Yes, we embrace equity in our system of justice, as we do in our society. Our law shall ever strive towards the ideal, however unattainable, of treating people equally and fairly. We make this commitment because the thought of life in a society where the law plays favorites horrifies us. The parade of abuses that a society with no principle of judicial equity is capable of disgusts us.
And so when one of our people are charged with a crime, regardless of their position or the crime they are accused of they shall receive the same access to counsel and evidence as the state. They shall have the same opportunity to speak and to make their case. They shall be judged as fairly and impartially as is possible on the evidence and arguments presented. They shall not be abused, mistreated, or coerced in any of the countless ways that states can abuse their power to render a system of justice unjust.
Societies can choose the laws by which they govern themselves. D'Almeida's unilateral revocation of the Charter is questionable, but even if we grant it, this society has the ability to freely choose the Charter, or any other body of law, as the law by which it will govern itself, because that is the sovereign and sacred right of all free peoples.
No, we should not break our promise. Even if the promise may have been unwise, the downside risk would have to rise to an existential level before it could justify undermining the general principle that we should seek to be trustworthy and keep our promises. We shall let this play out, and our hands will be freed to investigate them after the trial if it seems necessary.
Hmm, I like this write up quite a bit. It fits Pravin Lal's ideology to a T. My only concern with societies choosing the laws which they govern themselves, is that it does also mean that we will have much less authority to stand on if we deem the other factions to be committing crimes though.
Yes, we embrace equity in our system of justice, as we do in our society. Our law shall ever strive towards the ideal, however unattainable, of treating people equally and fairly. We make this commitment because the thought of life in a society where the law plays favorites horrifies us. The parade of abuses that a society with no principle of judicial equity is capable of disgusts us.
And so when one of our people are charged with a crime, regardless of their position or the crime they are accused of they shall receive the same access to counsel and evidence as the state. They shall have the same opportunity to speak and to make their case. They shall be judged as fairly and impartially as is possible on the evidence and arguments presented. They shall not be abused, mistreated, or coerced in any of the countless ways that states can abuse their power to render a system of justice unjust.
Societies can choose the laws by which they govern themselves. D'Almeida's unilateral revocation of the Charter is questionable, but even if we grant it, this society has the ability to freely choose the Charter, or any other body of law, as the law by which it will govern itself, because that is the sovereign and sacred right of all free peoples.
No, we should not break our promise. Even if the promise may have been unwise, the downside risk would have to rise to an existential level before it could justify undermining the general principle that we should seek to be trustworthy and keep our promises. We shall let this play out, and our hands will be freed to investigate them after the trial if it seems necessary.
The rhetorical trap Yudikon is setting is straightforward. Under the principle of equality before the law, and the Mission Charter being the operative law in this case, he intends to try Pravin Lal by proxy - and if we convict him, since we are supposedly guilty if the same crimes we cannot possibly hope to govern.
Since we know this is his strategy, though, we can simply discredit his witnesses and undermine his strategy in advance.
Say we motion to dig into the backgrounds of the witnesses - this is absolutely material to their credibility - and present that evidence to the defense. This is fair, but it is also much more useful to us than to them. Would Yilmaz see that as breaking our promise?
Hmm, I like this write up quite a bit. It fits Pravin Lal's ideology to a T. My only concern with societies choosing the laws which they govern themselves, is that it does also mean that we will have much less authority to stand on if we deem the other factions to be committing crimes though.
Democracies generally don't vote to commit crimes against humanity, and authoritarian directives are imposed on the population (or a subset of a population that is effectively disenfranchised in one way or another) so they don't get the same respect as popular laws. The principle is unlikely to be a serious issue often. And if we do run into a situation where a whole population is all for doing something to themselves we don't like, it could be a situation where we might want to check our cultural assumptions.
The rhetorical trap Yudikon is setting is straightforward. Under the principle of equality before the law, and the Mission Charter being the operative law in this case, he intends to try Pravin Lal by proxy - and if we convict him, since we are supposedly guilty if the same crimes we cannot possibly hope to govern.
Since we know this is his strategy, though, we can simply discredit his witnesses and undermine his strategy in advance.
Say we motion to dig into the backgrounds of the witnesses - this is absolutely material to their credibility - and present that evidence to the defense. This is fair, but it is also much more useful to us than to them. Would Yilmaz see that as breaking our promise?
The argument that Lal is a traitor is stretching to an extreme degree. Someone on the Peacekeeper side probably fired first in a very tense situation causing a firefight with Struan's (the Dreamers) aboard the Unity. That's just not enough for a case against Lal personally. There would need to be evidence that he gave an order, and even then it's tenuous as to a case for mutiny. Chances are some random Peacekeeper with a gun panicked and kicked everything off. That's an unfortunate accident, not on Lal personally.
1. We are indeed committed to equity. The Peacekeeping Forces have to stand for something, even in the face of factional emergency and extenuating circumstances.
2. The X.O. has dissolved the Mission Charter. There's no rule against reinstating it. He himself has no authority to declare it null and void if a faction freely chooses to bring it back as the basis of its law. Furthermore, d'Almeida is not present to weigh in on it either way.
3. Do not break the promise, but order a future investigation be made after the trial is over, for the purpose of intelligence-gathering and due diligence.
Okay, people seem to like this, so I'm cementing it into a vote. The descriptive text is a bit long to include in subvotes, so I'll just leave it as the one vote line with the understanding that the vote includes everything under it here.
[X] Yes, Yes, No
Yes, we embrace equity in our system of justice, as we do in our society. Our law shall ever strive towards the ideal, however unattainable, of treating people equally and fairly. We make this commitment because the thought of life in a society where the law plays favorites horrifies us. The parade of abuses that a society with no principle of judicial equity is capable of disgusts us.
And so when one of our people is charged with a crime, regardless of their position or the crime they are accused of they shall receive the same access to counsel and evidence as the state. They shall have the same opportunity to speak and to make their case. They shall be judged as fairly and impartially as is possible on the evidence and arguments presented. They shall not be abused, mistreated, or coerced in any of the countless ways that states can abuse their power to render a system of justice unjust.
Societies can choose the laws by which they govern themselves. D'Almeida's unilateral revocation of the Charter is questionable, but even if we grant it, this society has the ability to freely choose the Charter, or any other body of law, as the law by which it will govern itself, because that is the sovereign and sacred right of all free peoples.
No, we should not break our promise. Even if the promise may have been unwise, the downside risk would have to rise to an existential level before it could justify undermining the general principle that we should seek to be trustworthy and keep our promises. We shall let this play out, and our hands will be freed to investigate them after the trial if it seems necessary.
I ask for clarification. Do you intend to mean the "Unity Mission Charter" or the "UN Charter" in this case? Lal does not seem to care much for the Unity Mission contracts that held some colonists in peonage but Lal clearly holds the UN Charter in high regard. The wording of the vote question was "XO D'Almeida declared the U.N. Charter dissolved. Yudikon's question signals a possible intent to question whether he can fairly be subject to the obligations there enshrined. How should the prosecution respond?"
this society has the ability to freely choose the Charter, or any other body of law, as the law by which it will govern itself, because that is the sovereign and sacred right of all free peoples.
Does "this society" mean just the Peacekeeper community in Warm Welcome or does it refer to everybody who traveled to Alpha Centauri on the Unity and the earlier probe mission?
I like your vote but I would like an answer to these questions before I formally cast the vote.
I ask for clarification. Do you intend to mean the "Unity Mission Charter" or the "UN Charter" in this case? Lal does not seem to care much for the Unity Mission contracts that held some colonists in peonage but Lal clearly holds the UN Charter in high regard. The wording of the vote question was "XO D'Almeida declared the U.N. Charter dissolved. Yudikon's question signals a possible intent to question whether he can fairly be subject to the obligations there enshrined. How should the prosecution respond?"
Does "this society" mean just the Peacekeeper community in Warm Welcome or does it refer to everybody who traveled to Alpha Centauri on the Unity and the earlier probe mission?
I like your vote but I would like an answer to these questions before I formally cast the vote..
I meant the UN Charter as it applies to the settlers on Chiron. I'm reading between the lines here, but I suspect what might have happened is the Unity Mission Charter said something along the lines of the UN Charter applying to everyone on the mission. The XO declared the mission charter defunct, which meant the UN Charter by extension no longer applied either. It's not like the XO had the authority to dissolve the UN Charter back on Earth.
But that's just a guess, you'll have to ask @Trenacker for a solid answer.
In short, I think Lal and the Peacekeepers will be in favor of keeping the UN Charter (certainly the humanitarian elements, they might be more open to changes to the more bureaucratic elements), and they probably don't care much about the Mission Charter which is mostly irrelevant with the Unity gone and Garland dead.
By "this society" I mean the Peacekeepers. It would be quixotic to try to insist there's a united world government on Chiron when it's clearly a many sovereign states situation, de facto if nothing else.
Edit: I would actually to see the Peacekeepers have something like a Constitutional convention, when there's a chance. It would add legitimacy to the governmental situation, even if I suspect it's a foregone conclusion that the Peacekeepers would wind up with a liberal democratic system of some sort built out around the principles of the UN Charter.
