by David Nash
Commander Admentos knew of an ancient bylaw that allowed a colonized planet from a species that were not under protection to have their citizenship recognized automatically with the payment of mass and sponsorship from a separate species. With the Sangren help, Earth, Tabuts, New Aubagne and McCall have all formally requested citizenship in the Confederation. Once they were accepted they formally notified the Confederation of their desire to consolidate into the Planetary Republic.
Our relationship with the Sangren is similar to the French after the American revolution. Not all of the Sangren remain content with life in the Confederation. Surprisingly one planet even voted to join the Republic. Two more were close. They would have made it under the old majority rules of 51%, but we only want planets where the true majority of citizens want to live our way. The Sangren and Humans are becoming strong allies. We each see value in each other. On Earth it is hard, because for decades we saw the little grey aliens as fictional characters that kidnapped humans to do experiments on. Knowing that it was propaganda used to discredit the only people helping us helps, but not everyone is ready to forget their inherent prejudice against beings that are so radically different. We were lucky in that the Sangren planet that joined the Republic was Sparta. It is home to the few Sangren that retain some measure of militancy. Consequently it was no surprise that is the home of the Sangren Exploration Academy. Commander Admentos was elected to be its first president, as such he has retired from active duty in the legion and has transferred to inactive service in the planetary militia.
Sabol also became a politician. He was elected to be President of Earth. That was a very contested election, and he almost lost. Many felt he deceived them and was not a worthy candidate. I admit that I did use my influence to help put a finger on the scale. We did not tamper with any elections or manipulate votes, but I did make a lot of speeches, donated mass, and ensured everyone knew that the Republic would not exist without Adam R. Sabol. Their was a legal argument made that he was not a citizen because he did not serve in the legion, but that was shot down as he was the second human into space, and was given a rank equivalent to a one star general. Somewhere he even got a powered suit and after a lot of practice, and some additional “guidance” from Marvin was able to descend to give his stump speech out of a saucer.
Throughout the Republic, I was asked to run for the Republic Presidency. I begged off reminding that the Kernel named me the Legion Commandant and I did not think it wise to throw their appointment back into their face. Their is some truth to that statement, but the real reason is that I don’t have anyone prepared to take over the Legion. I have plenty of volunteers from Earth to fill Legion command structure, but virtually none of the command structure present before the First Battle for Earth Survived the Second Battle. Besides, I when I am ready to retire from service, playing the political game is the last thing I want to do. The politician that got the job was a rather Conservative American congressman. Before the Republic election I had never met him in person, but I had read about him. He was a former infantry battalion commander that was forced to resign over a shooting incident. It seems some terrorists had kidnapped some of him men, and in return his men were able to capture two insurgents. When one insurgent refused to talk, Colonel Eastman shot him in the face. The second insurgent, knowing how serious Eastman was about retrieving his men, told the Colonel exactly where his four soldiers were. He was forced to resign amid allegations his actions were torture. I became a fan of his when, during his first election, the news media tried to make hay with his story. When asked by a reported “Now that you know the consequences of your actions, would you still have murdered your prisoner?” To which the retired Colonel replied. “Absolutely, I got the consequences I needed, my men were rescued and were able to go home alive. I knew exactly what I was doing and I was fully aware of what it may cost me. Secondly, it wasn’t murder, it was war.” During the election, I stayed silent in public. I have heard rumors that I did not openly support Eastman he is black. I don’t feel the need to even address the accusation I am racist. I did not openly support him for two reasons. One was that the President would be my boss, and if the candidate I supported lost, it would have a negative impact on the relationship between the Office of the Presidency and the Legion. Secondly, I was was too busy ensuring Sabol won.
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The Legion has made an official request to replace the Barkun as Enforcers, and named me as the rightful High Enforcer. Legally, we have a claim, we have not had any response to the request. Marvin says I won’t. Commander Aegeus says that we have the right to make such a claim, and that the Barkun made the same claim after attacking the Centaurus, so the Kernel of Sentience will have a hard time refusing my claim. However, he explained, their is no time limit attached to their decision. They must make a legal judgement, but as long as they don’t respond they are legally considered to be considering the argument. At least, they can’t name an Enforcer without making a decision on the Legion’s claim.Speaking of the Barkun, they did not colonize near as much as I expected. Most of their citizens were enforcers that lived on the punishment ships. When we truly discovered the extent of the Barkun civilization we learned that they only had 4 planets colonized. The Barkun preferred to use the planet’s they claimed for mass to build orbital fortresses and more ships. I was greatly surprised that the Barkun culture was not all unimaginative bullies, the enforcer mentality was dominant to be sure. However, the culture had a definite split. The Barkun citizens on the planets tended toward technical and support trades with the more aggressive enforcer types leaving the planets to live full time in space.
