PUBLIC ADDRESS BY
FOREMAN WIED, RECORDED LIVE ON TAU CETI e SATELLITE TELEVISION (PUBLIC
BROADCAST) 2-9-38, 06:34 SET
“Citizens of Aequor.
“As many of you
know, last week, the dispute over the legitimate ownership of the Luyten Seven-Tw-Six-Eight system escalated into conflict. The United Systems Military emerged victorious
after a short struggle.
“We must honor
those who fell in the struggle, and I proclaim them heroes. They fought for
what they believed in, and they deserve our praise. They deserve justice.
“But I have always believed that no man
deserves vengeance, not if that vengeance is the death of another. Today is not a day for vindictiveness, or bloodthirst. It
is not a day for visiting upon our neighbor what they would visit upon us.
Today is the day that we finally begin to honor our words, and the lives of
those who have fallen in pursuit of peace. Justice for the fallen will not be
achieved through further bloodshed, but through peace. They will have died for
nothing if the future holds only more war.
“It is a sad day.
Sad, not only because of the lives lost, but also because, once again, the
human race has elected to solve with violence and war what should by all rights
have been settled by calm words and compromise. Today is a sad day, but it does
not have to be only sad.
“No, today can
also be a day of hope. A day of new beginnings; the first day of the future. A
future where battles like the ones in the Luyten Seven-Two-Six-Eight system do not happen.
“Today, under
Article Eleven of the Maidenhead Settlement, I proclaum Tau Ceti neutral in all
conflicts. I have already sent requests to the Maiden on Epsilon Eridani, and
to Admiral Engelund of the United Systems Military Command on Aitch-Aitch
Andromedae, respectfully asking them to honor this neutrality, and by doing so,
bringing an end to any further conflict between them. Since Aequor is the
only habitable world in the Tau Ceti system, no army of the United Systems can
attack the Maidenhead Colonies without violating our neutrality.
“It is my
foremost wish that we all honor this agreement. Good night, and may the Plowman
bless us all.”
ROSS 248 UNITED
SYSTEMS MILITARY COMMAND ARCHIVE
PERSONAL OFFICE
RECORDS OF CAPTAIN DIEGO MATHESON
TRANSCRIPTION OF
UNSCHEDULED MEETING 08:17:31
COMPILING...
COMPILING...
LOADING...
CAPTAIN MATHESON:
What exactly does Article Eleven read?
1ST LIEUTENANT KUKHARENKO: Hnn?
MATHESON: Article
Eleven of the Maidenhead Settlement, what does it say, specifically?
KUKHARENKO:
Uhh... let me pull it up. Let’s see... “blah blah blah blah blah, no world
shall, under obligation from another, unwillingly partake in armed interstellar
conflict, with any forcible breach constituting an act of secession, blah blah
blah...” basically, it underlines the fact the Maidenhead was always supposed
to be an economic agreement, as opposed to a military one.
MATHESON: So this
bullcrap about there being a ‘maiden’ in charge of five unified governments was
never the idea?
KUKHARENKO: Nope.
Neither was the Bridgehead, actually.
MATHESON: Heh.
Guess we’ve only got ourselves to blame for that one.
KUKHARENKO: Yeah,
really.
ADMIRAL ENGELUND:
Hello, boys.
MATHESON:
Admiral, sir!
ENGELUND: At
ease, Dee. You too, Lieutenant. What are you boys up to?
MATHESON: Nothing
much, sir. Just catching up on the stuff from the Maidenheads.
ENGELUND: Right,
right... what did you think of the Foreman’s address last night?
MATHESON: Well,
sir... the Foreman’s a smart guy. He knows he can’t fight us, and joining us
or the ARM would militarize the entire Maidenhead, pitting him against
whichever side he doesn’t choose.
ENGELUND: That’s
right. Join the Allies today, and they could protect him from us tomorrow, but
the day after that, his people could be off fighting the Empire, Blake or the
Confederacy in some dismal Rim hellhole.
MATHESON: Right,
and join us, and they’d lose all their fancy tax breaks and export tariffs.
ENGELUND: And
could conceivably end up fighting the ARM!
MATHESON: Sir?
ENGELUND: I’ve
been trading communiques with Ay-Ar-Em personnel through informal back
channels; it seems they feel it “unlikely” that the Allied governments would
ever feel “completely comfortable” trading with something they see as
forcefully annexed planets under a centralized government.
KUKHARENKO: We’ll
see how “comfortable” they feel trading with us when the One-Oh-Seventh is done
plowing through the Maidenhead and comes knocking on their door, sir.
ENGELUND:
Attaboy. We’ve still got some snags to work out, but that’s the general idea.
MATHESON: Pardon
me for asking, sir, but if they like it so much out there on the Rim, why don’t
we just let them stay there?
