[ P | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | E ]
CONFEDERATION DAY
Planet Hilthros;
TCNSA Academy
The Sirius System, Terra Quadrant, Sol Sector
AUG 23 2679/2679.235; 0755 Hours (CST)
And with that said, Senator James “Paladin” Taggart (TCN gen., ret.) paused a bit, scratching his short, stringy black beard. He allowed the young man before him to shake himself free from the entrancing description of the brutal war that forged the Terran Confederation of today. The Senator believed his semi-documentary account of the war to be so insightful, so understandable, so—
“Aw, god damn it... my batteries’re fuckin’ dead,” Cadet Lance R. Casey said with repugnance, smacking his DCD player with frustration. Immediately after, he froze, realizing that the senator had been waiting for his response on the matter he had drawled on about for fifteen minutes. Swinging his head up, he was in no shock to see the older man exasperated with the obvious lack of respect.
First feigning a racking cough to prepare a response, Casey then spoke. “Uh, um, I never thought about Confederation Day before, sir—in that way, I mean. I mean I’ve thought about it, you know, in Military History class. But, um,” Lance fought for a continuance, “How’d it go after that?”
The senator cleared his throat politely. “After the death toll of one million lives at the Battle of Centauri Prime, Cabreighny and his Admonisher went back to Terra to state the Confederacy’s case against the Federation. Tolwyn’s forces showed up on Terra’s doorstep along with the Confederate flagship and people began to celebrate and cheer-at least the planet’s upper class.” He stopped speaking for the moment, pacing slowly around the young cadet. “But when the Fleet Admiral announced a truce between the two sides, and furthermore demanded the WEC arrange a hearing, that’s when things began to change...” He paused introspectively, “And it is said that the most major of changes sprout from the most unlikely of places...”
UFI Prison of Political Affairs
Planet Earth;
Berlin, German Republic
The Sol System, Terra Quadrant, Sol Sector
AUG 26 2416/2416.237; 0900 Hours (FST)
To her, this morning was just like any other morning that had taken place in the last ten years since she had been here.
Dominica Lawson always awoke when the dayshift lights outlining the ceiling of her cell shimmered on weakly, but still illuminating the entirety of her six-foot by eight-foot cell. She always felt a little chilly, garbed only in her prison uniform, so she always took her bed’s fleece cover blanket which was the brightest, ugliest hue of reflective orange and wrapped it snugly around herself.
She had fifteen minutes until the whine of the force field at the front of her cell, the 25th century’s answer to prison gates, would cease and she would, under escort of course, proceed to the public showers and give the ever-watchful guards their jollies. They always did, of course; her 39 year-old body was more or less as shapely and fine as it had been ten years ago.
Truthfully, she sometimes forgot why she was even here. It had been eight years before when she decided to stop asking about the war. Any of the prison staff she had asked always gave the party line that each and every rebel would be wiped out. She was never given the opportunity to converse with the other political inmates. Due to her charge of conspiracy the warden had felt it prudent that contact between her and the rest of the fellow inmates should be prohibited “in order to prevent an incident compromising the security within the prison facility.” She had never yet gone to trial for any of her charges.
Under normal regulations, she should have been released long ago. She did not need her education at the University of Global Law at Geneva to know that. However, under Martial Law, Executive Orders were indefinitely in place, especially with senatorial backing. She was stuck here as long as the WEC wished.
Before all this, she had quite the career going for her. Well-known among organizations involved in protecting civil liberties, she had been on a team of attorneys that was involved in the pivotal case that allowed Non-Earthborns to serve in the Federate Armed Forces. Right before her imprisonment, she herself had been constructing a case for the Martian government—-to legally fortify itself with sovereign rights and peacefully release itself from the status of being a colony in servitude to Earth.
Then the Galactic Civil War ensued. Before, she had stayed away from serving in the Yan War by learning the tactics of the burdening bureaucracy that had formed the backbone of Federation rule. By getting involved with cases for government agencies and senatorial committees she had no trouble in convincing the Selective Service Board that she was more vital in a courtroom than she was on a battlefield.
