Prologue
December, U.C. 0105…
Five years have passed since the conclusion of the war between the United Forces and the Archduchy of Phobos Zeon.
With the passing of Archduke Alexander Miguel and the surrender of his forces, the era of Zeon has come, at last, to a close. The Zeon colors fly over no space colony, nor upon the desolate surface of the ruined Earth, nor upon any registered space vessel. All that remains of Zeon are space pirates and privateers…former Zeon soldiers, now war criminals and fugitives more concerned with profit than patriotism. These miscreants make use of their salvaged Zeon war technology to terrorize the shipping lanes between the Earth Sphere and the outlying frontier colonies in the Asteroid Belt and the Martian and Jupiter orbits…forming crime syndicates that will traffic anything and everything, or commit contract assaults with mobile weaponry, for the right price…but lack the vision, unity, will, organization, and sheer numbers to resurrect the Archduchy once again. No Zeon warlords remain…no Giren Zabi, no Haman Karn, no Char Aznable, no Alexander Miguel to galvanize the broken remnants of past Zeon glory. The Archduchy of Zeon is finally, irrevocably dead.
The Earth Federation continues to exist, but has become both an anachronism and a misnomer. Founded more than a century ago, the Earth Federation has no Earth to rule. The planet is yet to recover from the devastation inflicted upon it by the Archduke Alexander Miguel's "Operation Darkest Summer," which saw the simultaneous uncontrolled descents of over a dozen space colonies around the globe, creating a nuclear winter that ultimately claimed ninety-five percent of Earth's population, and snuffed out the planet's ability to support a viable living ecosystem for generations to come. The Earth Federation has largely moved its operations to the frontier colonies, of which it governs a relative minority. In the election year U.C. 0101, Senator Mirai Yashima-Noah was elected by a seventy-percent majority as the twenty-fifth President of the Earth Federation Government, and won a second term in the election of U.C. 0105. Her administration has focused its efforts on the ecological restoration of the Earth as well as the relocation and repatriation of many Federation citizens displaced by the wars against Zeon. President Yashima-Noah has also pursued a path of strengthening diplomatic ties with the Shambala Republic, an effort greatly helped by the fact that the Shambala Republic's Prime Minister, Dr. Artasia Daikun, is one of President Yashima-Noah's oldest and most trusted friends…and by the fact that Deputy Prime Minister Minerva Zabi-Noah is the President's own daughter-in-law.
The Earth Federation Forces are no longer the monolithic standing army that secured the Earth Sphere prior to the One Year War, but a skeleton force barely equal to the task of protecting its relative meager territories. Nevertheless, though far less expansive, the Federation Forces nevertheless boast its elite Special Forces, which have since evolved into and simultaneously become a subset of the Strategic Naval Research Institute (SNRI), a small, but potent and dynamic force that combines frontline combat operations with intelligence-gathering and weapons systems development, particularly in the area of Psychom weapons systems. General Bright Noah has been the prime mover in this restructuring of the Earth Federation Forces, although he once again faces challenges from General Manron Blackhead, who though rendered paraplegic by a Zeon ambush five years earlier, has recovered enough to resume active duty and is pushing for a more aggressive and expansive remilitarization of the Earth Federation.
In this post-Zeon world of the Second Universal Century, the most powerful social, political, economic, and military entity is the Shambala Republic. Based at the old Zeon homeland of Side 3, the Shambala Republic's dominion extends to the lunar cities of Anman and Von Braun and all the space colonies of the Earth Sphere excluding Side 7, which remains the Earth Federation's sole remaining territory within the Earth Sphere. The Shambala Republic also extends its suzerainty to the majority of the space colonies in the Asteroid Belt and the Martian and Jupiter orbits, and has spearheaded development of the Frontier 9 and Frontier 10 space colonies in Saturn orbit.
Prime Minister Artasia Daikun and Deputy Prime Minister Minerva Zabi-Noah remain much loved figures by the citizenry of the Shambala Republic five years after the founding of the Shambala nation. The first two years were difficult, as the new nation struggled to organize itself and cope with the aftermath of the war against the last of the Zeon. The past three years have seen stability and security gradually settle over the Shambala Republic, and booms in the colony construction industry have created overall economic prosperity. Zeon Daikun's dream of a just and peaceful Spacenoid nation, apparently, would be realized after all…
Scientific and technological research has thrived under the sponsorship of the Shambala government, particularly in applying technology that the Archduchy of Zeon had been developing for warfare towards ecological reclamation. Deputy Prime Minister Minerva Zabi-Noah has led efforts to apply the Zeon's colony laser technology to speeding the Earth's recovery from the effects of the mass colony drops of U.C. 0100. Archduke Alexander Miguel's undeveloped colony laser systems have been converted into mechanisms through which the billions of tons of debris thrown into Earth's atmosphere, cutting off life-giving solar energy to the Earth's surface, is burned away. The effort is expected to continue for at least another half-decade, but already, the nuclear winter effect caused by the colony drops have been partially reversed and ecological colonies have been established on each of the continents to replant dead forests and plains, and to reintroduce animal species to their old habitats. Shambala scientists have prognosticated that barring any significant setbacks, the full recovery of Earth's ecology should be complete by the beginning of the Third Universal Century.
Even the mighty Shambala Republic is not free of troubles and controversy: Defense Minister Meitzer Ronah has called for expansion of the Shambala Republic Defense Guard, which though adequate to protect the Shambala Republic's interests from encroachments by the Earth Federation or the scattered remnants of Zeon, the Defense Guard remains a much smaller and less substantial force than the Earth Federation Forces and the Archduchy of Zeon Forces had been prior to the outbreak of the One Year War. During an infamous address to the Prime Minister and the Shambala Parliament in April, U.C. 0104, Defense Minister Ronah stated emphatically, "The Shambala Republic is Cosmic Babylonia, and like the Babylonia of the ancient world, a mighty empire must have a mighty army." The Defense Minister found himself rebuked by both the Prime Minister and half the members of Parliament. Prime Minister Daikun went as far as to criticize the Defense Minister's "brash warmongering as the same kind of thinking that turned the Zeon Republic into the Archduchy of Zeon," and reaffirmed her commitment to not letting history be repeated in such a manner.
This is the world of the Second Universal Century era, Year 0106…