The Universal Order of Nations

One last kiss for you. One more wish to you!

<Arandas has chosen.>

The holographic video playing above the conference table flickered out at the press of a button. Parting Waves scowled at the space where it had floated, tapping his fingers on the tabletop as he considered the situation, before he abruptly shook his head and turned his attention back to his fellow officers, civil secretaries, and several additional, invited guests. <You are aware that I agreed with Congress on many less-important things,> he confided easily to his audience. <It is unfortunate that our disagreements were… existential in nature. Having resolved them in our favor, I have been content to maintain whatever profitable policies we have inherited from their governance. So far our foreign friends have been equally content to ignore our change in circumstances, if they ever realized that it had occurred in the first place.> The admiral knocked on the table before him, indicating the holographic emitter. <Obviously that has changed.>

From farther down the table, the reliable Admiral Defiant Hoofbeat leaned forward to catch the Premier’s attention. <Arandan opinions had great sway with the previous administration, but that was mostly because of Congress’s self-absorbed obsession with democracy as an ideology in itself. We have no alliance with them. We may go our separate ways without sorrow.>

Parting Waves nodded. <And so we shall,> he agreed. <But the conflict between our governments is now somewhat greater than mere differences of opinion, I think you will agree.> The Premier sighed. <Even if establishing a rival government to our own is ludicrous on its basic merits, Arandas wounds us with this attempt. Now there is real, substantial support for Honorians who oppose our leadership, or protest our previous actions, and intend to make trouble for our whole nation in order to vex us. Anyone who opposed our government and chose to abandon politics in order to avoid us has now discovered a more confrontational option – or rather, a more confrontational option that does not presage an immediate arrest.>

<So they will leave for Arandas? Fewer dissidents at home will mean a more peaceful Honorias, perhaps,> suggested one of the civilians at the table. A well-established journalist aboard the Lawgiver, Mountain Crowned had fallen victim to a nasty bout of office politics and had been sent home to Nabia in time for the election of a new Congress. His absence had likely saved his life in the bloody capture of the Capital Fleet, considering the mangled corpse that had been left of his successor before the Chamber doors. Eager to return to national prominence in the absence of this particular rival, Mountain Crowned had been quick to adopt the Premier’s preferred narrative at home and abroad. He was not invaluable or irreplaceable, but he was convenient, and for the moment that was enough.

But this suggestion in particular prompted a scoff from the Premier, while several other colleagues at the table looked at the journalist with contempt. <The domestic situation is well in hand as it stands,> Parting Waves pointed out. <No, we are now confronted with foreign-supported rivals spreading misinformation directly to those same foreigners, many of whom have the means to interfere or outright interrupt our activities abroad. Arandas being so public about this matter has prompted questions from some of Honorias’s strong allies, whose support is not guaranteed going forward.>

<The STO is not the best definition of strong ally,> Defiant Hoofbeat pointed out.

<Certain members within it, however, have been nothing but supportive of Honorian priorities… in the past,> replied Parting Waves. <Yet now I receive the hint of a question from the Empire of Ash, whose warships even now guard our borders. The nations of the Spur, friend and foe alike, now see reason to investigate our intentions, and they will not stop for as long as detractors among our number go forth to foreign governments and denounce us.> The Premier rapped his fingers against the table in his agitation. <It does not worry me that we may lose trade agreements or even political cooperation from those who outwardly despise our new government. It does worry me, however, that nations otherwise willing to deal with us will be forced to decide between Honorias and Arandas, and will not likely abandon Arandas on our behalf. Fascination with Elysian power remains strong among the nations of the Spur. Honorias is a poor replacement, they will think, and they will act according to that thought.>

Defiant Hoofbeat gazed at his superior officer for a long moment. <I refuse to believe that you will withdraw in the face of foreign political pressure,> he declared at last.

Parting Waves nodded as his eyestalks roved over to the collection of guests who were attending the meeting together with the officers, ritualists, and civilian authorities that made up the Premier’s senior staff. <Never believe that, Admiral,> he replied with a scoff. <If Arandas makes itself a haven for dissidents, and we seek to silence those dissidents to prevent further embarrassment… we need firstly to ensure that there are no more dissidents.>

An Isaurian cleared his throat pointedly. “I’ll need clearer instructions than that, sir,” he insisted. “Who are we eliminating?”

Parting Waves’ eyes glowed with fervor as he answered, <Every national politician that has no place in this room.>

_ _ _ _ _ _

To the Government of Her Majesty Queen Terra II, and to All Other Parties of Similar Mind:

Recently a letter appeared before you, written by desperate and unscrupulous men whose hunger for power and prestige has far outstripped their good sense, purporting to describe the last moments of the previous Honorian government and the supposedly-heinous means of the current administration’s establishment. I will summarize the argument made by these powerless troublemakers, as it has been reported to me: that our goddess has clouded our minds, that our eradication of Congress was unwarranted and murderous, and that our nation’s long tradition of democracy has been set aside in favor of a theocratic military dictatorship. Such assertions can only be met with contempt, and I hold them thus.

Questions of theology I leave to our learned ritualists to answer, but I declare from personal experience that a session of Vapor liberates the senses and clears the mind with greatest efficacy; to claim the opposite, slandering the name of the One who Knows in so doing, is proof only that these accusers are ignorant and blind of the truth against which they rail. I will move on from this argument of faith for the sake of this equally-unversed audience, for whom Boeth is a foreign concept whose righteousness is not (yet) imagined to supplant local religion.

Yet I am offended to learn that we have been accused of murderous treachery, an accusation that better describes the representatives of Congress we were forced, with heavy hearts, to put to death. Peace in Honorias was previously guaranteed by the treaty called the Zafirbel Peace, whose stipulations required the government of Honorias, Congress and any office or bureau claiming to act in its name, to yield to the decisions and interests of local governments. Yet Congress in its last composition was elected on the promise to eliminate the Peace, to dispatch warships and soldiers to the Western March, and to forcibly eliminate the freedoms enjoyed by the Dominions of that place as guaranteed by a treaty with the force of law. To use armed force to abridge the freedoms of the people as enshrined by law can be nothing other than treason, perpetrated by the government itself, Congress, against its own citizens. I eliminated these traitors, who thought themselves greater than the rights of the Honorian people, in order to preserve the Honorian democratic ideal. I answer, then, that not only was my action entirely warranted, but that this action saved the very democracy my officers and I are now accused of usurping.

I therefore reject the assertions made against my administration, and against the Boethian cause, by the collection of former politicians that now, having failed to persuade the people for their vote, seek to enjoin foreign governments to establish their power over the democratic establishment of Honorias. I call on the government of Arandas, and all parties within it, to recognize the falsehoods of the failed leader Valley Shadow for what they are, and to turn him and his collaborators out of Arandas with all speed. I declare Honorias’s intention to maintain its foreign relationships as they were established before the tragedy that brought my administration to power, and I further request that our partners abroad maintain those ties with us likewise. Honorias remains the democracy that it has always been, and my administration, with Boeth’s aid, will be responsible for defending that democracy from this point on.

