151st Fusiliers

Overview

The 151st (Altairian) Fusiliers was a Terran Alliance military unit active during the Outer Reaches Rebellion and which was destroyed at the order of the future founding leader of the Rim Worlds Republic, Hector Worthington Rowe.

History

Effectively abandoned following the issue of the Demarcation Declaration, the 151st (Altarian Fusiliers) had the misfortune of serving as the Terran Alliance garrison on the world of Lucianca when a rogue group under the command of Hector Rowe arrived in the Lucianca system in 2244. Lucianca had been an important staging area for the Terran Alliance military during the Outer Reaches Rebellion, and almost three divisions of regular units had been stationed on the world at the height of the conflict, using Lucianca as a base for raids against neighbouring systems. When the Alliance military effort against the rebellious worlds had failed, the regulars had been rotated home, and the 151st - a small reserve unit - had been rotated in as the garrison. The Fusiliers were still present on Lucianca partly as a face-saving exercise on the part of the Terran Alliance, but also due to a combination of a lack of transport and a series of administrative errors.

Rowe was a former student of Classics and History at the university of Thebes on Alexandria, and had been studying at the university in 2237 when he volunteered to join the Third Alexandrian Militia, shortly before two Terran Alliance battalions invaded Alexandria in a campaign that saw three thousand Alexandrians killed.

In the wake of the Outer Reaches Rebellion Rowe had started a student group aimed at protesting against the Terran Alliance, which he described as the "Great Alliance Devil"; Rowe's group had become increasingly militant with time, and earlier in 2244 had hijacked a flotilla of JumpShips belong to the Skye Freight and Goods company, forcing the JumpShip crews to carry Rowe and his followers away. Rowe's target was the 151st, having learned that the Alliance unit was still in place on Lucianca; his followers - who numbered approximately five hundred, and who had been dubbed the Theban Legion - had been recruited through Rowe's rallying call to cleanse the Outer Reaches of what he described as "the last vestiges of Alliance barbarism."

Disguised as a relief convoy that the Fusiliers had been waiting for some time to arrive, Rowe and his fellow guerillas infiltrated the Fusiliers and then assassinated the Fusiliers' command staff and captured the unit. Having already executed the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer of the 151st personally, Rowe then staged a series of mock trials involving the surviving three hundred and fifty members of the Fusiliers; Rowe's kangaroo courts invariably sentenced each Terran Alliance soldier to execution by torture, sentences that Rowe was busy enacting when the crew of one of the hijacked Skye Freight and Goods vessels managed to escape with their ship.

Certain that the escapees would spread word of his actions, Rowe and blackmailed the remaining JumpShip crews into carrying them away, but not before the remaining members of the 151st had been butchered and their equipment appropriated by Rowe and his followers. The last of the Fusiliers to die were those burned at the stake shortly before Rowe and the Theban Legion departed.

Officers

Rank	Name	Command
Commanding Officers of the 151st Fusiliers

Bibliography

• The Periphery, First Edition