Krinemonen System, 25 ABY
Krinemonen III, Union of the Seas
Following the Battle of Dac, Dragon-Coalition War
The Reborn Emperor once sought to unleash the most heinous of his terror weapons on the world, but he missed his mark. He missed his chance.
Once the third moon of a parent world, Krinemonen III still bore its historic moniker despite the fact that the planet Krinemonen no longer existed. The vast majority of the ever-expanding cloud of rock and dust that had once been Krinemonen was moving slowly out of the system under the force of the tremendous energies imparted to it by the Galaxy Gun's warhead. A tiny portion of the former world's mass would be swept up by the other planets in the system, and a greater fraction would be captured by the system's primary and drawn into its ceaseless nuclear furnace, touched once more by the primal forces that the Galaxy Gun's forbidden technologies had exploited to unmake Krinemonen.
There was a middle portion, though, that was not otherwise accounted for. A sum of mass insignificant in the terms used to discuss even single solar systems, but all too decisive from the perspectives of those it rained down upon as the near-missed wrath of a distant and dimming tyrant.
Before the Galaxy Gun, before the Emperor's Rebirth, before the great victories of an upstart New Republic, Krinemonen III had made itself a refuge for billions of aquatic beings fleeing the unfaltering march of the Emperor's New Order. It had stood in the midst of a Galactic Civil War as a symbol of more than simple defiance. It had stood as a symbol of hope.
And so it had been targeted. And so it had suffered.
The rain of artificial asteroids had pummeled Krinemonen III's oceans, generating tsunamis, earthquakes, and dust storms so thick they blocked out the sun. In a single instant, the fiercely defiant hope of Krinemonen III had been reduced to ruin. The world was all but dead, it's people broken and helpless.
But spirits are not so easily broken as bodies. Wounds heal. Terror fades. Hope, like life itself, springs anew. Buildings are replaced. Kelp forests recover. Seas calm. Skies clear.
The defiant remember who they are.
“We were brave once,” the yellow one with the finned hands and membranous neck frill said, looking out at the ocean filled with alien creatures.
“We are brave again,” the orange-and-red one with the prehensile feelers running down the sides of its worm-like body said, looking out at the ocean filled with boats and raft cities.
“We are more than our wounds,” the one with the translucent body and blue-black eyestalks said, looking out at the ocean filled with gentle waves and weathered islands.
“We evolve to greatness,” the one with the brown-green skin, bulbous eyes, and fin-like hands said, looking out at an ocean of stars all but blocked by the Krinemonen Relief Fleet. “To Dac!” the Mon Calamari shouted, and as one, his people set about their next great task, the first they had dared since the isolation imposed upon them by the rise of the Black Dragon Imperium.
* * *
Chalacta System, 26 ABY
Chalacta, Capital City
Following Coalition House Vote, Exodus of the East
“What if it's not enough?”
President Borosh looked up from his work to find his friend and political ally standing in the doorway, a grim look on his human features.
“What if all we've done here . . . what if the wounds just can't be healed?”
“Surely you don't believe that?” It really was a question. The Sneevel leader of the United Republic of Chalacta and Sneeve had never seen the man like this. “Not after all we've accomplished, together? Our people fought for this, together. We bled and died together, to put the sins of our past behind us.”
Brand sighed heavily, his burden plainly visible in the slumping of his shoulders. He ventured carefully into the office their war had won. “We've come a long way, Borosh, sure, but wartime atrocities, armed occupation, apartheid regimes . . . they don't just vanish with a public election and a staged photo op. We have a responsibility to our people to protect them from their own cruelty and malice, and we have to wall off every path that leads back to that dark history.”
“'Wall off every path'?” Borosh asked. “What are you talking about?” And then he got it. “Delaya? This is about Delaya?”
“We can't let the resettlement bill pass, Borosh.”
The President shook his head. They'd been over this too many times already. “I'm sorry, old friend, but on this we simply have to agree to disagree.”
“No,” the Chalactan man said, sliding into a chair on the opposite side of the President's desk. “I have a plan, now. A real plan, with real consequences. You can push, and push, and push for unity, for the 'oneness' of Chalacta and Sneeve, but all you will do is force people who are not ready, to live side by side with people they would rather throttle in their sleep.”
“Delaya is a symbol of the strife and division that drove our people to war,” Borosh said, reiterating the old line but with the same fire and passion as always. “We will remake it, together, into a symbol of our future prosperity. We will turn the scorched earth of our past into an Eden for the future, and anyone, anyone who says otherwise betrays all that we have achieved.”
Brand's head slumped slightly, his hands clenching the edge of the President's desk. Was he getting through to the man, finally after all of this time? “It's not ours. It's not for either of us. It's not for our children, or their children. Not for Chalacta, or Sneeve, together or apart. We don't deserve it. We haven't earned it,” he looked up, his eyes filled with remorse and pain, “and if any of us try to claim it again, it will be our destruction.”
