Outer Colonies Crisis

This fanfiction article, Outer Colonies Crisis, was written by Minuteman 2492. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission.

This article, Outer Colonies Crisis, is currently under active construction.

The author of this article, Outer Colonies Crisis, urges anyone who reads it to provide feedback on the quality of the article. Thank you!

"And the truth...the truth shall set you free."

―Ending sentence of the manifesto attached to the dump of ONI files

The Outer Colonies Crisis was the overall name for a series of events that occurred from mid-2564 to early 2567 after a massive dump of data by a shadowy group regarding the many crimes against humanity committed by the Office of Naval Intelligence, from the child soldiers of the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III Program, to the massacres of Insurrectionist officers from the Victorian Independent State and Gilgamesh Free State in the mid-2550s, and many others.

While ONI attempted to keep the information from spreading, the hackers had put contingency plans in place, and the information made its way to the general public. With massive riots and mutinies among United Nations Space Command units, including some planetary garrisons, the Unified Earth Government was facing down a full-scale civil war. While all available resources were diverted to subdue the rebellions, the sheer number led the UNSC to be unable to subdue all of them.

As time went on, with an inability to control the situation, and more importantly, with the Inner Colonies being deprived of precious resources that they needed from the Outer Colonies, UNSC commanders began looking at alternative solutions. Eventually, it was privately decided by most officers to order all ONI agents to be apprehended for trial, hoping that it would calm the revolt. The order to do so was given in June of 2566, and until February of 2567, all efforts were focused on hunting down ONI operatives, with rebel units even cooperating with the UNSC in this endeavor. To further appease the rebellious populace, the UEG promised to pass the Commonwealth Act once the crisis had ended so long as the rebels laid down their arms.

Finally, in February of 2567, the Unified Earth Government, believing that enough ONI agents had been apprehended, passed the Commonwealth Act. Holding up their end of the bargain, most rebel units laid down their arms. However, some units continued their fight, wanting not just independence, but the total eradication of the UEG and the return of Earth to nation-states, but these were few and quickly put down by pro-Act forces.

History

'Forbidden Fruit'

"These documents will be hard to read for so many who these tragedies have affected and even those they have not affected. But you must read, for these acts must not be forgotten, else they may happen once more. They are the forbidden fruit of knowledge, the great shames of the Unified Earth Government, perpetrated by the Office of Naval Intelligence and the United Nations Space Command. And then take action. Down tools, call out sick, perform civil and active resistance. Police, militia, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, refuse any longer to serve the government that has perpetrated the acts in these files. It will require every man and woman to steel their hearts, and to struggle against the evil that has subjugated us for far too long. Do these things in the pursuit of truth and freedom, a new order! And the truth...the truth shall set you free."

―The manifesto attached to the information dump

The Outer Colonies Crisis had its roots in 2557, as raids from units of remnant Insurrectionist groups on Office of Naval Intelligence facilities began giving ideas to the United Rebel Front for a cyberattack to gain vast amounts of information in order to better facilitate rebellions on the Outer Colonies that had been reconquered by the UNSC in the aftermath of the Human-Covenant War. The raids had produced not only actionable intelligence on the tactical level, but also a great deal of information that related to how information was stored on ONI systems, and the security safeguards that were in place. General Adam Makosky, at that point the leader of the URF, envisioned that cracking into ONI's databases and leaking so much documentation of their crimes to the galaxy at large that it could not be refuted would foment further rebellions and hopefully create the conditions for colonies that had gained independence during the war to reassert themselves once again. He assigned this task to the URF's command-level intelligence section, known officially as the Intelligence Section of the General Staff, but known more commonly to UNSC personnel by its ONI reporting name, HIGH CASTLE, and to URF personnel as GROUNDSKEEPER, the name used in internal communiques.