But the civil war had started. Once the same agencies and committees she’d tried to hide within ordered her to prosecute rebel soldiers for war crimes, she had officially announced her oath of neutrality.
And now she was here...
The whine of the constraining force field finally had ceased. Tossing off the blanket, she sat up ready to be escorted to the showers. Instead of one prison guard though, two had arrived along with a military officer garbed in a midnight blue dress uniform of the Confederate Space Navy. The two guards stood back away from the cell as the officer stepped inside.
“Miss Dominica Lawson, I’ve come to speak with you. I trust you have the time,” the dashing black-haired officer glanced at the walls of the cell, smirking. “I am Captain Cabreighny, acting commander of the Confederate Armed Forces.” Seemingly tired and exhausted, he, a foot taller than her short five-foot five-inch frame, was and pale-skinned due to artificial light exposure aboard the starship which he was stationed.
“Don’t tell me they have imprisoned you also, Captain? Is the war going that badly?” she responded with a smirk.
Cabreighny smirked in kind, “Actually, Miss Lawson, the war is in a lull right now, a temporary truce has been issued. I am—rather, the entire Confederacy is hoping that this dramatic chain of grim events will lead to a positive end of the war. To help us along in this chain of events, the Senate of the WEC in surprising cooperation with the Confederate President have moved to for you to be freed from this facility...” he trailed off, pausing.
Dominica did not even blink, smile, or even frown at this news. She simply stared at the dashing officer, hanging by the moment.
“... On one condition: that you represent the Confederacy and its case against the Federation in an off-world tort hearing that shall begin one week from now.”
Lawson stared down at the unremarkable cell floor for that moment; her fiery cropped red hair sweeping down over her eyes. “Even if I would be freed, Captain, I could not take your case. I was summarily disbarred upon my imprisonment, and I’ve taken an oath of neutrality by which I was imprisoned so long ago.”
Cabreighny voiced in a compassionate whisper, raising his hands in a more pleading gesture, “The venue where the hearing will be held is prepared to submit your standing to their planetary judicial bar. Along with that, one of the WEC’s requirements was that whoever stated our case had to have maintained a position of neutrality throughout the entire war.”
Slipping from beneath the cuff of his right sleeve and following into his hand was a datapad. Fidgeting elegantly, he tapped the side of the pad lightly again and again into the palm of his other hand. “I’ve memorized your record—‘Click!’—you‘ve mastered interplanetary law—‘Click!’—spoken on behalf of entire planetary governments—‘Click!’—and each time the WEC offered you to recant your vow of neutrality in exchange for your freedom, you have walked away. Just try to tell me there is another on this planet that can approach this case as objectively as you can.”
The former attorney looked up at the officer in silent acknowledgement.
In one last plea, the captain spoke. “Now you can either sit here for another ten years and keep yourself neutral in a war that can end the wrong way, or you can fight for your freedom in the courtroom giving us a chance to end this war the right way-without anymore bloodshed. Your choice, Miss Lawson.”
Lawson answered only in silence. Trying to kill the awkwardness he felt Cabreighny took to itching his earlobe. After that moment, he turned to walk out, his efforts in vain.
“I want office space.”
Cabreighny turned, thinking he had heard her murmur, “Excuse me?”
“I want office space, a quiet place to work and concentrate...” she clicked her tongue routinely to herself, thinking, “... and unrestricted access to all Confederate documents... how long do I have to prepare?”
Cabreighny pulled his now-classic smirk. “Done, done, and as long as you need. Fred—I mean, Fleet Admiral Frederick Tolwyn, has his fleet parked up at Space Station Alpha, and he is not planning on moving it anywhere until this hearing takes place. The Confederacy has waited ten long, bloody years for our voice to be heard... we’re sure the Senate can wait its turn.”
“Good,” Dominica ran a hand through her hair, already stressing herself over the piles and piles of records she’d have to comb through to make the most effective case possible. “But the absolute first thing I need,” she demanded as she started to walk out of the cell, “is a nice, hot, private shower.”
