Destruction of Phobos
Destruction of Phobos is the term given to the conflict and surrounding events that lead to the breakup and dissolution of Mars' moon Phobos during the Lunar Revolutionary War.
The Conflict
Prelude
Earth launched a counter attack with ground forces on the surface of Luna, attacking and occupying settlements to varying degrees of success against the entrenched Lunar forces and citizens that had taken up arms. Fighting was heaviest at the Lunar city of Annesvelt, with Earth stating that they had credible information that the city was no more than a secret military facility and the location of the Lunar war council. Though untrue, the fighting lasted for more than a week before infrastructure degradation caused the city to need to be evacuated and effectively abandoned. Luna responded with a three month campaign of orbital bombardment which devastated inner and coastal landmasses across Earth's surface. Aimed to not hit population centers, Lunar missiles rained down on military outposts and surface launch silos around the globe.
Deployment
In response, Earth pulled its forces on Mars back to Phobos in an effort to regroup and stage a new assault on Luna. The Lunarens let Earthen transports leave the surface and reach the moon or their respective ships peacefully; however, once Earth forces were off planet, Luna consolidated its fleet and mounted a blockade Phobos, trapping the remaining Earthen forces to the confines of the small moon.
The Engagement
At first nothing happened. For days the Lunar ships simply hung in space around Phobos and broadcast a continuing message announcing the blockade. Earth’s forces soon understood that there would be no engagement, they were simply being held there while fighting continued on Earth and Luna. It wasn’t until [I]UNES Duan Shu tried to leave that Luna showed their resolve. Three ships immediately attacked with no further warning, opening up with a barrage of torpedos that quickly overwhelmed the defenses of the older Earthen ship and turned it into an expanding debris field. Two more ships were quickly engaged in a similar manner the skies above Mars fell back into fighting. Though this skirmish would see no more Earthen ships destroyed, with Lunar ships only engaging defensively, letting UNEN forces expend more of their dwindling armament supplies. The following stalemate lasted for three weeks with Earthen hails and communications being blocked and unanswered by the DPLN. They were cut-off and had no idea what was silently traversing the space between planets. In the days before the blockade ten nuclear fission ground-to-orbit missils had been retrofitted with Cliptin Drives and, at a spcified point between orbits, were launched from the Lunar surface toward the small red dot of Mars. For three weeks these missiles quietly burned across the the vast distances, gliding closer and closer to its target. When it happened it happened fast. The UNEN, having been unable to communicate with Earth, were unaware and unprepared of the ordinance that shrieked in faster than the eye could see and slammed into the surface of Phobos. On orders, as the surface of Phobos glowed with molten rock, the Lunaren ships began firing on the UNEN ships in unison. It was the largest loss of life in a single incident in, not only military history, but human history.
Outcome
Within moments of impact the moon began to crack, long canyons opened up across the hilly, pitted surface as ejecta from the explosions spewed out in all directions. The surface burned as secondary explosions from refineries and military outposts causing more and more surface fissures, a cascade of cracks that eventually broke the moon into five large fragments. It took less than a day for the five peices to become millions of spreading out rocks drifting to their new home as part of a thin ring around Mars. After news reached Luna and Earth of the attack's sucess Luna immediatly demanded Earth's surrender, even adding the condition of giving full technical knowledge to the beaten nation as recompence for thier actions.
Aftermath
Destruction of Phobos became the initial, and largests, wedge in Martian Lunar relations, which in time would directly and indirectly lead to a number of future wars and violence between the two planetary entities.
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