The Civil Authority Massacre of '22

The Civil Authority Massacre, or otherwise known as 'the Massacre of 2022', was an event that occurred during the middle of Liberation. Acknowledged as an 'intentional purge' of the Civil Authority by their escort forces, post-liberation historians have struggled to explain why the incident occurred.

The massacre explains why few Civil Authority members remained alive post-liberation, especially when the feeble amount who survived the great purge were then captured and executed en-masse by post-liberation nation states, barring few exceptions (Rubin Locke and Jiroaki Kudo among them).

## Overview

As many insurgent groups encroached on Union territory, among them highly strategic urban centers (cities), waning transhumanist forces were instead relegated to core areas such as critical scientific zones and civil authority shelters whilst supplanted with conscripted civilians. Although in the short term this desperate use of a 'human wave' tactic provided a small human barrier for a few days, much of the conscripted armies were coerced through both propaganda and the ongoing devastation to instead surrender themselves, providing an open path for the insurgents to invade and seize the last civilized bastions of Union strongholds.

It is believed that the surviving transhuman personnel delegated to these 'high priority zones' were given explicit orders to defend the areas to the last man, although whether these policies included the local civil authorities and other officials under this 'last man' designation is entirely unknown. What *is known* is, beginning with Kyiv, many members were instead outright gathered in isolation and preemptively murdered en-masse by their escort delegation, either shot on the spot or locked into rooms with explosive munitions that were soon detonated. Some scholars believe that the massacre were due to fears that defectors or escaping personnel would inform the new order of highly confidential locations, potentially dormant last-resort weapon facilities, abandoned munition storage sites, isolated research installations or offsite advisor shelters nestled deep in unfamiliar terrain, of which many were slowly uncovered over dozens of decades. However, this would imply that the order for these acts were issued far above, and not simply the defenders acting on their own accord in accordance with their mandate.

Given that many cities enacted this desperate act during the last few days or hours before their seizure, and that they differed by days or weeks to other such incidents in other locations, it can be generally assumed that this was a universal protocol of last resort and defined within the Union's emergency doctrine, yet it remains unclear who actually ordered it in each locality.

Some conspiracy theorists believe that the order for the local City 17 incident was due to **Aaron Leonard's** insistence on ensuring the fabled 'Martian Colony' was completely concealed given this worst-case scenario, and thus ordered the execution of the entire local Civil Authority branch to achieve this with no loose ends (although the actual escape of one Rubin Locke surely complicated this). More accredited historians dismiss these wild beliefs, noting that Leonard is documented to have died in a dropship crash during 2017 BL and no evidence exists to document the Colony, nor does any liberation state officially believe that it exists.