Say we motion to dig into the backgrounds of the witnesses - this is absolutely material to their credibility - and present that evidence to the defense. This is fair, but it is also much more useful to us than to them. Would Yilmaz see that as breaking our promise?
The promise was straightforwardly for the colony's leadership team to distance themselves from Bruce King and his team. Yilmaz was, by all appearances, trying to do you the (perhaps unnecessary) favor of trying to prevent you contributing to a "David vs. Goliath" narrative. In practice, this really means that you undertook not to employ LaCroix or Metrion to do the prosecution's homework for it.
King can be counted upon to independently explore the backgrounds of each witness more or less thoroughly, up to and including mining their service jackets. The vote is really about whether you want to try to equip him with "whopper-level" intelligence obtained by hacking security-locked files to which you wouldn't ordinarily have had access.
There is also a separate but distantly-related issue: does anyone believe that the witnesses are in a conspiracy with Yudikon, and therefore pose a risk to the colony independently of their role in the trial, which I think is what @Traveller76 and @TaliesinSkye have verged on.
The argument that Lal is a traitor is stretching to an extreme degree. Someone on the Peacekeeper side probably fired first in a very tense situation causing a firefight with Struan's (the Dreamers) aboard the Unity. That's just not enough for a case against Lal personally. There would need to be evidence that he gave an order, and even then it's tenuous as to a case for mutiny. Chances are some random Peacekeeper with a gun panicked and kicked everything off. That's an unfortunate accident, not on Lal personally.
In the interest of avoiding mismanaged expectations, I am going to reveal my hand as the author. This much is clear to Lal and Company: Dole Yudikon almost certainly has what he needs to make the case that the Peacekeepers are trying him for actions they themselves committed against his employer during a period when both were arguably still subject to the Unity Mission Charter and the same chain of command.
The chaotic nature of Unity's last hours also creates a strong possibility that faction members explicitly pledged to you did commit outrages against others as well, although I think it was correctly pointed out that even this would not make cut-and-dry case against Lal personally. If they did occur--and there is a reasonable possibility they did--then the "others" against whom outrages were committed probably were not limited to Struan's representatives. This refers to the roughly twenty-four hours spent preparing the Landing Pod Chamomile for departure, during which time various teams roved out independently to nearby sections in search of moveable treasure. I described it in a very early story post as only "nominally peaceful."
You are well aware that Peacekeepers inadvertently and unknowingly killed 50 personnel of what became the Tomorrow Initiative when they jettisoned the Unity Datacore on your orders. This is information you have so far chosen not to disclose to Sathieu Metrion.
I ask for clarification. Do you intend to mean the "Unity Mission Charter" or the "UN Charter" in this case? Lal does not seem to care much for the Unity Mission contracts that held some colonists in peonage but Lal clearly holds the UN Charter in high regard. The wording of the vote question was "XO D'Almeida declared the U.N. Charter dissolved. Yudikon's question signals a possible intent to question whether he can fairly be subject to the obligations there enshrined. How should the prosecution respond?"
Thank you for the question and I apologize for the confusion.
For the record, Executive Officer Francisco D'Almeida dissolved the Unity Mission Charter, which bound the souls aboard Unity to U.N. command and also dissolved their legal associations with, and obligations to, one another.
For the record, Executive Officer Francisco D'Almeida dissolved the Unity Mission Charter, which bound the souls aboard Unity to U.N. command and also dissolved their legal associations with, and obligations to, one another.
[ ] Draft a Settlement Charter that requires personal commitment to the U.N. Charter as a basis for voting rights in a Town Hall. You may not have been able to control this latest vote, but you can prevent emergence of a 150-strong "foreign" power bloc in your midst.
Knowing that ideas must percolate to achieve sweetness, you repeated the speech every few days to new lots, but avoided any direct solicitation of loyalty. Instead, Adan Sadak and Tell Stillwell assisted you to draft a colonial charter that enshrined voting as the responsibility and privilege of a stakeholder in your democratic venture, not Struan's commercial one.
Not a minute after the gate closed, you asked the question everyone had been waiting to hear: "Who will join me in ratifying the United Nations Charter for our colony?"
Edit: I would actually to see the Peacekeepers have something like a Constitutional convention, when there's a chance. It would add legitimacy to the governmental situation, even if I suspect it's a foregone conclusion that the Peacekeepers would wind up with a liberal democratic system of some sort built out around the principles of the UN Charter.
We kind of did this already. Lal, Adan Sadak and Tell Stillwell wrote a new colonial charter based on the UN Charter for the governance of Warm Welcome and it was ratified after Yudikon departed for Relief Station.
King can be counted upon to independently explore the backgrounds of each witness more or less thoroughly, up to and including mining their service jackets. The vote is really about whether you want to try to equip him with "whopper-level" intelligence obtained by hacking security-locked files to which you wouldn't ordinarily have had access.
That is good. I do not think we should need or want to try to equip him with "whopper-level" intelligence obtained by hacking security-locked files in this case.
In the interest of avoiding mismanaged expectations, I am going to reveal my hand as the author. This much is clear to Lal and Company: Dole Yudikon almost certainly has what he needs to make the case that the Peacekeepers are trying him for actions they themselves committed against his employer during a period when both were arguably still subject to the Unity Mission Charter and the same chain of command.
The chaotic nature of Unity's last hours also creates a strong possibility that faction members explicitly pledged to you did commit outrages, although I think it was correctly pointed out that even this would not make cut-and-dry case against Lal personally.
We are trying Yudikon for what he did on the planet. Considering the chaotic and confused nature of the Unity's end, it would be probably unfair to try people for what they did during the Unity's final hours. Of course, we already tried some captured Spartans for their actions during the Unity's end but then again the Spartans directly sabotaged the Unity as opposed to some other factions grabbing and fighting for supplies to save themselves.
Francisco D'Almeida dissolved the Unity Mission Charter, which bound the souls aboard Unity to U.N. command and also dissolved their legal associations with, and obligations to, one another.
Does the dissolving of the Unity Charter, if accepted as valid, also dissolve the legal association of the colonists toward their oath of allegiance to the UN Charter and the human rights the UN Charter enshrines as well? I am sure Lal and the Peacekeepers would say no.
We kind of did this already. Lal, Adan Sadak and Tell Stillwell wrote a new colonial charter based on the UN Charter for the governance of Warm Welcome and it was ratified after Yudikon departed for Relief Station.
Does the dissolving of the Unity Charter, if accepted as valid, also dissolve the legal association of the colonists toward their oath of allegiance to the UN Charter and the human rights the UN Charter enshrines as well? I am sure Lal and the Peacekeepers would say no.
Yudikon has made the argument before that this is exactly what Lal himself either says or implies happened to the relationship between the charter colonists and Struan's. And that must be true, 'else Lal could not have rightly invited Struan's employees to join his colony rather than send them out with the other corporate colonists.
Yudikon might have good arguments from a certain point of view but he has a poor relationship with his defense team and he has no real friends in Warm Welcome which is mostly his own fault it seems. If Yudikon manages to go free, he might not enjoy his freedom for long without constant protection.
The trial and the morality of the conduct of Yudikon has sucked up all the discussion so far so I will comment on other things.
It seems the quest had a time skip. The Skagway was weeks from being finished before the hiatus but it is finished in the current update and the vessel plucked the now judge of Warm Welcome from the sea. The Nautilus Pirates have not yet returned to attack but Lal seems sure that the Pirates remain out there at sea. The Hooded Lantern, the xenofungus hating and burning faction descended from the Chiron Pathfinder Probe, has left the island suddenly and left Warm Welcome to deal with the consequences of some sort of environmental emergency that they caused. This event probably damaged our Planet score a bit and we might have to explain the ecological situation on the island to Skye if we meet her again.
@Trenacker While I find the trial interesting, I would not be surprised if the quest started to attract more voters when we eventually return to the regular number crunching of resource for our colony to survive and grow of the normal turns. Numbers are easier to jump into than the very dense complex moral discussion with a massive backstory of the last two updates.
Yudikon might have good arguments from a certain point of view but he has a poor relationship with his defense team and he has no real friends in Warm Welcome which is mostly his own fault it seems. If Yudikon manages to go free, he might not enjoy his freedom for long without constant protection.
That's a very, very good point. Dole Yudikon has enemies in profusion, some of whom are very probably score-settlers. There's no doubt that, if he stayed in the colony, he would require a personal protective detail, a precaution necessary even when he was governor of Relief Station.
The trial and the morality of the conduct of Yudikon has sucked up all the discussion so far so I will comment on other things.
It seems the quest had a time skip. The Skagway was weeks from being finished before the hiatus but it is finished in the current update and the vessel plucked the now judge of Warm Welcome from the sea. The Nautilus Pirates have not yet returned to attack but Lal seems sure that the Pirates remain out there at sea. The Hooded Lantern, the xenofungus hating and burning faction descended from the Chiron Pathfinder Probe, has left the island suddenly and left Warm Welcome to deal with the consequences of some sort of environmental emergency that they caused. This event probably damaged our Planet score a nit and we might have to explain the ecological situation on the island to Skye if we meet her again.