TWO WEEKS LATER...
ORS Polaris;
Conference Auditorium
SEP 8 2416/2416.251; 1500 Hours (FST)
Not ignoring the fact that in exactly an hour she would have to state the opening argument in the most important trial in human history, newly minted Advocate Lawson of the Orionis Republic started to review her case for the sixth time in the last two hours. Her favorite poet, William Shakespeare, had written, “brevity is the soul of wit.” In this case, the advocate had aimed her case at brevity being the soul of truth, too.
Her case had been composed more on evidence rather than testimony. Initially she had gone through any and all records relevant to the Federation’s atrocities under Martial Law, and the steps the Confederacy took in establishing itself as a revolutionary force. After that, she had cut her case down to the most effective examples of what she had been searching for.
She had used this same process in selecting testimony. Instead of having every Confederate officer testify, which would make the case long, drawn out, and redundant, instead she chose to utilize the testimonies of all the commanding officers within the Confederate Armed Forces that had survived the Battle of Alpha Centauri, including Cabreighny. She had tried to get the Confederate President to appear, but for security reasons he had to refuse. However, the Vice-President had decided to appear regardless of the danger he knew would be surrounding him.
The evidence, however, was the core of her case. She had recordings, which had once been classified, of Federate troops committing acts of misconduct., “misconduct” being the most general term she could think of. She had watched visual records of such acts as exploitation, profiteering, and bribery, to more grievous crimes of murder and rape.
Crimes committed in the perverted cause of the Federation, and its enforcement of Martial Law.
In between her case preparation, Dominica had barely enough time to research the venue where the hearing would take place. Zeta Orionis, “her battleground” as Cabreighny had called, was the farthest colony from Earth, established at the dawn of the twenty-third century first by Pilgrims, then the WEC when the Pilgrims moved on. With a civilization carved by fugitives of Earth’s quarantine trying to escape the last Great Pandemic, the entire planet’s cultural basis, Dominica presumed, was one that craved freedom. She planned to use this anthropological tip to her advantage during the proceedings.
Also one of the older colonies, Orionis had a staunchly developed society. Over a century ago nine-hundred unified persons of like minds and values journeyed aboard a liner sloship that had ended up at her destination, and it showed, historically. The product was that of a human society that had left its diseased cradle of Earth, fighting the trying difficulties of colonization while at the same time persevering to keep the same startling unity it had needed to make the journey to constructing a new life on an alien planet.
In that stoic, unshakable unity, an invulnerable peace had been formed. At the time the Federation finally established a meager on-planet presence during the beginning of the Yan War, no insurgent movements had threatened to overthrow the first civilian government that led the colonization of Zeta Orionis. When the civil war heated up, the planet, adhering to its pacifist values, declared its neutrality, offering no logistic or monetary support to either side. As the ruthless, calculating Yan had ignored the far-flung colony during their attack on Sol, so did the Federation as it concentrated more on stomping out Confederate elements closer to Earth proper.
The Advocate contemplated... a planet, a sovereignty that has remained independent for a decade, dedicated toward peace and the conservation thereof. Lawson was sure the Defense for the Federation were unnerved at the venue, if they had done their research on Zeta Orionis as she had, fear would obviously be playing a central role in the stage of the Defense’s mind.
Taking her briefcase and gathering together her hardcopy case file, organizing the records and readying them for her—no, humanity’s most important trial ever, she thought to herself before speaking quietly, “They are running scared. Damn them, the World Economic Consortium knows it has done wrong.”
Planet Orionis
Prime; Capitol Eden
The Zeta Orionis System
SEP 9 2416/2416.252; 0900 Hours (FST)
“The Judicial Ministry of Zeta Orionis now calls this hearing to order!”
