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Governor Isaak stood at the podium that was normally used by the Speaker for the Sector Assembly and stared down at the literal horde of out-Sector representatives and local Sector assemblymen. He couldn’t help but feel a rush of power go straight to his head.
He’d done this. No one other than him, a minor nobleman from Capria, turned Ambassador, turned Representative, turned Sector Governor as of the last election. And now, with this grand gathering, the potential to be so much more had just opened up before his very eyes.
He’d pulled every lever of power available to him. Traded every favor and promised what he couldn’t possibly deliver, sent couriers and messages by the thousands and tens of thousands, all of it culminating in this, the largest gathering of Spineward Sector officials since the Imperial Withdrawal.
Today they had full quorums from three full Sectors, and representatives from at least three more with a strong contingent from the recently and only partially liberated Sector 26.
Then his attention snagged on a group that instantly soured his good mood. The Border Alliance Worlds, representing a few dozen undeveloped worlds along the edge of the Sector, along with a handful of underdeveloped ones to give the group some bite. They were an eyesore and a direct contradiction to his claim of total control over Sector 25—his Sector.
They were merely a proxy, by any other name, for the MSP. His current hope was that by including the Border Alliance in his plan, the political representation of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet could be parlayed into staving off the increasingly lethal Confederation Fleet long enough to build up a real united Spineward Sector force. A 'Spineward Fleet' or, better yet, a 'Confederation Guard' so as not to be confused in any way with the old heartland’s mostly mothballed Confederation Fleet.
“It would also be a nice shot over the bow to a certain Confederation Admiral,” Sir Isaak murmured.
“I beg your pardon, Governor?” his Policy Adviser inquired politely.
“It’s nothing; my mind wandered and I was speaking to myself regarding unrelated matters,” said the Sector Governor.
“It is not wise to lose your focus at such a pivotal event, Governor. Bad enough that you rejected my advice to delay the convention until after we got a better feel for the individual players in person. But a single misstep now could—”
“You know very well why I am forced to proceed without delay. The longer they are here, the more time my opponents in the Assembly have to make inroads among the delegations. To say nothing of the currently nascent Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet! I need to project strength and I must do it now,” Isaak said harshly, “I will not make a mistake. I am too close to all that we have worked for to allow that.”
“Just keep that in mind; you cannot afford to lose. An opportunity like this to unify the Spine won’t come a second time in this lifetime,” said his Adviser.
“I am well aware of the stakes,” Isaak said.
****************************************************
The Spineward Convention opened with a non-binding resolution to empanel itself and almost ran itself aground on the shoals of what to call itself.
“I call for a second of the motion to officially establish the Spineward Sectors Convention!” cried one of Governor Isaak’s paid delegates from Sector 26.
More than fifty hands immediately shot up, mainly from the sector 26 contingent but their cries of affirmation were met almost immediately by a loud counter protest by a large group of representatives from Sectors 23 and 24 who immediately shot to their feet.
“Mr. Speaker, this is not merely a Convention of worlds nor does it solely matter to those of us from our individual sectors, but to every world of the Spine,” stated an Asiatic Representatives. “It does every citizen of the Spine a disservice if we attempt to start off calling ourselves as such!”
“What would you have us do, call ourselves a Senate?” sneered Isaak’s paid stooge. He was smart enough at his job, perhaps, but if he were a top notch operator he wouldn’t be busy carrying the Governor’s water instead he’d be out there hatching schemes of his own.
“Neither a Convention nor a Senate is appropriate,” stated the member from the 23 and 24 contingent, who’d taken on the role of temporary spokesman to a rumble of approval from his fellows, “the truth is that what we attempt to forge here is nothing less than a Grand Assembly to rival the Old Grand Assembly that failed every one of us in this room…a Grand Assembly of the Spine!”
There was an immediate uproar in response.
“Who are you who to say such words…are you insane?!” cried a conservative delegate from Prometheus, standing up and shaking his fist at the Asiatic.
“Who are any of us?” agreed a representative from Sector 21. “Sure, times have been tough, but we are a hardy people in the Spine. Are we now to sever all relations with the Heartland Sectors because of a mere hiatus in trade, travel and official information? Surely it has not come to that!”
“It was not your Sectors that were invaded by angry droids intent on conquest and genocide!” shouted another proponent of a Grand Assembly in the Spine, this one from Sector 24. “It doesn’t matter how hardy you are when the Empire blows up your fixed defenses and then runs away like the cowardly schemers they proved themselves to be, leaving our Sector defenseless in the face of the Machine Menace.”
“Man, not Machine!” shouted the dual contingents of Sectors 23 and 24 that had taken up one side of the room together.
The 'Man not Machine' slogan was belatedly echoed by the other representatives around the room, some much more perfunctorily than others.