Although some information from Insurrectionist units still in contact with and loyal to the United Rebel Front made its way to HIGH CASTLE, it mostly related to the information storage structure. Most critically, it contained no examples of the types of keys that would be needed to gain access to the systems. Without anything to go on in order to break in, the organization began looking into ways to jumpstart the search. Through a stroke of luck, a URF mole in the UNSC Navy came across an itinerary for an ONI flag officer due to visit several colonies for a security evaluation, including Glabetov, where the Glabetovan Security Service, one of the rebel groups that the URF still had contact with, was operating. As HIGH CASTLE put out more calls for information to their informants regarding the flag officer, it became clear that the officer had taken part in some form of kidnapping operation during the 2510s. This caused the capture of this flag officer to go from a high-priority mission to a no-fail mission, as not only would his biometrics prove useful in penetrating ONI's systems, his interrogation could also provide more information on where in the information structure ONI's black operations were stored.

The operation, dubbed ALCATRAZ, was a total success, with HIGH CASTLE gaining the biometric data they asked for, and information that the admiral had been one of the field agents involved in kidnapping children for the SPARTAN-II program, one of HIGH CASTLE's highest priorities for obtaining information in. Although they had been certain this was the case for years, they needed information to prove it to the public. They reckoned that while the public at large may not care about operations that killed insurgents, it would shake their confidence in the UEG to the core if they realized the supersoldiers they had been led to view as heroes were the result of an ONI project to take children and turn them into soldiers. Though the biometrics and information were useful in order to crack into ONI systems initially and to gain information as to the kind of keys that would be needed to delve deeper into the parts of the structure containing information on the organization's most sensitive past operations, they were only useful for a short time, as ONI eventually realized that the admiral was still in captivity yet his credentials were still being used to access information, and blacklisted his credentials from accessing the system any further.

For the next five years, HIGH CASTLE worked from this single kernel of information up to being able to access information on ONI's black operations through a convoluted process of informants, moles, spyware, and direct action raids by the few commando units that still remained under direct URF control on ONI field facilities. Although Adam Makosky died during the Battle of New Tyne in 2561, his dictat to HIGH CASTLE was still followed, though now operating in the Republic of Levosia, given shelter by the Levosian Reform Party, in return for the organization's intelligence services and hoping that a release of information would allow them to take power in Levosia. Finally, on January 7th, 2564, six years to the day after ALCATRAZ, HIGH CASTLE officially gained access to the unredacted files they had been searching for. Realizing that ONI may quickly realize the breach and move to lock it down, they moved to begin downloading as many files as possible with disregard for their contents, planning to sift through them once the dust had settled to curate what would be released to the public. As they expected, ONI did lock down their servers and they were no longer to gain access, but not before the downloads had been completed.

On ONI's part, they began preparing for a galaxywide information blackout in order to prevent whatever files had been downloaded from being disseminated among the public. As the weeks passed though, no release occurred, and ONI officials became cautiously optimistic that perhaps while the rebels had gained access to the information, they may not have had the means to distribute it. This was far from the truth though, as the URF knew full well that a communications blackout would occur if they acted quickly afterward, and instead decided to bide their time, preparing for the release in what would be dubbed WILD WEST. Printing copies of the documents so as to prevent the ability of a worm to destroy their years of work, they relied again on their informants and moles to prepare for the release.

The operation officially began on March 15th, 2564, as seemingly innocuous emails were sent out across the galaxy to users on Waypoint, with sender addresses, subject lines, and attachments all designed to seem as normal as possible to avoid flagging by ONI surveillance. These were mostly sent out to media companies and Waypoint service provider, and appeared to be simple emails with interview proposals, business propositions, trial programs, and the like. Hidden within these emails however, were scripts designed to allow HIGH CASTLE to hijack media broadcasts, collect email addresses for Waypoint users, and affect homepage changes for said users. For the next four months, the organization worked to formulate a plan of action as to release the files and have the public view them without ONI immediately cracking down. The final plan involved another set of emails, but this time sent out to the stolen email addresses, with similarly innocuous subject lines as the first, but this time opening the email ran an automatic script that locked the user's device and opened the attachment with all of the stolen ONI documents, and would not unlock the user's device until they finished reading it. Simultaneously, it would send emails to everyone the user had corresponded with, with the same script. This would be followed immediately by broadcast hijackings where a looping broadcast, prerecorded by HIGH CASTLE where they discussed the documents and their implications, would be played on local broadcast stations on colonies so as to subvert ONI's likely quick response to shut down communications between planets. In spite of all this preparation, rebel units were not notified, as they were unsure that the risk of giving ONI notice of the operation would be worth the limited gains that preparation of units would give.