Sincerely written:

Parting Waves
Premier of Honorias
Admiral of the Fleet

_ _ _ _ _ _

As his hired driver raced through the sun-drenched streets of Holamayan, Rewarded Patience glared out through the window at a city that had demanded his taxes and provided him with shelter, but had never truly been his home. The former representative had only grudgingly given up his place aboard the Lawgiver when his time had come, being replaced ironically by his own cousin’s paid stooges for what turned out to be Congress’s most embarrassing showing since its establishment. Angry at his defeat, particularly given his own support for the scheme that had thrown him out, Rewarded Patience had eventually accepted his wife’s argument that belonging to Congress at its least effective – her word was treasonous, regardless of his objections to using it – would have ruined his political career when the inevitable backlash brought a new wave of representatives to power. He campaigned for a return to office in the following election, only to be balked by the public’s thorough support for the unprecedented candidacy of military officers, whose attitude toward the March (and therefore Rewarded Patience’s cousin First Senses) was uniformly hostile and whose determination to do something about it was backed by the might of Command rather than the words of politicians. Politics had moved on from civilized debate at the height of government. Rewarded Patience was no longer welcome in Congress.

So he had come to the March in his turn, abandoning the rest of Honorias in favor of the gamble that his cousin’s success could be maintained, that his empire of business and favors could be protected, and that Rewarded Patience could rebuild his influence under First Senses’ patronage and support, even if that influence was confined to the Western March. While the plan lacked any meaningful course of action, the former representative knew that he would have plenty of time to devise one, so long as the aggression of Congress was kept at bay.

Then First Senses was murdered, and Rewarded Patience’s hopes died formless.

Shadowed Cloud, the High Ritualist, had declared Boeth’s intention for a new Honorias, united and free, where one day even the struggles of labor and livelihood would be erased. It was a glorious vision, but it had prompted an exodus – of foreign mercenaries, of First Senses’ industrialist allies, and even of politicians both bought and independent who called the March home. It had been fear, not belief, that had kept Rewarded Patience at the table while his co-conspirators and fellow politicians walked out the door, but as so many potential competitors left the room that day, the former representative had felt the beginning of a new hope that this new Honorias would see his return to prominence in their absence. It was a fleeting hope, violently suppressed by reality and the ambitions of those who knew better than to stay. The Boethians might have allowed others to benefit from their schemes, but those schemes would always be theirs to create, theirs to implement, and theirs, ultimately, by which to profit.

The time for self-delusion was over. From the moment that the ex-politician’s foreign contacts had informed him of an acknowledged government in exile, Rewarded Patience knew that he would be a hunted man. It meant another infuriating retreat, but this time his sense of humiliation was replaced almost entirely with fear. His passage to the Machias Gate was booked under a false identity – creating it had meant abandoning his family, but the ruse was worth the sacrifice – and his listed destination of the Dominion of Sarathram, in the Sadrith System and thus within range of the incredibly-potent guns continuously pummeling Suran into a cratered waste, would raise no alarms. Nonetheless, as Rewarded Patience fled the city in the back of a nondescript car hired at the last minute to avoid any interception of his plans, he couldn’t help but wonder who might have already learned of his departure.

But the spaceport was before him, dominating the skyline ahead as though beckoning him toward the safety of its shuttles and ships. Turning his attention away from the rest of the hated city and its hated people, Rewarded Patience focused solely on that not-so-distant silhouette, growing larger by the minute with its promise. His worries and his fears, his anger and his guilt, and even his frustrated and ever-heavy ambition finally, finally began to slide off him, gradually but inexorably, as he focused his gaze on the promise of escape and a new tomorrow.

The car turned off the main boulevard, and Rewarded Patience’s gaze was torn from his goal. The former representative’s first reaction was to huff in frustration and turn away from the window, but even as his eyes turned back to the modest refreshments in his cabin, Rewarded Patience realized that the car simply should not have changed direction like that. His eyes widened as he struggled to his feet in the confines of the vehicle, his tail blade cracking to get the driver’s attention. <Where are you going?> he demanded.

The driver did not respond. The glass between him and his passenger, Rewarded Patience learned a moment later, reflected the strike of a tail blade with little more difficulty than the light glinting in its mirror finish. The same was true of the windows, while the doors refused to open. Worries and fears piled in once again; panic set in. Rewarded Patience set his thoughts free to the world, calling for help from anyone who could understand him. The driver still did not respond. No one came. The car continued on.

Five minutes later, three Sadrithians and two Isaurians in military-grade assault armor threw open the car door to reveal a bruised and exhausted ex-politician, lying on the floor of the car after what appeared to be a desperate struggle to escape the cabin. The interior was smashed, but the structure – the prison – was intact still, while Rewarded Patience had succeeded only in chipping and splitting his tail blade and pummeling his own body into a beaten pulp against the reinforced bulkheads. The former representative was still conscious, staring at his captors and making a feeble attempt to continue his struggles as they stepped into the vehicle to drag him back out, but his attention soon wavered as he took his first good look at the place where they had taken him. Sarayn Plaza was the haunt of common laborers and middle managers, the general public whose opinion had been firmly split on the Boethian question even before it became the alternative to a hated corporate overlordship. They could still be seen, those general citizens, the voting public as he would have once termed them, but now they were kept to the periphery of the plaza, while vehicle traffic was nowhere at all. Instead, save for Rewarded Patience, his captors, and his hired car, most of the plaza was kept entirely empty… except for a small huddle on the other side of the car, barely visible until the former representative’s captors turned and pulled him in that direction to join the rest.

His wife’s betrayed stare bored into Rewarded Patience’s horrified eyes as his family was revealed, kneeling on the pavement under guard beside the prone forms of three tightly-bound Suranese and the imposing figure of a ritualist in ceremonial robes. It was the ritualist who began the proceedings: <Where were you going, Rewarded Patience, once of Congress?>

The former representative’s breathing hitched at the sense of foreboding beginning to engulf him. <S-Sarathram,> he answered. <Just Sarathram. My papers were filed this morning – >

<I know about your papers,> interrupted the ritualist. <I know that you seemingly forgot your own name when you filed them. This is unlike you, Rewarded Patience, as we know you are a man eager to return to the public eye. Yes, we know you very well.>

His wife’s breath escaped in a hiss of fear tinged with vindictiveness: She had warned him often enough that his obsession with returning to power would one day ruin him. Whatever she might have wanted to add to the conversation, though, a sharp tap of a gun barrel against her back persuaded her to stay out of it, and Rewarded Patience spared her only a small thought more before he tried to answer the ritualist one more time. <I have urgent business,> he tried. <I knew there would be questions and delays if I came to the spaceport as myself – >

He was interrupted again: <Why would there have been questions? Who informed you that anyone might be looking for you? Why would you be so… paranoid?>

Rewarded Patience stared at the ritualist, the obvious answer to his own last question, before his eyestalks inexorably strayed toward the looming visage of the spaceport stretching above them all. It was so close that the former representative could almost touch it. Its promise of safety, however, had been a mirage this whole time.

<Rewarded Patience,> the ritualist continued after a pause, <Premier Parting Waves has declared you to be an enemy of Honorias. Your attempt at escape has only confirmed your guilt. By this judgment, I deliver your soul to Boeth and your body to the enveloping Vapor. Let Honorias learn from your example.>

One of the guards behind him shifted slightly; immediately, there was a sharp blow that staggered the former representative, sending him back down to his knees. Rewarded Patience looked down in shock to find half of a tail blade protruding from his chest, covered in gore and torn flesh, which was removed a second later. He collapsed onto his side with blood pouring from his wound, even as the ritualist and his attendants hefted one of the bound-and-gagged Suranese up from the ground and threw her onto the dying Sadrithian. Even as one of Rewarded Patience’s eyestalks found the towering shadow of the spaceport yet again, as though even at the end he still begged the edifice to send him on to safety, his other eyes met the ritualist’s gaze. <I must admit,> the latter commented so that only Rewarded Patience could understand, <compared to the fight Yellow Ochre put up, you are a disappointment indeed.> He motioned toward one of the guards, who lifted a nozzle attached to a very obvious set of tanks strapped to his back and aimed at the dying man and the unfortunate sacrifice chosen to attend his execution. There was a whoosh and a burst of light.

