Part 818: The Real Timeline by Demi-Precentor of the Archives, Agent Interrobang - Part 1
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An Abridged History of the Inner SpherePart 1 - The Final Frontier
By the late 2020s, Terra, then known as Earth, had achieved a period of relative tranquility. Most nations had put aside mutual hostilities in favor of cooperation, and it was in this environment of prosperity and goodwill that Doctors Thomas Kearny and Takayoshi Fuchida created a revolutionary reactor, the Kearny-Fuchida Fusion Engine. By 2102, the now-legendary Deimos Project had created the first operable Jumpdrive, utilizing a Kearny-Fuchida reactor core, capable of propelling a craft up to thirty light years in a single instantaneous jump.
On December 5, 2108, the TAS Pathfinder made its historic jump to Tau Ceti, and by 2116, the first human colony was established on Tau Ceti IV. The stage was set for a new era of unity and brotherhood amongst the stars. Unfortunately, this is not an episode of Star Trek, and there was no 'evolved sense of morality' governing the actions of human beings. Like all before them, those sent to colonize lands distant from their origin grew to desire independence, and it wasn't long before colonies started declaring themselves nations and countries. When the Terran Alliance sent marines to quell the revolutionaries, the difficulties of maintaining supply lines across interstellar distances caused the expedition to fail miserably, and desperate to bandage their wounds, the Alliance granted independence to all colonies lying thirty light-years away from Terra, the distance of a single Jump.
Over time, as more and more colonies moved to break away, the lack of resources and manpower, as well as the economic strain of maintaining loyal colonies, began to fray the Terran Alliance. Tales of rioting over food in outlying systems brought on widespread panic, and poverty ran rampant. It all came to a head in 2314, when rioting and increased police crackdowns sparked an Alliance-wide civil war. The AGM, the Alliance Global Militia, finally stepped in at the urging of James McKenna, an Admiral of the Alliance Navy who used the unrest to stage a coup d'etat, eliminating the bloated and corrupt Alliance government. In 2316, he was elected Director-General of the newly-christened Terran Hegemony, and hailed as a hero by a tired and grateful public.
After bringing the colonies still loyal to the deposed Alliance into line, McKenna realized the need of the resources held by the colonies outside the Hegemony, those ceded by the Alliance. The military was deployed to seize the independent worlds, and with a stern hand with years of experience fighting brushfire wars across interstellar bounds at the helm, the Hegemony successfully brought large portions of the independent worlds under their rule over the course of two campaigns. A third campaign, launched in 2335, would not be so successful, and the failure of this effort is credited largely to McKenna's nephew Konrad McKenna, who led the Hegemony's fleet blindly into a massive minefield in the Syrma system. With all but two of his twenty-nine troopsips lost to the uncaring void of space, Konrad's forces retreated in utter disgrace.
The loss of so much manpower spurred the independent worlds to form together to oppose the Hegemony, and with unified fronts presented to their militarist expansion, it is rumored that the strain of his work contributed to the sudden death of Director-General McKenna in 2339. With Konrad widely dismissed as an idiot, the Hegemony's High Council passed leadership to McKenna's third cousin, Michael Cameron.
A shrewd politician, Cameron realized that he couldn't maintain the Hegemony's territory through military force alone. Rather, he needed a carrot to dangle to keep the regional political figures satisfied. And so, in 2351, Cameron published his now-famous Peer List, setting forth a system of feudal nobility, meant to keep local warlords and military officials in line by offering them land and titles, even extending the offer to independent worlds beyond Hegemony control. With the Hegemony realigned into a collective of nations, all paying nominal tribute to the central authority of the Hegemony on Terra, things settled into a tenuous peace.
One of the very first to receive mention on the Peer List is Dr. Gregory Atlas, renowned for his research into refining the production of myomer bundles for use in construction vehicles. Incredibly powerful, synthetic myomer muscles provided the brute force of Workmechs. Later it would be discovered that using a fusion reactor to power myomer musculature would dramatically increase the load and impact they were capable of handling, while still retaining agility and speed of reaction. Though he would die before that tree bore fruit, Dr. Atlas' discoveries would pave the way for a new generation of war machines, and to this day he is hailed as the father of the Battlemech.
The disparate states of the Hegemony and elsewhere would not remain peaceful for long, however, particularly not with such a powerful weapon as the Battlemech tempting them to action. In the late 2300s and early 2400s, tensions escalated, brushfire wars starting to break out among feudal lords who for too long had stared lustfully at the resources of their stellar neighbors, each fire building until the Hegemony seemed ready to explode. Even expanding further and further out into the stars was not enough to sate the hungry lords. It all came to a head, however, on Tintavel, a member-world of the Capellan Confederation. There, millions of civilians were killed when forces aligned against the Capellans deployed nuclear weapons against major population centers.
In response to the Tintavel Massacre, as it came to be popularly known, Capellan ruler Chancellor Aleisha Liao drafted the Ares Conventions, an article of rules for settling differences between interstellar powers. The key articles were restrictions on the usage of nuclear weapons, and an agreement to avoid civilian targets whenever possible. Ratified by the Hegemony and signed by every major power on June 13, 2412, the Ares Conventions brought a certain civility to the proceedings of interstellar war. All this really meant, however, was that every signing nation had a free license to attack whomever they wanted as long as they limited the excesses of their military.
As their allies and subjects took to constantly warring with each other over trivial slights, the Hegemony itself stood neutral in most matters, taking a peacekeeping role among the feudal states, and for the next hundred years an odd equilibrium reigned, the gentle push and pull of conflict building economic bridges throughout the Inner Sphere. Eventually, in 2556, Director-General Ian Cameron sat down the leaders of the Free Worlds League and their neighbors, the Capellan Confederaton, and signed into law the Treaty of Geneva. Signed by the Lyran Commonwealth in 2558, the Federated Suns in 2567, and the Draconis Combine in 2569, humanity was, after many trials and many wars, at last truly united, a singular alliance spanning all of known space.
The Star League had been born.