Her Ministry Sarah Ghurold hammered the gavel five times into the bench head. Quickly, everyone in the large courtroom—or rather, court hall was seated. The artistic copulation of marble and stained glass allowed the sunlight from outside into the imposing, intimidating atmosphere. Nature itself cared nothing for the political affairs of the human race, it seemed, it kept going along oblivious to the tension in the room.
Supremacy Ghurold and her four fellow Ministries nodded to each other in agreement upon noticing this; today would forever be remembered as one of two things: the day a rebellion was finally stopped or the day a revolution finally took over.
Another, older and balding male Judicial Minister politely cleared his throat and spoke into the small wire microphone connected to an earpiece fitting snugly to his left ear. “The Supreme Judicial Ministry of Orionis Prime will now preside over the torts hearing between the parties of the Confederacy of Terrans and the Terran Federation,” his stern voice echoed throughout the chambers, “the interplanetary militant order of the World Economic Consortium.”
Noticing all of this, Fleet Admiral Frederick Tolwyn sat quietly at the Witnesses section behind the Advocate’s Bench. The expedient pace that the proceedings had taken surprised him. Nearly a hundred witnesses, himself included, had to be seated and sworn in, and while the public did have access to view the hearing, only the top VIPs of the Confederacy and the World Economic Consortium had been allowed to actually view the trial in person. For everyone else, for the millions of innocent people soldiers of both militaries had died fighting for, they would only be able to see a live, real-time broadcast sent through all public media channels.
Over the central aisle that separated the two ideologies, Confederate or Federate, freedom or martial law, the prosecution and the defense, Tolwyn glimpsed Fleet Admiral Cabreighny, fresh after his recent promotion. Don caught his old friend’s look and returned a grin. The Federate officer took notice of his former exec’s face, which had been wrinkled and wrought by the burdens of leading Tolwyn’s very first command, the Admonisher. When he had left the ship to take up his admiralty on Earth Central, he had pressed his fellow brass to appoint his second-in-command to take the Admonisher’s helm. Just after seeing the Admonisher still charging headlong into the Battle of Centauri Prime’s foray on the cusp of the Federation’s takeover the Fleet Admiral finally realized that his first starship had the right man steering her.
His attention was gathered once again as Minister Ghurold spoke. “We are ready to commence this hearing once the Advocate Lawson cites the Course of Wrongs, if you would please, Advocacy?”
Dominica stood up in her earthen-colored leather uniform of the Orionis Independence Regime. She moved toward the ornate marble podium positioned before the five Judicial Ministers. After a long pause, she began reading her opening argument, the Court’s Course of Wrongs.
“For the needs of truth I state—” she began by Orionis protocol, “At the end of the Yan War, our first conflict with a foreign, extraterrestrial presence on the interstellar scale, humanity expected a multitude of changes that the battle had brought about. We expected greater vigilance in our exploration of the stars, equal opportunities for all of Earth’s colonies to learn and grow and to establish civilization. We even wished for an understanding, if not a separate peace, with what has been called the ‘Pilgrim Alliance.’ We awaited our chance to relearn what peace and freedom truly meant to each individual and to the colonies that, collectively, individuals had produced.
“As the Yan retreated from our territories, once again assuming their nomadic state, humanity, too, assumed a state of reconstruction in order to fulfill our post-war expectations. In this state we did a great many things in healing from the scars the Yan had wrought upon our body as a unified race. But alas, the chance to realize once again the fruits of peace and freedom was never given to us.
“The same ones that had fought and died to ensure our ability to reconstruct, the World Economic Consortium and their Interplanetary Federation Military, suddenly became the same ones who decided—no, dictated on what expectations of ours could be filled in this new era.
“This limitless power has been assumed in a bureaucratic function—Emergency Decree 242—the contingency order that, in layman’s terms, became Martial Law. Initially ordered by the Consortium’s President and validated by its Senate, Martial Law began during the start of the Yan War to stabilize the interplanetary markets and inhibit the actions of terrorist organizations hoping to take advantage of humanity’s plight while the government concentrated on the war effort. However, after the war those intentions were lost, replaced with the WEC’s fear of losing their war powers. War powers that had granted them absolute power—power which was shown to have corrupted absolutely the moment the Confederacy sparked into existence, power the day of August the 23rd showed us all the evil of all too clearly, plainly, and painfully...”
