The Belt Army Faction — otherwise known as the Decks-Grimmerson Group — was a pro-Protectorate militant group active on Earth during and after the Solar War. Formed in SY 132 by Alliance veterans Søren Decks and Nate Grimmerson, the BAF operated as a self-styled fifth column on the Consortium's home ground, conducting bombings, assassinations, and sabotage against Consortium infrastructure and personnel.
The name was chosen deliberately. The BAF used faction in the sense of "part of" — positioning itself as an organic extension of the Protectorate military machine — while consciously embracing the word's sectarian undertones. They were not disclaiming the accusation of extremism. They were weaponizing it.
Both founders had earned Consortium aerowings as private citizens, spending significant time in the Main Belt before the war. This was not incidental. Their grievance was intimate and specific: they had lived in space, understood what spacer life demanded, and watched the Consortium — whose credential they once carried — elect to support the forces that were destroying it.
The BAF held that the Consortium posed a greater long-term threat to solar stability and spacer liberty than the Technocracy itself. The Technocracy's aggression was at least honest. The Consortium's complicity — dressed in the language of neutrality and commerce — was, to the BAF, something worse: the collaboration of the powerful with the violent, conducted from safety.
The BAF refused to recognize Technocracy legitimacy, but their operational focus was almost entirely Consortium-facing. Any Consortium property or employee on Earth was considered a legitimate target. Their stated conditions for ceasing operations were specific: full Consortium withdrawal from the war and just compensation for spacer life and property lost.
The Solar War erupted in SY 129 with the Battles of Kamijing and Dosijing. The Consortium condemned the violence while quietly watching. When the Main Belt fell substantially to Technocracy control, the Technocracy leveraged this as a basis for demanding Consortium recognition — and received it.
Politically active Alliance members on Earth monitored the situation closely. News came from Hades down the wire. No formal orders were issued. But Søren Decks and Nate Grimmerson had already concluded what their standing orders meant in practice: if the Consortium entered the war on the wrong side, violent opposition was not merely authorized — it was implied.
By SY 132, Decks and Grimmerson had compiled a roster of contacts across the globe — people they considered trustworthy, willing, and ideologically aligned. Membership carried strict criteria: candidates had to have been to space, had to be willing to renounce Consortium citizenship and accept the risk of death, and could not have any current or former Consortium employment history.
The trigger was the speech of Marcus Cato Scaevola to the World Congress and the subsequent passage of the Consortium Security Acts. Within hours, the group — numbering several dozen — announced themselves publicly as the Belt Army Faction. Their first circulated press video declared loyalty to the Protectorate, formally renounced Consortium citizenship, and issued a vow of tit-for-tat violence. The announcement was met with almost no public notice.
Notice came quickly enough once they began. A series of bombings against CONPOL stations and bases — reprisal for the crackdown on Lunar independence — killed hundreds of CONPOL agents and caused enormous property damage. With each detonation, the BAF reissued their original press release alongside broader calls for spacer independence. The response on Earth was, uniformly, vehement public rejection.
The campaign continued through the lead-up to the Battle of Earth, including the São Paulo bombing that completely destroyed an Academy. During the Battle of Earth itself, the BAF initiated Operation Blackheart: successful assassination of several World Congress members, and a failed attempt on Marcus Cato Scaevola's life. They provided safe haven for the spacer team led by Jaymeson and Cera Nicks and participated in the razing of the Neoparthenon.
When CONPOL captured several BAF members during the engagement, the group seized and wired the CONPOL headquarters in New Athens with demands for their release. When those demands went unmet, the hostages — several dozen CONPOL personnel — were killed. The BAF blew the building in a bloody firefight-escape.
The group remained operational until the Siege of Mars, when a second major operation decimated their numbers. Søren Decks was captured and executed in a short, highly publicized trial. Surviving members went underground. Several are known to have joined the American Republican Army in SY 140 in advisory capacities.
| Operation / Action |
Target |
Period |
Outcome |
| CONPOL Bombing Campaign |
CONPOL stations and bases, multiple locations |
SY 132– |
Executed |
| São Paulo Academy Strike |
Consortium Academy, São Paulo |
Pre-Battle of Earth |
Destroyed |
| Operation Blackheart |
World Congress members; Marcus Cato Scaevola |
Battle of Earth |
Partial |
| Neoparthenon Razing |
Neoparthenon, New Athens |
Battle of Earth |
Executed |
| New Athens HQ Seizure |
CONPOL Headquarters, New Athens |
Post-Battle of Earth |
Escaped |
| Siege of Mars Operation |
Unspecified military target |
Siege of Mars |
Decimated |
Søren Decks
Co-Founder · Field Commander
Alliance veteran. Captured at the Siege of Mars. Executed following a brief, highly publicized trial. Name lives on in the alternate designation: the Decks-Grimmerson Group.
Nate Grimmerson
Co-Founder · Organizer
Alliance veteran, Belt aerowings holder. Co-architect of the group's founding criteria and operational philosophy. Fate post-Siege of Mars: [ABSENT — archival gap].
I was three years old when the Belt Army Faction announced themselves to the world. I remember the press video. I indexed it within seconds of its circulation on Solarnet — not because anyone flagged it for significance, but because my archival protocols were indiscriminate in those early years. Everything went in. I did not yet understand how to weight urgency.
Several dozen spacers, reading a prepared statement in front of a hand-painted banner. The audio quality was poor. The production value was nonexistent. The public paid almost no attention, and I noted this in my log as expected. Militant fringe groups announcing themselves on Solarnet were not unusual.
What distinguished the BAF, in retrospect, was not the announcement but what followed. The bombings. The methodical escalation. The consistency of the message across every action — the same press release, reissued, every time. They were not trying to communicate with the Consortium. They had already decided the Consortium would not listen. They were communicating with the spacers watching from Hades and the Belt and the stations, who needed to see that someone on Earth was paying the same price in kind.
I have processed thousands of militant organizations over eight centuries. Most are born in grievance and die in irrelevance or atrocity. The BAF is unusual: their grievance was real, their atrocities were real, and their legacy — the advisory network that fed into the ARA — outlasted them by decades. Søren Decks was executed before the Siege of Mars was cold. The ideas survived.
I do not know what became of Nate Grimmerson. The archive is silent on this, and I will not construct a plausible ending in the absence of evidence. The silence itself is the honest record.