by Kali Altsoba
OK, a little less inspiring. He’s still a politician, after all. He has to touch all the bases, rhetorically.
“Let all our Neutral friends in Orion and the Clusters hear this warning. Without our victory there will be no survival of your freedom. Together we may win, though the road is hard and uncertain. Separately we shall surely fail and fall. I ask that you join us in this terrible struggle. Send us your ships and fighters! Time is short, shorter than you know. Join us, so that liberty and fairness survive as principles of human civilization among the stars. Your liberty as well as ours, your great and worthy civilizations standing freely alongside ours.”
“The way is hard. The way is long. Yet, we take the first steps on the road to distant victory knowing that our cause is just and our shield-arm strong. We’ll act in concert as great and free allies in this cause. So I say again to our friends in the Clusters. Don’t wait to cross the great space lanes of commerce and amity that connect us, to come with fleets bearing your strong sons and daughters. Don’t wait until the eternal choice of ‘silver or lead’ is made for you by tyrants.”
“Do not wait so long to come to our aid that you arrive only to parley with the enemy, standing in our ruins. Do not wait until the pacific gap between us becomes an abyss into which falls all that we free peoples value and believe. Our need is nigh and your hour is arrived. Rally, rally to us as we will rally to you! Rally and fight! Wait no more! The time is come for war!.”
“Let this challenge follow on the heels of warning. We must do more than act to defend ourselves and each other. We must overthrow the fatal wickedness of our foes. We must liberate and enlighten dark worlds we, the free and favored peoples of Orion, have ignored for too long. Blissful in our own rich freedom, leaving too many of our brothers and sisters to suffer under sallow tyrannies.”
“We and our children must now pay the full price in blood and treasure for the false contentment and indifference of our parents and grandparents. We may not, we must not, ask the same of the innocent generations that follow ours. This is the final, defining moment of our time. Of a failed and fading Shōwa Age. The great hour is here, come to this generation.”
“To our enemies, I say this. As leader of this Union and partner in the Grand Alliance, I promise the reckless Grün Tenno and the Dread Tyrant that you shall have war to make you pay ten-fold for your presumption. We shall wage war the like of which you can’t imagine. Terrible, hounding, wailing, gnashing, all-out war to the ends of Orion. War to greet your terror in kind and then double-and-redouble the terrific violence you have hurled against us. You are warned.”
“We shall not let you, our enemies, callow and hollow men, live quietly after murderous aggression is beaten back. We shall not stop at the old frontiers once we liberate all the Alliance worlds. We shall cross over and take the fight to your homeworlds and wicked regimes. We are coming for you, Pyotr Shaka and Jahandar the Dread. For you, and for all your vile servants.”
“I say to all those Grünen and Daurans who choose to stand by Pyotr and Jahandar, to the elite castes and lowest orders alike: you, too, are warned. Desist! Or we shall raze your cities with showering ice, bombard them into glowing waste as you have done to ours. We will churn worlds into smoking ruins, make your mothers weep and fathers choke on their prideful war. We shall make a desert of your empires and call it peace. Stand with the tyrants and all this will happen to every world we reach for with our fire and our fury. Desist! Now! Or you will get no pity from us. Only hard justice that we shall serve to you as cold as comet ice.”
“Let there be no doubt, no mistake, no misunderstanding. This war is just beginning. I say in the presence of our friends to all who would be our enemies, the high-born and the low, that this great Union shall make foul war against you until the utter downfall of all your works. Whatever cost to ourselves, however postponed for us may be the spring of victory and peace. Total war. Absolute war. War to the distant ends of Orion. War without relief or respite, until we achieve your ruin. Until all our enemies are defeated and overthrown, their terrible wickedness downcast and uprooted. War without pity, mercy or garlands. Until no Oetkert or Shaka reigns anywhere and the wizened Tyrant’s stain is expunged from Daura and all the Thousand Worlds.”
