Report on the Sedona incident and accords
The Star League is a large polity of hundreds of star systems. Our system was settled because of the combination of a huge number of rare metal asteroids, a gas giant with the right mix of gasses for starship reactors to use for fuel, and a small habitable moon in orbit. All and all a very desirable system. Normally such a useful system would do well in the league, but there were two main issues.
First, was the ancient gate network first discovered when the first human cryo pod based exploration ship reached Alpha Centauri the gate network was already ancient when man first achieved flight the gates allowed quick travel between any systems on the network humans found a unclaimed habitable system off one of Alpha Centauri’s gates and humans joined the galactic neighborhood, most systems have between three and six gates.
Paledes our system has a grand total of one, which connects to the dead system of Sedona which has two the other leading to Consorsha which is an agricultural colony. In other words we live on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere with little trade. With the border to the belligerent Theocracy of Amid only ten gates away in one direction and unconsolidated space also known as the wild stars five gates away in another direction Paledes was an Important military fuel post for League ships on border patrol.
Second, the League was divided into Administrative zones with local governors appointed mostly from the leagues core worlds serving as essentially local nobles over three to five systems responsible for local management taxes and law enforcement, a hundred years ago the local administrator in the major system of Herona was in charge of seven system including Paledes and Consorsha the administrator increased taxes on the two outlying systems ignoring their governments protests and the promises the League had given the founders of Paledes. Appeals to higher authorities in the League went unanswered so the Paledes Government began building a fleet converting the frame of a large merchant ship they bought. They stripped it down to the frame and built a light cruiser named Longbow and declared their independence.
The administrator sent a group of mercenaries and his law enforcement cutters to suppress the rebellion. The Longbow lead a group of armed merchant ships loaded with fighters into action against the Mercenary fleet. The longbows unique design featured a single battleship main cannon mounted centerline which could destroy most anything at or below its weight class, and Longbows powerful engines could outrun anything bigger than it.
It was designed to be used as raider to continue a guerilla campaign against the League if they refused to accept Paledes independence. After defeating the fleet the administrator sent Longbow and Paledes armed merchant militia to assault Herona defeating the small naval task force there and delivering the declaration of independence from orbit above the administrative building, the administrator was recalled to the League. Seven years later friends of that former administrator lobbied enough support from the League Council that they agreed to send a naval detachment to re-annex Paledes for their own good.
The Paledes intelligence service ( which was just two guys sitting in the public section for every Council hearing) quickly sent word via a fast courier boat to Paledes to warn them. Three weeks later a detachment from the nearest naval base arrived a battleship, 2 escort carriers and 5 cruisers and 20 smaller escort ships normally enough to crush any single colonies defense force. When they arrived in Sedona however they encountered Paledes fleet and the militia the Paledes had been mass producing fighters during that seven year period and using Longbow and her nine sisters one of which, Paladin my great- grandfather served on, as well as every merchant ship with a cargo hold big enough to transit a fighter thru the gate.
A water hauler owned by the Morison corporation was hastily converted into a supply ship and unarmed carrier allowing the pilots to land and eat and do other necessary services in rotation. Still those volunteers were spending twenty hours a day in their cockpits waiting for the attack. So when the League fleet arrived they faced ten up armed light cruisers, forty-five armed merchants and 400 fighters the commodore assigned the mission refused the recommendation to withdraw and gather more resources and attacked.
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The escort carriers launched their fighters and met the Paledes 80 military fighters and 120 militia fighters the League pilots shot down two Militia pilots for every one of theirs they lost but between the Paledes regulars and the sheer number of militia fighters the Leagues fighters were destroyed. While that happened the battleship and the light cruisers were locked in a long range duel the Paledes lost three light cruisers including Paladin who had her engines shot off and who’s crew abandoned ship before it was sucked into the gas giant Sedona III’s atmosphere. The battleship was also destroyed and with no more fighters to stop the 200 torpedo armed militia fighters the surviving officer in charge ordered a retreat and the League forces withdrew while the Paledes began rescue efforts.
in total 50 league personal were recover thirty five from the battleships wreckage and fifteen ejected pilots total losses on both sides were near even at 1,000 when news reached the League central stars the Public was outraged the members of the Council who had promoted the expedition had sold it as a backwater who was struggling to feed its people being rescued by the league but somehow they lost one of the League’s fifty battleship’s then the media began to dig into the story more and found out about the disgraced administrator and his connection to the events and instead of firing the administrator and making an example out of him the League had simply quietly retired him and pretended it never happened. This was a massive scandal as the League has always portrayed itself as the defenders of small colonies from other more dangerous star powers.
Massive referendums and votes of no confidence swept through the League the government was turned on its head as over seventy five percent of government positions were voted out for minority parties who had championed small colonies and administrative reforms. Perhaps sensing weakness less than a month after the Sedona incident and only a day after the new League government met for the first time the Theocracy invaded. A messenger boat arrived in Paledes a week later a Theocracy Conversion fleet had been sighted on its way towards Consorsha and was only a day away. as the nearest occupied system to Paledes and their gateway to the rest of the galaxy Paledes and Consorsha had always had a close relationship even though they had never left the League. the Paledes government met and agreed to send the five still functional longbows to aid the small system defense force Consorsha had and put out a public address requesting but not ordering militia volunteers to assist and thirty armed merchants sailed with the fleet. Unknown to Paledes or Consorsha a League naval patrol was resupplying in Herona escorting a diplomatic vessel on its way to Paledes to begin normalizing relations.
when a Courier boat brought the news of the Theocracy’s pending attack the diplomat a former League officer decided to continue the mission anyway and was just as surprised to find a joint Paledes and SysDef (system defense) fleet orbiting Consorsha as locals were to see a League fleet actually arriving in time to assist. A quick and dirty treaty that was to last until the end of hostilities was hammered out Sedona was to be a joint controlled system since it had nothing of note, Paledes would retain its independence but would allow the league to refuel for free and Paledes war ships were allowed to operate in League space in order to assist in joint operations as well as allow them to resupply from League bases.
This rough treaty allowed both forces the legal cover they needed to meet the Theocracy attack together. The war would last for five years seeing the loss of two more longbow’s. by the end of the war Paledes force’s had earned a reputation for being the best Starfighter pilots and the Militia captains had earned a reputation for convoy escorts not losing a single ship in a escort convey to Theocracy sponsored privateers or independent pirates. While Paledes regular armed force learned traditional warfare from the League’s fleet.
The situation had worked out well for both and by the end the rough treaty got a few minor changes the most significant being a joint military star port being established in Consorsha the treaty was ratified by the Council and the Senate of Paledes and became known as the Sedona Accords in order to honor those who died in that Incident. To this day Paledes remains the only single system polity to have a military arm that is distinctly not a SysDef force.
Benjamin Miles
A report on the Sedona Incident and Accords
Final paper class 82 Paledes central school