Rewarded Patience found death just before the flames engulfed him.

Please make up your mind.

Curse these days. Will we accept the things we must?

The failure of the Reclamation was not just that the Gorvikians and the Bruvalks survived, Kynani Alketas wrote in her journal, but that the people of Noverra died in their stead – and in the stead of we Isaurians, who brought such death upon them with impunity. The late war was meant to correct the first. By the gods’ will, I don’t doubt it was directed to visit vengeance on us for the second. In either case, I do not know if it did.

The colonel paused and stared at the paragraph she had just written, before setting her pen down on her desk and slowly, deliberately pushed her chair back and got to her feet. Turning away from her cluttered workspace, Alketas let her gaze pass over her cramped office until she looked out through the small window facing Tsoulio harbor. The faint sea breeze was perhaps the most refreshing air that she had yet experienced on Noverran soil – not a high bar, compared with the offerings of beautiful Evvia, from whose shores Alketas had resigned herself to a lifelong exile – and the harbor view allowed the colonel to keep a close watch over the new spaceport that had been constructed in close proximity to the docks. Two private shuttles with official insignia rested at the main terminal there, generic Uhlekian imagery painted in Isaurian colors as though the foreigners who used them could ever understand Isaurian cultural iconography – or perhaps, Alketas thought glumly, her own well-born education in Sardavar had immunized her to propaganda efforts that the rest of Isauria applauded with enthusiasm. Lady Xianna So Scipiones was in residence, holding tight to the title gifted to her at the conclusion of the Gorvikian War, ‘Lady of Mastropa,’ regardless of her regular residence in Sardavar, no doubt within a brisk walk of Alketas’s own birthplace; the other shuttle belonged to the man who had gifted her that title, who had directly commanded and completely mismanaged the war that had won it for her, and who had subsequently engineered lifelong power for himself and his allies through the destruction of one foreign backer, the gullibility of another, and the betrayal of the soldiers who had fought and died to win him the world of Noverra. The homeworld of her people should not have been her prison. The world of her birth should not have been a foreigner’s throne. The…

The High Lord of Isauria should not have made his League a tool for foreign interests, the goddess once lauded as the defender of the nation should not have been repurposed for the worship of foreign heathens, and Kynani Alketas should never have given up her comfortable life in Sardavar in return for a foreigner’s promise of glory on the irradiated soil of an all-but-abandoned world.

Her personal gripe session over for the moment, the colonel turned away from the sight of her foreign masters’ shuttles and returned to her computer terminal. She was a rear-echelon officer now, it was true, and many of the plans she devised for Isauria’s continued pacification of Noverra were intended for others to carry out. But Kynani Alketas had not attained her high position by hiding in the rear in the ruins of Azarel, and she did not intend to forget the dangers that she was now responsible for sending others to face in her place. This relatively-harmless assault in southern Fryth, where a suspected band of Gorvikian hold-outs might be hiding – admittedly in the midst of a very-much-confirmed nest of Bruvalk scum – would be no threat to her life, but it would help to keep her skills sharp while she was otherwise relegated to desk duty. It would also serve to get her out of Mastropa, and thus out of the illustrious Scipiones’s line of sight for at least two weeks.

It was uncanny how ‘Lady’ Xianna spent almost all of her time on Evvia, but could still sense trouble in the Megaron before half of the building’s own staff was aware of it, in time to arrive in person and eliminate the problem – usually an officer with a grudge. It made Alketas, an officer with a grudge, very nervous indeed, and she took what opportunities she could to escape her superior’s direct oversight as often as she could manage without appearing suspicious. Nor was she the only officer to take advantage of these small excursions for this reason… and it only made sense that Alketas made herself available to these other officers during their shared service, regardless of the dangers or lack thereof to be discovered at the target site.

Xianna So Scipiones was not infallible, after all. She was merely very, very good at her job… but so too was Kynani Alketas.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Xianna So Scipiones set the empty liquor glass down with a hard thump, glaring across the table at the Honorian officer whose appointment as a foreign ‘advisor’ had been a chain around Isauria’s metaphorical neck since the waning days of the Chengite Wars. Beside her, Archon Aurus Adeni leaned back and hummed as he considered the proposal that his erstwhile opponent had put before him so clandestinely. “As you have told us yourself so many times, Senior Captain, we cannot hope to defy the mighty Honorian fleet, the pride of your people and your state. Were those just words to intimidate us? Or do you ask us in your desperation to doom ourselves beside you?”

Senior Captain Hrota Aratasel grimaced as he followed Scipiones’s example and took a sip of the local liquor; whether his expression was due to his discomfort or his opinion of Isaurian alcohol was left unsaid. “The news from Arandas is incontrovertible,” he began. “The coup destroyed Command as an institution, just as it destroyed Congress. The Capital Fleet suffered extensive material losses, both in ships and in men. Honorians of conscience flee the country in astounding numbers, reducing the junta’s ability to recoup either the loss of ships or manpower. My nation’s great strength…” The senior captain paused, his gaze far off. “Honorias is broken, Archon Adeni, and not just in its morals. My nation is gone.” His eyes refocused on his host. “So is its ability to retaliate against you.”

“The news from Arandas also suggests that you should already be fleeing there, rather than asking us to make a stand on your behalf,” Scipiones replied harshly.

Aratasel glanced at Adeni, but the Archon sipped his glass and waited for the Suranese to answer the question. Grudgingly, Aratasel answered, “Arandas is Elysian. Of course it will offer grand statements against tyranny and what-have-you, as all Elysian states inevitably do. But all Elysian states also inevitably ignore the wider universe when their own self-contained sphere distracts them. And with the whole planet on the verge of a major political realignment, there is no point in pretending that Arandas will waste the merest ounce of its attention on matters in Honorias, let alone true military and political assistance. I could flee there, but I would never see home again.”

Scipiones shook her head in disgust, but chose not to explain whether her expression was intended for self-centered Elysians or delusional Suranese. Adeni made his own opinion clear, however: “Isauria is rebuilding itself. We are in no position to fight a war against anyone; we are especially reluctant to turn our guns against the country that most recently brought us to heel, whose power is largely responsible for the composition of the current Isaurian government, and whose confidence alone maintains Isauria’s standing in the Orion Spur. Whatever made you assume that we are a safe haven for you and for your people, Senior Captain, I must tell you that it is a false hope.” The Archon leaned forward with a deep frown and added, “A new Honorian ambassador arrived in Sardavar only three days ago with a warrant for your arrest and deportation, and I was obliged to inform him that I would have Evvia searched from pole to pole to find and capture you. When I must report that I cannot find you there, his government will insist that I widen the search. I cannot refuse him.”

Aratasel held the Archon’s gaze for a long moment, before turning his attention back to his drink and tipping the whole glass back. Adeni politely looked away as the Suranese nearly drowned himself, but Scipiones couldn’t help but stare in fascination at the proof, if any was needed, of the senior captain’s utter despair. Finally she felt compelled to give him a push in the right direction: “We will not surrender you if you flee. Even at its height, Honorias never dared to interfere in foreign spheres of influence. You will be safe in Arandas, or anywhere else on Elysium for that matter – but you are not safe here, and you know it as well as I do.”