“I have to try,” Borosh whispered, truly hurting for his friend, but knowing where his duty fell. “We cannot let this world lie, dead, between our two peoples. We cannot let this monument to our past evils stand. You have to know that. You have to.”
Brand nodded, sitting a little more upright, his hands sliding from the desk. “It has to be remade, yes, but by someone more deserving.”
* * *
Fwillsving System, 26 ABY
Fwillsving, Refugee and Evacuation Service Headquarters
special Executive Conference, Exodus of the East
President Howard Shan cleared his throat, diverting his eyes slightly. It wasn't the harsh light of the holograms, everyone who knew him understood. Howard Shan wasn't built for this kind of exchange. He was no warrior, and this, without a doubt, was a kind of war.
“Prime Minister Regrad, respectfully,” he worked up the courage to meet the central hologram's imposing glare, “I refuse.”
“Excuse me?” the leader of the Galactic Coalition said, taken aback.
“I will not evacuate Fwillsving,” he said flatly. “I will not betray the trust that it's people have placed in me, I will not destroy the lives I have restored by returning dignity and hope to billions of refugees. I will not abandon the faith and goodwill of our allies. Fwillsving will not be emptied. This world and it's people will not yield to you.”
He wasn't built for this, no, but that spine of his served just fine in this capacity.
“Then I take it your people have decided to withdraw from the Coalition.” It was not a question.
“No,” Howard said firmly, eyes darting to other Coalition officials represented. Before Regrad could respond, Howard pressed on. “Now that Delaya has been ceded to the Refugee and Relief Service, I will be calling on our allies throughout the Coalition to expand the authority of the Refugee Service and establish the Refugee and Evacuation Service as a federal agency with broad authority to manage refugee worlds and populations, and secure safe avenues of entry for those seeking political and humanitarian asylum.”
“Then you intend to ignore my evacuation order?” Regrad asked, clearly displeased.
“No,” Howard shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “I am defying you,” he opened his eyes and met the other man's gaze again, “Prime Minister. Openly and unapologetically, before the leaders of your administration and the Refugee Service's Oversight Committee. For the sake of the Coalition, for the sake of the billions yet beyond our borders who are desperate to find their way into our protection, I am defying you! I will not yield! Fwillsving will not yield!
“We will not!”
“I thought a man in your position would understand that it is easy to be brave when your enemy has not yet come for your own home.”
“I am as brave as I am made by those who follow me,” Howard said defiantly.
“I'm recalling the Eastern fleet to defend our new border,” Regrad threatened.
“What use is a border you keep redrawing to suit your enemy?” Howard spat. He was shaking now, not in rage, but in panic. This was not who he was. These were not his words. But they needed to be said. They had to be said. And the man who should be saying them was staring daggers at him from across the galaxy.
“You draw your line on the map, Prime Minister, I'll draw mine, and we'll see where the troops line up.”
Howard closed the lines and shuffled shakily to his desk in the corner of the room. He collapsed into the chair, trying to calm himself before looking over to the foreign delegates who had been watching. The Ryn simply nodded before heading to the door. The Sneevel grinned sheepishly, fully aware of how inappropriate it was, but unable to stop himself. The creature from Krinemonen III, whose people had continued to help ferry Dac refugees to long-term settlements on other Coalition worlds even after the initial evacuation to Teth was complete, slither-walked forward slightly.
The blue-and-orange creature looked more oversized snake than human, the lower two-thirds of its body a long, sinuous tail covered in fishy scales. Its two arms were vaguely humanoid, but thin and delicate in appearance, with extra joints, webbed fingers, and covered in a strange mix of fine scales on the outer arm and frail flesh on the inner arm. Its head was perhaps the most peculiar, with lizard-fish-man features framed by a fleshy, webbed frill that extended partway down its back.
It spoke with a voice as unusual as its form, melodic but not exactly feminine, with a kind of flowing quality that hinted at its aquatic origins. “Every day that my people choose to aid you, President Shan, we give cause to the Black Dragon Empire. And every day we choose to aid you, President Shan, because we know what men of war do not: for the Dragons, cause is pretense. If they come for you, they do so because they wish to come for you, not because you have offended them, not because you give them cause to fear you.
“My world is no less safe today than it was yesterday, because today as yesterday it is found within the proclaimed borders of the Black Dragon Empire. Today as yesterday, the dragons either desire it or they do not.
“The Dragons will come for Fwillsving or they will not, and your presence or absence will have no bearing on the matter. And if you leave this world for some new home, the Dragons will come for your new home or they will not, and your presence or absence will have no bearing on the matter.
“We will remain to aid you, President Shan, because it is right to remain, and the Dragons' coming or not has no bearing on the matter.”