“I feel for your pain, good Sir,” Isaak’s paid delegate said passionately. “My Sector was also invaded, our planet conquered, and much of Sector 26 still groans under the Imperial boot heel of the PPD—otherwise known as the Provisional Provincial Directorate which, despite Governor Isaak’s heroic efforts to free us from them, is the political action wing of what might be better known to the rest of you as the Reclamation Fleet—which has overthrown legitimate governments throughout my sector and replaced them with appointed imperial governors!” the stooge said passionately, his eyes flickering back and forth as he read off a miniature holo-prompter set up so that he could see its words. “However much I agree with the sentiment,” he continued, “we can’t risk calling it a Grand Assembly at this juncture without fear of deeply offending the Confederation Grand Assembly!” the stooge finished, slapping a fist on his desk. “The simple fact is that if we anger the Grand Assembly we will be crushed!”
“Why should we care what they think? The left born children of Baal abandoned us!!!” cried the anti-machine spokesman from Sector 24. “If they couldn’t even be stirred to send out the fleet they were legally obligated to, after the Confederated Empire and the Rim Fleet blew up what little we had to defend ourselves with on their way out the Spine, then why in the name of all that’s unholy would they care about a little thing like a name?”
“Label’s disable, you fool! Names are the most important thing in the galaxy,” snapped the Delegate Prince from Prometheus.
“No, I vehemently disagree my brother representative, labels are not the most important thing in the galaxy. I put to you that people are the most important thing, my fellow delegate,” the Asiatic representative from Sector 23, who initially proposed a Grand Assembly in the Spine, said while cupping his hands and bowing deeply, “which is why I believe they deserve a name they can take pride in.”
“Who are you to propose such a name; are you insane?” demanded the Promethean Prince. “You’ll kill us all if you continue with this foolishness.”
“If we are to declare the Old Confederation has failed to live up to its ideals and protect its people, then I do not believe it insane for those of us in this room to take upon ourselves the cause of Freedom, Justice and Humanism upon which the old Confederation was founded on—and upon which it has so badly failed,”
the old Asiatic Delegate said passionately. “I hope that my fellow delegates will consider this selfish request of mine and give me face,” he finished bowing low.
“I say again: who are—” the Promethean Delegate barked ponderously.
“He’s a bloody Sector Judge, you idiot,” snapped an angry looking woman, shouldering the Promethean aside as she stepped forward, “and I for one don’t give two figs for humanism, honor and the Confederation way. What I want is Justice!”
“No one in this room wants justice more than the Sons of Prometheus, and no world has suffered more!” growled the Prince, shoving her back and sending her staging two steps to the side. He then chuckled.
“The Daughters of New Pacifica disagree!” spat the woman. “The Sexists pigs who invaded our planet, oppressed our people, and attempted to indoctrinate us with their patriarchal bigotry and brute force tactics have damaged the moral fabric of our society in ways that will not recover for generations if ever,” she said stepping back over to the Prince and giving him a shove. “We don’t care if this is a conclave, a grand assembly, or the meeting place of Knuckle Draggers Incorporated. The Daughters of New Pacifica demand social justice! We demand compensation for the moral damages sustained by our people for generations to come!”
“Moral damages? Is this a joke?” mocked the Promethean Prince.
“Is social justice a joke to Prometheus?” the New Pacifican cried furiously. “The people of New Pacifica have suffered irreparable harm! Our fleet is gone. Our orbital industry first turned against us and then was all but destroyed. Our planet was occupied by beasts fueled solely by toxic masculinity. The system-wide safe space that was New Pacific utterly violated and destroyed, forced against its founding principles, and turned into yet another tool of the vile patriarchy. This was torture on a planetary scale and you ask if it was joke?! Are my people a joke to you? What greater horror could we experience as a people?” she demanded, her voice rising to a strident screech.
“Yes, yes, it’s all my fault. You killed your parents and I’m a hypocrite for not honoring you as an orphan,” scoffed the Promethean Prince.
“How dare you?!” gasped the New Pacifican, holding a hand to her chest.
“Anyone that unilaterally disarms in the face of danger deserves what they get. Especially when they blew up their own warships with the crews still aboard,” the Prince mocked and then issued a loud, braying laugh. “My people may not have done any better than yours but at least we know which way to point a weapon. Unlike New Pacifica, we know it was our job to kill the enemy, not our own SDF crews!”
“You racist, fascist, sexist pig!” shrieked the New Pacifican. “Yes, sacrificing our own crews for the greater good proved to be a terrible mistake but at least we showed the measure of our resolve to settle things peacefully! We were prepared to pay any price, but no matter what we gave them the Imperials rejected peace. Unlike the bigoted, patriarchy-based in Prometheus!”
“Yes, we are patriarchs and proud of it! You won’t find the patriarchy of Prometheus killing more of our own people than the enemy ever did on your world. In fact, we resisted until the bitter end—which, by the way, was when they blew up everything they could on the way off our planet and then fled the star system,” he said proudly. “Unlike the Matriarchs of New Pacifica, we patriarchs respect the lives of our women and would never kill them in job lots like you did with the wholesale slaughter of your own crews. A more self-hating, bigoted, and—dare I say murderous—scheme I have yet to see.”
Incensed beyond measure, the New Pacifican delegate leaped toward the Promethean War Prince her fists swinging.