ENGELUND: The
good of the human race, that’s why! All those resources they’re tossing around
out there on the Rim fighting each other could be used here in the Thicket,
feeding people who weren’t fortunate enough to happen upon some lost sleeper
colony with a fully functional economy. Those economies should be supporting
the entirety of the human race, not funding four rump empires and their
respective warlords in their bids to tear each other apart. We should be
helping each other, not fighting over what little we have... in many ways, I
agree with Wied, that is to say if half of what he said last night is true.
MATHESON: I see.
What would you have me do, Admrial?
ENGELUND: I’m
sorry?
MATHESON: Well,
you’re presumably here to order me somewhere in response to last night’s
announcement, right?
ENGELUND:
...Lieutenant, would you give us the room for a second?
KUKHARENKO: Aye,
sir. I’ll be right outside if you need me.
ENGELUND: Good
man.
(door opens,
shuts)
ENGELUND: Listen,
Diego. There’s been a slight hiccup, but followed by an opportunity.
MATHESON: Sir?
ENGELUND: Do you
have any booze in here?
MATHESON: Little
early in the day, isn’t it, sir?
ENGELUND: You’re
going to need it after you hear this.
(cabinet opens,
glass clinking)
ENGELUND: About
an hour ago, we received confirmation from independent assets on Epsilon Indi,
revealing that the Murasaki Corporation has been engaged in secret talks with
the Freehold Directorate. The Directorate says that if an independent commission
from Stellar Patrol finds us guilty of provoking Bridgehead and illegally
invading Bee-El Ceti, they’re willing to grant Murasaki citizens access to
Earth on a temporary visa basis, in exchange for tariff reductions and
exclusive arms deals.
(drink pouring)
MATHESON:
(exhales) Jesus.
ENGELUND: The
point of all this would be, of course, to ally against us and either push us
into the Rim or wipe us out completely, with Stellar Patrol acting as the anvil
to their hammer.
MATHESON: But if
they want to side with the Murasaks, what’s stopping them? And why won’t they
act without Stellar Patrol’s backing?
ENGELUND: My read
on the situation is that House Centauri is acting out of their usual obsession
with how they’ll be perceived by history. They figure that allying with Stellar
Patrol will give them the legitimacy they’ll need, and Murasaki will give them
the money and the resources.
MATHESON: Don’t
the other houses get a say in this?
ENGELUND: House
Barnard are probably choking on their own spit drooling over the business
contracts they’ll get to draw up with Murasaki, and House Ross have never
really had much say in anything.
MATHESON: And
House Sol?
ENGELUND:
They’re... an unknown quantity. I have a feeling they have less say in this
than they’d like. There’s a slim chance they’ll be able to provide us with an
avenue of negotiations... should ‘plan A’ fail, of course.
MATHESON: Plan A?
ENGELUND: That’s
where you come in. See, we need a way to compromise Stellar Patrol’s perceived
neutrality. If we can plant the seed in the Directorate’s collective excuse for
a mind that Stellar Patrol is ineffective or – even better – acting on suspect
motives, it’ll kill the deal.
MATHESON:
(snorts) We hardly need to do much to convince anyone that Ess-Pee is ineffective.
ENGELUND: That’s
why it’s more important for us to prove that they can’t be trusted, that their
political motivations are just as cloak-and-dagger as...
MATHESON: ...as
the rest of us.
ENGELUND: Right.
So, remember when I mentioned an oppurtunity earlier?
MATHESON: Yes
sir?
ENGELUND: Well,
it appears that the commission to investigate the Battle of Bee-El Ceti has yet
to leave Vee-Fifteen-Eighty-One-Cygni.
MATHESON: What’s
taking them so long?
ENGELUND: Well,
to them, it’s all over. They’ve yet to hear the Commodore’s address. It didn’t
play on synthevision, so essentially, they’re waiting on word-of-mouth, or a
leak from us.
MATHESON: No
kidding. So either they have no sources...
ENGELUND: Or
they’re playing them very close to the chest. I’ve decided to favor the first
option, and treat this as an oppurtunity to not only stop this commission
before it gets going, but also to make Stellar Patrol look particularly stupid.
MATHESON: How’re
we gonna do that, sir?
ENGELUND: We’re
going to intercept the commission before it leaves Gliese Twelve-Forty-Five.
(pause)
ENGELUND: If we
nab them while they’re still on the ground with a quick response team from
Vyssotsky Two-Oh-Seven and cover our tracks carefully, any claim they make
about our ‘unchecked aggression’ and whatnot is going to seem particularly
stupid considering everybody else already knows about Bee-El Ceti. We’re the
victims and the victors here, as far as the interstellar community is
concerned; the benign superpower that secured our frontier, but didn’t use it
as a springboard for further attacks on the Maidenhead Colonies. We didn’t use
their aggression as an excuse to wipe them out, even though we easily could
have. Alternatively, if we let the Ess-Pee commission poke around, they’re
going to reopen traffic between Tau and Bee-El, and the entrepôt trade will
keep Epsilon Eridani fat and happy for another twenty years, not to mention
that if they do find anything even slightly funny lying around on Cordoba
Thirty-One –
MATHESON: Which
they will.