The Suranese slammed the glass back down on the table and leveled the Lady of Mastropa with a glare. “What is there in Arandas for a loyal soldier of Honorias?” he hissed. “A safe haven, for as long as the government finds it convenient; an income, for the short time the government is willing to pay it; obligations that I can never take up, debts that I can never repay, and demands on my loyalty that I can never accept. I am loyal.” Aratasel’s voice broke; he clenched his hand on the glass it still held, but, it being empty, he reluctantly left it on the table. “I was loyal when my superiors ordered the slaughter of my kinsmen throughout the entire damn fleet. I was loyal when my crew almost mutinied when my captain demanded that they spare me! I have been loyal to Honorias my entire adult life, from the day I learned what it would mean to be Asran instead, and I stood by my flag and my nation even as my own brother was cut to ribbons in the engine room of his own ship by the knives of his own trusted shipmates! I have never turned away from my country. And I will not flee to φούκιγγ Elysium now!”

Aurus Adeni took a breath in the face of Aratasel’s passion. “Then why will you flee to Isauria instead?” he asked.

Aratasel turned his glare on the Archon and motioned roughly toward a small badge on Adeni’s breast; Adeni recognized the Preserver’s insignia and closed his eyes in frustration. “Uhlek drives Isauria onward, or so I’m told,” the Suranese answered almost mockingly. “He pushes Isaurians to reach out to others. He calls on the brave to fight for their nation, but also for the right. So you’ve said many times, Archon.”

“You had your part to play in that particular strategy,” Adeni pointed out, but Aratasel waved his objection away.

“Makaria would accept xenocide as the natural consequence of coexistence,” he continued. “The Glysenes would laugh at the blood of foreigners, and of foreign aliens even more. But Uhlek is a foreign alien god himself, and he has served you well so far, has he not? He would not stand for injustice, and his followers must likewise fight to preserve the dignity of life. And when the fighting is done and the righteous have prevailed… then the politicians will return, retake their seats in government, and bend their necks in gratitude – not to Arandas that did nothing, but to Isauria that did everything. Honorian scorn and derision has defined how Isauria has been governed since the arrest of Cheng I Sen. Should I not encourage you to reverse our nations’ relationship in the most righteous manner possible?”

Adeni shook his head and scoffed. “Uhlek helps those who help themselves, I need hardly remind you,” he said. “In your fantasy where this nation rises to the occasion and the Thirteenth Daimyokantai turns its aged, exhausted guns against the full might of Honorias, where will you be standing, Senior Captain?”

A muscle twitched in Aratasel’s jaw as he answered firmly, “I will be in the front rank, Archon, as a true Honorian soldier must be.”

Adeni shook his head and took another sip of liquor. “You, and who else?”

The senior captain gritted his teeth and spat out, “I, and as many Suranese as I can call to this place, will stand side by side to end this xenocidal threat, so long as we also stand side by side with you.”

Scipiones almost laughed at the poor man’s sincerity, until she turned her gaze back to Adeni and stilled. “You cannot be considering this idiocy,” she snapped, her humor having fled like the breeze at the Archon’s expression.

Adeni ignored Scipiones – as he did all too often, and all too often to his detriment – and held Aratasel’s eye as the Suranese straightened his back under the scrutiny. “Bring me your army, and I will find you a fleet that is worthy of it,” he promised. “If you call the dregs of a defeated people, I will give you trash barges. If you gather a force to unseat Parting Waves… I will give you the use of the Isaurian fleet to enjoy. Success or failure rests with you, Senior Captain.”

Aratasel’s expression betrayed some hope for the first time in a month. “Archon, thank you –”

Scipiones’s newly-drained liquor glass slammed down on the table as the Lady of Mastropa rose to her feet. “If you insist on staying on this rock, Senior Captain, you might as well gather your army somewhere useful. Domoria, Fryth, or Gorvikia itself for all I care – but not in my domain, I assure you of that. Head to Glys and do whatever you like. Mastropa, for one, is closed to you for as long as you intend to bring Isauria into your war.” Scipiones turned her attention back to Adeni and jerked her head forward in as respectful a bow as she could manage, one Zephyri to another. “I hope you have a good evening, Archon,” she said through gritted teeth, before turning on her heel and making for the door of the cabin.

Adeni just shook his head again, even as Aratasel stared at her. “I will be with you shortly, Lady Xianna,” he said, causing Scipiones to pause at the door briefly enough to glare at the Archon one more time before departing. Adeni waited until the door closed behind her before turning his gaze back to his supplicant. “I have nothing to give beyond what I’ve already promised,” he warned before Aratasel could open his mouth to speak. “I fully expect you to fail in any meaningful way. It is up to you to prove me wrong, Senior Captain.”

Hrota Aratasel’s expression hardened once again. “I certainly will.”

We will show our true faces… which eat one another in amnesia each Age.

Once, years before, when her soon-to-be husband asked her about her childhood dreams, Helas Odrosal turned the question away. She had asked him the same thing a moment before, and had heard the usual immature drivel she had expected: He had grown up dreaming of heroes, of wealth, of power, and of adulation; he had yearned to be an athlete, a celebrity, a general, a president, a spaceman, or some grand combination of all of those roles and more. Suna had smiled and giggled, sharing her lover’s fond reminisces of his most innocent days. But then he asked her the same, and she refused to – she could not – answer.

When Helas was a girl asleep, her blood cascaded down her dream-self’s walking corpse in rivers. The jungle’s undergrowth drank deeply of her footprints as her battlecry drowned out the roar of her armies. Glass towers and floating void-craft witnessed the gutters of her cities fill to the brim with red floods, her own and that of millions of her enemies. Bonfires had heralded her coming; Lyghion, Mim, and even Risolas had shared in the dubious honor of illuminating the wreckage left at her passing. Where the ancestral spirits lingered in ancient glories never to be recreated, ghosts of future triumphs screamed her name in horrific ecstasy, their voices of flame pulsing across spacetime. When Helas was a girl, she slept among the dead yet to be, warmed by suns yet to be born whose destruction she herself would accomplish.

On her wedding day, when her husband asked again, Helas Odrosal told him that she had dreamed of travels in a fantasy that she couldn’t quite recall. He smiled. “Tell me where you have been, if you ever remember,” he said.

She agreed, and remembered the heat of reentry from the bridge of a Firestorm warship as it sank into the atmosphere of Sadrith. She said nothing more about it.

This House will come to order.

Honorias was a nation greatly changed from its earliest years of space exploration. When the first Sadrithians set out from their homeworld, first into the far reaches of their system and then out to the stars beyond, they were a self-contained people, aware only of the Suranese and the Adabali, guided to assimilate the first and to dominate the second, and to treat neither as sovereign for as long as Honorias, the kingdom of Golden Cloud and the Republic that rose from his ashes, stood united and strong. Even as Dominions were built and the territory of Honorias expanded farther and farther from its origin point, the governance of Congress and the construction of the Lawgiver emphasized the unity of the people and the nation: that acceptable limits of local flavor, and even the greater distinctions between the Dominions and the privileged States of Sadrith, could never be allowed to threaten the vision of Honorias as a single, indivisible entity, the sole and single known civilization that wasn’t a defeated xenocidal enemy or a valued but ultimately dependent source of semi-citizen commodities. Faster-than-light travel and trade was difficult and expensive, and yet little by little the States and Dominions managed to eke out a new economy together, strengthening the nation and profiting its people, encouraging its growth and promising a bright and glorious future.