The beginning of the Crisis would finally kick off on July 4th, 2564, as the emails were sent out and one hour later, the broadcast intrusions began. Although ONI did, as expected, lock down communications between colonies, local field offices were taken aback by the extent that the information was being disseminated, as well as the inability of broadcast companies to halt the looping broadcast hijack, as to do so meant having to do irreparable damage to their equipment, which station managers were simply not willing to do. Rebel units, although equally taken by surprise as ONI field agents were, they responded far quicker, engaging in random and impulsive attacks on local authorities, unwittingly helping turn the release of data from a cause of civil unrest to a cause of violent revolution as the use of violence quickly became normalized among an enraged public

Initial Riots

Rioting in the streets of New Belgrade on Gilgamesh

"For truth and freedom, a new order!"

―Slogan adopted by many groups from HIGH CASTLE's manifesto

"By the authority of the Acting President, this facility is now under Martian Union government control."

―John Henry, better known as Colonel Augustus, at the outset of the Misriah Uprising

As the major lines of communication between the colonies fell silent, UEG forced quickly became hard-pressed to maintain any semblance of order in the face of the riotous mobs and rebel cells taking advantage of the chaos to strike at targets. While ONI had made sure not to lock down the secure lines of communication used by government authorities, the bandwidth available shrunk dramatically, as the lines were clogged with queries and messages from panicking colonial authorities, unsure how to respond. Law and order were almost impossible to maintain on those colonies that had already been strongholds of pro-rebel sentiment even before the release, as local security units were unreliable at best and outright hostile at worst. Colonial Militia and local law enforcement units were some of the first UEG-aligned units to see desertions, usually of whole companies or stations, urged on by personnel with pro-Insurrection ties. Local UNSC Army garrisons on these worlds, usually only concentrated in a few posts and now having to also contend with angry mobs attacking government buildings in the major UEG power centers, were unable to do anything but dispatch token forces to deal with the rapidly growing revolts. These token forces, sent by desperate commanders in hopes that the revolts would collapse at the first sign of resistance, were often quickly routed or, more commonly, killed to the last man. In these rebel-controlled sections, even without sign of a re-established independent national government, the old independent states were quickly redeclared on the settlement level, and the new authorities quickly set about avenging the last decade of injustices. In the settlement of Corley on Gilgamesh, which had seen a failed revolt only months before, those pro-UNSC activists who had been responsible for the destruction of the war memorial erected by citizens were publicly shot and hung on trees along the road leading to the town with placards declaring their crimes around their neck. On Glabetov, Cossack militias provided muscle for the Glabetovan Security Service as they worked through the lists of enemies of the state they had worked on creating for the past decade. And on Victoria, a UNSC Army garrison in Agley was totally overrun before being marched through the city as prisoners and imprisoned in an open-air enclosure where many died of abuse, neglect, and exposure by their jailers.

In addition to the violent revolts occurring on those colonies that had already been anti-UEG before the release of the files, even on those that were neutral and even pro-UEG, citizens began to take action through strikes. Though these actions were not the bloody reprisals on the former independent worlds, they forced the UNSC to react as they began to cause industry and government services to grind to a halt. On Mars, the day after the release, workers of Misriah Armories showed to work at the factories but then simply gathered and refused to work. A shift supervisor at one of the plants, John Henry, later going under the pseudonym Colonel Augustus in order to protect his family from reprisals, rose to prominence as he and his colleagues chased out Misriah's local security and fended off a police attempt to breach the factory. The factory workers, in conference with each other, agreed to form the All-Martian Union in order to better cooperate against UEG attempts to force them to cease striking, and were soon joined by other workers, including public utilities workers and even some law enforcement personnel. Workers on other colonies also created their own unions with the same goal, and although none officially pledged their allegiance to the United Rebel Front, HIGH CASTLE, which was the closest thing approximating command and control for the moment, was happy to take to assuming, and on July 6th funneled a statement through the clogged official communications channels stating that the UEG had two months to offer the colonies a real proposal of independence and a plan of reconciliation, or what they termed "severe consequences" would follow.

