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The Copernicus Five

The Copernicus Five were surviving members of the leadership of major powers who happened to be on the moon when the Last World War began. Together, they negotiated the ceasefire that ended the war and acted as five of the fifteen Provisional Executives of the Commonwealth Provisional Government from 2052 – 2055.

Thomas Atkinson

(1998 – 2182)
At the outbreak of the Last World War, Atkinson was United States Secretary of Commerce, technically tenth in line of Presidential succession. At war's end, he was one of three legitimate claimants to Presidency and he signed the Copernicus Declaration as 'Acting President'.

Returning to Earth in 2054, he helped organize a return to civilian administration in North America. Considered a traitor by American Separatists, he survived two assassination attempts before taking residence in Byzantium. Atkinson stood for election in 2055 and was elected to the Senate and then the Executive Council, becoming the Minister of Space. Convinced that the Human race must spread out to avoid extinction, he led the effort to establish the Exodus and Genesis Projects.

Declining to run in 2060, he became Director of Project Exodus and took residence on the Serenity habitat. He resigned his post in 2065 to become the Mayor of colonists aboard the Cityship Atlantis. Arriving at Alpha Centauri in 2105, he was one of the first colonists to homestead at the future site of the capital city Chiron.  He was elected mayor of Chiron in 2108, but declined to run for a second term in 2112.

When Atlantian colonists voted to secede from the Commonwealth in 2119, he voted against the measure, but allowed himself to be drafted as interim president and then stood for election to be the first president of Atlantis for a six year term ending in 2127.

Atkinson vowed to retire from politics and concentrated his efforts on development of the upper Serenity river valley.

After the disastrous Hwang administration, he reluctantly agreed to serve a second term as President from 2139-2145, but then retired to his Serenity Ranch where he lived until his death from natural causes in 2182.

Wu Jun

(2007-2132)
Wu came to the moon as Director of the Chinese Helium 3 mining venture at Mare Smythii.  She was a former Chinese Air Force Colonel, but held the civilian rank of Governor of Chinese Lunar Outposts.  As a communications specialist, she was instrumental in establishing the channels that led to the cease fire, and Chinese civilian and military leaders differed to her for the purposes of negotiating a constitution that protected Chinese interests.

As such, she became extremely unpopular over the Mongolian Compromise, which seeded Inner Mongolia to the Mongolian Region in the Ninth District.  She did not seek election in 2055, but was appointed Director of the Ministry of Infrastructure's Communication Bureau.  For the next fifteen years, Wu labored to reestablish orbital and surface communications and guidance systems, becoming known as the 'Mother of TerraNet'.  On her retirement in 2070, she was rewarded with the title of Countess.

In retirement, Wu married, raised children and confined her activities to the social scene of Shanghai.  The Executive Council hereditizerized her title in 2088 and granted her the Prosperity Through Purity arcology as a permanent fief.

Countess Wu Jun was assassinated along with her husband and two children during the Anarchist Revolution of 2132.  Her son Tomas Wu became the second Count of Prosperity Through Purity and held the title until the arcology's destruction and his death in 2339.

Anatoly Dmitriev

(2012-2214)
Colonel Dmitriev was commander of Russian military forces on the moon.  As such forces were not legal, his official title was Chief of Security for Russian Lunar Expeditions.  Quickly realizing the futility of warfare in space, he maintained an unofficial cease fire with Allied force throughout the last six months of the war and unsuccessfully sought to convince Russian Space Forces to do the same.

Dmitriev stood for election in 2055 and represented Slavia in the Commonwealth Legislature.  He did not secure an election to the Senate, and did not run again in 2060.  Instead, he emigrated to Vesta, becoming a prominent mining executive on that asteroid as founder of the Vesta Resources Group.

As one of the belt's wealthiest individuals, he was awarded a Baron's title in 2088.  In 2110, VRG completed work on the Solaria mining habitat, which Dmitriev used as his headquarters until transferring to the Valentina habitat in 2149.  Dmitriev returned to the Earth for the first time in ninety years to become invested as Marquis Valentina in 2161; he did not return again.

Marquis Valentina was a supporter of the Rebels in the Colonial War, using the conflict as an excuse to militarize his fleet of six Belter habitats.  He attended the constitutional convention of the Colonial Confederation and ran against Yatrindra Gupta for Confederation President in 2185, finishing a distant second.

