UPDATE TEN: OPENING DAY
- Location
- boundless optimism
Here once was erudition and culture.
Here sages once questioned the teleology of existence. They reasoned ethics and morality out of unfeeling cosmos, they put names to natures and penned dialogues and monograms. There was not an inch of sapient nature they did not consider and in the rarified air of their academy they built a grand theory of statecraft and living that could bring anyone to tears with the solidity of its argument, of how self evidently correct in how it posited essential freedoms and unity with the cosmos. They also had a really good physics and engineering program.
And then you killed them all and good bloody riddance, the pack of bleeding solipsists. Really! A pack of postdocs and navel gazers, manning the stations of the Rock out of a stupid high minded desire to be one with the troops. You don't fault their courage, you fault their risk-reward assessment.
Now in their ivory towers and crystal palaces strides a barbarian of different bent. They wear fine dress boots but the halls clang with the sound of iron boots all the same.
You arrived on the planet of Dashar-B, once home to the universe renowned Academia De Rei Arete. It is now where United Shipping Co. is headquartered, a recently chartered company that has a writ of warrant from the Marquis-Admiral of the Empire to service the North Defense Fleet. On top of this noble duty, it will provide speedy and secure transit to all the peoples of the Front.
It's all bullshit, of course. Everyone knows it for what it is-- an official monopoly over one of the most important industries a spacefaring industry can have. But what are they going to do, rebel? Revolt? You won the last time. They're not going to try again for some time.
A cool sea breeze ruffled your hair before you put on your admiral's tricorn. Luca and Seubi are at your side, chattering with each other and looking out into the foam-rilled sea.
The sun is shining.
The air is fresh.
It's the perfect day to inaugurate your front company. You step onto a limo, off of the heliplatform, and sit back and watch the scenery pass by. No one's happy, you note. Oh, they're smiling, but that's because you hired out a bunch of caterers to set up stalls giving away free food and drink. It's all plastered smiles stretched over hollow holes.
Ah, fuck'em. They lost. You won. They ought to take the L this time, as the ancients say.
The last few weeks have been productive and lucrative. When the first check came through to your bank account as a stakeholding director of United you smiled. This is the first step to not dying from poor in these troubled times, and the first step to avoiding being fragged.
You have to thank Seubi for thinking this up. Because United is an Empire contractor, the Empire's orders come first. So if the barbarians want their orders through, they'll have to pay prohibitive fees or purchase a premium membership. When your factors told their representatives, the barbarians grimaced, scowled, but still paid up. You're making stack on stack on stacks. You gave Seubi and Luca some PTO. Once they're done with the ceremony, they're hitting the student bars and getting outrageously drunk.
The limo stops at the start of this main boulevard. At the end is a raised platform, where you can make your speech, surrounded by toadies, officers, and executives. Flowers from the fiery red tolkovri the ultrablue darani hang from garlands all over the buildings lining the street. There's paid cheerers doing their best, a band running through the motions. Some of them just don't care, they're just here for the vibes and to gawk. Others hate you. Really hate you. But they're here and from the sky this looks like any other party.
All this to celebrate a racket. You remember your first triumph. Oh, it wasn't yours, it was the one that came before you. Old Ironguts, you remember her fondly. Bone deep psycho with a good pedigree, that's why they threw one for her and not you. She taught you everything she knew so she didn't need to do anything, but when the chips were down she strode onto the bridge like a hero and turned the battle around.
Well, you think, I did all the legwork. That had to be something, right?
On Centre, they rearranged the Float-City to make a grand avenue pole to pole for the heroes. Strewn with slaves. Oh, and flowers, you suppose.
Strange to say, but it feels so fake. A dream, there like dew, or lightning, or shadow. You saw it once and forgot about it, and then reconstructed the glory and it just didn't match up to that moment. The years and the distance tarnished it for you. And you guess you still have sour grapes over how they sidelined you, gave you a bronze, two steps above a participation trophy. Ah, whatever. Old Ironguts gave you the command when she retired, with the pension and the command over fifty divisions.