Krinemonen III, Union of the Seas
Following the Battle of Dac, Dragon-Coalition War
The Reborn Emperor once sought to unleash the most heinous of his terror weapons on the world, but he missed his mark. He missed his chance.
Once the third moon of a parent world, Krinemonen III still bore its historic moniker despite the fact that the planet Krinemonen no longer existed. The vast majority of the ever-expanding cloud of rock and dust that had once been Krinemonen was moving slowly out of the system under the force of the tremendous energies imparted to it by the Galaxy Gun's warhead. A tiny portion of the former world's mass would be swept up by the other planets in the system, and a greater fraction would be captured by the system's primary and drawn into its ceaseless nuclear furnace, touched once more by the primal forces that the Galaxy Gun's forbidden technologies had exploited to unmake Krinemonen.
There was a middle portion, though, that was not otherwise accounted for. A sum of mass insignificant in the terms used to discuss even single solar systems, but all too decisive from the perspectives of those it rained down upon as the near-missed wrath of a distant and dimming tyrant.
Before the Galaxy Gun, before the Emperor's Rebirth, before the great victories of an upstart New Republic, Krinemonen III had made itself a refuge for billions of aquatic beings fleeing the unfaltering march of the Emperor's New Order. It had stood in the midst of a Galactic Civil War as a symbol of more than simple defiance. It had stood as a symbol of hope.
And so it had been targeted. And so it had suffered.
The rain of artificial asteroids had pummeled Krinemonen III's oceans, generating tsunamis, earthquakes, and dust storms so thick they blocked out the sun. In a single instant, the fiercely defiant hope of Krinemonen III had been reduced to ruin. The world was all but dead, it's people broken and helpless.
But spirits are not so easily broken as bodies. Wounds heal. Terror fades. Hope, like life itself, springs anew. Buildings are replaced. Kelp forests recover. Seas calm. Skies clear.
The defiant remember who they are.
“We were brave once,” the yellow one with the finned hands and membranous neck frill said, looking out at the ocean filled with alien creatures.
“We are brave again,” the orange-and-red one with the prehensile feelers running down the sides of its worm-like body said, looking out at the ocean filled with boats and raft cities.
“We are more than our wounds,” the one with the translucent body and blue-black eyestalks said, looking out at the ocean filled with gentle waves and weathered islands.
“We evolve to greatness,” the one with the brown-green skin, bulbous eyes, and fin-like hands said, looking out at an ocean of stars all but blocked by the Krinemonen Relief Fleet. “To Dac!” the Mon Calamari shouted, and as one, his people set about their next great task, the first they had dared since the isolation imposed upon them by the rise of the Black Dragon Imperium.
* * *
Chalacta System, 26 ABY
Chalacta, Capital City
Following Coalition House Vote, Exodus of the East
“What if it's not enough?”
President Borosh looked up from his work to find his friend and political ally standing in the doorway, a grim look on his human features.
“What if all we've done here . . . what if the wounds just can't be healed?”
“Surely you don't believe that?” It really was a question. The Sneevel leader of the United Republic of Chalacta and Sneeve had never seen the man like this. “Not after all we've accomplished, together? Our people fought for this, together. We bled and died together, to put the sins of our past behind us.”
Brand sighed heavily, his burden plainly visible in the slumping of his shoulders. He ventured carefully into the office their war had won. “We've come a long way, Borosh, sure, but wartime atrocities, armed occupation, apartheid regimes . . . they don't just vanish with a public election and a staged photo op. We have a responsibility to our people to protect them from their own cruelty and malice, and we have to wall off every path that leads back to that dark history.”
“'Wall off every path'?” Borosh asked. “What are you talking about?” And then he got it. “Delaya? This is about Delaya?”
“We can't let the resettlement bill pass, Borosh.”
The President shook his head. They'd been over this too many times already. “I'm sorry, old friend, but on this we simply have to agree to disagree.”
“No,” the Chalactan man said, sliding into a chair on the opposite side of the President's desk. “I have a plan, now. A real plan, with real consequences. You can push, and push, and push for unity, for the 'oneness' of Chalacta and Sneeve, but all you will do is force people who are not ready, to live side by side with people they would rather throttle in their sleep.”
“Delaya is a symbol of the strife and division that drove our people to war,” Borosh said, reiterating the old line but with the same fire and passion as always. “We will remake it, together, into a symbol of our future prosperity. We will turn the scorched earth of our past into an Eden for the future, and anyone, anyone who says otherwise betrays all that we have achieved.”
Brand's head slumped slightly, his hands clenching the edge of the President's desk. Was he getting through to the man, finally after all of this time? “It's not ours. It's not for either of us. It's not for our children, or their children. Not for Chalacta, or Sneeve, together or apart. We don't deserve it. We haven't earned it,” he looked up, his eyes filled with remorse and pain, “and if any of us try to claim it again, it will be our destruction.”