Great point about Deirdre, too. The Gaians couldn't possible conscience an agenda like the Hooded Lantern's. And whatsmore, you can't even be certain the Hooded Lantern is engaging in this behavior for their own purposes. The faction is obviously willing to be hired out to solve those "wicked programs" Enogra mentioned.
@Trenacker While I find the trial interesting, I would not be surprised if the quest started to attract more voters when we eventually return to the regular number crunching of resource for our colony to survive and grow of the normal turns. Numbers are easier to jump into than the very dense complex moral discussion with a massive backstory of the last two updates.
That makes sense. It seems we're getting new blood, too, which is always good.
It turned out the way past my writer's block was simply to sit on what I'd produced and wait until its appeal ripened. When I re-read it a few weeks ago, I had a much more positive impression.
I'm exploring moral and philosophical subjects precisely because the numbers-related aspects of the original quest were such a heavy lift for me. I do plan on returning to them--they were a lot of fun--but this has proved to be an appealing starter as I work up toward the main course. Besides, every good story needs an evocative villain.
Hi, all. Working hard on the next narrative update, which is once again turning into a lengthy piece that will hopefully be a rewarding read for that very reason.
My thought right now is to wrap the trial story line, then return to colonization and diplomacy.
To help manage expectations, I will share some editorial considerations.
I've been over the past entries with what I consider to be a fine-tooth comb, but bear in mind three corollaries.
Manual review of that much material is a probably-inevitable error trap. I'm going to have missed some things, and I've made some peace with that. I'm anticipating that we won't get away without a ret-con or two. For example, the past updates were actually somewhat two-faced on the question of what Sathieu Metrion did or didn't know, so I guess you could say we found one error already. I'm trying to address this in the narrative, and I think I've split the difference admirably, but if you find yourself feeling confused, that could be why. (Basically, the "fix" was to say that, based on his personal remarks to Lal, Sathieu Metrion clearly suspects us of jettisoning the core but, per LaCroix's snooping in a subsequent post [#486], the Tomorrow Initiative's confidence level in that belief just isn't where they want it to be [#538], leaving the mystery open.)
The combination of branching questions and ambiguous language used at the start of the story may have created some gaps between the things you think you know as readers and the things I think I know as the author. The vaguely-referenced scouring of the Unity cargo bays--a "nominally peaceful" process (#27) for which Lal couldn't always be present in person--is going to be significant to the trial. I feel strongly that the flavor quotes and overall thrust of the story as a whole create a reasonable basis to say that, while most of your people and Lal himself actually did avoid having to use violence afterward, at least some Peacekeepers stumbled into other shootouts over disputed cargo even after your big victory over the Spartans. Those are going to come up at the trial even though they weren't explicitly part of the story thus far.
The time jump purposely introduced more colonists who have connections to Dole Yudikon, which you chose (wisely, I think) not to investigate in detail. Although Yudikon's name is mud with a lot of the original colonists, remember that a number of people who were once sympathetic to him chose to stay with you. Even if they later took the vote of allegiance to the Peacekeeper faction, they had real concerns about the direction of life and government in Warm Welcome that wouldn't necessarily have vanished simply just because Yudikon proved himself an unfit tribune. That population is of great interest to both sides in this trial.
Recovering new colonists was a key objective after victory over the Nautilus Pirates. As we've already established, a fair bit of that occurred during the time skip. And some of those people apparently had ties to Dole Yudikon that you chose not to explore through hacking (a good decision, in my view). A great deal more will be revealed during the trial and we'll talk at length about the ways the colony's least-favorite son is perceived. A lot of this is material I developed during my hiatus. So this brings us to what I guess I'll call the "George R.R. Martin Quandry." After watching A Game of Thrones, I asked myself: Do I really think that, after seeing one interpretation of his world play out on film, that the books George R. R. Martin has yet to write will not be somehow different than if the show never existed? No, I don't. I think that, consciously or not, his take-aways from that show will matter in any of the rest of the story he chooses to tell. You're getting a version of the Quandry here. I think a lot about what happened aboard Unity. I wrote extensively about Dole's background as part of my wandering in the author's desert. I don't think it will feel as if I've rewritten Dole's story--that's not what I'm getting at. It's just that you're getting more of the Director's Cut now, inclusive of a lot of deleted scenes, so I want to make sure nobody is expecting a summary execution.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope the old readers feel rewarded and excited about what is ahead. I welcome the new readers and the people who started reading when the keyboard had gone quiet.
The Tomorrow Initiative - A clutch of survivors that have chosen to develop their colony in the manner dictated by Chiron's secondary computer core, which they are attempting to bring to sentience.
I noticed that you continue to flip between Tomorrow Institute and Tomorrow Initiative in referring to the faction. That faction remains a big mystery to us despite their highly useful aid. I had a bunch of proposed questions for written up for Sathieu Metrion about a year ago and I will repeat them here.
"Would we finally confront him about Tạ Dọc Thân and his concealment of his death in addition to all the odd behavior of the Tomorrow Institute personnel? Lies that could be dispelled with the Unity Core database. This may bring up uncomfortable questions about any responsibility that Lal might have in Tạ Dọc Thân's death on the Unity assuming that actually happened. Alternately, we can ask personal questions on Metrion's hopes that the Unity Core data might one day return him to Earth. We could ask him if he really believed that the Unity might return to Earth instead of being a one way trip and point out that it seems unlikely anyone on Chiron will ever see Earth again. Or we can ask him about the Nautilus Pirates and if they could be a threat to Bright Point as Metrion claimed Bright Point was untroubled by violence. Tell Metrion about Skinner's supposed encounter with the Tomorrow Institute foils and watch his reaction?"
It seems the next update will have Lal leave the mystery of Tạ Dọc Thân's death and the Data Core ejection open for Metrion because it is too awkward for our relations and the odd dance of information and suspicion will continue for now. LaCroix ejected the Data Core on Lal's behalf and unwillingly killed Tạ Dọc Thân and his team when the core ejected with an anonymous account. Perhaps Metrion would have confirmed his suspicions if he was granted full unrestricted access to the Data Core or perhaps the anonymous account was truly untraceable and only Lal and his inner circle will know the truth unless they choose to reveal it. The Tomorrowers have many mysteries for us. Why did they imply their leader was alive and still the current leader when he died on the Unity? An earlier reader suggested that Thân's mind might live on inside a computer. What is with the earlier odd tactless behavior such as eating too much of our food, taking pictures of our defenses without permission, and never taking off the suits in the earlier updates? Are they are data obsessed fanatics willing to do reckless things such as running a pirate blockade with only enough fuel for a one way trip to try to find the Data Core or they are merely a creepy but well intentioned faction wish to protect humanity's knowledge and are merely being careful around us who they believe might have intentionally murdered their leader? Is Bright Point and the Tomorrow Institute truly untroubled by violence when the Nautilus Pirates or at least one of their pirate captains named Skinner seem to actively hunts and hates Tomorrow Institute members. Perhaps the two Tomorrow Institute foils that the pirate captain Skinner had destroyed had been on their own similarly reckless quest for the Data Core and the Tomorrowers assumed the foils had simply run out of fuel and supplies when the two foils never returned?
In my recent reread of the quest, I noticed the Multiple Use Labor Elements (M.U.L.E.s) are a potential flashpoint with Governor Oscar van de Graaf of The New Two Thousand which is another megacorporate charter contractor with a leader that is even more obsessed than Dole Yudikon with "recovering" the heavy equipment that was on loan from his small venture to the larger Unity Expedition now that the Unity Charter has been dissolved. Oscar van de Graaf will be more violently aggressive about enforcing the contracts his colonists made with his company despite the collapse of the Unity mission and recovering what he considers his from the other factions. While most readers may find Yudikon's obsession with holding corporate contracts above everything else and claiming the contracts to entitles him to a large share of supplies and to have the authority to hold people in debt peonage to be absurd, Yudikon is far from the only one on the planet that thinks that way. One of our early choices increased the number of POPs that the factions led by proprieters had at planetfall.
Ironically, Yudikon did demand and received one of the M.U.L.E.s during the negotiations that allowed Yudikon to form his own colony despite the M.U.L.E. technically belonging to van de Graaf and Yudikon would be the same sort of thief that he accused Lal and the Peacekeepers of being if we follow Yudikon's logic to its conclusion. I guess only contracts with Struan's Pacific Trading Company are sacred for Yudikon.
The correct designation for Sathieu Metrion's faction is The Tomorrow Institute. Thanks for catching that one, @BoredStudent1414. Let me try to address some of your other very good points.
On reflection, everyone who isn't a peacekeeper still plays their cards very close to the vest. What do you really know about any of the factions you've encountered--the Spartans, the Charterists, the Tomorrow Institute, the Nautilus Pirates, the Hooded Lantern? You know vaguely what they believe, but rarely why.