The War Prince fell back in surprise when she punched him in the throat, and suffered a further handful of vicious strikes to the face while humorously backpedaling as he threw up his hands to ward off the blow.
Then, out of nowhere, a female member of the Promethean delegation jumped forward pushing the New Pacifican back and swinging an uppercut that knocked the still-raging Delegate to the floor.
Mounting her opponent, the Promethean woman rained blow after blow into the face of her New Pacifican rival before Assembly Security could arrive to break up the fight.
“And that’s how the patriarchy fights with crazy women,” sneered the Promethean Prince, holding a hand to his still bleeding nose as the two women were dragged apart.
“Why you—” the New Pacifican Delegate tried to lunge forward, ignoring the female Promethean delegate who looked more and more like an undercover body guard than an actual representative of her home world.
“Order,” snapped the Speaker from his raised dais in the room, “Order, I say. Order! I will have peace and non-violence in this Assembly room, or so help me…” he turned red in the face and gestured furiously toward the door.
“As I was saying,” Judge Kong said, standing back up, “we cannot live in fear of a Confederation too old, too tired and too hypocritical to defend its own. We must stand tall and loudly proclaim to the galaxy that a New Confederation has arisen from the ashes of the old. Are we to sit in terror, wondering if we should dare to even dream of organizing and defending ourselves from raider, pirates, droids and Imperial Invasion Fleets? To me the answer is obvious, which is why I propose a motion making this convention the body that establishes or, in my mind, reestablishes the Confederation in the Spine. Thank you,” he said, cupping his hands, bowing and then stepping back.
There was a long moment of pause, and then heads started nodding around the Sector Judge while on the other side of the room skeptical looks slowly morphed into questioning ones.
There was a stir as Governor Isaak strode forward into the center of the room, taking the small—relatively small, that is, compared to the rest of the room—open space in the middle of the floor.
A hush fell over the room.
“You all know who I am, if only by holo-image and reputation. I am the man who gathered you all here together for this convention, I am the Governor of this Sector and, until the Judge made his passionate appeal, one of the skeptics regarding the naming of this, I hope, soon to be great body,” Isaak said, his face grim.
“So you are throwing your support behind this notion of a new Confederation?” the head delegate from Aegis asked sternly.
“I am,” Isaak said with conviction, “not for the reasons many of you might think, but yes: I’m convinced. In order to survive the coming storm, the Spineward Sectors needs something more than just to make a stand. If all we are interested in is hanging together else we hang separately, I don’t think we’ll make it. So yes, what we need is something big, bold and brash that will let the rest of the galaxy know we are here—and, by all that’s within us, we are here to stay!”
“Hear hear!” a large number of member delegates from the 23rd , 24th and 25th Sectors stood and rumbled in agreement.
Intermixed within the Sector-based groupings was a sizable minority that ran the gamut from uneasy to openly dissatisfied with their counter parts.
“Then if all our questions have been answered, let’s call a vote,” said Sector Judge Kong Pao.
“Wait!” said a representative from Sector 21, one of the few such individuals present.
“Yes?” the Judge looked over at him.
“I don’t want you, Judge; my question is for the Governor of this Sector,” the delegate said abruptly.
Kong Pao took a step back and nodded.
“Yes?” Governor Isaak asked, drawing out the word.
“You said you changed your positions. Why? What was it originally that made you want to keep this convention from establishing a new Confederation?” the Delegate asked, then nodded and stepped back looking pleased with himself.
Isaak frowned. “Previously, the question was asked 'why we should care what the Confederation thinks?' The truth is I have just received a report today from Sector 25 Intelligence. In short the reason I felt we should care is because the Old Confederation essentially sold us to the Empire and the Empire is ev
en now in the process of sending a war fleet to pacify the Spine.” Sir Isaak said.
If he’d dropped a plasma bomb in the center of the room, it couldn’t have been more explosive. Instant pandemonium erupted with people shouting questions, threats toward the Empire, threats towards the Confederation, threats toward the Governor for being a liar, cries for the gods and more.
And that was precisely what he had intended.
Chapter 55: The Confederation of the Spine
“And so the vote tally is 124 to 53 in favor of this Convention establishing the Confederation in the Spine, so long as at least 100 of the Delegates' home worlds ratify the new constitution. Said constitution is to be, in principle, very similar to the Old Confederation constitution,” called out the Speaker, three days and seventeen votes later.
“Minus the amendments that were introduced fifty years ago that formed the Confederated Empire!” shouted a representative.
“Minus the specified amendments that apply to the Empire,” the Speaker agreed.
People milled around on the floor, looking surprised that the vote had actually passed. Over the course of three days the Sector Palace had seen proposals for everything from a direct democracy that would require a vote by every single member world before any legislation could be passed, to what was essentially a council of monarchs that would call itself a Confederation but would essentially rule their own unique autonomous regions by fiat.
Finally, after carefully redacted reports on the gathering Imperial fleet had been disseminated to the various representatives, and enough time had passed for people to start believing and their situation to sink in, they had fallen back on the structure everyone in the room was familiar with.
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