the crown of it all the J-Battleship *Europa*. The plan was for the battle fleet to arrive a few thousand kilometers away and deploy long range fighters to destroy the gravity mines. Then, the fleet was to move in and destroy any and all pirate ships and ground-to-space weaponry on the surface. Finally, the landing barges would arrive with their combined legion of troops and vehicles to occupy and capture the planet, destroying any civilian resistance that they met. The plan went completely smoothly in the first two phases. But when it came time to land the troops on the surface, an experimental weapon the pirates had found in a UEC cargo barge was being brought online. The results: every electronic, including the neural implants in the troops' heads, overloaded with a surge of energy from a weapon called by the Jupiter High Command the Lightning Bolt Mass Generator. The ships in orbit were completely shut down and the ships descending to the surface crashed into the barren wasteland. Soon after the pirates scavenged enough shuttles from the wrecked landing barges to board the ships in orbit, kill their crews, and take them over. The landing barges and the machinery inside were both salvaged and the Jupiter ships were used to replace the pirates' forces. From then on, the High Command considered any attack on Ceres to be too costly to be worth the effort. To news reports and other rediscovered colonies the High Command spoke to they remarked, "The only way one could now hold the planet of Ceres would be to take control of the pirates stationed there. Anyone with the degree of honor lacked enough to willingly infiltrate a pirate group cannot be found in an institution as honorable as the Jupiter Military."