You've hit on a very important dichotomy. There are two discernible parties among the survivors: those who joined up thinking the Unity was an ark, and those who joined up thinking it was on a voyage of exploration. Those are very different missions, actually, and the mindset of the people involved is like night and day. The common problem of survival has papered over the chasm in outlook.
Metrion has been forthcoming on one point: Lal is a top suspect in the deaths of Thân and his technicians. That hasn't stopped him from throwing in with you against worse threats.
Insightful point about Oscar van de Graaf. The New Two Thousand were the original "what's mine is mine" faction. In a literary sense, they are explicitly inspired by Louis L'Amour's musings about what it takes to tame a wilderness. In Last Stand at Popago Wells, my favorite of L'Amour's short stories, he proposes a paradox: only the uncivilized may civilize. It was very Thucydidian outlook. I see now that Carnaveron is very much in that vein, although it fits Struan's just as nicely as it does van de Graaf. Carnaveron is not really all that representative of the Dreamer ethos--just their faction structure. He'd actually be the odd one out in a society focused on introspection. People like Cobb and Cohen can be themselves because people like Dole Yudikon are keeping things going behind the scenes.
Author's Note
I've enjoyed this project immensely, and it isn't dead by any means.
Given how long I've been at this story in general (since 2014) and the popularity of this specific venture, it's become clear to me that I'll probably never stop working on it. As readers well know, I've set it aside for a long while, but with the intention of coming back once the inner muse reawakened.
Recently, while listening to a Robert Gaudi audiobook about the First World War in Africa, of all things, I heard a quotation on philosophy that made me remember this narrative. I took another look at some unfinished draft material and finally had some spark of imagination to sit down and tidy up the below material for you today. Enjoy!
There's more unfinished draft material in the works, but I'm unable to offer a prospective timeline. Let's take each day as it comes. It has been fruitful to walk away a while. I get more comfortable with the prose, given some distance.
The Trial Continues
General Francisco d'Almeida said:
Courts martial answer two questions for us. Of course, they tell us when the defendant is guilty. But, irrespective of the outcome, they tell us also whether the defendant is fit. And the answer is always, no. Court martial is an expression of doubt. If it has come as far as that, the defendant is clearly of no use to the Army. – Remarks to the Corps of Cadets, Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Drawing, Induction of August 2108
Man is a happy vandal, but reluctant in his labors. He destroys with abandon, then abandons what he has destroyed. His achievements are more the product of desperation and whimsy than design. With the treasures of one place, he profanes another. – Part I: The Shaping of Earth
They were three days in the search. It was an obscure volume he wanted: Oceanus Orientalis Indicus: Ruby of the Raj. A production of the Imperial Broadcasting Service. [1] Patent neo-colonial propaganda, spooned so thick from the jar that Informatics had banished it to an annual of travelogues marked with the lowest priority for preservation and retrieval.
Vesper Abaddon joined him in the reading room, then closed the door behind. He was a great shovel blade of a man, Abaddon. Squat and solid. Perhaps one day he simply sat himself down on the Carmelite throne and couldn't be dislodged, Lal thought. The great tyrant's face was pitted and seamed, as if the worry had been blasted out of it with sticks of dynamite.
Were the scars mined by interminable hours of ethical hand-wringing, as Abaddon's offhand remarks sometimes implied, or merely the signs of an epicure's hard living? Lal recalled the many times Abaddon had stood himself before the international press, usually when Carmelite forces were fresh in victory, as they so often were. Even back then, thirty years the younger, Abaddon had looked like a man already waist-deep in his own grave. The rolling gait, the booming cough, the rheumy eyes. Central Intelligence said cancer. The KGB agreed. But the United Nations Intelligence Cell demurred. He was mugging for the camera, one briefer explained to Secretary-General Mongkut, sounding very much like the man who must tell a child that the magician's assistance remained perfectly whole even after the box was sawed in half. Up close, Lal saw that the bigger man's infirmities were very real.
Always, the King of Carmel confessed himself an unhappy conqueror. Everyone knew the Carmelite apologia: War could not be avoided because Carmel's children were hungry. The famine responsible for the death of a quarter-million Carmelites was blatant ecological warfare: the Ussite River was not dry, just diverted by Shiloh. Since Carmel hadn't any ports through which to take aid, these must be seized. Force majeure relieved Carmel, its people and its king of any obligation under the U.N. Charter.
Abaddon gave himself over to hacking. He mopped blood-flecked sputum with a white handkerchief, then steadied himself with a paw on the back of Lal's chair before getting started toward his own. Lal knew better than to inquire about the cancer, recently discovered and already being scourged from him by potent chemotherapies.
Abaddon swayed, then gestured to the tape-reader. "What do you hope to find here, Pravin?"
"I don't know," Lal replied. He fitted a neural circlet to his temples and dropped the reader's reticule before his right eye. A nootropic wafer dissolved almost instantly beneath his tongue. "Insight." He squared up to the table, set his gaze on the viewer, and turned the knob to begin scanning. "After the army, Dole Yudikon went east."
Images of the original hardbound, published in the waning days of real paper, called to mind the coffee table stalwarts kept by Mongkut in his New York offices. Books meant to be seen, not read. Ironically, most of the insights Pravin sought from this reading experience were visual. The text, written for the junior set, was largely beneath his interest.
Keeping with convention, Oceanus Orientalisbegan by situating the reader in proper geographic and ecological context for its subsequent narrative. Marine life, water chemistry, climate, patterns of wind and wave. There was the Indian Ocean "then," meaning before the nuclear holocaust of the Six Minute War, and then the Exclusion Zone "today," a place where life struggled above and below the surface. Lal rolled past insets that told a pot-boiled history every school child already knew by ninth form. Global cooling killed off fish, plankton, and coral. To revive the oceans, the U.N. and others backed an atrociously expensive scheme of introducing thousands of different strains of artificial microorganisms to rebuild the food chain. Instead, they'd wrecked fresh environmental havoc. English-speakers gained a new word, Crichtonic, an adjective describing what happened when well-intentioned solutions met a reality that simulations could not fully apprehend.
The next chapter was a political inventory of the littoral. Imperial editors had taken the prerogative to make several groupings for the better moral instruction of the reader. First, the enlightened colonizers. Knowing, organized, undaunted. Britain, France, China, and the Netherlands. Next, member states of British Commonwealth and French Union, each contributing selflessly according to the precise blueprints laid out in Europe. Here were the Austrlians and New Zealanders, keeping "a close eye on developments in their own backyard." Lal sniffed. Since when was the Bay of Bengal an Aussie swimming hole?
Third came the pitiable: states that had "chosen" self-immolation. A description of Lal's native Pakistan hit all the familiar low points: enthusiastic corruption, grinding poverty, popular superstition impeding the work of reformers and overriding the sage advice of concerned Western consultants. Thence came the corporations, combining Mother's concern for the helpless with Father's knack for innovation. Lal was disappointed but unsurprised to discover that the United Nations registered here as a mostly incidental player. Checking the date of publication, he saw that the book would have been in production during a long diplomatic winter season when New York had made decolonization a top priority. See the Blue Helmets, too timid, too few, too incompetent, and practically beggars themselves. Lal peeled another tab of nootropic from its wax paper backing. But who turned the oceans red? Mostly Britons. Some Frenchmen. Who encouraged General Ashraf? The Chinese and the Americans. Who urged full-scale mobilization in New Delhi? The Politburo.
Smaller treatments zeroed in on outliers and villains: self-sufficient Persia, which knew to invest its petrodollars in the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank; blameless Israel, "turning the desert green;" the countless micro-nations on platform and shoal that survived as barnacles on the back of the great U.N. whale; pirates operating from a thousand hidden places; and, of course, the great criminal enterprises, so sophisticated, so glamorous, that they could not be denied attention.
By order of the Colonial Office, there could apparently be only two modes of existence east of Suez: majesty and poverty. Strangely for a product that had passed the censors, Oceanus Orientalis conveyed much of the latter, but hardly anything of the former. The peoples of the Exclusion Zone, high and mighty, low and meek, were by all indications united in their resentment of the lens.
Though obviously posed, not one of the subjects in the pictures evinced contentment or enthusiasm with the promise of digital immortality. Refugees looked anywhere else, while lounging roughnecks stared needles at the photographer from beneath the brims of battered safety hats. Oceanographers, government sociologists, pilots, and marine ecologists bent to their work. Soldiers stared determinedly dead-ahead. Lal wondered if the photographers had possessed the self-awareness to recognize they were so unwanted. Is the imperialist blind, or merely indifferent?
The administrators all looked ashamed to have been found. They, whose superiors had presumably commissioned the prints. Like something was obviously rotten, and their responsibility plain. Where were the undaunted spirits, unleashed upon a new frontier? Where the proud shepherds of a bright and shining tomorrow? If Dole Yudikon, he of the boundless self-confidence, was to be found in one of these still captures, would he be the only one smiling?