You remember something written in a book long ago, preserved in some philo course the officer academy made you take. To live in the past is pointless, to plan in the future is futile. That's fucking stupid, in your considered opinion. You cannot plan a campaign on vibes. You've got no idea why the academy included that. Probably to check who thought it was the shit (to put a note saying: this guy's an idiot) and who thought it was stupid.
Halfway, then three quarters, and now you're on the platform, gazing out on the masses of life clustered beneath you. Photographers snap your portrait. You shake hands with some dignitaries of the Empire, that you've bribed to assume this is perfectly natural. And then, you fix your suit.
Is this victory? It is, isn't it? Has to be. Yet you feel you've been bumblefucking from one crisis to another. Retirement can't come fast enough. Luca will have to have the command once you're done. Suebi ought to have it-- he's talented, smart. And the position will have to deal with barbarians. But it will go to Seubi. You will have to make them something more than friends.
Oh, well.
Retirement can't come soon enough. Once this is over, you'll find a nice planet far away from all this and sip fruity drinks as the universe burns. You can make a start after you give your speech. What was it? Ah, here it is. You look down on the crowd and begin to say--
There is a terrible ghastly noise.
There is a terrible ghastly silence.
You look down and saw that the left half of your body was burned away. Your arm is cinder. Your leg is a log of coal. Medals melt into your charred flesh. Rivers of bronze and tin in valleys of black and red. You will feel the pain very soon, you think. You look and…
DO YOU SEE?
[]- THE YOUTH: Someone's son or someone's daughter. Just a kid. But they saw a shot and they took it. Damn brave. One terrorist won where armies could not.
[]- THE ASSASSIN: A man with no name and a man with no face. You know the ENEMY's hand when you see it. You almost want to salute. Good game. Well played.
[]- THE DRONE: It's one of your own fucking troops! You can't believe it. This really takes the wind out of you. You can blame your lying eyes but you can see Brevet Private Lorenzo's holotag in your cranial processors.
Here sages once questioned the teleology of existence. They reasoned ethics and morality out of unfeeling cosmos, they put names to natures and penned dialogues and monograms. There was not an inch of sapient nature they did not consider and in the rarified air of their academy they built a grand theory of statecraft and living that could bring anyone to tears with the solidity of its argument, of how self evidently correct in how it posited essential freedoms and unity with the cosmos. They also had a really good physics and engineering program.
And then you killed them all and good bloody riddance, the pack of bleeding solipsists. Really! A pack of postdocs and navel gazers, manning the stations of the Rock out of a stupid high minded desire to be one with the troops. You don't fault their courage, you fault their risk-reward assessment.
Now in their ivory towers and crystal palaces strides a barbarian of different bent. They wear fine dress boots but the halls clang with the sound of iron boots all the same.
You arrived on the planet of Dashar-B, once home to the universe renowned Academia De Rei Arete. It is now where United Shipping Co. is headquartered, a recently chartered company that has a writ of warrant from the Marquis-Admiral of the Empire to service the North Defense Fleet. On top of this noble duty, it will provide speedy and secure transit to all the peoples of the Front.
It's all bullshit, of course. Everyone knows it for what it is-- an official monopoly over one of the most important industries a spacefaring industry can have. But what are they going to do, rebel? Revolt? You won the last time. They're not going to try again for some time.
A cool sea breeze ruffled your hair before you put on your admiral's tricorn. Luca and Seubi are at your side, chattering with each other and looking out into the foam-rilled sea.
The sun is shining.
The air is fresh.
It's the perfect day to inaugurate your front company. You step onto a limo, off of the heliplatform, and sit back and watch the scenery pass by. No one's happy, you note. Oh, they're smiling, but that's because you hired out a bunch of caterers to set up stalls giving away free food and drink. It's all plastered smiles stretched over hollow holes.
Ah, fuck'em. They lost. You won. They ought to take the L this time, as the ancients say.