Marshal Ira Philips, the leader of the recreated Gilgamesh Free State and overall head of the URF during the Crisis

Although at the time of the ultimatum command and control had not yet been established and the threat of consequences was an empty threat, over the next two months, the United Rebel Front began to return to its former power. Those who had come to prominence during the revolts in the formerly rebel controlled worlds or those formerly leading members of the independent governments, began to get into contact with HIGH CASTLE, and send representatives to Levosia or come themselves in order to better coordinate. By late July, the United Rebel Front had established contact with most of the major rebelling groups, and had elected General Ira Philips, the resurgent former commander-in-chief of the Gilgameshan Free Armed Forces as its new commander. Although Philips' defeat at the hands of the UNSC during the UNSC-GFS War made him initially an unpopular choice among the representatives, this same defeat caused him to have an unshakeable will to see this crisis through with a rebel victory.

Civil War

"It was even worse than what Carver warned us about. The local police and militias either defected or were overwhelmed by angry mobs, Army garrisons couldn't stop it, Marine expeditionary forces couldn't even concentrate themselves to effectively fight, and the SPARTANs could kill leaders, but if the an uprising during the Insurrection was like a flamethrower that would stop when the man behind it was killed, then this was like a thousand tire fires at a thousand different places. Killing leaders made them martyrs, proving to them that they were right and just, and only led to more anger, more death, more destruction. We couldn't stop it."

―Lord Terrence Hood

The logo of the All-Martian Union, whose action against UNSC forces on August 6th is widely considered to havemarked the beginning of the second phase of the Crisis

As the strikes and protests raged on throughout the Outer and Inner Colonies, UEG government officials mulled over what to do. As the two month deadline began to approach, debates began to become increasingly heated over what to do about the mass rebellions. Finally, a week before the deadline arrived, it was agreed by the civil and military authorities that they would call the rebels' bluff, allowing the deadline to pass without any action, and in the meantime initiate anti-insurgency operations. Following this, on August 5th the day prior to the stated deadline, several of the rebel leaders, including Colonel Augustus at Misriah Armories on Mars and a Cossack militia officer who had set up a camp in the city center of the Glabetov colonial capital, were killed under mysterious circumstances. In actuality, they had been assassinated utilizing Hard sound rifles.

Immediately following the deaths and the passing of the August 6th deadline, hopes for the rebel threats to be simply a bluff quickly evaporated. On Mars, in the late evening hours of the 6th, Misriah strikers, enraged by the assassination of their leader, turned violent. Although they were barricaded inside a building without access to weapons, they still were able to access the power tools that were stored there for manual repair of the automated machines in the manufacturing plants. Charging out, they mobbed the UNSC Army troops that had surrounded the building. The soldiers, unwilling to open fire initially, were quickly caught off guard by the enraged workers, who began killing them and seizing their weapons. The attack soon erupted into a full-scale battle as local law enforcement and Army troops began attempting to subdue the now-armed workers, who had begun plundering and destroying Misriah's manufacturing buildings.

Across the Outer Colonies, similar incidents occurred. On Glabetov, Cossack militia began creating barricades of burning tires, with them and other rioters using the smoke to cover them as they threw incendiary devices and homemade explosives at M12 Warthogs, whose open configuration led to many UNSC troops suffering severe burns or being outright killed. In New Belgrade on Gilgamesh, riot leaders began actively inciting violence in order to lure in police and soldiers for armed Insurrectionists to shoot down as they attempted to form cordons to halt the riots.

As the peaceful protests erupted into violence, ONI was helpless to halt the spread of information, leading to an exponential increase in violent incidents across the Outer Colonies. Panicking, the UEG ordered the UNSC Security Council to come up with a method to put down the rebellions immediately. Although Admiral Hood advised that a plan to take the rebelling colonies back one-by-one as had been done in the aftermath of the Human-Covenant War, Generals Strauss and Hogan instead fervently advocated for simultaneous strikes that committed the UNSC's full strength to prevent any colonies being able to dig in and leading to much longer and costly campaigns. With Admiral Serin Osman's agreement to aid by coordinating covert action through ONI, Strauss and Hogan's plan was put into action.