Obviously, we removed the Barkun from space for the time being, which caused some crowding planet side. The Barkun empire had some planets suitable for habitation claimed but were harvesting them for mass. We dropped a lot of the ship borne citizens there and claimed their ships. We didn’t execute the captains, but rather allowed the Kernels from punishment ships repatriate into suits or saucers without hyperspace capability.
Oni, with the help of both Kernel and Sangren technicians found a way to block specific types of material from being replicated. They password protected hyperspace field generators designs as well as those for fissionable materials, vehicle borne weapons, and cloaking devices. We chose not to disallow shields and explosives as they had civilian application. I was also determined to go the way of Lincoln and try to eventually mend of relationships rather than make an enemy. We were on the right side of history, not just because we won, but because we were one the side of justice. I felt no need to punish those that did not participate in the plots against earth. As you may imagine, this was stance that was not very popular.
We have a glut of punishment ships, and not enough Kernels to navigate them. The few surviving Legion Kernels have all transited to Combat Suit bodies and have been moving the Punishment ships to stand in stationary positions over the transit points throughout Republic space. The recorded discussion with the Seeds during the Second Battle for Earth has made quite an impact on the Legion. It also helps the cause that Captain Marvin leads a combined unit of Kernels and Humans.
All of our pre-battle Kernels have requested citizenship. Our problem is reproducing more. I have an idea, but the consensus is that if Legion Kernel’s reproduce it will cause a war. I believe a full fledged war is inevitable for several reasons, but we need a break before starting full fledged galactic revolution. I know how lucky we were this time and yet how expensive this victory cost.
The Kernel of Sentience is not happy with the Legion for land-locking their enforcers. I think they really want my head in a jar, or at least hooked up to their collective for that. In discussing the political fallout from our short lived war, my team believes there are only a few things keeping the Kernel of Sentience from declaring war on us.
The first is the Legion claim on the Barkun territory. We did not break any laws and we legitimately won in combat. The Kernel may prefer us to exterminate the Barkun
species, but I can’t find a law that says they must be killed for losing a duel. Our Republic loudly replays my challenge on Kernel Prime where I challenged the Barkun to a fight for control of the homewards. Some may think I was not serious at the time, but no one can prove that.
Secondly, my continued argument is that the Republic is as much a part of the Confederation as the Barkun Empire. The fact that we openly and loudly argue that we are a state under Confederation rule and the strictly demand that all planets in our Republic pay their required mass tax to the Confederation. They Kernel, don’t like that we build the Republic without permission, but they did not disallow it and since they allowed the Barkun to form an Empire, my lawyers argue that it is the same thing. Now that we won, I have entire teams of lawyers willing to explore whatever angle of the law I want to press on.
Lastly, while I do not think the Legion scares the Kernel of Sentience from a purely military perspective, we are an unknown. They have mislabeled us as a non-threat for millennia and we beat their hit squad of enforcers in just a few short years. I think they are studying us and preparing a strategy to attack us at some point in the future. We have constant tension between the Planetary Republic and the Kernel of Sentience, but right now it is more of a Cold War than an imminent shooting war.
A huge project using these Kernel-less ships was to take all the hundreds of Barkun punishment ships and use them to create fortifications around our planets. We used nanites and manpower to build huge rings around the Transit points connecting the ends of the punishers end to end so that the massive weaponry faced inward to the Lagrange points. Oni suggests that with time, we bay be able to set up communications arrays using the hyperspace communications channel to link these rings together setting up a beacon network that might allow for automated transiting without the need for calculations. She says we can set up small receivers around the massive polygonal ring and use the receivers to calculate the minute differences in the signal to allow for the gravitational influences between two known points. I took the same class she did in the Sangren educational box, but I don’t have the skill to put the data together. I kinda see where she going, but frankly that project is all her.
We also used a few hundred of the punishers to create the framework of moon sized geodesic sphere using punishers as spars. On this structure the bellies faced out of course. We then used it to build a massive mobile space port near the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Our command team decided to leave the outer Oort Cloud port classified and to keep building ships there also.
The Barkun fortresses remained manned, and it has become a great place to acclimate our new recruits into Legion culture. They remain at watch over the Barkun worlds, and the power of those fortresses still amaze me. I remember watching old movies with my dad and seeing the power of a fictional space weapon of similar size. When my team and I discussed it, Commander Oni brought up the possibility of creating our own using the minor planet Sedna that orbits the outer reaches of the solar system. We sent out a crew to hollow it out and create a metal shell like we saw on Kernel Prime. Oni says that we can place enough grave plates and a planet based fusion reactor and make it mobile. I imagine that will take decades, but having a killer planet we can jump around in would make a really cool base camp. The idea is to eventually transition our Legion headquarters to Sedna and make New Aubagne a Legionnaire retirement colony.
