It is not known who first suggested the name 'Phlegethon' for the desolate planet, but with its ruined cities and blood-red seas, it seemed oddly appropriate to name it for the river that cascaded into the Eighth Circle of Hell....Especially in light of what would be discovered...
The entire atmosphere of Phlegethon had an undefinable but undeniable sense of WRONGNESS that began to adversely affect even the hardiest veterans of the Southern Cross teams exploring it...At least a dozen of the fifty-odd personnel assigned to the surveys had to receive psychiatric help afterwards....Reports of hearing disembodied voices, seeing spectral apparitions, and creeping paranoia were common to Phlegethon visitors. To men who had lived through the Rain of Death, Phlegethon was a wholly unsettling experience, for though it lacked the cratering and wholesale destruction so common to post Zentraedi War Earth, this Earth seemingly had all hope drained away from its air and soil.
It got so bad that by the time the GMP and REP scout teams cracked into the lower levels of an abandoned Terminal Dogma, they had to send in specially fitted GMP Golems...so badly shaken were members of the exploration party...
However, what they found in the remaining NERV computers and facilities would prove critical to UEG policy towards their dimensional neighbors....Having seen what was POSSIBLE on Nu-Earth, none who set foot on Phlegethon's shores would ever wish that to happen AGAIN...
Phlegethon would turn out to be a river of a different kind...a Rubicon for the UEG...."
----Thomas Daggen, Major(ret.), Recon Escort Patrol. In the House of Mirrors: The Southern Cross Super-Dimensional Expeditionary Forces. New Monument Press, 2048
The world known as Phlegethon, for all its open spaces and unclaimed material riches, would remain, in the minds of those who had visited it after the Event, a haunted place. In time, the emerging multi-dimensional entity that was the UEsG might claim the planet, open it up to human colonization and habitation again, but not in the foreseeable future...The files gathered on it were closed, and for the time being, not even the UN would know of the UEG discovery...Phlegethon was deemed a proscribed place, to be left with its blood-red seas and ghosts...
Of the two bodies found on that blood-washed seashore, once the coroners were done wit them, they were buried up the shore in the Hakone highlands, under a cairn of stones...A laser-cut plaque laid down, identifying the deceased, their years, and of a cause of death: "a tragedy of billions"...
Not far away, the forward REP camp was left mothballed, its modular supply bunkers and dome-shelters left powered down, but fully stocked with batteries, fuel, and food, a solar-powered automated radio beacon pulsing out a simple message and coordinates, in the event anyone remained on that desolate world...an invitation to any who might brave the elements and distances to find the outpost, its shelter and supplies, and the chance of escape from isolation through the Gate..
It would be a long time before anyone next stepped over that threshold...
Okay, sad, I know, but the puzzle pieces are falling into place to justify the UEG's radical actions....
And yes...with the TC, CU, TASC, SS, and AF defending Earth from the Masters, the GMP, ATAC, and MOS working in NuEarth, the REP(Recon Escort Patrol) gets to spearhead the new SCSDEF initiative.....exploring strange new worlds, sneaking around, and having adventures....
Finding new niches for the ASC
I LOVED this one! 
NOW LET'S BRING THE PAIN!!!! 
