Burning Memory

  by Mack

  published by Mack Meijers, Deserts Of Man.

  © Mack Meijers, 2013

  ISBN: 9781301718634

  Smashwords Edition

  Table of Contents

  Burning Memory

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Notes

  Notes

  Notes

  Notes

  Notes

  About the author

  Credits

  Foreword

  The following short story is one of a soldier who is more than just another cog in the machine. Witnessing horrific crimes against humanity in his time, and part of them, he considers consequences and options.

  These are the transcripts of his logs during those days.

  The events taking place are part of the fictional universe Of Suns and Spheres.

  — Mack

  Chapter 1

  Mode Record.

  Is this thing on?

  Mode Play.

  Is this thing on?

  Mode Record.

  I hate pushing tiny buttons with these claws.

  Warfare in space is mathematics. You're just another key on the calculator.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 2

  Mode Record.

  So I guess the cat is out of the bag I'm not sure how I feel about it. I knew that one day we would have to show our cards, I never expected to blow up the table in the process. If I am to believe the newscasts, damage to us at this moment is minimal. None of the other Polities has much of any idea on how it happened, just that it did happen. And that is the sort of damage that is bound to hit hard, not now, but it will.

  According to our analysts it's all because of one dumb young officer - assigned as an administrative clerk to a conference of bureaucrats - setting things in motion, discovering a trail to the Marlann system where her efforts to find and share evidence on her findings resulted in what is probably one of the most horrific military strikes of the past few hundred years.

  Mode Record.

  How did we get here.

  Dumb question. Ok, fine. Not an easy question to answer.

  We make choices.

  Yeah, the often praised secret of life. Making choices and building proverbial forks for others following the road. That and always bringing a towel with you.

  It's fair to say we made our choices. But instead of leaving something, universe, we just blew up the forks and the road. Still my brain gives me its cold logic, telling me it was the right thing to do. My heart, that's different. What is "right" by means of logic is not necessarily "right" at all.

  Doesn't mean it's "wrong" either though.

  Mode Record.

  The scale of things, it's hard to express in words. At some point people lose their faces. Warfare in space already does that, but what happened here changes perspective on even that fundamentally. As a soldier I know that we are all numbers, heck an economist can admit to the same knowledge. Never ask a politician though. But there comes a point where numbers become a terror in their own right.

  Warfare in space is timing. Living and dying by the clock.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 3

  Mode Record.

  Alright, so I signed up for a second tour in our military. An extended tour, with the lure of making a difference, investing in ourselves as a people and human beings. You know the drill. On board the first Republic Carrier Battle Group we packed up. Lock, stock and barrel, we set out to build the means to a secured future for us all. Unwrapping information as we went, from classified to need to know and further.

  Quite the trip. But we made it. We arrived at our destination and we did what we set out to do. Turning a rogue extra solar domain into a bastion of military and manufacturing power. Retraining ourselves to discard the culturally ingrained habits of over a thousand years of self-derailing human civilisation. Honing every skill we could muster, becoming more than we ever thought we could be. We have come a long way, and still we have only barely begun.

  A grand undertaking, especially considerings all the secrecy. One I understand we had to engage on, because ultimately while we have a technological disparity currently between us and those who would harm us, we need to consolidate this and other advantages. Quite simply put, it meant that in order to make the most of it we needed to hide deep in space in order to build upon that technological disparity. It's not something we could have done back home, such projects and initiatives are always noticed. Not a risk we could take, considering the disparities in economics and military power that work against us.

  And not to forget, even though we are signatories to the Accords, we are still seen as an anomaly. A temporary one. To be corrected almost instinctively should we show our hand.

  We paid a price for that now, one we thought would take a very different shape.

  By grace of intelligence provided by our Nassavi liaisons (not something I saw coming, they are another Polity after all - even if a bit of an odd1 one) we found out something nobody had taken into account. Fortunately it's something that also remains undisclosed to anyone else but us, still, the consequences of it.

  Well, one consequence is that of what we did. The other is facing questions concerning our Admiral.

  She's been completely candid on it, which goes a long way towards mending things. If I didn't know any better, if I had not been part of the team tasked with chasing that young officer, I'm not sure I would believe it.

  Who would, you could ask. What a question, in this human universe where paranoia is the default state of politics and cultural development? Seriously?

  The Polities would believe it, if they knew. We prevented at least that scenario, for now. By doing so, we provoked them none the less.

  Notes.

  1. The polity of Nassav:

  DOC LINK.

  SRC LINK.

  Warfare in space is a race of clocks against each other. Always biding for time.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 4

  Mode Record.

