The Fall of the Southern Cross

The end of the second Robotech War could only be described as a pyrrhic victory for the Armies of the Southern Cross. The Robotech Masters had been defeated, and their armies had fallen, but at a staggering cost. The loss rate among Southern Cross forces was devastating in terms of raw numbers of personnel, equipment and ships, with units across the world having been affected in some way. The highest and most visible loss rates were among the Southern Cross' fleet, which had lost most of their vessels, with many of those that remained too badly damaged to keep operating.

However, the losses ran deeper still. In the last day of the war, the Masters had obliterated the Southern Cross' command centre in the heart of Monument City. Supreme Commander Anatole Leonard had been killed in the strike, along with the majority of the Southern Cross' leadership. Chief of Staff Rolf Emerson had been killed in action as well, creating a power vacuum at the top. The highest-ranking officer left alive was General Nigel Aldershot, the commander of the Global Military Police and a figure who was very much on the political outside. Not that the UEG itself had fared any better; Prime Minister Moran had been killed in the final days of the war as well, along with much of his cabinet.

Almost as soon as the fighting ended the ASC began to lose what little coherence it had left. Desertions became commonplace, as disaffected and demoralised soldiers simply put down their guns and walked away. Others left with their weapons, forming private militias and mercenary companies, or simply strong-arming their way to power. The Stone Men, who took control of Brasilia, were one such case, having previously been a locally-based Southern Cross unit. Their actions led to a destabilisation of the entire South American sector, which further fragmented. This process was being repeated worldwide, with states declaring their independence from the United Earth Government, creating a rapidly fragmenting world.

To make matters worse, there was an unexpected side-effect of the conflict. A strange new flower had begun blooming worldwide, rapidly spreading from North America across the globe. Unquestionably alien, openly hostile and highly toxic to terrestrial life, its source was unclear but it was seen as a threat no less. Efforts to exterminate the flower proved futile, as it grew and spread faster than anyone was able to keep up with (even the Defoliator movement, a radicalised eco-terrorist front). While many suspected it had some connection to the Robotech Masters, nobody knew what it was or where it had come from, not the true danger it represented.

The UEG tried to contain the chaos and keep the situation in hand, knowing full well that as bad as the Second Robotech War had been, there was an even greater threat on the horizon. Acting independently, General Aldershot gave the GMP broad discretionary powers to act as needed to prevent desertions and keep the Southern Cross together, but it was a band-aid solution at best.
A meeting of what was left of the UEG cabinet, headed up by Senator Barth Costanza (Himself a relatively minor figure) appointed General Vincinz as the acting Supreme Commander of the ASC. Something of a non-entity within the ASC's command structure, his main qualification was simply that he was a rear-echelon officer who had survived where so many others had not. Vincinz' first act was to form an emergency command staff, rapidly promoting a number of veteran officers who had seen action against the Masters to key positions. He also worked to bring in Aldershot in an effort to both keep the Southern Cross together and to limit the GMP commander's growing emergency powers.

Under Vincinz, high command did their best to consolidate what was left of the Southern Cross and begin rebuilding against what they knew was coming. Emergency recruitment and even conscription was used to fill out ranks, while surviving factories worked overtime to build Mecha, weapons and other equipment. This served to staunch the flow, but the desertions continued, along with the fragmentation of the United Earth Government. Those units who had the strongest ties to their local countries, such as the CDC and CDFC, were the most likely to desert, while the spaceborne units maintained the strongest loyalty to the UEG and ASC.

However, salvation and ultimately damnation for the UEG would arrive from the stars. A relief fleet from the UEEF arrived in Earthspace, bringing with it fresh ships, men and equipment. Among them were decorated Colonel Jonathan Wolfe and his elite Wolfe Pack special forces unit. With the Expeditionary Force aware of what had happened on Earth, Wolfe had been dispatched as much to provide aid to the ASC as he was to warn them about the Invid and help prepare for what was seen as an inevitable invasion.

Armed with this information, the UEG held a summit at Pinnacle Base, a fallback command centre in the Rocky Mountains, and invited representatives from the various emergent nations and factions. The aim was to form a coalition to help prepare Earth for the coming of the Invid, using the charismatic Colonel Wolfe as a figurehead. However, the meeting had the opposite effect. Nobody could agree on a plan and many simply dismissed the Invid as an outright hoax or a ploy by the UEG seize power. Behind the scenes, there was infighting between the ASC and UEEF Relief Force over command right and operational control that further hampered matters. Ultimately, the summit collapsed with many simply walking out. Rather than reunifying the world, the summit instead accelerated the collapse of the UEG. What was left of the government chose to remain in hiding at Pinnacle Base, hoping to ride out whatever might come next.

In the weeks to follow, the world descended further into chaos. Petty warlords sprang up across the globe, armed with whatever weapons they could find while carving out their own small kingdoms. Vigilantism, stockpiling and violence became commonplace as factionalism took hold, few willing to trust anything beyond their own communities. Small scale, localised wars broke out, the threat of the Invid seemingly forgotten in favour of more immediate concerns.

And yet, the Southern Cross survived. There were many units that were loyal to the Earth as a whole, rather than any single nation or group, or even the UEG itself. Johnathan Wolfe worked with those groups to form allies against what was coming, with the full acceptance that the goal was now less about stopping an Invid invasion and more about what would come next. He made a number of allies in the process, including UEEF Major John Carpenter, and two key GMP officers, Colonel Alan Fredricks and Captain Nova Satori. Finally, and possibly most importantly, he won the trust of Captain Dana Sterling, a decorated war hero. Her presence helped to bring in a large number of other Southern Cross soldiers and units that were willing to trust Wolfe because of her.

Ultimately, it wouldn't be enough.