While the UNSC prepared their reclamation campaign, the violence continued to rage unabated in the colonies. Although on Mars, the deployment of UNSC Marines on August 15th appeared to prove the validity of the Security Council's plan, with the violence at Misriah ceasing only two days later, the Outer Colonies were quickly becoming rebel-held colonies once more. On August 20th, the UNSC garrisons on Gilgamesh surrendered, and now-Marshal Ira Philips, who had led the Gilgamesh Free State in the final months of its existence, once again proclaimed that the Free State had come into being once more. Two days later, the Victorian Independent State proclaimed the same, with Colonel Nathaniel Wright at the helm.

An MA37, one of the rifle types supplied to rebels across the galaxy by the Republic of Levosia. Although the rifles, captured from the People's Republic of Levosia, were superior to the LA1, the Levosian military preferred to export them as spare parts were limited

In response to the reemergence of its former allies, the Republic of Levosia began funneling weapons and equipment to them from the mass of captured weapons that had been acquired following its victory against the People's Republic of Levosia. Although this supply was not permitted due to the Levosian government policy of reconciliation, those in the military, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the current ruling party, facilitated it anyway.

Although without the intelligence that had once been plentiful during the days of independence, the triad of former Insurrectionist states, the Glabetovan Peoples' Republic, Gilgamesh Free State, and the Victorian Independent State, agreed that a UNSC invasion would be forthcoming, and predicted how it would be carried out. Correctly anticipating the attack would come through orbital forces, they agreed on a strategy to counter such landings, which they proceeded to disseminate to other rebelling colonies to aid them in halting the invasions. The strategy hinged on ensuring UNSC forces could not effectively concentrate themselves.

In order to effectively do this, the strategy relied on lessons learned from the UNSC-GFS War, specifically that shadow armies could be a great asset in getting the enemy to do what one wanted them to. Creating fake armies through false communiques and decoy vehicles would ensure that the UNSC would land nearby in order to subdue it. To counter these landings, rebel forces were to be stationed in hiding nearby, with communications only carried out physically and their positions being well-camouflaged in order to prevent them being spotted alongside their decoy counterparts. Finally, once the UNSC landing began, Insurrectionist forces were to attack them once a sizeable amount of troops began landing in order to inflict maximum casualties and prevent them from fully concentrating. During this, mobile teams armed with MANPADs, and failing that, RPGs, were to remain in hiding, shooting down incoming aircraft and changing positions.

The final part of the cold calculation was that all of the strategies had to performed near or in a civilian population center in order to preclude the possibility of enemy air or space superiority being able to turn the tables.

A crashed D77 dropship in the mountains of Gilgamesh, a common sight across all of the colonies during the failed reclamation campaign

On September 17th, the reclamation campaigns began across the galaxy. Contrary to UNSC predictions of a speedy victory over rebels that would flee at the sight of overwhelming force, the campaigns instead quickly became unmitigated disasters. On Gilgamesh, anticipating that it would be one of the most difficult worlds to overcome, around 75 Delta Company SPARTAN-IIIs were assigned to augment the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers from the 105th Shock Troops Division. Fearing that drop pods would risk encirclements, these troops in the initial wave were brought in via D77 dropships, supported by G79 gunship Pelicans.

As Insurrectionists had anticipated and engineered, these forces landed in the vicinity of the shadow army the Free State had created. What followed was a veritable massacre that resulted in the single greatest loss of NAVSPECWAR operators since the Human-Covenant War. Using forward spotters to pin down the exact location of the UNSC landings, the Free State launched JOTUN cropdusters on suicide missions, with remote operators crashing them into the dropships as they began to slow for landing, specifically targeting the cockpits of the gunships.

