Chapter 2: A Prelude

The United Stars of the Galaxies, more commonly and simply referred to as the Union, was as societies went, still young, and had only existed for about 2700 years. This was not a very long time even in human terms. There had been empires and societies existing for much longer than that. Compared to other galactic societies and empires past and present, the Union had not even really started.

In this short time, however, it managed to spread over a considerable region of space and even into other galaxies, a feat that no other society of similar brief existence managed to do.

No other mega society known had managed to incorporate so many diverse member species and unlike any such known mega society, it was not a kingdom, not an empire, and not dominated by a particular individual, group, or species. Because of this unique aspect, even the so elusive Narth saw great potential and a long future ahead.

By all measure of things, the Union was a free society with a host of fundamental rights for its individual members, however, the concept was still developing.

It had been conceived as an amalgam of concepts when it was founded, borrowing heavily on a former United Earth civilization known as the United States, mainly because the United Stars were of similar nature in structure, a number of individual societies united under a common federal umbrella.

The fundamental idea was to create a foundation and a framework in which individual members would retain much of their individual structure when it came to questions and issues pertaining to conditions of specific nature not concerning other members of the Union.

Slowly but steadily new concepts emerged and found their way into the fundamental fabric of this Union of societies.

One such concept was the rise of the Union Citizen. An individual, first and foremost a citizen of the entire Union and member of his specific society and species second.

Another fundamental idea of this Union was the concept of combining defense efforts. This was, if truth be told, perhaps the main reason for the principal founding members to come together. The Union was not in the least born as an answer to aggression and threat.

It has always been a fundamental fact that the universe is a hostile place. Young societies discovering faster than light technology and expanding their influence past their homeworld’s orbit and past their home star learned very fast that they weren’t alone in the universe. This realization came with an event called First Contact. Unfortunately, such first contact almost never occurred between technologically equally developed sides and more often than not to the great misfortune of the less developed party.

No real statistics or estimates exist of how many young civilizations, reaching that technological milestone, opened the gate to the stars only to encounter another older one with malicious intentions, and thus never reached the so-called Galactic Stage where a civilization became known to others and thus took its place and seat among the players and principals of this eternally repeated play.

A major guarantor of taking a seat among the many others was a strong military. A military that was able to project its civilization’s might beyond its home star’s orbit.

While the principal societies coming together to form the Unites Stars had militaries of their own, it was decided right at the first day of its official creation, that the new Union should have the strongest defense possible and everyone agreed such defense had to take the form of a fleet of armed spaceships crewed with fearless professionals carrying out the will and bidding of the Union Assembly.

The founding members of the United Stars agreed on the fact that United Earth was perhaps the smallest and least potent founding member, but without question the one with the most potential. In a less known historical fact, Earth also contributed a number of immortal guides. Humans picked by an artificial super-entity of then very obscure origin called the Guardian of Earth, and endowed by it with certain extraordinary abilities, chief among them being impervious to aging and disease.

Many of these human immortals also became chief principals in the formation and definition of that new Union and its military.

While other branches of the military such as legions and armies struggled to adapt to remain relevant, the fleets and navies naturally adapted to that new environment, that of deep space. Role and mission, tactics and strategy changed little in terms of fundamental principles.

On that very first day of business, among the very first laws, acts and official decisions was the creation of a Union Navy. It became the first official institution of the United Stars of the Galaxy and thus its oldest. The fleets and units of Saran, Pan Saran, United Earth, and Ult were disbanded and re-organized into the Union Spatial Navy. To lead and build this all-important institution, a human immortal was chosen, a former British Submarine commander, the most senior officer of the United Earth fleet, a human born long before Earth’s ascent in the year 2017 and in the small Scottish town of Stirling.

No one familiar with the matter can deny or argue that McElligott built the fleet into what it is today. From its organizational structure to the creation of “Number Fleets” and their designation to spheres of operation, and much of the rules and regulations necessary to make such an enormous apparatus work.

Never in all the known history of any of the founding members was there an organization as enormous as the Union Spatial Fleet.

However, much to the dismay of McElligott, another individual was chosen to lead Union military when war was declared.

The choice was made for another Pre-Astro human immortal, a former United States Marine Lieutenant picked by that same Guardian at the height of World War III.

Richard Stahl, son of an American mother and a German father became that choice.

Stahl, though at first a virtual unknown, quickly became a society favorite by winning battles and wars, even against enemies and opponents deemed more powerful than the United Stars, culminating in a resounding victory that ended the First United Stars versus Kermac war.

A new president was elected and a war-weary public made a few choices that gave president Hip Hollister vast new powers and authorities. This was the dawn of the Peace Hawk period in Union history. It peaked with the arrest of Stahl. The Admiral was accused of warmongering and war crimes against “helpless” and peace-loving Kermac. False evidence was presented claiming it was Stahl and his cohorts who started the war.

Even today only a select few know that this false evidence was created with the active participation of McElligott, who used his position to suppress or make exculpatory evidence disappear and manufacture reports of war crimes that never occurred.

He also lobbied for the vague and very malleable War Mongering Act of 3401.

The reports and recordings of McElligott celebrating Stahl’s arrest, if they ever existed, were deleted and erased.

In the same year that Stahl was found guilty and sentenced to death, his execution was set to be performed by the Kermac on Kermac Prime, as an official gesture of healing and admission of Union guilt.

While awaiting his transfer to Kermac authorities, Stahl escaped the Brisbane Stockade and disappeared.

To appease the furious Kermac, a series of show trials were held in just one week, and on the darkest day in Union history, a little over three thousand Union Fleet Officers were executed.

McElligott later claimed that there was nothing he could do, the verdicts and the sentencing were done by Union Courts.