The Great Disturbance, the immediate redirection of astral resources toward the discovery of its source, and the rapid discovery of Laegia and the shared civilization known to its participants as the Orion Spur radically altered the trajectory of the Honorian nation, its politics, and most importantly its economy. Honorian ships no longer required a Suranese engineer to travel between star systems, as foreign engine designs became available for purchase by government and private entities alike. Honorian investors no longer needed to rely on the construction of new Dominions, a process governed entirely by Congress, to establish a new marketplace to exploit, when foreign markets now opened themselves up to Honorian products and services and offered up their own in turn. Money could be made at rates never before known, though only by the few with the immense resources needed to invest in such ventures. Inter-Dominion relationships faltered as foreign trade blossomed well beyond the most optimistic expectations, and while Congress fretted about distant threats and sought friends abroad to counter them, domestic trade and traffic was allowed to stumble along untouched and, inevitably, disadvantaged – with the sole and obsessive exception of the Western March, established by foreign-facing interests in Congress to generate yet more foreign money and attract alien industry.

When the fleets of the Boethian War ripped Honorias apart, they found an easy prey already tearing at the seams before the first shot had been fired. The Zafirbel Peace that concluded the violence only enshrined the state of division among the Dominions that remained: autonomy for those that demanded it, centralized authority present only in those places more fearful of attack than interested in recovery, and a government reliant on foreign money to function while the nation’s constituent parts walled themselves off from one another. It took the tragic example of Jenayu to persuade the divided populace to turn their attention away from foreign investment and back toward their own neighborly connections, and by that time the enemies of centralization were prepared and ready to act to stifle this unity of purpose. Honorias was divided in fact, then once more in name, and then…

Premier Parting Waves claimed to be the leader of a united nation, but his first act was to slaughter the elected representatives of Congress, and his second was to declare the Dominions to be free, both from foreign threats and from overbearing central authorities. This was a measure of independence not seen among Sadrithians since their home planet was overtaken by Vapor and the proud States of the nation’s founding disappeared in a very literal fog of war and time. Under the weight of national-level questions of regulation and law, local mayoralties either collapsed entirely or withdrew their effective authority to those matters that could reasonably be governed entirely within a single Dominion’s jurisdiction. Honorian corporations and their wealthy investors, grown fat from foreign profits in the years before and following the Boethian War, only feasted further in this time of disunity, as Dominions that once claimed to belong to a common state were often now only bound together by the single rapacious tie of a common set of corporations answering to no government at all… not all of which, it transpired sooner rather than later, were entirely or even remotely Honorian.

Financial officers and investors, yes, profited greatly from these days, but under them still lived the people of Honorias – neither subjects nor serfs, but citizens even by the Premier’s declarations, and, most importantly, voters. Corporate money flowed into mayoral elections to sway the public vote, but no amount of credits could ever wash away the panicked headlines surrounding the first collapse of Jenayu, the deep and abiding fears surrounding the infiltration of foreign interests into the capitalist paradise of the March, and the utter chaos in both business and politics that marked the year of First Senses’ usurpation of Honorian democracy. Business-friendly candidates did well to hide their connections to wealthy sponsors until the votes had been counted and ratified, and even then only the most cautious had a fighting chance at a second term. Those who denounced the corporate elite, on the other hand, could depend on swathes of votes on election day, no matter any individual candidate’s ability to keep his promises when and if the election wasn’t rigged against him.

Easier communications among the Dominions only revealed to the voting public that this class divide was common throughout Honorias; long-standing, perhaps ever-present, it was now the cause of some serious trouble as each Dominion’s population came to realize that the struggle against the rich was not unique to their own benighted home. Even as Dominion mayoralties officially shrank their interest into the area of their own real reach, activists and reformist candidates began establishing inter-Dominion networks of support outside of the government’s control to an extent once imagined as a fantasy by the local politicians of the Republic – in large measure because such efforts were actively undermined by Congress, whose representatives had considered themselves to be the only legal means of inter-Dominion communication and cooperation. Their inevitable contest with counter associations of pro-business candidates raised by corporate interests slowly gave rise to what any other democracy of the Spur would identify as a pair of political parties coordinating their campaigns across more than a dozen localities at the same time. The contests grew fierce, and the coordination only strengthened, ignoring the vestigial remnants of the old official channels in favor of newer partisan affiliations. The Dominions’ enforced independence, greater than it had ever been before, was no hindrance to these deeper connections being forged among the Dominions’ leaders and friends.

Throughout it all, the old Honorias withered away… but a new nation waited to fill the void left behind. Its citizens’ memories were deformed by trauma, mistaking challenges of the past for glories that never were, and competing with one another to return to those same imaginary days each in their own way; but they were all, by separate roads, dedicated to the cause of Honorias and of the old Republic, and sought by their votes and their candidacies a reformation of the nation that once, in its unity, claimed a confident ownership of the stars.

*the region barely shakes from the influx of nations*

Goddess, it’s time for the curing.

In the darkness of the ritual chamber, Vapor wafting upwards to lay the goddess’s blessing even on the very ceiling of the room, the faint light of embers on the dying pyre illuminated the very edges of Shadowed Cloud’s reclining form as he motioned for his visitor to kneel before the bloodied knife. <You arrive auspiciously,> the High Ritualist declared, his eyestalks still lifted to the heights of the chamber where the Vapor swam in eddies stirred up by the faint movement of air from his own breath below. <The One who Knows gave notice of your coming to me. Whatever news you bring, I am meant to know it.>

The High Ritualist’s main eyes bored into his kneeling visitor as the latter bowed at the waist, avoiding his host’s gaze long enough to gather himself from the shock of seeing such mutilation on the goddess’s altar, evident even after the burning was done; no ritualist aboard his own ship had ever been so malicious, even to the dying Adabali. <It is an honor to receive your attention,> the messenger began, <and a greater one by far to learn that the goddess values my news enough to make you aware of it. I come from Jenayu with news from the fleet.>

<Truly Boeth has rewarded our sacrifices,> Shadowed Cloud replied with a nod toward the pyre. <Has the Premier accomplished his aim?>

The messenger grimaced. <Cylostra yet lives,> he answered.<Premier Parting Waves warned us that this campaign would likely be a long one, of course, and we are yet at the beginning of that journey. Jenayu is a stopping point, on which Cylostra has yet to set foot. The Premier means to bring the fleet to Golden Rain as soon as is practicable, to confront the enemy and eliminate her; but for the present, Jenayu is a chaotic mess that takes up the Premier’s attention for as long as the Tuvhalian government, according to the law, is incapable of acting for our mutual good in the face of our shared enemy.>

Shadowed Cloud sighed. <Has Honorias ever been so fortunate as to find an ally willing and able to fulfill the promise of its friendship?> he asked. He held up his hand before the awkwardly-hesitating messenger could respond. <I do not need an answer.> The High Ritualist turned his glower onto the assemblage of torn, ashen flesh that smoked still at the heart of his ritual pyre. <The goddess points us toward enemies in plenty, and mightily does she defend us from them, but friends and allies even she cannot find. The nations of our reality defy her, and thus defy us, in every particular. Trade and treaties hardly serve the spiritual realm.> Seeing the messenger’s uncomfortable expression, Shadowed Cloud waved the topic away and declared, <I will assure the people that the Premier continues to prosper abroad. Let him decide how to spend our nation’s great fleet; that is the business of an admiral. What should the rest of us care that our brave soldiers are sent to die against a foreign agitator in a rage against a foreign slight by which neither Boeth nor Honorias suffered anything at all?>

The messenger, deciding that engaging the High Ritualist in his philosophizing was likely to lower his own life expectancy, bowed his head once more. <I will return to the fleet to assure the Premier that the people are with him,> he promised.