Abaddon, watching on a sympathetic screen, said aloud what Lal was thinking. "Down came the color line, but money and circumstance never lost their power to divide. These people knew why they had been selected." On the canted viewfinder set in the desktop, a long-faced man with a downturned mouth stood at a railing. He was the wrong kind of large. Soft, not firm. His skin was dark as jet. One epaulette made him a junior captain in the Royal Navy, practically viceroyalty out among the million-and-a-half artificial natural and unnatural landforms that lay inside the boundaries of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone (IOEZ), as it was formally called. The name, Winston Jonathan, suggested a West African origin. Lal decided to imagine that Captain Jonathan's displeasure was because he realized he was doing unto others what the British first had done to him.
Lal tapped a fingernail on the polished plastic screen, indicating the Oerlikon mount in the background. "The gunboat, I think, has an eternal meaning." How unlikely a place for Dole Yudikon to discover the only community toward which he had ever confessed feeling affinity!
Commissioner Pravin Lal said:
We grew in our artifice but could not abate our low character. There was no achievement. We left behind monuments to nothing worthwhile. What is genius, absent virtue, if not a misguided energy? – A Dirge for Terra
Heaping one's trash in the ocean and standing tent or flag thereupon had various salutary consequences. Conservationists looked to the rejuvenation of species deprived of their natural habitats closer inshore. Climatologists prescribed barrier islands for any problem to do with water, whether it reared up in waves, lashed down from the sky, or was spoilt by poisons. New Orleans, Miami, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Shanghai, and Bangkok—all girded very early in the twenty-first century by star fortress complexes of concrete-crusted sand. Generals sent dredges to extend the engagement envelopes of missiles and their spotting systems. Corporations built their own "heaps and rigs" for any number of purposes, ranging from support of aquaculture and deep-sea mining to traditional tax shelters.
Technicians and soldiers had occupied the very first outposts seasonally. Desperation later created the first permanent residents when post-war radiological fallout and a lack of better options tempted migrants to seek the immediate safety of "clean" spaces, notwithstanding the certainty of future natural disaster. Policing these movements was beside the point: death by rubber bullet was quicker and less awful than death by cellular degeneration. Since nobody knew what else to do with the millions displaced from along the Indus, it was agreed they should go out to sea.
Given time, the inhabitants of the "Big EZ" developed a language and culture uniquely their own. Under gentler conditions, this might have been powder enough to fuel revolutionary spirit, but alone on the mighty ocean, rare was the servant who wished to forsake a master with one foot still securely on dry soil. Prophets of the new age promised interdependence only one generation off, yet following the old scripts, riches pulled up from the seabed or scooped from the waters rarely stayed on the sand heaps and platforms that the refugees were forced to call their homes.
The so-called "dry-siders" were happy to furnish the inhabitants of the Big EZ with the infrastructure that would tie them into existing markets. Water filtration and desalination systems. Drilling rigs, cranes, and pipe. Turbines and photovoltaic cells for power generation. Communications. "Ancillary" services, to include brokerage, sanitation, medical service, and, of course, physical security. Marxists called it a perversity--the self-subjugation of peoples abandoned on the edge of despair, forced to prostitute themselves on a global scale.
Not everyone agreed with this dark assessment. Some took it for progress. The flow of value was no longer monodirectional; supplies funneled in, and raw materials streamed out. And that was not to say the windfall of this economic revolution was strongly felt in the putative metropoles. One of Lal's favorite speeches pointed out the fundamental self-deception behind imperialism: it was ruinously expensive.
Pravin Lal said:
The colonial project is purely an emotional project. At the root of our desire to have sway over the choices of others, there is an inescapable anxiety: that somebody should have taken a path other than the one we thought was suitable for ourselves. – Valediction, 146th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, New York
The Big EZ had bad margins. Easily-exploited laborers must still be fed and watered. They require protection from themselves, if not also from others, and the Indian Ocean was crowded real estate by any measure, lousy with pirates and occasionally a battlefield. The Indian and Pakistani navies were frequently found prosecuting their generations-long enmity at the expense of the general peace, as if a fusilade of short-range missiles was the best medicine for pent-up aggression. Soviet submarine captains surfaced in the midst of British and Indian flotillas with alarming regularity, setting an irresistible example for the Communist Chinese. The carrying trade struggled with this volatility, to say nothing of the radiological contamination. On more than a few occasions, floating refineries and low-situated ore dumps simply vanished, submerged, and their custodians along with them. Many investors preferred to look for opportunity high above the Earth than on the roiling surface of its poisoned seas. Vacuum was predictable in a way that water was not. Beset with their own problems, the "great" powers soon found new exigences that took their focus elsewhere.
Before long, overworked officials made way for overworked contractors. Their pay was better, and their incentives clearer, but the scope of work remained yawning. For a while, the Gezah Islands Authority had tried a policy of sending hard men (and they were mostly men) to so a hard place. Dole Yudikon, a killer at twenty-two, was again handed a gun.
Lal didn't like the CTR narrative for Dole between Lebanon and Singapore. It didn't fit with the swaggering, cynical man he'd first encountered at mess. The earlier record of Dole's war service better accorded with Lal's experience. So did the details Lal had been able to find regarding what Dole had done for Struan's. Dole was the fixer without scruples. Since when did devils become angels, only to become devils again?
"Why does he come here? How does this suit him?" Lal turned the page. Stopped. Sipped his tea. "Vesper. Do you think you could do it again? If tomorrow, we were in Carmel…"
The king sighed. "Have you ever really heard me, Pravin?" He folded both hands on the top of the cane resting between his knees. "There were no choices. The second test would play same as the first."
Lal slammed a fist on the table. "So how does he become a hero, then? By whom is this man called friend?"
For a long time, Abaddon said nothing. Then, reaching out, he fanned the pages, eyes darting to and fro, until at long last a new panorama had filled both viewers.
"By everyone who was due some proper vengeance."
And there he was. Against all odds, a recognizable face in the crowd. Dole Yudikon, a can of Singha brand beer in one hand, an M-16 battle rifle in the other. One booted foot was raised on a crate, obviously contrived as part of a rakish pose. The picture had been snapped from above, perhaps by drone, and purported to show a "local self-defense force, with supporting authorities" in the aftermath of a "successful defensive operation." Women and children crowded the edges. Amazingly, everyone in the picture was smiling.
Equitable Justice
Afet Yilmaz plunged off the cliff without anyone to stop her. "This court is absolutely committed to the equitable administration of justice." Like a vulture, she leaned into her statement, scrutinizing the appellant for signs of doubt. Lal bit his tongue. It was a correct sentiment, but not the right answer. Not to that question, not in this place, nor for the purposes Dole Yudikon had asked it.
The prisoner's grey eyes flashed with a predator's pride. His smile was wide, the straight teeth very white, a perfect counterpoint to Yilmaz's squinting frown. "And with regard to the Charter, Ma'am?" That honorific, although technically acceptable, elided the question of Yilmaz's authority. Even Martius preferred to call her by her title.
Yilmaz, a woman from a country where politics was not only bloody, but still mostly practiced by men, was either perceptive enough to be offended by the complainant's slyness, or else wary of his prominent change in tone and stance. Her second answer was blessedly circumspect:
Judge Afet Yilmaz said:
Let the record show that Mission Executive Officer General Francisco d'Almeida did declare the Unity Mission Charter dissolved in the presence of senior executive staff at 07:52 Mission Time, following the assassination of Captain Jonathan Garland." – Minutes from the Trial of Dole Yudikon
Not the reply for which Carnaveron was searching. True to form, he let that show, too. His upper lip curled. The expression brought out lines in his forehead that hadn't been there the year before. They deepened when Afet Yilmaz spoke again.
"You have provided insufficient context to allow the Court to answer your third question. A superior officer's order is binding unless it either violates the United Nations Charter, or said officer has been relieved of duty by a proper authority."
Kruse Martius thrust up from his chair before Carnaveron could recover. Wisely, the latter sat down. One of the junior barristers handed him a slurp-packet of water. Obviously, the Defense's opening gambit had veered somewhat off-course. No use loitering at the scene. Better just to roll into opening statements.
Martius cleared his throat and spared a cross look for his fitful client. "Your Honor, the Defense will conclusively prove the following facts. First, that this Court and the Base Administration to which it answers do not administer justice equitably, and are therefore unfit to try Mr. Yudikon. Second, that at no time since mission launch has Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal, Head of the mission's Medical Division, had the requisite legal authority to give orders to my client. And third, that Mr. Yudikon had a positive obligation under the Unity Charter to reject and decline the attempts by Mister Lal to subordinate recovered Struan's survivors to his pseudo-government."
Titles were a sticking point for the Charterists. Yilmaz was no real judge; Lal, no real governor. As Chief of Staff to the U.N. Secretary-General, Lal had once been counted among the fifty most powerful individuals in the solar system. Even in ignominious semi-retirement with the World Health Organization, he'd retained top-tier billing. Aboard Unity, his position was Chief of Surgery, with supervisory responsibility for a Medical Division encompassing some ten thousand healthcare specialists and adjuncts. On top of that, as Chief Medical Officer, Lal held confirmed power to relieve senior officers under certain conditions, and was the final authority in the Mission Charter on matters related to a discrete set of "experimental" technologies, Wespe-Quinn-Wagner hibernation and Neutral Resocialization therapies being the most prominent. At present, personnel sworn to the Peacekeeper Creed recognized Pravin Lal as Commissioner. Security Forces personnel on-base saluted him as their civilian commander. An ungenerous person would call Chamomile his pod, the base his settlement, and these people his followers, and many did even as they excoriated him on the Datalinks. But in the eyes of committed Charterists and other non-conformist survivors, Dr. Pravin Lal was nothing more than the biggest game in town.
