The Ore Secession

The Ore Secession (2441–2449). By the 2440s the Belt is divided between the blocs: Open City charter worlds, the largest share, Settlement charter cities, the Parishad's own habitats and a few Mandate mining habitats. The Open City charter worlds and the Settlement charter cities, with the Line habitats among them, break away together. The Settlement's charter cities reject its resource levies and Earth's veto over their charters. The Open City charter worlds reject councils on Earth where money wins the votes, and where the fortunes that outvote them are betting on the Open Cities' own array, which will soon undercut the Belt's fuel monopoly. No power on Earth backs them. The Open Cities and the Settlement fight to keep their worlds, mostly with autonomous drones and the sabotage of fuel shipments, while the Mandate and the Parishad keep their own habitats out of the war. Nobody can stop it: the Belt refines and ships the fuel that every inner world and most fleets burn. Earth, Mars and the Moon have water of their own, but their refineries closed generations ago, undercut by the Belt's, and the tankers and Saturn's skimmers belong to Belt firms. Every blockade starves the blockaders first, and building new refineries at home or new skimmers at Saturn would take decades. It ends with an independent Belt Republic: the first great power outside the blocs. Freehold, the Raised bloc, backs the breakaway: its Belt enclaves support the other settlements and its crews refuse to work for the blockaders, and the Republic's founding law lets Raised citizens hold signing offices in return. It also stops the Elevator for six years (see The Elevator, in Reaching outward).