Shadowed Cloud allowed one lazy eyestalk to scan his visitor’s face for a long moment, before dismissing him with a wave. <Bring my greetings to the Premier,> he instructed, <and assure him that Boeth stands always with the righteous – as he well knows.>

The messenger shuffled back to his feet, his head still bowed (staring yet again at the agonized remains of flesh that once might have been an Adabali, a Suranese, a man, a woman, or a child), and stepped carefully backward until he reached the edge of the chamber, whereupon he finally turned his back and departed with as much haste as politeness allowed. Shadowed Cloud’s eyestalk watched him go, until his main gaze lifted to join it.

Behind the High Ritualist, a shifting shadow eventually resolved itself into another, more recognizable messenger. <The Premier will not appreciate the criticisms you have laid against him,> Tower’s Voice advised as he stepped forward to inhale the misty Vapor still rising from the pyre.

<He will not like them,> Shadowed Cloud replied, <but appreciation comes with acceptance, and I must hope that he will accept the truth that I send him. This exercise is a folly borne of overwhelming pride and an ownership of a grievance that was not his to begin with. When Honorias remained uninterested in the war, trading with all peoples as though no obstacles existed among us, our people profited greatly and suffered little to nothing in return. When we were made to take a side, however, trade suffered in great measure, we gained nothing in negotiations with our new allies, and all of Honorias’s confident demands for justice were simply passed over by those who surely had greater reason to agree with them than our people ever did. We were no longer ignored entirely by potential negotiators: Now they took the time to mock us before moving on to more interesting concerns. So it has remained since the end of the war.>

The High Ritualist got to his feet, his robes of office flowing around his body as he began to walk around the gently smoking pyre toward the exit of the chamber. Tower’s Voice fell into step behind him as Shadowed Cloud continued, <Cylostra’s arrival in Tuvhalia is a surprise, but it is unpleasant only for those who suffered at her hands. We suffered nothing by her, and by her usurper we suffered only what we inflicted upon ourselves. Honorias need not be offended by her return, as so many other nations might be.>

<Yet Honorias and Tuvhalia are allies,> Tower’s Voice objected firmly. <Our people profited by Dov Anyr’s leadership, and our position among the nations was stronger with Tuvhalian support. Now Cylostra threatens that relationship. Already Dov Anyr is dead; what parts of his government have not shattered from infighting will surely be swept away by targeted and well-funded revolution before long.>

Shadowed Cloud’s gaze never wavered as the two emerged from the Vapor-darkened chamber into the waning sunlight of a barren world. A colonnade carved from the rock of a cliff face separated the two Sadrithians from a steep three-hundred-foot drop to a sprawling series of pipes, vents, and ducts that led into the underground machinery responsible for maintaining the infrastructure that allowed for settlement on the surface of this world. Ahanibi was at once a safe haven and a torturous exile for those Boethians who had fled the Western March after the signing of the Zafirbel Peace: harsh and unpleasant, at a far remove from the pleasures of its new inhabitants’ home Dominions, but built from the first to focus on the will of the goddess and the needs of her people, free from all degenerate causes for distraction. Soldiers and laborers alike had been given this world to maintain their faith even as they honed their desire for a glorious homecoming; now, masters of Honorias according to Parting Waves’ intentions, many of them yet remained on Ahanibi in disgust at the worldly nature of Honorian life, with which their reinforced piety could not coexist as of yet. This disparity caused the remaining exiles, and High Ritualist Shadowed Cloud in particular, a deep and abiding distress – to such a point that at times the High Ritualist wondered whether Honorias was fit to be the home of the people of Boeth.

<Tuvhalia’s aid to Honorias in the past has been paltry compared to its promise,> Shadowed Cloud rebutted. <And the devotion of Congress, of private enterprise, and now of the Premier to the established government of that place of madness – whatever that government claims or has claimed to be – has resulted in inescapable folly time and time again. I have already advised the Premier against this course of action, and he has ignored my counsel. Now I merely remind him of it.> The High Ritualist’s eyestalks swept across the industrial machinery below and the barren horizon beyond it as he added, <The nation’s pride is at stake, but now the Premier carries the weight of the goddess’s name and reputation, which stands to be tarnished in his self-imposed mission. Boeth has no interest in Cylostra or in the late war sparked by her tyranny, yet she shall be made to suffer for it nonetheless, on the orders of her sworn and fervent servant.>

Tower’s Voice stopped at once, staring intently at his host. <Are you certain of the Premier’s failure?> he demanded.

Shadowed Cloud stopped as well, turning back to the emissary. <The Premier dreams of glory while his financial backers yearn for profits,> the High Ritualist answered. <Tuvhalia has promised these often and given them never. To enter any foreign nation under arms with an expectation for a kind and eager reception and a victory to please the hearts of all people is… tragically optimistic, a lesson the Honorian Congress learned to its sadness only a short time ago. To enter Tuvhalia and expect these things is the mark of complete self-delusion.> He shook his head in frustration. <The Premier desires Cylostra’s head. He may well get it. What will it gain him in the end? Our soldiers will die, and Tuvhalia – the whole Spur, I declare – will move on without taking any note of it. Parting Waves will return with losses and damaged ships, and our people will be made to pay for it… and it will mean nothing to anyone else.>

Tower’s Voice remained still for a long moment as he considered the High Ritualist’s vision. <And what will you do when that day comes?> he asked at length.

<I will obey the will of Boeth,> Shadowed Cloud answered easily. <And I will advise the people, from the Dagonite laborer to the Premier, to do the same, or to make way for someone who will.>

<Do you believe that the Premier does not?> Tower’s Voice pressed.

The High Ritualist paused. <I am uncertain,> he admitted after a moment’s thought. <The Premier believes in his duty to the goddess. I will not insult him or the work he has done for her. But he is a man of arms and politics, not a man of faith, and his attention is ever fixed on the temporal realm of Honorias, while Boeth’s gaze encompasses a far greater scope. Until Parting Waves recognizes the distance between his ambitions and the goddess’s universal concerns, I must consider the possibility that he will not remain our Premier for much longer, by the hand of Boeth or by the anger of the people brought on by his unprompted failures.>

Tower’s Voice shook his head firmly. <The Premier and the people are in full agreement,> he insisted. <Cylostra is an enemy. She must be removed.>

Shadowed Cloud shook his head in turn. <It is for the people of Tuvhalia to denounce and remove her, or the people of Zeikeutsyr, or of Valkyrios,> he replied. <Yet it is the people of Tuvhalia who rise up in confusion both for and against her, and it is the people of Honorias who will wonder why their loved ones do not return home from a foreign land. Boeth has never asked her people to unmake the governments of others, for she is above government. This lesson even Sharpness Everlasting never learned. But Parting Waves will learn it. I must make sure of it,> the High Ritualist added, <or else I too must make way for someone who can.>

is this a book or something?

