11.20-The Battle of Phobos

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 11.2, the Battle of Phobos. We left off last time on 06/20/2250 with the redeclaration of Martian independence. During the dramatic run of events that became known as the independence days, Omnicore's attempt to reclaim control of Mars failed spectacularly. The carefully laid plans of Kamal Singh lay in shambles. The attempt to breach the Martian firewall had failed. That alone all but guaranteed the loyalist uprising led by Bruno October was snuffed out. October and nearly all of his followers now sat in Martian stockades. Meanwhile convoy group 11, which was supposed to have been in orbit around Mars before anything else happened, was still two weeks away from Mars, no longer flying under the radar, but instead exposed under a bright spotlight commanding the fixated attention of millions of people on Earth, Mars, and everywhere else in the solar system humans lived. It would appear that Kamal Singh had taken his shot and missed. But there was still a sliver of hope for the oh so recently installed CEO of Omnicorp. The one part of Singh's plan that had gone smoothly was his coup against Jin Wong. So at least for now, he still wielded the enormous powers vested in the CEO of Omnicorp. The first thing he did was thoroughly muddy the narrative waters. Within hours of the Martian Declaration of Independence, he released a vid addressed blaming Martian radicals for everything. He flatly denied there were any nuclear devices in convoy group 11. He said that was preposterous. Omnicorp's official position had never changed. The Gemini vids were a hoax. They were disinformation created by Martian radicals to justify an otherwise unjustifiable revolt against the agreement of 2248, which Singh said Omnicorp had scrupulously honored. Meanwhile, reports of a failed uprising by loyalists on Mars was a complete inversion of the facts. The reality, he said, was that radical Martians invented this supposed loyalist conspiracy as an excuse to do their most favorite thing, which was round up and abuse earthlings. And here, he finally addressed the board of directors abruptly removing Wong. He said Wong had been ousted because she had known about these Martian plans and had done nothing to stop them. But he, Kamal Singh, was committed to the shared interests of all humanity. Now, this was all a load of spacecraft, of course, but since he commanded Omnicore's vast communications array, Singh could just pump this vid address out there and force everyone to deal with it. Omnicore's corporate rivals, meanwhile, did everything they could to deal with it. They flooded their own communications networks with every scrap of evidence they had proving Omnicore was the aggressor and the Martians were innocent victims. What really happened was the Martians had been minding their own business and abiding by the agreement of 2248, when suddenly Omnicore hauled off and tried to reconquer them out of the blue. Once again, Omnicore was putting the vital supply of Phos …