As the Advocate drilled her words into the hearts of those who knew their guilt and those who knew the truth, both of the fleet admirals looked across at each other, and grinned. In their polite gaze, both seemed to have said one remarkable thing.
Farewell to the old Federation, and let this new beginning start with a confederation—the Terran Confederation.
CONFEDERATION DAY
Planet
Hilthros; TCNSA Academy
The Sirius System, Terra Quadrant, Sol Sector
AUG 23 2679/2679.235; 0805 Hours (CST)
“The evidence,” Pilot-Instructor Gonsaléz pointed out, “... was undeniable. Vids and databases showed that such atrocities as petty theft had been given capital punishment. Activists had been marked as ‘clear and present dangers.’ Cabreigny hammered his case that once given seemingly absolute power, the military governments of the Terran colonies acted as unforgiving potentates.
“The hammer that drove the nail into the Consortium’s coffin was Frederick Tolwyn’s testimony. On the cross-examination, when the Advocate asked him why he had chosen to spare the Confederacy instead of obliterating them outright, he stated—”
Cadet Christopher Blair, “Maverick” to those that knew him best such as Gwen “Archer” Bowman and Todd “Maniac” Marshall, knew the famous Fleet Admiral’s words, the words of the already-infamous Commodore Geoffrey Tolwyn’s ancestor; a famous quote among others in history, it had been taught to all students in their first years of high school education. He then interrupted the flight instructor, “‘The true administration of freedom and brotherhood is not the same administration as that of justice and certainly not that of control. Somewhere along the line, we all lost that vision. Or it was beaten out of us by those addicted to power.’”
“But, sir,” the young Blair spoke, puzzled. “Yeah, I’ve read the documents... watched the Tri-D holotapes like everybody else here, I’m sure... but honestly, if I may ask, how did the hearing lead to our Confederation?”
Gonsaléz paced around his student, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Ah, Christopher, here’s where we see the ends of war justifying the means of it. You see, at the end of the Torts Hearing, the Judicial Ministry unanimously deliberated that the Confederacy had been right all along. While at first the Confederacy had fought to protect the sovereign rights of all colonies wishing to end Martial Law, they had never gotten past the first step to achieve their second goal—”
Blair’s eye sparkled with enlightenment. “Stopping Martial Law on Sol and its closer colonies.”
“Right. Once the verdict had been announced, Martial Law was revoked, and half the WEC Senate slit their throats. Taking the easy way out, since they knew that most of humanity was ready to burn them. With half the senate gone, and the tendering of the WEC President’s resignation, new elections were held and new senators were responsibly put in power and the Great Assembly reestablished—the Confederacy’s first president amongst them. Along with him, the others pushed for governmental reform on an interplanetary scale. By the end of the year, the Terran Confederation as we know it today came into existence.”
Christopher’s wristwatch beeped. “Look, sir, that is all well and good, and I understand now maybe why I should’ve paid more attention to your speech, but...” he trailed off, looking around as if he were waiting for somebody.
Gonsaléz smiled. “But you’ve got another sim-run against Maniac, I know. I won’t stop you; he’s always in need of having his smug, arrogant little ass kicked down a peg or two. Listen though, Maverick, I hate these little lectures—they make me feel ten years older. So how about between now and graduation you read something other than your flight regs? Like a history book...?”
“Yessir.” Maverick smiled while his wavy black hair with a bluish tint glistening under the artificial sunlight. “A history book... you got it, sir.”
“Good, Cadet. Dismissed.”
Before the instructor had even finished his sentence, Maverick was already out the door and headed for the flight simulators. Gonsaléz shook his head pessimistically.
What those men and women died for... what those soldiers really died for... they would never even begin to comprehend in the present. They couldn’t... and Blair was no exception.
F I N I S