Dominion of Hairan, Nabia System, Honorias Proper

When an Honorian – any Honorian – was pressed to describe what made his home attractive to potential newcomers, his response would almost certainly focus on whichever of the following traits his locality happened to possess: excellent access to good grazing lands, a tolerable relationship with in-system neighbors and/or Congress (now the Administration), or impressive employment figures. Considering its distance from the Sadrith System and subsequent assumption of irrelevance in national politics or the national economy, the Dominion of Hairan would never have been expected to score highly in any but the first of these categories; yet somehow, miraculously, this peripheral Dominion possessed, in Crackling Wind’s perfectly objective opinion, an impressive rating in all three. Crackling Wind was genuinely proud of his Dominion, not that anyone had actually asked him, and in his mind it was actually strange that Hairan didn’t already play a more substantial part in the wider Honorian story than it already did. There were few places in Honorias more important to the national economy than a bustling supplier of spacefaring ships, after all, meaning that the presence of the Aralen and Vos Ship Design and Construction Corporation was perfect for focusing national attention on Hairan while simultaneously all but eliminating unemployment from the Dominion for the foreseeable future.

Just as Crackling Wind was proud of his Dominion, he was proud of the company that kept it relevant. Aralen and Vos had been a small firm when the Great Disturbance had altered the course of Honorian history, dwarfed in size and capacity by the established giants of the Sadrith System, in particular the state-owned shipyards of Desele. But following the Great Disturbance came the greatest discovery of all: foreigners, their incredible amounts of money, and – most importantly for a small shipyard largely excluded from the supply of Suranese engineers – their basic, easily-reproduced faster-than-light propulsion systems. The Dominion of Hairan had profited massively from both the money and the technology, with Aralen and Vos expanding its production and profit estimates many times over in an extremely short period of time. Only the Closed Session had given the shipyards’ directors cause for concern… and only its disastrous and violent aftermath froze those optimistic visions of wealth without end that had launched unprecedented expansion projects throughout every level of Aralen and Vos, projects that had yet to be completed as threats of violent sabotage, a decided lack of military protection, and a desperate shortage of Laegian-equipped vessels throughout the nation resulted in an instantaneous economic and bureaucratic collapse.

There were sectors of the Honorian economy that had never recovered from the Boethian War, Crackling Wind instinctively knew. There were Dominions that had transformed completely, and there were of course the Dominions that had been erased as a result of the fighting. But Hairan, with Aralen and Vos Shipyards as its spearhead, had survived the war intact and had plunged into the post-war period with gusto. For years, faster-than-light travel required the employment of Suranese engineers, whose relatively small number compared to the needs of Honorian shipping had long acted as a hard limit to trade, productivity, and even military strategy; now not only did Honorians know that it was possible to circumvent that limit, but they had personal wartime experience to demonstrate why it was necessary. Consequently, Aralen and Vos had received a barely-conceivable volume of orders from shipping companies, wealthy private citizens, and even Congress and Command to construct new ships, mostly freighters and medium-sized passenger craft, and to refit old ones with the Laegian Drive to ensure that the absence of a Suranese engineer would never strand an Honorian ship and crew again.

The yards above Suran had had their share of success, taking on the largest projects of the Honorian state and some private contracts to the side, but for those who sought profits and adventure in the stars abroad, the great shipworks of the Sadrith System were far too costly and prone to delay in favor of Congress’s – that is, the Administration’s – priorities. Aralen and Vos, situated on the Honorian periphery within a tailswipe of Laconia in the first port of call for any foreign merchant doing business in Honorias Proper, was the perfect alternative for buyers on a budget or in a hurry. Between building enough new ships to cover the surface of Sadrith seven times over, fitting Laegian Drives to a constant stream of existing ships ranging from humble shuttles to the very occasional escort carrier, and keeping up with standard maintenance cycles in the midst of all that, Aralen and Vos Shipyards had grown and grown again to meet the challenge… and exploit it.

Crackling Wind settled into his cushions with a sigh and let his eyestalks wander across the expanse of the design floor around him. This was the true center of Aralen and Vos, and its importance to the company showed in the brilliance of its people. That this small army answered to him, a man who had once before been the sole designer of a small and perpetually-underfunded shipyard, still filled Crackling Wind with awe. The certainties of the old Honorias – Sadrith and its States; Suran and its magical technology; Congress and its corruption, or else democracy and its hope – had been thrown down, but, for Crackling Wind and the Dominion he called home, the space those certainties left behind were full of promise for a glorious and profitable future.

It was curious, then, that the chief designer of Aralen and Vos was faced with the challenging vessel design before him. Neither freighter nor warship, both opulent and utilitarian, intended to be used equally by all known species of the Spur (though admittedly given a Sadrithian bias due solely to its port of origin), this massive ship was a first of its kind in Honorian space, taking on a role once held more or less exclusively by the multipurpose Dominion-class super carrier, in an entirely new context. It was at once an exciting project and a sign that the fortunes of Honorias were failing.

It was a passenger liner, and it was to be built, according to White Star Transport’s order, to accommodate not only the business travel of super-wealthy executives but the desperate emigration of thousands of common Sadrithians whose modest budgets could never afford passage aboard the standard passenger offerings of the day – and whose intent to escape the burdens of life in Honorias would never garner the sympathy or the assistance of the Administration, thus barring their passage on any foreign or military vessel with a similar purpose.

Despite his admiration for his designers’ elegant response to the commission laid down before them, Crackling Wind grimaced in disgust as he considered the ship’s intended purpose. Were these people really taking flight in the face of such great opportunities in their own country? Surely no one in Hairan would be such a fool!

Nonetheless, the cowards of Honorias could look forward to one of the finest machines in known space to convey them to a new life elsewhere. A skin of metal and glass stretching the length of eight hundred eighty meters wrapped around a beautifully-winding network of open promenades, artificial parkland, and open-air entertainment venues that spread across the top layer of the craft like the atmosphere of a planet, blanketing the first class accommodations just below with only a few minutes’ walk to the nearest lift from any location on the first two deck levels. This luxury was built over a packed core of rooms, corridors, and the occasional hall intended for the use of less-affluent migrants, Honorias’s poorest and least-wanted citizens making their hasty retreat to anywhere more stable than the patchwork of Dominions that had once claimed to answer to a single state. An impressive array of thrusters, verniers, and gravity adjusters was networked across the outer skin of the ship, in accordance with the highest standards of safe maneuverability when taking sixteen thousand passengers and crew into consideration, all acting to bring the vessel to and from its docks as quickly and smoothly as Aralen and Vos could devise. Between those docks, through open space, the great ship would cruise among the stars under the power of a Regen Drive, a product of Valkyrios’s famous Hyperion Corporation, which would ensure the vessel’s speedy, as well as efficient, journey. With the financial contribution of fewer than a thousand wealthy aristocrats and industrial giants traversing the Spur for business and pleasure, thousands upon thousands of uncertain, underclass Sadrithians could make their way to a new life with a minimal, though admittedly not merely nominal, ticket purchase.

Predictably, several White Star Transport executives had wanted to name this masterpiece of space engineering the RB-class. The company’s usual lack of imagination, however, had fortunately been overruled by the majority of its directors, who recognized in the new ship a marketing opportunity that a mere letter designation could never exploit. As a result, as Crackling Winds looked over the work of his design team one more time, he was admittedly rather smug to see a name emblazoned on the nose cone that his own team had been permitted to suggest for White Star’s review: Endless Possibility.

There would be five of them.