In 2206 Marquis Valentina attended the negotiations at Shackelton Station that established the Terran Confederation, becoming the only member of the Copernicus Five to negotiate three separate constitutions.

Anatoly Dmitriev died in 2214 during a failed regeneration.  His descendants fought over his commercial empire for decades, until his granddaughter, Xenia, Third Marquise Valentina eventually consolidated the enterprises as the Valentina Resources Group in 2241.

Arianne Bourassa

(2006-2263)
Arianne Bourassa was the European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science when she traveled to the moon.  By the end of the war, she was one of four surviving Commissioners a claimant for the Presidency.  A conservative French Politian, she was responsible for much of the drafting of the Commonwealth Constitution, and she was one of the founding members of the Horizon Party, which would dominate Commonwealth politics more than a century.

Bourassa became a career politician, easily winning elections from her region of Atlantica, and through Horizon Party rolls, achieving Senate and Executive Council membership.  In 2055, Bourassa became Minster of Infrastructure.  In 2060, she became Minister of Space, a position she would hold through three elections, until accepting the Ministry of Environment in 2075.  Factional fighting within the Horizon Party caused her to lose her Ministry position in the 2080 elections, but she remained in the Senate until retiring in 2105 and becoming the Duchess of Normandy.

After the Horizon Party barely retained control of the Executive Council following the suppression of the Anarchist Revolution, Duchess Normandy was asked to come out of retirement, and in the 2140 election, she won the foremost Ministry of Finance, maintaining her position until the setbacks of the 2150 election caused her to again retire to her estates.

Fallout from the Colonial War brought her back into government as Minister of Environment in 2185, but she resigned her ministerial position when she joined other more centrist members of her party to form the breakaway Conservative Party in 2187.  Accepting party chairmanship, she led her party into a coalition government in 2190, serving as Minister of Justice.  When the Conservatives became the dominate partner in the Conservative -Horizon coalition in 2195, she served as Minister of Finance until retiring in 2199 to undergo regeneration therapy.

The Commonwealth appointed her as a negotiator to the reunification conference at Shackelton Station, were she celebrated her 200th birthday and stood with Anatoly Dmitriev at the dedication of the Commonwealth Memorial at Copernicus.  In 2210, she stood for election to become a Grand Senator, but resigned after the Conservatives faired poorly in the 2215 elections.

Duchess Normandy spent her retirement years as a patron of the arts, contributing to the rediscovery of Opera and Ballet, both on and off the Earth.  She died in 2263 from a re-entry accident during her voyage to dedicate the Maxwell Vista Opera House, the first opera house on terraformed Venus.

Pradeep Virma

(1995-2120)
Pradeep Virma was India's first Minister of Space.  Along with the Minister of Urban Development, he was the only Indian Minister to survive the war.  After participating in the formation of the provisional government, Virma returned to Bihar to stand for election as an independent, but failed to win against entrenched party interests.  Tomas Atkinson appointed him Director of the Space Resource Bureau.  In 2060, he became Director of Project Genesis, but he resigned in 2073 when Venus was chosen over Mars for the terraformation project.  He emigrated to Mars, taking up residence in the Mangala Colony in 2075.

Virma turned down investiture as a Baron, but did accept a Knighthood in 2085.  He was stripped of the title two years later when he was convicted of leading a clandestine terraformation effort.   After a five year exile on Phobos, Virma returned to Mangala and was elected mayor of the colony.  He proved to be an erratic leader and resigned in 2094.

Virma left Managla to set up a small community in the badlands of Lycus Sulci.  Despite suspicions that he had resumed terraforming activity, the authorities did nothing investigate his compound.  After passage of the Home Rule Amendment in 2114, Martian authorities effectively stop prosecuting terraformation crimes, and Virma begins work on a mining complex on the slopes of Olympus Mons.  In 2120, the Martian Legislature overturned anti-terraformation laws and Virma begins openly drilling into the deep magma chamber, hoping to release a reservoir of methane gas.  Virma was killed in a rover accident two weeks later.  His scheme was found to have little geological basis and was quickly abandoned for more practical methods.

Despite his erratic last decades, Pradeep Virma is considered the father of Martian terraformation.  His mausoleum on the slope Olympus Mons of still stands four hundred years after his death.

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