The Destruction of Phoebe was a confrontation during the UN-MCR Cold War, which culminated in the destruction of Saturn's moon Phoebe and the Protogen research station there.
Prelude[]
During the UN-MCR Cold War, a mysterious alien contagion was discovered on the moon of Phoebe, leading to the company Protogen setting up a research base on the moon to study it. Protogen would ultimately lock the base down, exposing Martian researchers to the Protomolecule for study, before abandoning the base and wiping the station's data cores. The MCRN Donnager would later be dispatched to investigate the base, with boarding teams concluding that the base's destruction was the result of a cover-up rather than an accident.
Confrontation[]
Following the Donnager's destruction, the Martian Congressional Republic Navy dispatched the MCRN Scirocco to investigate the station and hold it until science teams were able to arrive. With the Scirocco en route to Phoebe, Protogen owner Jules-Pierre Mao secretly ordered UN Undersecretary Sadavir Errinwright to dispatch a United Nations Navy (UNN) ship to get there first to ensure information about the Protomolecule be kept secret. Initially fearing dispatching a UNN ship to Phoebe would draw too much attention, Errinwright pitched a plan to the UN Security Council to redeploy the Navy's fleet to all bases in the Outer Planets and to head off Martian ships wherever they were, as to make deploying a vessel to Phoebe appear more innocuous. The UNN Nathan Hale commanded by Captain Yvgeny would be dispatched on a hard burn to Phoebe, intending to beat the Martians to the moon.
With the Nathan Hale matching course and reaching Phoebe faster than the Scirocco, Lieutenant Sutton ordered Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper and her marine fireteam to prepare to drop on the station. However, the Scirocco would have no chance of reaching the moon before the Hale, resulting in the Martian ship electing to destroy the moon by firing five torpedoes to ensure the UN wouldn't get their hands on the station either. With a twenty-minute transmission delay between Phoebe and Earth, and interpreting the torpedoes as an attack on the Hale, a heated debate ensued at the UN between Errinwright and Deputy Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala, when Errinwright proposed launching a pre-emptive attack on the MCR, triggering a full-scale war, a plan which Secretary-General Esteban Sorrento-Gillis decided be put on hold thanks to Avasarala's words of dissuasion. Meanwhile, Captain Yvgeny of the Hale chose against firing back on the Scirocco in apparent retaliation, with the missiles streaking past the UNN ship and impacting on the moon instead, obliterating it alongside the research base. In the aftermath of Phoebe's destruction, the UN would ultimately decide to retaliate by destroying the Martian moon of Deimos.Books
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