When the Administration learned that Honorias might soon lose tens of thousands of citizens a week to international migration, Crackling Winds merely hoped not to be in the same room.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Dominion of Dagon, Honorian Rhiannon System, Western March

The design offices of Joint Brothers and Company were cold and quiet, brightly lit for employees to better discern the details of their work, but otherwise lifeless and depressing. The company itself was new, and its owners had little time or interest in the creature comforts of its workforce; office staff members could at least be grateful that they were not stuck on the production line in free space somewhere above them, assigned to dangerous work without any allowance for safeguards, crammed into storage holds converted into berths far too small for habitation, fed little and paid even less. Designers, at least, had homes in the Dominion to yearn for as they filled in their dreary ten-hour shifts at the office.

In the meantime, the Dominion-class carrier filled the designers’ thoughts. It was an old design, in use by Honorias for generations by this point as both an important military asset and a reliable means of internal population redistribution. But both Command and civilian logistics authorities had long held mixed feelings about the compromises in design that allowed the Dominion-class to fulfill both of those purposes together. Nonetheless, the Honorian government had never seen fit to order newer and more refined models of the Dominion, which was after all an extremely expensive vessel to build – and to deploy. And no other entity had access to the plans that would make such a redesign possible, even if the money was available to do it.

When the infamous Holamayan Seed Company approached Joint Brothers with a proposition for a new breed of sentient haulers, however, it was the massive Dominion-class to which the ship designers turned for an immediate solution to their newest contract. Even lacking technical information about the class’s interior construction did not undermine the designers’ basic understanding of the ship’s structural mathematics; the shell of the ship could be sketched without trouble. The difficulty had always been to determine how best to house the people and cargo aboard, and to propel them through space to their destination. Holamayan’s sensible intention to avoid combat with their new purchases made the designers’ job much easier, though they were still tasked with adding a multitude of expensive shield generators and heavy armor plating to a ship that was, even to the untrained eye, clearly designed with fewer active defenses in mind – a deterrent, claimed the Holamayan representatives, against piracy abroad. Pushing that huge bulk, a solid shell surrounding a much softer interior of drab communal accommodations, would likely have been the real challenge for the shipyard’s design team… if the team had not designed those accommodations so sparsely and so crammed together for a reason directly related to their chosen propulsion system. Honorian machinery might require much more research to integrate to the satisfaction of the contract and the safety of the ship’s inhabitants, but foreign engines were available, and the Combine for one was selling just what Joint Brothers needed. The Tachyon Hypershunt Drive, as described by its seller, was a significant improvement on the warp-standard Laegian Drive, and was far cheaper and more reliable than a continuous supply of captive or farmed Adabali whose fates could bring international sanction to both Holamayan and its contracted shipbuilder. It was admittedly unhealthy to be aboard a vessel traveling by this method, particularly mentally, but that health warning was restricted to the very occasional crew member forced to take any part of the journey awake and aware; thus, the passengers and crew of this pseudo-Dominion simply would not be. Combine-developed cryogenic suspension technology and Combine-developed automated navigational and maintenance systems, both of which came reasonably priced considering their necessity in conjunction with the propulsion system, actually decreased the overall cost of building the ship as several secondary life support systems necessary aboard any other Honorian ship, such as water and waste treatment, would not be necessary for this one.

Even at the exorbitant price Joint Brothers would need to charge for this ship, the savings on unnecessary supplies like food and water and the immense number of people who could be put into such a large space when claustrophobia was no longer a concern ensured that Holamayan Seed Company would surely recoup the losses within a year, and establish wild profits in the years to come… assuming a steady market for the goods being shipped, of course.

And assuming that the shields and armor held up in the event of an unwanted encounter.

Holamayan had waived the right to name the class, no doubt hoping that a name chosen by someone else would lack any unintended tells that could make its ownership obvious. The owners, being unoriginal by default, immediately dubbed their new creation the Refrigerator-class. The three now in production would guarantee Joint Brothers and Company’s solvency for the next decade.

The designers took one last look at the monstrosity, signed off on the plans, and sent them up to the shipyard proper. They’d seen enough of that ship over the last two months; the next project was already waiting. What they’d done would have to be good enough.

Statement of the Republic of Honorias

The Honorian Administration condemns in the strongest possible terms the announcement of diplomatic and economic sanctions placed against this country by the supposedly-democratic regime of Valkyrios, on the grounds that Honorias, this glorious and historic Republic, does not meet the criteria for democracy set down by a nation that has only just discovered the meaning of the word. The Premier and all of his administrators are disgusted by both the blatant ignorance of the Valkyrian announcement and the true message it sends to the nations of the Spur, which tells us more about the regime in Haven Solis than it ever will about the collection of nations to which it claims to have taken offense.

For Honorias’s part, this Administration has demonstrated and laboriously explained the Republic’s continuation of democratic governance many times already, and it is pointless to repeat that local government has superseded the need for national representation, and that fairly-elected Dominion mayors continue the long and dearly-held tradition of Honorian democracy. It is clear that the government of Valkyrios has little interest in our explanations and demonstrations; it is clear, in short, that the government of Valkyrios has little interest in facts, and prefers to govern based on its fantastical assumptions of what the truth should be – so long as that false truth displays Valkyrios in its very best light. But, whereas the Valkyrian opinion of the Honorian Administration is at least predictable, we find ourselves perplexed by the accusations of monarchical corruption in the Empire of Ash, a nation whose royal authority is now possessed by the democratically-elected Prime Minister of the Sochana, that institution that Valkyrios itself acknowledges to govern by democratic authority. We find ourselves perplexed still further by the idea that a democracy that has too many factions – the result of a plethora of opinions afforded the political power to affect policy – is somehow not democratic enough, a contradiction that cannot be resolved without a clarification of definitions that Valkyrios is simply not capable of achieving.

But of course the government of Valkyrios cannot clarify its position, its definitions, its terms, and even its understanding of democracy, when Valkyrios learned democratic principles at the whip of Cheng I Sen.

True threats to democracy have risen in the Orion Spur: bloodstained warriors, tyrant-monarchs, mad magicians, unholy oppressors of all that is light and good. We have seen them at the front in the late war. We have seen them bringing chaos from the Great Eye. We see them now amidst the confusion of Al’terra, obliterating sense for the sake of their own greedy accumulation of power. We call some Chengists – and Valkyrios has a great share of them still, who learned at the great warlord’s feet as she raised that nation to the only glory it has ever known. We call others Askas – and it is Valkyrios that claims the greatest share of blame for their very existence, the Pierces and the Cylostras of the Spur, and it is Valkyrios that now stands aside and allows their evil to fester while declaring itself the enemy of those who would confront the terror and bring it to heel.

Where is Valkyrios to rectify this Askan plague? A democracy is endangered; Honorias has come; Ash has come. Valkyrios, font of Askan tyranny from Derflekktagen to the Veil, stands back and condemns those who fight for freedom. TYRANNY IN ASKAN GUISE, A CHENGIST ADMIRAL BESIDES – BE REVEALED IN YOUR SHAME, YOUR PLOTS UNDONE, YOUR NATION MADE HIDEOUS BY YOUR CONSPIRACIES AND SCHEMES. Valkyrios, we know what you are.

Our democracy overawes the pale imitation of warlords and tyrants. Our Republic endures; the Askas and their Chengist support will wither and die. The Spur shall be glad to witness your miserable and inevitable fate.

I am, on behalf of my glorious people,

Parting Waves
Premier of Honorias