The audience was silent. This was exactly as expected. Seated directly left, Vesper Abaddon shrugged when Lal polled him with his eyes. He had wondered whether the Great Yudikon would amaze the audience with the unexpected. Not that taking the easy road was sign of a bad legal strategy. Martius was sticking with questions of judgement rather than fact. Even if interpretations of procedure went against his client, the Sehlan wanted to color the entire proceeding as political persecution in hopes of limiting punishment—either because a sympathetic populace would no longer allow something severe, or because base leadership would be crippled by doubts about their own legitimacy. So far, so good.
Presentation of Evidence by the Prosecution Opening Remarks
I clean up my space. I lock up my chest. Dole Yudikon comes and takes all the rest. – Rhyme of Minding, Warm Welcome Children's Crèche
The prosecution's presentation of evidence was thorough, but not masterly. King's team focused like a laser on Dole Yudikon's specific attempts to inflict harm on the residents of Warm Welcome. As it turned out, King was a poor fit for the job. His bearing was all wrong. Somebody had unwisely loaned him a too-tight blue suit that forced him into the posture of a hunchback. He was an actor desperate to find his way off-stage. Every speech, every motion had a rushed earnestness that begged the question: why was this amateur being called to do work that should have been entrusted to a more experienced hand? For those disinclined to attend to the particulars of the law, the effect was even worse. He frequently lost the crowd, which had come only to hear a denunciation—something King didn't try to give them because he had clearly believed his task was to lawyer.
Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:
To reach truth, apply the skill of interpretation. For identifying simple relationships, we have any number of machines. The role of the scientist is to inspect a problem in all its dimensions. Find complexity. Rather like a trial. Under some constraints, innocence. Under others, guilt. But never an easy question. – Turning the Prism
The prosecution started out by drawing a distinction between the broader United Nations Charter and the more narrow, but still ambitious, Unity Mission Charter. Warm Welcome had been founded on the basis of the former. Therefore, whatever General d'Alemida had done, and in whatever capacity he had done it, had no bearing on anyone's guilty or innocence. King further clarified that Dole Yudikon was accused of harming the common interests of the people of Warm Welcome defined as survivors, not as a political body. While certain definitions of disloyalty might easily apply, Yudikon's political allegiances were actually quite beyond the scope of the prosecution's interest. The precise issue was that he had injured the probability of group survival by engaging in violence against his fellows. Nobody begrudged Dole Yudikon for preferring to leave, nor for driving the best bargain possible given the hard road ahead of him.
This last part was too generous. Vesper Abaddon mopped his wide upper lip, a sure sign of disaster. King had been side-stepping the defense's jabs and winding up an incredible right cross of his own, only to gratuitously let the tension out of the spring. Once it was allowed that Yudikon and his followers were facing certain death, theft took on the color of a semi-legitimate survival tactic. Oblivious to his mistake, King finished by stressing that the period of interest to the court must be the time before Dole Yudikon's self-imposed exile, when he had personally commissioned Struan's personnel to alienate resources from the colony outside the formal bargaining process and tried to provoke a bloody coup d'etat.
Happily for the Prosecution, a significant constituency still remembered Yudikon's portion as the fruit of extortion, not prudence. "Thief!" It came from deep within a clutch of technicians at the rear of the building, the speaker's identity lost to distance and intervening heads. An approving buzz persisted long enough for Yilmaz, glowering, to pound her gavel.
Witnesses for the Prosecution
A majority of the prosecution's witnesses were called to deliver testimony around Yudikon's nascent coup, the thefts being much easier to prove and (now) murkier morally. Here, King split the difference. He demonstrated clearly that a plot had been taken in hand. His unsolved problem was that the threads thereof led more convincingly to Martius rather than Yudikon, the one on trial.
Senior Corporal Primera and Second Lieutenant Planitzer told how Dole Yudikon had taken such a diligent interest in base defense that each had separately felt compelled to invoke operational security protocols based on their military training. They asserted that Dole Yudikon's behaviors were consistent with the hallmarks of an insurrection. Martius protested that this was conjecture, but King replied that the two soldiers were comparing Yudikon's observed behaviors to the objective and measurable criteria found in their operations manuals—which reflected best practice on two continents, and from two very different military traditions. Yilmaz overruled the Defense.
King was in his element when speaking of what soldiers knew. He relaxed, slowing down and becoming noticeably less self-conscious. He shucked the confining blazer, too, which added positively to the overall visual impression of his trial demeanor.
A Coup d'Etat
By far, King's strongest sally was bringing a pair of Twin Cedars Trust mercenaries to the stand. They were immediately familiar as the greater part of a trio long ago courted by Kruse Martius when it had appeared the colony would fall into civil war. Lal had last seem them on digital playback from an overhead camera, receiving instruction from the Sehlan colonel in hand-to-hand techniques just days before Dole Yudikon had accepted a negotiated settlement. Surprising Lal now, the subpoenaed pair explained that they'd chosen to remain in Warm Welcome after Yudikon became an exile, preferring service in the Peacekeeper militia to a less comfortable future as adjuncts of the Sabre Corporation at Relief Station. Seeing Lal's shock, Tell Stillwell leaned in from behind to whisper that Twin Cedars was contracted to the U.N., not to Struan's, meaning that the new mercenaries would not have been backing into favorable contracts like virtually all the rest of the exiles. Lal shook his head, troubled at the reminder that there were still people who felt comfortable in that liminal space between worlds.
Doctrine: Loyalty[/quote said:
What compels a free person to willingly constrain themselves by acknowledging membership in the commonweal? Crack this code, and you will have the secret to building armies, and cities, and nations. But there is another mystery, equally worthy of inquiry. What compels an absolutely free person to insist on remaining so, even though it be at a terrible cost for themselves and to others? – Anonymous Datalinks Post, The Nations United
Asked the question of why they had lowered themselves to hear Martius's inducements, the older and thicker-set of the two men bristled. Freighted with a walrusine grey mustache that must defy mask-fit regulations, he seemed to find it easy to frown. "Well, I thought this 'ere was a democracy. Folks can sort've choose there own way, yeah? S'what we did. We chose. An' t'do that, I like t'ear both sides."
For once, the set-up worked in King's favor. These were not friendly witnesses, nor coached. The mercenary resented the professional soldier, probably because he correctly suspected that King held him in contempt. "We dun' serve a cause blindly. If I dun' likes a king, I dun' take 'is coin." King leapt at the metaphor. "Two kings. Which kings?" He had the crowd now, and they leaned forward as if to be closer to the stand. Cross-examination had awoken the amateur dramatist in King.
The mercenary was taken aback. "Why, Pravin Lal and Carnivery-whas- 'is-name." He jabbed a spathulate finger at the man sitting next to Maritus. Both names, he made to sound foreign. Pray-vin Laal. The witness must count himself fairly remote from his government.
King cocked his head. "Did Dole Yudikon or Cruse Martius in fact pay you any 'coin?'" The witness hesitated again, understanding that his next answer would be somehow momentous, but not quite why. "No. 'Ow could they? They wasn't in power yet." King made to look confused. "And that's why they needed you?" The heavyset soldier nodded hard. "That's right." King rounded and spread his hands invitingly. "Did Martius want any information from you?" The witness puffed his cheeks, digging in memory. "Well, 'e wanted t'ave th'schedule. For rounds an' post changes." He thought again, then appended loudly, "But I didn' give it!" With a self-satisfied nod as to his non-culpability, the mercenary went on: "An' he asked about th'guards at th'arm-ry." At that, the audience tittered, and Yilmaz again banged her small judge's hammer for order. Security waved the assembled into passivity.
King glanced back over his shoulder at the defendants. "And this training, it would have helped you to defend the walls?" The witness grew frustrated again. "What? No. Couldn't do tha' at all. We was talkin' 'bout a snatch. Takin' 'ostages."
The mercenary paused again, blue eyes popping as his brain caught up to his mouth. "Oi was goin' t'report it, but by th'time I got back t'my terminal…" King knew that to halt the man would undercut the seriousness of his testimony. The mercenary had to be hung out to dry or else how could the plot be worth punishing? "You didn't tell your superior officer at once?"
Lal had thought the mercenary cornered, but his eyes lit up. The rat leapt for the rail as the inrushing water surged toward him. "Why, no, sir. Sergeant Orphidius, he was in on it, sir. Full tilt. 'e spent most nights drinkin' wif' th'defen'ant. They even went t'talk wif' the Spartans together, sir." King went for the kill. "What did they say they were going to do with Lal?" The big man shrugged. "Arrest 'im. But who knows? Y'know 'ow kings is."
