"Saolea holds. The forts held the line at the radius and the platforms did the rest. They came as the doctrine said they would."Signal from the Saolea Fleet to the Navy Board, 2434
Saolea is the anchor system of the Saolea sector, the mining sector of the Ciriban Gulf. Its second planet, the gas giant Okeanos, carries the mangrove moon Theia, settled from Greece and Cyprus in 2323, whose seabed produced a fifth of the federation's rare earths by 2333. Its fourth planet, Chalna, was the sector's farm. Saolea was the base of the Saolea Fleet from 2331 and the second fortress of the Republic in the war with the Red Khanate. There the Republic won its first victory of that war in March 2434, and lost the system in September 2436.
The system
| Body | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Saolea I | Hot rock | |
| Saolea II, Okeanos | Gas giant | Named by the Aegean colonists. Its larger moon is Theia; its smaller moons are Pelagia, an ice moon, and Kalymnos, a captured rock |
| Saolea III | Ringed gas giant | Fuel skimming for the Saolea Fleet |
| Saolea IV, Chalna | Barren world with thin air | Domed farms from 2327 under Bharat's concession; colony founded after the Voor War |
| Saolea V | Ice giant |
History
Survey and settlement
The Grissom surveyed Saolea in 2308, the first system of its long arc south into the Gulf, and the Office claimed it in 2316. Reliance's survey of Theia's seabed was under way in 2317, before the Office had a settlement plan. The UNS Theia landed 100,000 colonists on 3 August 2323, the Office's first settlement in the sector and the first the companies had asked for.
Chalna, Saolea's fourth planet, was worked from 2327 by Bharat's agricultural concession as a station, not a colony. The Office's agronomists rated its domed soil better than Mars's. Its 30,000 contract farmers fed Hoplonka and the Saolea Fleet and were the sector's largest population without a charter. Its colony register opened in 2333, and the colony was founded after the war.
The Iron Gulf
War Plan Purple made Saolea one of its three gate systems. The Bastion-class starforts Rhine and Io went up at the Pillai radius in 2327 and 2329. The Saolea Fleet was formed in 2331 under Fleet Admiral Sean Santiago and based at Hoplonka's orbital. On 1 July 2333 it held two battleships, two battlecruisers, two carriers, five heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, sixteen frigates and thirty corvettes. In the Voor War it held the south, fought at the First Battle of Media in 2333 and held Media in the Second Battle of Media in 2334.
The Naval Reduction Act of 2350 mothballed the Saolea forts.
The Battle of Saolea, 2434
In 2430 the Khan's southern division of 90 monoliths, under Khan Orun D'Vesh of the oldest of the twenty clans, was sent against the Saolea sector through Media. By 2434 Saolea's Pillai radius held six of the Rearmament Acts' starforts and 300 projector platforms of the Vur Duri pattern, built from 2429 on the Legion's design. D'Vesh's division arrived at Saolea's edge on 12 March 2434 and fell inward against the forts, as the doctrine required. The Battle of Saolea was the Republic's first victory of the war. On its third morning the captured hearth The Hearth That Waits, whose Voor slave crew of 60,000 had been under Fevarian command for seven years, killed its Fevarian officers and came over to the Republic's lines. The Chamber, the Senate and the President went to Saolea in April 2434 to mark it.
The fall, 2436
The Republic used the next two years to deliver 300 hulls, build 800 platforms at Nomotar, Saolea and Talandra, and evacuate Theia from 90 million people to 20 million. The Khan came against Saolea on 3 September 2436 with 230 monoliths in one mass. Admiral Kvoravich withdrew to Nomotar and Talandra with 600 hulls without a fleet action, on the Navy Board's strategy. The forts and Saolea's 500 platforms, with garrisons of 20,000, held four days. Theia refused submission on 10 September, and Hoplonka and the mangrove coast were burned on 12 September 2436.
Liberation
The Retribution Fleet retook the Saolea sector from Saolea itself. It reached the system on 20 June 2450 and destroyed the garrison of two monoliths in Theia's orbit on the 22nd. Theia had 12 million people of 90. Chalna's domes had been broken and resealed by the survivors.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind"
- Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.1 "War Plan Purple" and §8.3 "The Binami and Saolea Sectors"
- Solar Eternal, Fleet Reference (July 2333)
- Solar Eternal, Part XII, §12.3 "The Sector War"
- Solar Eternal, Part XIV, §14.1 "The Reclamation of the Binami and Saolea Sectors"