At the same time, Gilgamesh Free Army quick response detachments that had moved into position when the dropships had been spotted on re-entry, began opening fire on the transports. Although ODST officers and SPARTANs attempted to rally the remaining forces to fight back and establish a figurative beachhead, they were without support and were quickly cut down. Unwilling to surrender, the UNSC force fought the death as the Free Army troops cut them down. By 1200 local time, the force had been eradicated to the last man. In total, forty D77-TCI and ten G79 Pelicans were lost in the initial fighting, along with over eight hundred UNSC personnel, including seven hundred ODSTs and all seventy five SPARTANs, most of whom were lost when their dropships were shot down before landing. The remaining twenty five ODSTs were taken as prisoners by the Free State.

A HAVOK nuclear weapon detonating above Victoria, destroying the UNSC ''Missouri''

Left reeling on Gilgamesh, the UNSC would not be afforded a break, as almost every single major operation ended in a major loss for the UNSC. Above Victoria, a number of Orbital taxis loaded with Mark 2556 HAVOK nuclear weapons supplied by the Republic of Levosia destroyed the Orion-class assault carrier UNSC Missouri and Autumn-class heavy cruiser UNSC Springbok. Rather than suicidally slamming the taxis into the hulls of the ships, the Victorian Independent Navy personnel aboard instead posed as refugees fleeing off-planet, following all docking instructions, bringing the taxis inside the vessels before detonating their payload, killing 2,000 UNSC sailors and over 1,000 Marines. On Venezia, another nuclear attack on the UNSC base of operations was followed by a counterattack that nullified the UNSC presence planetside, and on Glabetov Cossack raiding parties severed supply lines and eliminated officers.

Deadly failure after deadly failure left the Security Council reeling, with Strauss and Hogan sacked due to their plan having cost the lives of 15,000 UNSC personnel in less than a week and many more wounded, more casualties than the postwar reclamations of Victoria, Glabetov, Venezia, and Gilgamesh combined. Relenting, Admiral Serin Osman agreed to Hood's new strategic proposal, that the UNSC Navy be used to blockade the Outer Colonies off from one another and NAVSPECWAR operators perform subversive actions on the planets.

The next two years proved to be a veritable rollercoaster of success and failure on both fronts. Although the naval blockades made it harder to move trade between the rebelling colonies, within several months they found ways to adapt and fight it off. The plan was developed by the Venezian government, who had great experience with defeating blockades throughout the 26th century.

Utilizing speedy blockade runners at regular intervals, a colony would send an initial shipment of supplies along with a proposed physical shipment schedule in order to prevent interception. The blockade runner would return to its home port with the finalized shipment schedule and meeting coordinates, which would then be followed until the next scheduled blockade runner, so on and so on. This quickly frustrated UNSC captains, as without any reliable intelligence on rebel ship movements it was simply a matter of staking out popular slipspace jump points or hoping to catch intelligence intercepts in order to catch one of the ships.

This schedule also frustrated NAVSPECWAR operators, as often they had used rebel cargo ships or posed as them to slip onto colonies, however, any off-schedule ships were immediately treated with suspicion, meaning posing as rebel cargo ships was near-impossible, and the secrecy of the schedules meant that it was luck of the draw as to what colony they would end up on. Subversive activities were made further difficult by the intelligence network that had been established, with HIGH CASTLE continually providing intelligence, with the Glabetovan Security Service providing advisors to help in tracking down suspected agents. Although sabotage and assassinations did occur, often they were quickly followed by a crackdown that operators would have to find ways around, making it increasingly difficult.

A destroyed Paris Class Heavy Frigate above Vitalyevna after an ambush by Talitsa Rebel Front contracted Kig-Yar pirates

On the blockade side of the operation, the attempts became increasingly frustrating. As their nuclear weapons supply dwindled, rebel forces began to realize the potential of cooperation with Kig-Yar pirates, and by mid-2565, a favorite rebel tactic would be to contract a Kig-Yar pirate group, allow the UNSC to intercept SIGINT intelligence regarding movements of a convoy, send ships out, and then have the pirates pounce on the UNSC ships while they were distracted. Although some convoys were still intercepted, it was not nearly enough to make the blockade effective given the amount of ships being lost, with, on average, one a half warships being lost for every rebel ship, no matter the size, that was brought in.