The crowd roared. "Shame!" Martius was hissed and spit at as he stood for redirect. King was astute enough to nod gravely before turning to face the defendants. "I do know. Your witness, counselor."
Redirect for the Twin Cedars duo was limp, as it must be in the face of such withering drama. Martius faltered through a long and implausible series of questions as he tried to scrub coal. Rather than deny the foregoing testimony, Martius meant to take the sting out of it by addressing what hadn't happened: the coup itself. Like King, his counterpart on the stand was the heavier man. "Corporal, did this 'plan' you refer to ever actually come about?" The witness again shook his head. "Well, no, but—" Martius sneered. "And nobody ever gave you anything as part of any agreement?" The mercenary looked lost. "No." Martius made a gracious gesture. "And at any time, did you actually speak to Mr. Yudikon, or receive any instructions from him?" "No. But you—" "Thank you, Corporal. No further questions."
Because this portion of the proceedings turned on his own actions, Yilmaz granted a request for Martius to read a statement into the record. His curiosity about the mercenaries' interest in regime change? Canvasing votes for the next Town Hall. The explanation for their training? The colonel, Martius, being mostly an administrative talent, had but a narrow repertoire of useful combat skills to pass on. His interest in Warm Welcome's military capabilities supposedly came of shrewd foresight. Both he and Dole Yudikon had known the only answer was to leave the colony, never to return, and they'd been equally certain that the Peacekeepers would one day use force to retrieve them.
An Unfair Share
Next, King addressed the pattern of thefts preceding Dole Yudikon's leaving. Back on mundane matters that were outside his professional wheelhouse, he also reverted to his earlier, slower form. This caution awoke great temptation in the listener to check King's argument all the more closely, and it was not to his advantage.
The story was clear enough. Charterists had taken base resources for themselves alone, and Yudikon had orchestrated it—why else had he been the common variable across multiple conspiracies? The thefts targeted medical supplies and water—both prerequisites for survival in any hostile environment. They did this not in full light of day, but under cover of deception, demonstrating that they knew they were violating a social compact to which they themselves felt bound. Base Operations Director Guan Biao submitted evidence showing the quantity and types of resources allotted to the Struan's survivors as compared to a comparable cross-section of non-Charter colonists. Comparison indicated that the Struan's survivors received, on average, up to half again as much in the way of care and privileges. "There was, in fact, no 'fair share' to recover," King emphasized.
But what about the very low standard set earlier in the morning? King had moved the goal posts and now had to demonstrate that Dole Yudikon had been gratuitous in his selections. Martius's riposte was eloquent. With barely fifty souls, every item that could be got was bound to be either bootstrapped or bartered to replace something they didn't have. Wasn't that how the Peacekeepers themselves had done it aboard Unity? Had Lal been more discriminate than Dole Yudikon? No, Guan admitted. He had not.
King's road was the harder to plough because a good deal of the knowledge he possessed about Dole Yudikon had been obtained through means that could only generously be termed "extra-legal." Were the prosecution to build its case substantially on that surveillance, they might as well not even try for a conviction given a presumably hyper-ethical juror like Enogra. Because of this, it seemed to Lal that only a very weak case could be built. At best, it was a mostly extra-judicial argument--asking that the law be used to correct an ethical defect, even at the expense of textual protections guaranteed to every defendant. Carnaveron was a thief, but perhaps justified given his obligation to fifty souls. Carnaveron was a troublemaker. But was he demonstrably a coup plotter? Martius was, but in a court of law, Carnaveron remained safely inside the boundaries of plausible doubt.
The coup itself had never produced more than hot air. True, the Marine guards set over the Spartans and the faction Librarians were in full agreement that Carnaveron had expressed an "unparalleled" curiosity about security matters. Other Peacekeeper militiamen spoke to new catch-vid clips that were hard to interpret as anything but strong evidence that onlooking Charterists had been memorizing their patrol routes. Medical staff confirmed that the thefts of supplies resulted in worse outcomes for their patients, incapacitated Charterists included. A parade of facilities technicians walked the court through Charterist-inflicted damage to numerous water catchments, inflicted during their siphoning operations. Some opined that this could only have been intentional. But no shots had ever been fired, no necks broken, no base facilities seized or stormed.
From Yudikon's corner, Martius worked vigorously to sell the idea that the Struan's personnel were genuinely fearful of the heavily-militarized "Peacekeeper" colony. Even though they anticipated being allowed to leave—"marooned, actually"—Martius claimed that they all knew the other shoe would drop. "Our fates were going to be intertwined," Martius suggested, "and not for the better. The relationship was to be competitive, even deadly. How else to interpret your colony's security posture?" During Corporal Pereira's redirect, he'd brought out the issue of the mortar base so close to Relief Station and confirmed that Warm Welcome continued to take an active interest in its "prodigal children." These military preparations far preceded the discovery of the Nautilus Pirates, and you'd been well set-up for war on two fronts. Rhetorically, he said, Lal had poisoned the Peacekeeper populace against the Charterists, leading to confrontations both digital and physical that amounted to political vigilantism and discouraging Yudikon from risking a trade mission, keeping both colonies the poorer and sicker.
At the end of the first day of trial, Carnaveron left with the same defiant posture he'd adopted six hours earlier. Lal thought it was well-deserved. Admittedly, the crowd was not well-behaved. One man even tried to punch Dole Yudikon as he was being led out, prompting an ugly scene with a baton-wielding guard. But the baying, torch-wielding mob—the majority judgement that no security team could have prevented—never did coalesce. Already, Lal worried that behind every contemplative expression, each observer was doing exactly what Martius wanted: placing themselves in Dole Yudikon's shoes. Weighing which bridges to burn before they ran out of road. The number of new faces on the witness list, along with the revelation that some of the conspirators' old prospects had stayed behind, were more bad news. The stunning thing about the Twin Cedars man was how brazen he'd been. Lal had once thought the biggest threat was that that Dole Yudikon, waxing lyrical, would form a counterparty again. But what if that counterparty was already in being?
Whether King was a bad choice? Hard to say. Probably not, in fact. Vesper Abaddon, though doubtless the more talented rhetorician, was manifestly unfit to approach the bar. Malakai Ro was even flatter on her feet than King, and according to her service record, had received considerably less formal education. If Abaddon's background was too well-vetted, then Ro's was too poorly-known. It didn't bear thinking about the lather into which Guan Biao would have whipped himself, the better to feed Kruse's persecution narrative. Eloquent like Abaddon, Terrance LaCroix nevertheless had similar problems of credibility that King, because of his official role in the colony, could sidestep. Yudikon and Martius were well-connected. Instead of arguing about whether the Peacekeepers were an aggressive people from whom the exiles needed defending, the trial would surely have become an archaeological expedition into LaCroix's computer records. Stillwell and Metrion, couldn't be trusted to properly represent faction ethics. One was an unreconstructed product of a byone era who embraced a bloodier justice, the other an unknown quantity residing in Warm Welcome for reasons no one really knew. Both fairweather allies without grounding in the Peacekeeper script. Erkins might have been a viable option, but you'd felt unable to ask. The fight with Dole Yudikon belonged to the Peacekeeping Forces.
Over tea, Lal's staff divided themselves on the score. Most agreed that King was too wooden except when talking to other soldiers. His very limited legal training had obviously included warnings to avoid trying to convict Carnaveron for playing the heel, which was no crime, but that was exactly what Abaddon and Erkins thought might work. "Academic," Vesper Abaddon called the showing. "Everyone knows what Carnaveron is. This was our chance to rekindle old, bad feeling. Instead, we're hearing why Robin Hood was correct to ferret away some extra rations from the rich before he went off into haunted Sherwood." You offered, without much believing it, that King had given himself a sound footing by deciding to pursue Carnaveron for criminal action rather than dissenting thought, but agreed that the case was boring, which in turn made it seem trivial, and Carnaveron's behaviors tame. Tell Stillwell acidly recommended that somebody should remember to send King a network note clarifying that his job was to try Carnaveron, not Kruse Martius.
Only Sadak and Virhaan Singh were especially bullish on King's style. The neurosurgeon explained that he was trying to look at the trial from the position of Wyle Enogra, who insofar as anyone knew was committed to the institutes of logic. Unfortunately, he had no counter when Abaddon asked what the Council was supposed to do if Carnaveron regained a serious following within the colony—especially because a good proportion of the newest inductees were somehow considered interesting by him.
Signals of Past and Future
Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:
God has sometimes been described as a disinterested clock-maker. This is patently nonsense. Do you know any clock-makers? I do. The tinkerer is obsessive about his projects. There is no spring that is coiled, no gear that turns, about which he does not make himself unexcelled expert and feel himself the adoring father. If God has made us, then he is watching very closely indeed. - Guest's Lecture, Thoughts on Deity, Symposium of the Elected
The signal came through less than an hour after planetary midnight. Thinking that this was why he had a watch commander, Lal let the terminal chime, focusing instead on filling his lungs with as much air as they would hold. Breathe in the possibilities of new purpose. Renewed strength. Breathe out the wastes and pains of the day just past.
