11.14-The Mutual Blockade

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 11.14, the mutual blockade. Less than a week after the standoff in Stockade 7 began, the order of the solar system was completely upended. On 07/26/2247, Earth and Mars exchanged final, defiant transmissions. Mars had a list of demands and swore they would send no more phosphide back to Earth until those demands were met, and Earth refused to even discuss those demands until the Martians handed back control of Mars. Neither side had any intention of backing down, and so after a week of rapid fire events, the trajectory of the Martian revolution ground to a sudden screeching halt. They transitioned from chaos and confusion to a permanent state of anticipatory stasis. Surely the other side was about to see reason and break down. Will today be that day? No? Okay. Well, let's keep sweating them. Surely they will crack tomorrow. But then tomorrow would become today, and neither side would back down. Then another tomorrow would become another today, and so on, and so on, and so on. And they crawled through this series of tomorrows becoming todays with nobody breaking for eight long months. The breakdown of negotiations, or should I say the non commencement of negotiations, led first to what we call the sorting of ships. When all this broke out in July 2247, there were spaceships in orbit around Mars, spaceships in orbit around Earth, and spaceships traversing the space in between. As omnichores swore no more deliveries would ever reach Mars until the Martians capitulated, Timothy Werner issued a blanket order for all spaceships to return to Earth, and forbade any ship around Earth from departing for Mars. This order was heeded by most of the Phos five container ships and a good number of the civilian cargo shippers. Now those cargo shippers were far more inclined to side with Mars, but those in the environment of Earth were now hemmed in by the security service ships patrolling the lunar orbit line, and those who had chosen to travel in container fleet convoys risked being attacked by the security escorts if they broke for Mars. So most of them who were en route to Mars reluctantly stuck with their convoys and returned to Earth. But plenty of others were not traveling in those convoys and just kept going to Mars, or turned around and headed back to Mars. And some committed souls who were a part of convoys used old tricks of the smuggling trade to mask their transponders. They broke formation, set course for Mars, and were out of range before the security escorts even knew they were gone. In this way, ships accumulated either around Mars or around Earth, and then they stayed put. Hence, we call this the sorting of ships. The only ships Warner explicitly ordered not to return to Earth were the ships still loyal to Omnicorp around Mars. The senior officer of this group of vessels was Commander Li Wei, who had …