By January of 2566, the stress of the campaign had begun to cause rifts in the military and even among the civilian population of the Inner Colonies, who at the beginning of the campaign had been overwhelmingly in favor of it. Without supplies coming from the Outer Colonies, rationing had begun over a year before in November of 2564, and had only become stricter and stricter as the UNSC began to consume more and more supplies. As destroyed ships often had provisions for long journeys, if they were destroyed, they often had not used them all. In turn, a new ship would have to be built and provisioned, and the cycle would repeat itself over and over again.

In the military, particularly the UNSC Navy, the stress of the blockade campaign had begun to negatively affect performance of naval personnel, with increasing rates of drug and alcohol addiction, insubordination, and most disturbingly, suicide, self-inflicted wounds, and outright refusal to serve. Even in Inner Colonies garrisons, similar trends began to manifest as they were called in to help contain riots of dissatisfied citizens. Although murmurs began among higher-ranking officers that the campaign was an abject failure and that they should strike a deal with the rebelling worlds, the Office of Naval Intelligence, which had begun assigning agents to each ship, quickly put an end to such talk with veiled threats against officers who dared breathe word that the campaign was not going as well as Section Two was leading the public to believe.

This culture of fear would continue, and while ONI felt they had a handle on the situation, under the surface, UNSC military personnel were becoming increasingly disgruntled. This would culminate in the Atlas Mutiny in April of 2566, where sailors and marines aboard the UNSC Atlas staged a rebellion onboard after an incident where the carrier's captain ordered the crew to repair damage done during an ambush by a joint URF-Kig-Yar fleet over Venezia in an incredibly short amount of time so that they could resume raiding. Taking control of the carrier's communication systems, they broadcast a message over all available communications avenues that they were demanding an end to the raids, citing the great number of UNSC ships and sailors lost and the fact that the rebel colonies showed no signs of giving up. While the revolt was put down and Section Two attempted to walk back the sailors' remarks, the incident shocked many citizens in the Inner Colonies, who had been led to believe that the rationing and loss of life was leading towards a rebel defeat that would soon occur. Even Admiral Hood, who had been in charge of the campaign, was revolted upon finding out that statistics supplied to him by Admiral Osman were spun in such a way that it appeared the UNSC was winning, when in reality it had turned into a stalemate where the rebels were beginning to bleed the Navy dry.

Enraged, Hood attempted to confront Osman, who refused to meet him and attempted to have ONI agents assassinate Hood to replace him with someone more pliable to ONI's will on June 5th, 2566. Enraged, Hood ordered all UNSC Navy commands to immediately take control of all ONI offices and apprehend officers and agents on June 8th. The next day, Hood went before the Unified Earth Government and presented his case, citing that not only had ONI hidden the facts of their crimes before, during, and after the Human-Covenant War, but that they were attempting to usurp the authority of the UEG and the rest of the UEG for their own gain. Imploring them to extend his order to the whole of the UNSC and the UEG's civilian authorities, the General Assembly, in a landslide vote, agreed.

They passed a motion that not only were all ONI sites and personnel to be taken over by the regular UNSC military authorities, but also that the rebels were to be offered an armistice, that in return for a mutual ceasefire and their help in neutering ONI, the General Assembly would pass the Commonwealth Act and grant them the newly created status of Independent Commonwealth, permitted to run their own affairs as independent states in alliance with the UEG.

Negotiations and Peace

Representatives from the United Rebel Front and Unified Earth Government during the New York Conference, shortly before the signing of the Commonwealth Act and the Treaty of New York

"I have seen many things in my ninety three years of life in this galaxy. I've seen the sun rise on colonies across space, so many acts of heroism that I cannot recall them all, experienced the warmth of comradeship and love, and a hundred other things that have made this life worth living. But I have also seen the worst horrors that can be inflicted by one man upon another. A hundred new suns in the sky of a colony, vaporizing all in their path, friend or foe. Mass killings born out of an insatiable thirst for vengeance. Teenagers murdering all in their path because they were told to, without a second thought for anyone caught in the crossfire. But that is all over now. Seventy five years after this all began back on Far Isle, it is finally about to come to an end with the stroke of a pen. And so, I beg and plead to everyone listening that the will to carry out those horrors end with the same stroke of that pen. The dream of generations is about to come. Rejoice in that, mourn the fallen, remember what led us to this point, but I implore you to not refight the Insurrection."

