2 Chapter 1

Currently, Jason Cortaro was president of Earth, and every second of it was hell.

Not just the politics of dealing with a war against mars, but also dealing with the press, with the rebellion…

It was a nightmare.

"Sir, the AP wants a statement about the recent bombing of the state capitol," drones the voice of Caroline, his secretary. He would have resigned from stress long ago if it wasn't for her support.

"I'll get it done by tonight. Just buy me some time with them. Please."

Jason was half surprised it wasn't about the war with mars, seeing as how almost everything had something to do with it.

About 130 years ago, almost all of Earth agreed to unite together under one president as a union known as the Terran Union in an attempt to stop wars, and then promptly declared war on everyone who didn't join the Terran Union.

After about 15 years, the Union had control over the entire world, and immediately began work on a colonization project for mars.

At that point, Earth had a population of roughly 17 billion, and enough resources to support 12. Everyone knew it, but no one did anything about it. Until the Union was formed of course.

At this point, a sort of golden age descended on humanity for about a century. Technology was advancing incredibly quickly, to the point where Mars was terraformed into being habitable for humans in just over a decade.

Many people began setting up mining colonies on the more resource-rich asteroids near Earth and Mars, providing a steady flow of resources. Eventually, Mars had enough of being a colony, and declared independence. Of course, the Union didn't want to give up an entire planet with a total population of approximately 4 billion people, and so they declared the Mars government to be terrorists.

Shortly after, quite ironically, Earth officially declared war on Mars, which therefore identified Mars as its own country. Mars created its own government and called it the Mars Protectorate. Soon, they had their own navy, laws, cities, all the while Earth began building its own massive destroyers, each with a crew of about 50,000.

Within a year of the wars beginning, Earth had just over 70 of these destroyers ready for war, each and every one a terrifying show of power.

What Earth didn't realize is just how many orbital defense platforms mars had been building during this time.

When Earth finally launched its assault on Mars, the Union was running low on funding, most of it having been sucked into the war effort.

The Union immediately suffered a crushing defeat, all but 12 destroyers being totally annihilated, and the remaining ones limping back.

After this point, the Union began to go downhill, as more and more money went into the war, and soldiers were paid less and less.

They began seizing control of most of the asteroid mining colonies between Earth and Mars using Strike Marines to takeover these entrenched colonies, with the Protectorate unable to defend these highly valuable asteroids anywhere near as well as Mars.

At this point, the Union then had most of the solar system's known resources under its control, and began playing a war of extreme proportions, the likes of which were unprecedented in the history of mankind.

During the first 10 years, volunteers flooded into the military. But eventually, the flow of people slowly trickled to a stop. It even got to the point where Jason, as president, had to create a draft for the army's war efforts.

Anyone with scores too low on high school graduation tests, or who committed any crime less than murder, would be drafted.

In Jason's 6 years as president alone, over 600 million people had died in that war.

It was the bane of his existence.

And he was going to end this war once and for all, one way or another.