An aide woke him. His assistant appeared with a freshly-laundered mission jumpsuit and, more important, doodh pati chai. The halls were deserted, and the caller was content to wait, but Lal and his escort tramped along the catwalks at a cadence that he found absurb and yet irresistable at the same time.
Outside the communications hut, a cylinderical nodule sprouting from Chamomile's upper hull form to make it the tallest habitable point on the grounded dropship, others had already gathered. The inevitable Marine guard snapped to attention. Tell Stillwell looked up from a leather-bound volume of something brought from home, tucked the palm-sized tome into his breast pocket, and nodded once. Guan Biao cycled the locked door and hastened a technician from his chair.
There was time for someone to rob Lal of the chai, and for him to tongue the standard nootropic used to enhance focus ahead of formal diplomacy. With hands to either side of the door frame, Lal forced himself forward into the darkness, then slipped into the set operator's formed couch. On a small, black-and-white screen before him, obscured periodically by refresh rates, was a man he hadn't seen in the flesh for more than a hundred years.
Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov was in the seveneth decade of his life outside the bottle, a not-very-far-off-the-mark euphamism for cold sleep. Nominally third-in-command, he was the closest Unity had to a master builder, and, after Executive Officer d'Almeida, the nearest Captain Jonathan Garland had to a problem child on his staff.
Lal could use many adjectives to describe Zakharov as he had known him before tonight. He was vain, interjecting the dubious benefit of asides during conversations that didn't require his commentaries. In the Russian's estimation, female accomplishments were likewise subject to qualification. Many Peacekeepers, Lal included, considered Zakharov most-responsible for the human cost of Unity's destruction. Zakharov had been first in disobeying Garland's orders concerning damage control. Strangely--he was a pronounced hypochondriac--Zakharov had insisted on attempting to repair the ship's engines notwithstanding multiple worsening radiation leaks. For this purpose, he had awakened hundreds of engineers and technicians ahead of first responders, complicating more urgent life-saving and salvage operations, to say nothing of the defensive fight against the mutineers.
Here, on this screen, there was only one word suitable for Lal's counterpart: ghoulish. Zakharov was now all but hairless, half his egg-bald skull blistered with beta burns, the eyebrows gone. What hair still clung to his scalp was sparse and shoulder-length, giving the appearance of a marionette with the strings cut. His right eye, incompletely obscured behind an optical square, refused to focus. The left, murky but active, found him after too long a beat, and resulted in a smile with fewer teeth than Lal had fingers on both hands.
"Hello, my good friend. You see I have survived."
Lal couldn't speak and only nodded.
"Your island has been emitting some rather interesting signals these past few months. You will forgive my tardiness. Medical urgencies intervened." On his side of the screen, Zakharov reached up to fiddle with a setting. The hand was swaddled in bandages.
"W-we'll get you some medicines." Sympathy made Lal a willing liar. Even if he had been sure of Zakharov's location, and even if the journey were possible for the Skagway or the Skycrane, Warm Welcome was critically low on care goods, especially for sufferers of radiation poisoning, who must be the lion's share of every faction's patient load.
Zakharov smiled again. Lal wished he would not. This time, the Russian's good eye twinkled with reflected light. "I think not. It is rather far."
Still unwilling to profane the sick bed atmosphere with talk of policy or trade, Lal fell back on what he knew. "I and our other medical staff are happy to consult--"
"No, Doktor Lal, that will not be necessary. Our care is quite adequate." Again, Zakharov fiddled with switches. "The University of Planet is fortunate to possess a vast database of medical knowledge."
"University of Planet?"
"Yes. We have elected to form a proper faculty. To survive, we study." When the infirm engineer leaned back, Lal spotted the edges of a pressure suit. The bulky medical garmanet, a precious rarity in Unity's recuperation wards, was used for those afflicted by burns over a significant portion of the body. "There is a charter, and mealtime discussion is quite... diverting. Present circumstances will be overcome."
Should Lal be relieved that Zakharov remained true to form, or shocked that he could not be shoved off-course even by the most atrocious calamity?
"I have contacted you because I learned you are in possession of the Data Core."
Only the drugs explained why Lal was able to avoid a physical reaction to Zakharov's indication that his intelligence operation was so far-seeing. Spies or sensors? Had his been the forces foiled by King's mission of retrieval?
"I sense you are going to remind me that the contents thereof are the shared birthright of all survivors." Lal was careful to keep his tone genial. "We agree. I would be happy to transmit certain files, if that is what you wish."
Zakharov nodded. "I expect you will find it necessary to make some beneficial modifications to your apparatus. I will have my people share some simple instructions. And, of course, the list of requested reading materials."
Lal rubbed his chin, deciding the time had come to press his own needs. "How many of you are there?"
"Seven hundred souls, more or less." A long tongue slicked across Zakharov's chapped upper lip. A tell? "But we have conquered certain prejudicial assumptions."
"I beg your pardon?" Was Zakharov referring to an alliance with another group of survivors, one whose crimes were more odious than his own?
"I only mean, Doktor, that a soul is completely unnecessary." Zakharov turned partially, and with difficulty, to make a flailing motion to parties off-screen. The camera focus was too narrow to make out any particulars of the space behind him, but a dark shadow fell over the image in its entirety. More clear was that the conversation had reached its end.
"The University of Planet thanks you again for your contributions to human knowledge, Pravin Lal. Our underlings will complete formalities. We will speak again."
Lal had expected Zakharov to close the feed. He did not. So Lal wondered instead whether the Russian would rise under his own power or instead slide away from the console, revealing a mobility sled.
Lal was unprepared for the appearance of two enormous accordioned arms to embrace the other leader and hoist him gently from his perch. The uncomplaining Zakharov went obligingly. Like a herald dandling the newborn royal infant, a bulky robotic servitor, the metallurgical incarnation of the gnomish Vesper Abaddon, waddled away with its precious charge.
Lal sat long enough that the others entered without knocking.
On the third day after the conversation with Zakharov, Communications confirmed receipt of an enormous list of data pulls. Mostly geological, ecological, and chemical surveys taken by Unity on approach to the solar system, along with operator's manuals for two hundred-odd common implements found aboard Colony and Landing Pods. LaCroix claimed the requests were innocuous on the face of it, although the University specified that it should be relayed in coded bursts according to a cipher of their design. Zakharov's people also sent what they purported was the position of their settlement, called University Base. The coordinates put Zakharov and his people almost due north, not very far away across the freezing ocean, and nowhere near the Data Core's path of travel.
True to the academician's word, the University's transmission included detailed instructions for enhancing the range and clarity of your signaling devices. Unexpectedly, an additional three hours of content was labeled, "For integration. - Academician Prokhor Zakharov". The librarians found detailed case notes regarding care of patients afflicted by radiation sickness.
Voting Options Vote 1 - Counsel for a Counselor
Does it bear replacing or redirecting King before the presentation of evidence by the defense?
[ ]Keep him. There is nobody better-suited to argue the case, and anyway only King is fit to see out the strategy already unfolding.
[ ] Retain King as lead counsel for the prosecution, but urge him to press home a moral argument rather than a legal one. Enogra might not be persuaded, but losing the crowd would be catastrophic. We can withstand judicial exoneration by a jury of one outsider so long as Dole Yudikon is forever tarnished.
[ ] Replace King, who was obviously thrown into the river without a paddle. Appeal to Erkins to replace him. King created too much moral ambiguity about what happened during the coup. We're seriously in danger of losing this issue. Erkins, a one-time mutineer, is the best-placed to secure a legal conviction.
Vote 2 - Friends with the Faculty
How to respond to our discussion with Zakharov?
[ ] Ready an expedition. Send the newly fitted-out Skagway. Load physical data tapes containined the requested information and as many medical supplies as Dr. Karimov says she can do without. Include the Sabre Corporation paramedic who was previously part of the colony at U.N. Relief Station. The frigate should be powerful enough to fend off any pirate intercept.
[ ] Transmit the data on a closed channel, as requested. There is nothing untoward about Zakharov's request, which means we should have no problem acceeding to it without amendment. This is a moment for setting positive precedents.
[ ] Transmit the data on an open channel. Positive precedents should be set. Those include respect for the principle that information should not be suppressed except in consideration of public safety and personal privacy. Neither of those considerations is applicable to the information requested by the University.
I would rather not change horses midstream. All potential prosecutors have their own issues, and removing King now won't remove his existing issues from circulation.
I would rather not change horses midstream. All potential prosecutors have their own issues, and removing King now won't remove his existing issues from circulation.
That is the classic advice, don't change lawyers mid-trial.
On the other hand, much of the reason for that is that a new person wouldn't be up to speed, being unfamiliar with the trial. That's not the case here. There are still reasons we might want to avoid it, though. Because we like King's strategy even though it's not popular, or because we're worried a change will confuse the jury or make us look like we have a weak case.
I think I'm okay with leaving King in, but I wonder if it's the best option in the context of larger political concerns. That's hard to determine.