“I have to try,” Borosh whispered, truly hurting for his friend, but knowing where his duty fell. “We cannot let this world lie, dead, between our two peoples. We cannot let this monument to our past evils stand. You have to know that. You have to.”
Brand nodded, sitting a little more upright, his hands sliding from the desk. “It has to be remade, yes, but by someone more deserving.”
* * *
Fwillsving System, 26 ABY
Fwillsving, Refugee and Evacuation Service Headquarters
special Executive Conference, Exodus of the East
President Howard Shan cleared his throat, diverting his eyes slightly. It wasn't the harsh light of the holograms, everyone who knew him understood. Howard Shan wasn't built for this kind of exchange. He was no warrior, and this, without a doubt, was a kind of war.
“Prime Minister Regrad, respectfully,” he worked up the courage to meet the central hologram's imposing glare, “I refuse.”
“Excuse me?” the leader of the Galactic Coalition said, taken aback.
“I will not evacuate Fwillsving,” he said flatly. “I will not betray the trust that it's people have placed in me, I will not destroy the lives I have restored by returning dignity and hope to billions of refugees. I will not abandon the faith and goodwill of our allies. Fwillsving will not be emptied. This world and it's people will not yield to you.”
He wasn't built for this, no, but that spine of his served just fine in this capacity.
“Then I take it your people have decided to withdraw from the Coalition.” It was not a question.
“No,” Howard said firmly, eyes darting to other Coalition officials represented. Before Regrad could respond, Howard pressed on. “Now that Delaya has been ceded to the Refugee and Relief Service, I will be calling on our allies throughout the Coalition to expand the authority of the Refugee Service and establish the Refugee and Evacuation Service as a federal agency with broad authority to manage refugee worlds and populations, and secure safe avenues of entry for those seeking political and humanitarian asylum.”
“Then you intend to ignore my evacuation order?” Regrad asked, clearly displeased.
“No,” Howard shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “I am defying you,” he opened his eyes and met the other man's gaze again, “Prime Minister. Openly and unapologetically, before the leaders of your administration and the Refugee Service's Oversight Committee. For the sake of the Coalition, for the sake of the billions yet beyond our borders who are desperate to find their way into our protection, I am defying you! I will not yield! Fwillsving will not yield!
“We will not!”
“I thought a man in your position would understand that it is easy to be brave when your enemy has not yet come for your own home.”
“I am as brave as I am made by those who follow me,” Howard said defiantly.
“I'm recalling the Eastern fleet to defend our new border,” Regrad threatened.
“What use is a border you keep redrawing to suit your enemy?” Howard spat. He was shaking now, not in rage, but in panic. This was not who he was. These were not his words. But they needed to be said. They had to be said. And the man who should be saying them was staring daggers at him from across the galaxy.
“You draw your line on the map, Prime Minister, I'll draw mine, and we'll see where the troops line up.”
Howard closed the lines and shuffled shakily to his desk in the corner of the room. He collapsed into the chair, trying to calm himself before looking over to the foreign delegates who had been watching. The Ryn simply nodded before heading to the door. The Sneevel grinned sheepishly, fully aware of how inappropriate it was, but unable to stop himself. The creature from Krinemonen III, whose people had continued to help ferry Dac refugees to long-term settlements on other Coalition worlds even after the initial evacuation to Teth was complete, slither-walked forward slightly.
The blue-and-orange creature looked more oversized snake than human, the lower two-thirds of its body a long, sinuous tail covered in fishy scales. Its two arms were vaguely humanoid, but thin and delicate in appearance, with extra joints, webbed fingers, and covered in a strange mix of fine scales on the outer arm and frail flesh on the inner arm. Its head was perhaps the most peculiar, with lizard-fish-man features framed by a fleshy, webbed frill that extended partway down its back.
It spoke with a voice as unusual as its form, melodic but not exactly feminine, with a kind of flowing quality that hinted at its aquatic origins. “Every day that my people choose to aid you, President Shan, we give cause to the Black Dragon Empire. And every day we choose to aid you, President Shan, because we know what men of war do not: for the Dragons, cause is pretense. If they come for you, they do so because they wish to come for you, not because you have offended them, not because you give them cause to fear you.
“My world is no less safe today than it was yesterday, because today as yesterday it is found within the proclaimed borders of the Black Dragon Empire. Today as yesterday, the dragons either desire it or they do not.
“The Dragons will come for Fwillsving or they will not, and your presence or absence will have no bearing on the matter. And if you leave this world for some new home, the Dragons will come for your new home or they will not, and your presence or absence will have no bearing on the matter.
“We will remain to aid you, President Shan, because it is right to remain, and the Dragons' coming or not has no bearing on the matter.”