That he remained Admiral of the Fleet throughout this time had been a dark spot on his reputation, but time and very clever suppression of certain facts of this period erased much of this from public memory.

In 3411, the Assembly “awakened” after Cherubim, Peter Baker and Phil Decker exposed the Peace Hawk Party as a Kermac operation and the existence of a Kermac Will Bender installed right in the Assembly Dome. The truth was revealed to the Union as a whole. President Hollister and every lead member of the Peace Hawk party were arrested and many of its members were exposed as willing collaborators. The Peace Hawk Party was outlawed, but the Union was in no position to fight and punish the Kermac.

In the aftermath of this period that nearly saw the end of the Union, a new voting system was enacted, called the Union Wide, and both the Fleet and the Army established PSI units.

Much later and during the hour of greatest need, Stahl re-appeared aboard an immense alien battleship filled with technological secrets that not only helped win the war against the Y’all and the Second Galactic Council but created a solid foundation upon which the Union’s modern technological superiority was based.

Stahl had brought back the technological knowledge of Translocator cannons and ParaDim shields chief among others. Both technologies were the products of vastly advanced societies, far beyond the capabilities and advances of any other known and currently active society. Neither Shiss, Nul nor the Kermac had any defense against the effects of Translocator cannons and no weapons that could penetrate ParaDim shields.

It also became vital to protect the secrets of these systems, as they guaranteed Union superiority over all known enemies and adversaries.

This was the dawning of the Covered Committee, the Union Security Council, and eventually the creation of the Grey Ghosts.

Everyone agreed a society, no matter how open and all-inclusive, must have the ability to keep and protect secrets. While the Union spent much thought and effort on this very subject to keep it in line with Union law and philosophy, the reality of it expanded into several agencies, each with its own command structure, mission envelope, and field of operation.

There was ANA, the Assembly News Agency, the Unified Command Authority of Intelligence (UCAI), and NAVINT, the Union Fleets intelligence agency to name the biggest. Each military branch had a smaller Intel division as well.

It was a fine little jungle just under the official Union surface and only a select few knew of its true extent or were able to navigate this mostly invisible network.

McElligott was one of those.

The immortal Admiral checked the wind direction, then selected a 3-wood from his bag of clubs, considering it a good choice for the 130 meters he wanted to bridge from the current ball position on the fairway to the green and as close to the hole as possible.

It was still early in local terms. This was a planet very much to his liking. The place was called Patrick Green, a large resort town on a Class 1A garden world known as Britannica, planet.

Patrick Green was basically a large island, too small to be called a continent and dedicated in its entirety to a sport called Golf. There were a few hundred of the finest Golf courses, small quiet towns in old-world style and character. Very few non-humanoids ever found their way to this region, and similarly no one under a certain income level.

It was here where McElligott believed the universe was in balance and just right.

That Britannica planet was only two Space Train stops from old Earth and not very far from Pluribus made it a perfect place for the old Admiral to relax, practice his favorite sport and past time, perhaps spend a few hours with like-minded people in one of the nicely appointed club homes. Here, he wasn’t the only pipe smoker or the only connoisseur of fine whiskey.

People around here were human and knew golf. It was none other than that obnoxious Stahl, who said Thaurans should come here to learn how to be real arrogant snobs. What did this simple Marine know about the finer aspects of life and the natural order of things anyway?

McElligott was not alone, an Army general was his partner while they played against a team consisting of a Union Bank officer and Henry Forster III of Forster Industries.

The Army General, not the Army’s commandant, and only a four-star was still a very refined gentleman of old stock and good family. The recently promoted General Warwick had been put in charge of the Union Army’s Weapon System Development Division.

“It looks like you’re going to make it onto the green,” Warwick commented on McElligott’s effort.

Henry Forster the 3rd, a direct descendant of Henry Forster, founder of Forster Industries had long shed the last vestiges of the common man and hoped no one would remember all the way back when Henry Forster himself, dirt and dust-covered, crawled through mining tunnels of half a dozen asteroids to dig for Ilmenite as a source for titanium dioxide. More by accident than the officially claimed genius, Henry Forster discovered that the associated Szomolnokite, a crystalline form of Iron II sulfate was also known the galaxy over as Kalimun and of the greatest value to virtually every Non-Union spacefaring society and this discovery, after many deals and refining process patents made Forster Industries a very profitable enterprise and the Forster family very wealthy. The old Henry was dead many centuries now, and the third Henry to bear his name, member of a subculture know to some as Neo Nobles, had not the slightest interest in the old business which was a corporation now anyhow. The family lived very well on the residue earned by the family-owned stock and a very nicely diversified portfolio. Henry hated nothing more than losing.

Yet a chance meeting at the Gordonman’s clubhouse with the famous Admiral of the Fleet led to a wager and a supposedly friendly round of golf.

With a cold smile, he wondered loudly. “McElligott, I say, isn’t that rather Irish than Scot?”

Henry suspected this to be a point of irritation with the man wearing a kilt even now, but he had no idea how much.

McElligott almost immediately lost his usual settled coolness and while his face turned red in fury, it took much of his self-control to appear unaffected.

Yet, exactly this little fact had caused him much grief so long ago near Torpoint, Cornwall on HMS Raleigh. Back then people knew about Ireland and Scotland, England and all those national distinctions, but how did a snot-nosed sixty-year-old Neo Noble, who perhaps never set foot on Earth know about this forgotten tidbit. Something O’Brock himself had almost forgotten.

Sure enough, it had the desired effect and he sliced the ball and, instead of onto the green, sent the little white sphere into the bunker. Henry could not suppress a little snickering sound.