―Excerpt from Winston Kilroy's address

After two weeks of deliberation, the United Rebel Front sent back their own proposal, that the Commonwealth Act have the language of the newly independent states being allied with the UEG stricken, it had to release any Insurrectionists still held in prison and repatriate them, make all records of UNSC and ONI crimes publicly available, as well as posthumously rehabilitate all rebels executed since 2492. Initially, the UEG was hesitant, stating that many of the rebels had been tried and executed for crimes such as terrorism, kidnapping, and murder. In response, the URF threatened to break off negotiations and let the fighting resume. Fearful of the ruin further fighting could bring, the UEG quickly acquiesced. Realizing they could get whatever they wanted if they simply threatened to let the fighting continue, the rebels pressed for new demands, including that URF observers be permitted to oversee the dismantling or transfer of control of the Office of Naval Intelligence's prowler fleet, that ONI or UNSC personnel guilty of war crimes from a planet that would become a Commonwealth world be tried there, and that the UEG pay an indemnity to each of the rebelling colonies for the damage done during the Insurrection and wars of reclamation.

The UEG viewed these demands as ridiculous on top of the rebels being granted the independence they desired, but agreed to consider it, and asked that the URF send diplomatic envoys to Earth in order to hash out the final details and witness the signing of the Act. The Act stated that while the UEG would not repatriate UNSC enlistedmen below the rank of E-5 and officers below the rank of O-4 due to their possibly having been forced under duress to commit war crimes, all Office of Naval Intelligence personnel involved in war crimes would be repatriated for trial, with the decisions being made by a council composed of UEG and URF officials. The UEG would also dismantle and sell the ONI prowler fleet for scrap, with the proceeds going to the indemnity to be paid out to Commonwealth planets.

Meanwhile, URF forces continued to aid UNSC troops in apprehending ONI agents, although incidences of so-called green on blue fire did occur on occasion. On February 6th, 2567, the URF and UEG finally agreed that it was time to sign the Treaty of New York, followed by the Commonwealth Act. In the interim period, rebel planets had held referendums, and every single colony passed it with an overwhelmingly positive result.

Finally, on February 8th, with much pomp and circumstance and in a ceremony streamed live to every human-occupied colony, both documents were signed. The final speaker, Winston Kilroy, was a veteran who had lived from the beginning of the Insurrection to the end, having fought in many of the war's greatest engagements. Born in 2474, he began fighting as a Private in the Colonial Military Administration under the command of then-Captain Adam Makosky during the Far Isle Incident, before joining the Eridanus People's Republic, fighting in the coups that overthrew the planetary government in 2494 and 2513, narrowly escaping with his life after being wounded during the first deployment of the SPARTAN-IIs in Operation: TALON. Leaving Eridanus Secundus in fear of another UNSC attack that would destroy the station, he fled to the Gilgamesh Free State, retiring from the Gilgamesh Free Army a a Major in 2539. Too old and frail to fight by the time of the UNSC-GFS War in 2555, he helped shelter escaped prisoners of war and supplied retreating soldiers, continuing to live a life of solitude until the outbreak of the Crisis in 2564, when he helped to recreate the Gilgamesh Free Army, being one of the few officers from the pre-war army that was still alive.

In his speech, Kilroy asked for reconciliation between the former bitter enemies, that the 75 years of war had brought untold suffering to the people of the galaxy, and that now was the time for healing. His speech was extremely well-received by both sides, and excerpts it appeared on plaques on monuments to rebel soldiers across the galaxy.

Despite Kilroy's plea for reconciliation, the UEG's decision to repatriate personnel involved in war crimes led to an initial outpouring of blood on Commonwealth worlds as they were often tried and sentenced to death in a matter of minutes in what one UEG assemblyman called legal murder. However, protests fell on deaf ears to a public and government that had little sympathy for ONI after their actions had led to untold suffering for UEG citizens and a war that had cost the lives of an estimated 100,000 UNSC personnel.