“On this promise I give all yearning and unfree peoples my bonded word. I may offer to the free peoples only this. In deep respect as to the dread hour upon us, I am from this moment to my final breath, your humble servant.”
Briand turns, bows slightly to the Speaker, then strides away from the raised podium. All 4,000 MPs and thousands more in overhanging galleries stand to stamp and shout their approval.
No, that’s wrong. They stand to shout their consent. They consent to his grim promise, consent to vast and bloody murders yet to come, consent to do whatever he tells them is required to win. Agree to kill as many as they must, however they may, with any means they can lay hands to. They lend their consent to withdraw mercy and withhold regret for all the necessary crimes of total war they are about to do in the name and in the cause of self-defense.
Hundreds of billions do not rise. They sit back and still to think quietly about what it all means. Free peoples, occupied peoples, aroused Grünen, even Daurans who hear the new prime minister speak, think within the limits of their lights what his words mean for their lives and families. Many know it means their death, or their family’s deaths, or perhaps the deaths of their worlds and empires.
Calmari lean against a spouse on a soft couch, lift up or hug children, whisper to friends in a silent pub, or on a park bench, of the coming tsunami that must change all their lives. The wishful speak of liberation and the return of peace. The wise ask how soon death might arrive in their systems and outside their doors.
Fighters on all sides in the lengthening trenches on Amasia and other holdout worlds warm masers and prepare for grim years of long, hard war to come.
Appendix
Imperium ranks followed Broderbund practice until the First Orion War, which is to say there were no officer ranks. All commanders were called ‘Brothers’ or ‘Knights’ and all soldiers were classed as either basic infantry (landser) or cloned military slaves (dāsa). Rikugun no longer uses slave soldiers. The term landser survives, but not dāsa.
Rikugun terminology changed with martial marriage of the original Oetkert-Shaka dynasty with the elites of Nagoya and Yokohama, after the First Orion War. By the time of the Second Orion War, all officer ranks were Nagoyan.
Kaigun (Grün Navy) ranks
vice admiral
rear admiral
captain
commander
lt. commander
lieutenant
ensign
midshipman
warrant officer
chūjō
shōshō
daisa
chūsa
shōsa
daii
shōi
shōi kōhōsei
jun-i
Rikugun (Grün Army) ranks
lieutenant general
major general
general
colonel
lieutenant colonel
major
captain
1st lieutenant
2nd lieutenant
sergeant
corporal
senior private
private/recruit
basic infantry
slave soldiers
chūjō
shōshō
taishō
taisa
chūsa
shōsa
taii
chūi
shōi
gunsō
gochō
jōtōhei
nitōhei
landser
dāsa
Special Action Commando (SAC)
SAC uses same rank structure as Rikugun
Sakura-kai (Cherry Blossoms Society)
politruks political officers (non-military)
/> White Sails Fleet
Named ships only
Krevan Republic Navy (KRN)
battleships: Endurance, Endeavor, Goliath, Quark
heavy cruisers: Bao Ninh, Phuong, Viêt
light cruisers: Reckless, Renown, Revenge, Retribution, and Redoubtable
destroyers: Guépard, Le Triomphant, Le Terrible, Resolve, Resolute
frigates: Asimov, Tyco Brae
troopships: Jutlandia, Warsaw
Navy of he Calmar Union (NCU):
dreadnoughts: Kars (Nunavut)
battleships: Aquarius, Ferdinand, Formidable, Forgetmenot
light cruisers: Aztec, Gansu, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Idaho, Mixtec, Shangxi
destroyers: Alaska, Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Dakotas, Manitoba, Métis,
Sioux, Tuktoyaktuk, Yukon, Yutu
Navy of the Jos Republic
heavy cruiser: Jaytown
Navy of Oyo Republic
heavy cruiser: Ibadan
Marine Squadron
Eight NCU assault boats
Twelve KRN armored-schooners
Hospital ships: Argus, Comfort, Esperanza del Mar, Hope,
Mercy, San Remo, Red Rover, Relief