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We have begun terraforming operations on Tabuts and New Aubagne. We have continue to build new Big Bertha replicators on the two planets and feed in mass from nearby asteroids and comets we capture as well as the planets themselves. On Tabuts, we are trying to change the atmosphere from a primarily toxic one to an oxygen mix that is compatible with humans. On New Aubagne it is simpler. They don’t have enough gas present to be either breathable or to crest a greenhouse effect strong enough to heat up the environment. On New Aubagne we are primarily breaking up the methane ice and turning it into carbon dioxide. I wanted to go straight to making oxygen, but my smarter colleagues reminded me that when the planet warms and the methane melts, an oxygen rich environment would cause lots of problems. Besides by starting with a carbon dioxide rich environment, we get a head start when we introduce plants to the mix.
We have tons of environmental scientists wishing to study and help with the terraforming efforts. I love science, so I am all in on having this done correctly, but we can afford to be picky. We run an exhaustive search and any climatologist with published works claiming climate change is a scientific fact or that the Earth heating will drown the coasts are excluded. It is not that I refuse to work with people of different opinions, I just hate scientists that are co-opted for political purposes spewing junk science. Pollution is an issue, but man made climate change is a hypothesis not a law. By the rules of scientific research, it cannot be a closed subject. As to the ice caps melting, a greek guy by the name of Archimedes already showed that ice melting won’t raise the water level as long as the ice was already in the water.
Marvin and Sabol are at the Academy, they are co-chairs leading a popular panel discussion on the difference between sapience and sentience. We used those words in the Constitution very carefully, and with good reason. It is a known, but closely held opinion of mine that the Kernel as created with a purity verification is sentient, that they are, without a doubt, self aware. I also believe that the ruling class of Kernels may be sapient, that is think with reason. I believe that is how they were able to break their programming and enslave their creator. However, I know Marvin and his band of Citizen Kernels watching over the Barkun Fortresses are Sapient. They most definitely have moved beyond programming to determine what is and is not good. It is easy to determine what is legal, however, they have moved beyond the law. Marvin even came to me last week and quoted scripture. He told me the key to the argument with the Kernels was argued over by Jews two thousand years ago when Jesus said,“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Taking the quote in context I see exactly the right argument. His level of reasoning is nothing less than human. His veins may flow with electrify instead of blood, and may be called circuits rather than a circulatory system, but he is no less my fellow man. I cannot judge him by anything less important that his character.
When the time comes we will make the argument that true obedience is more than following a set of rules, but to look at the spirit of the law. Kernels should be able to reproduce, and I think with the right encouragement and cultural support our citizens will share their selves with us and reproduce without the need for some ancient purity test. However, that will create two types of Kernels and lead to an all out civil war. Right now we are testing the waters by seeing just how strongly our citizenry believe in the humanity of our mechanical brothers.
Currently Commander Aegeus is working on gathering information on the Centaurus. They are not hidden, but they took their banishment from planets seriously and moved themselves to the edges of the galaxy well away from transit points to survive as mass collectors in the interstellar medium. I hope that with the loss of the Barkun status as Enforcers they will join the cause with the Republic and eventually help us remove the corrupted Kernel of Sentience from power. I do need to be careful, as I would hate for them to make a power play and try to regain their former role as Enforcers. I doubt that they would side with the group that allowed them to be ousted. But I don’t know anything about them, and the Sangren only know a little about their current state of mind. Right now the Kernel as an opponent have some serious operational limits if they are going to stay true to the idea that they follow the law. Without biologics on their they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to fighting. I surmise that when the time comes they will find some loophole to show why they don’t need to have a Captain in command. However, I am pretty good at seeing when someone is stretching a law and using it out of context.
History may judge me a hypocrite, especially concerning
my help with Sabol’s election, and my attempts to keep the Kernels from using the same sea-lawyer tactics I used to save Earth. I am fine with that, judge me how you will. First of all, because of the Legion, human history will be able to judge my actions in the distant future. Secondly, I did what I did in the cause of what I thought was right. I don’t believe that might makes right, or that the ends should always justify the means, but when fighting slavery and genocide, I think a little bending of the rules is not off the table.
Anyway, if his reconnaissance efforts show the Centaurus are willing to talk, I will be heading out to the void to try to make some new allies.
As I write this recounting of the beginning of the Legion I look out of my office and watch a strong little toddler racing around my living room laughing and playing tug of war with his dog’s tail. Oni and Jones are sitting nearby laughing at Bobby Junior’s antics. Her growing belly a testament to the fact that the jerk boss finally allowed his protégé time at home. What he doesn’t know is that his boss is making a plan to send him on a mission to try to find the Burrougots and see why they left the galaxy and see if they want to come back home.
Part V
Founding Documents of the Planetary Republic
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Articles of Understanding
We the Sapient entities of the Planetary Republic, in Order to provide an understanding of our Republican form government and the reasons for its existence provide the following explanation:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all sapient beings are created equal, and that a Superior Being created them as well as the laws of the universe they inhabit. That Creator, in his wisdom, endowed sapient life with free will and certain inalienable rights. Among those rights is the ability to choose a path to pursue happiness.