The last few weeks have been productive and lucrative. When the first check came through to your bank account as a stakeholding director of United you smiled. This is the first step to not dying from poor in these troubled times, and the first step to avoiding being fragged.
You have to thank Seubi for thinking this up. Because United is an Empire contractor, the Empire's orders come first. So if the barbarians want their orders through, they'll have to pay prohibitive fees or purchase a premium membership. When your factors told their representatives, the barbarians grimaced, scowled, but still paid up. You're making stack on stack on stacks. You gave Seubi and Luca some PTO. Once they're done with the ceremony, they're hitting the student bars and getting outrageously drunk.
The limo stops at the start of this main boulevard. At the end is a raised platform, where you can make your speech, surrounded by toadies, officers, and executives. Flowers from the fiery red tolkovri the ultrablue darani hang from garlands all over the buildings lining the street. There's paid cheerers doing their best, a band running through the motions. Some of them just don't care, they're just here for the vibes and to gawk. Others hate you. Really hate you. But they're here and from the sky this looks like any other party.
All this to celebrate a racket. You remember your first triumph. Oh, it wasn't yours, it was the one that came before you. Old Ironguts, you remember her fondly. Bone deep psycho with a good pedigree, that's why they threw one for her and not you. She taught you everything she knew so she didn't need to do anything, but when the chips were down she strode onto the bridge like a hero and turned the battle around.
Well, you think, I did all the legwork. That had to be something, right?
On Centre, they rearranged the Float-City to make a grand avenue pole to pole for the heroes. Strewn with slaves. Oh, and flowers, you suppose.
Strange to say, but it feels so fake. A dream, there like dew, or lightning, or shadow. You saw it once and forgot about it, and then reconstructed the glory and it just didn't match up to that moment. The years and the distance tarnished it for you. And you guess you still have sour grapes over how they sidelined you, gave you a bronze, two steps above a participation trophy. Ah, whatever. Old Ironguts gave you the command when she retired, with the pension and the command over fifty divisions.
You remember something written in a book long ago, preserved in some philo course the officer academy made you take. To live in the past is pointless, to plan in the future is futile. That's fucking stupid, in your considered opinion. You cannot plan a campaign on vibes. You've got no idea why the academy included that. Probably to check who thought it was the shit (to put a note saying: this guy's an idiot) and who thought it was stupid.
Halfway, then three quarters, and now you're on the platform, gazing out on the masses of life clustered beneath you. Photographers snap your portrait. You shake hands with some dignitaries of the Empire, that you've bribed to assume this is perfectly natural. And then, you fix your suit.
Is this victory? It is, isn't it? Has to be. Yet you feel you've been bumblefucking from one crisis to another. Retirement can't come fast enough. Luca will have to have the command once you're done. Suebi ought to have it-- he's talented, smart. And the position will have to deal with barbarians. But it will go to Seubi. You will have to make them something more than friends.
Oh, well.
Retirement can't come soon enough. Once this is over, you'll find a nice planet far away from all this and sip fruity drinks as the universe burns. You can make a start after you give your speech. What was it? Ah, here it is. You look down on the crowd and begin to say--
There is a terrible ghastly noise.
There is a terrible ghastly silence.
You look down and saw that the left half of your body was burned away. Your arm is cinder. Your leg is a log of coal. Medals melt into your charred flesh. Rivers of bronze and tin in valleys of black and red. You will feel the pain very soon, you think. You look and…
DO YOU SEE?
[]- THE YOUTH: Someone's son or someone's daughter. Just a kid. But they saw a shot and they took it. Damn brave. One terrorist won where armies could not.
[]- THE ASSASSIN: A man with no name and a man with no face. You know the ENEMY's hand when you see it. You almost want to salute. Good game. Well played.
[]- THE DRONE: It's one of your own fucking troops! You can't believe it. This really takes the wind out of you. You can blame your lying eyes but you can see Brevet Private Lorenzo's holotag in your cranial processors.