ENGELUND:
...which they will, considering it’s within jump range of four other systems,
they can make it public with Sol and Epsilon Indi, and there goes us.
MATHESON: ...and
there goes us. Right.
(glass, ice
clinking)
ENGELUND: There’s
another option, Diego.
MATHESON: Sir?
ENGELUND: The
commission is huddled into an em-see-see that’s making a refuel stop on Triad before heading to the cannon and jumping to Krüger Sixty. If we
manage to send a rapid strike team to take out the em-see-see before it has
time to construct any defenses...
MATHESON: Sir,
that’s... worth a shot; maybe we could have a See-Ay put down some
Em-Seventy-Nines or an Em-Nineteen-Forty-Six, but that’ll
take time, and if we fail –
ENGELUND: We
won’t fail. We’re going to send in our own em-see-see.
MATHESON: Sir...
an em-see-see has a two-kiloton nuke on its back. With the kind of close-quarters fighting we'd be looking at around all those hoodoos... you’d be sending that
em-see-see on a kamikaze run, sir.
ENGELUND: Most
likely. It’s not a decision I came to lightly, Diego. But the stability of the
region is at stake, and most likely, the stability of the Hundred Worlds as a
whole.
MATHESON: Who did
you have in mind for this kind of mission?
ENGELUND: There’s
only one man I trust to do the job. You.
MATHESON: Me?
ENGELUND: You.
You’ve been with me from the beginning, Dee. You’re the only one I could even
think of asking. Right from the get-go, you’ve envisioned something greater
than yourself, something to keep living for, something to die for. The cause. A
unified humanity, free from greed and tyranny, instead of divided by petty
hatreds and feuds... that should have died out a long, long time ago.
MATHESON: You
really think killing this commission is going to give us that?
ENGELUND: It’ll
take a very large and important step in the right direction.
MATHESON: I’m...
not sure I’m willing to die for a step, Kev. If I’m gonna die for this, I want
it to be at a time that matters.
ENGELUND: But even
the last step will still just be a step. It won’t matter any more than the
first step, or any one of the hundreds in between.
MATHESON: Are you
giving me an order?
ENGELUND: Of
course not, Dee. I’m asking you, as a friend, to volunteer for what could be
the most important mission of the war for us. No one, especially not me, will
think any less of you if you decline.
MATHESON: (sighs)
Right.
ENGELUND: I’m
going to need an answer from you sooner rather than later, of course. And if
that answer is no, I’m going to need your help in selecting the alternative man
for the job.
MATHESON: Do you
already have some nominees?
ENGELUND: Of
course.
MATHESON: Who?
ENGELUND: Pierre,
Kim, Paolo or Joe. And maybe Hanley, or even Randy.
MATHESON: Well,
Pierre would refuse out of principle, and Joe and Hanley just aren’t good
enough. And Paolo and Randy, well... they’d do it, but not without taking a day
or two to prep defenses first, rendering the whole point moot. Kimmy’s good,
and she’d do it, but her crew are too inexperienced to handle combat maneuvers.
ENGELUND: Can you
think of anyone else?
MATHESON: ...no,
I really can’t. I really can’t.
ENGELUND: Then...
is that a yes?
MATHESON: Yeah...
(sighs; glass, ice clinking) yeah. That’s a yes, Admiral.
(pause)
ENGELUND: Good
man.
MATHESON: Just...
give me an hour to get my things in order. Call my sister.
ENGELUND: You’ll
get an hour and forty. That’s all I can give you.
MATHESON: Right.
Okay.
ENGELUND: I don’t
need to tell you again how important this is, what a great service you’re doing
for your people.
MATHESON: Yeah.
Well, I’d better go.
ENGELUND:
Alright. Send Kukharenko back in here on your way out, will you?
(door opens)
ENGELUND: And Diego?
MATHESON: Yes?
ENGELUND: Thank
you.
(pause)
KUKHARENKO: You
wanted to see me, sir?
ENGELUND: Yes...
I trust you were listening to that?
KUKHARENKO: Yeah.
What do you want me to do, sir?
ENGELUND: There’s
a volunteer slot that’s just been made available in his platoon. Apply using
the i-dee I gave you earlier... make sure Matheson does the right thing, then
I want you to set up a base on Triad. A small one, nothing that would attract
attention. You’ll have all the matérial you need.
KUKHARENKO:
Understood. Uh... sir?
ENGELUND: Yes?
KUKHARENKO: If you
needed some zealot to take the longest fall here, why not just promote some
fanatic from Crater or Confluence? Can’t be no shortage.
ENGELUND:
Matheson was... starting to ask too many questions. Getting too conscientious
for his own good. It’s more convenient this way. And it’s... something I think
he’s well suited to.
KUKHARENKO: He’ll
get the job done, sir, no doubt.
ENGELUND: Hm? Oh,
right. Right... right.