  So, the gist of it. It starts with our Admiral. Yes, the woman who gave birth1 to our independence. The same one who welcomed us on board the Deus and gave us our welcome. "We will get to know each other", she said. Remember that speech posted2 on the grapevine? Well, we thought we had gotten to know her.

  Our Admiral is a Nassavi Royal, she also is an Heir to the Realm. Bankers and imperialists. Or rather, she has been, both, in the past. She was born a daughter in two monarchies. Her father the crown prince to the family that later in history gave birth to the Realm, her mother being heiress to the family that ultimately became the Nassavi Monarchy. All of this taking place in a time so long ago that most people have trouble recognising even the name of the planet home to those events.

  Our Admiral, in many ways mother and sister to us all, is an immortal. Not by choice, but by accident of nature. She's been in and out of history as it developed, sometimes standing on the side, on other occasions in the thick of it. More often than not running from it, her nature imposes the necessity of always moving on.

  Mode Record.

  Right, I'm still piecing things together.

  Before coming to the territories that later became the Republic, as always moving on, she spent several decades in various identities at one of the Marlann system stations, the Marlann Memory. The library of mankind. The repository of history and knowledge. The sacred home of The Order. Revered symbol of human existence across the ages.

  Living several lives there, she collected and developed knowledge which our species had buried and forgotten, ultimately forced to move on again. This time to what the polities call uncivilised space, regions where man lives without the Polity Accords.

  It's there where she was forced to again partake in history, on the run from Corporate culling in the territories, fleeing from the tyranny of monarchs raping systems for their riches, discarding its people along the way.

  Mode Record.

  Having all the information is not always a good thing. At least not when it hits you in the face.

  I remember the uncanny feeling of resemblance once, seeing what was left of an old album mum once had in a box, between my Admiral, and my great-grandmother's twin sister.

  Proud family member who risked her life to free political convicts in daring strikes against Corporate facilities. The woman who negotiated the first of many secret deals for arms and ships necessary for a struggle of life and liberty. The leader who died sacrificing herself to destroy the Corporate warship reigning down destruction on what ultimately became the first and capital world of the Republic. Or so the stories go.

  It's not resemblance.

  My great-grandmother never had a twin. In fact she did not exist at all, not until her so-called sister so valiantly gave her life in that final liberating strike.

  She is family. An immortal woman.

  She's younger than me today.

  But older.

  Oh man.

  Notes.

  1. 1st Republic Assembly speech (excerpt):

  DOC LINK.

  SRC LINK.

  2. Introduction to the crew at the Deus launch ceremony:

  DOC LINK.

  SRC LINK.

  Warfare in space is always a ca se of hacking it. Not just lines of code.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 5

  Mode Record.

  Anyhow, got to get this sorted out in my head.

  So that young officer found a trail. One of trader families, shipping manifests and old banking records, ultimately leading her to the Marlann Memory. What she found was more than she had bargained for, a set of old stored lives - if you will - of this woman always moving on. The Memory facilities had been ideal for storing the old and preparing for the new, it did however also mean that deep among the archives of that installation the accumulated knowledge of our Admiral could be found.

  Yeah, our splendid secret strides in technological development. Our Admiral. Her work. Our fruits of her labour.

  If it had not been for a chance meeting between a zealot of The Order and that young officer those memories would have been safe forever.

  But they did meet, and she was able to make connections which had not been made in centuries.

  Mode Record.

  Knowing the identity and nature of our Admiral was one thing, but the knowledge contained in the Memory could undo everything we had built and sacrificed for. So we set out on our mission, to track and capture that young officer before it would be too late.

  A mission we accomplished, however also one in vain. A comrade of hers had kept an eye on her, much like we ourselves do among soldiers. On its own that was not an insurmountable problem, him being followed by half a dozen intelligence services from various polities however was. Add to this the structure of the Marlann Memory, its scale and its redundancy.

  Conundrum.

  A Gordian knot.

  She did the only thing she could do.

  We did the only thing we could do.

  Or so I say.

  Don't get me wrong. This was a decision I was glad to not have to make. Relieved, thankful even. And as much as I despise it, and myself for it, it was the right call to make.

  Warfare in space is quiet eyes confronting one another, eye for eye with best of luck.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 6

  Mode Record.

  So, how do you unravel such a knot?

  In its first forward deployment of our Republic Carrier Battle Group since it was formed, a carefully timed and executed strike resulted in all defensive and monitoring facilities in the Marlann outer system destroyed.

  A second strike wiped clean the inner system.

  The third left planetary installations along with all traffic present in space destroyed.

  The final strike, one of concerted plasma spears from a wing of CSS warships, resulted in the complete destruction of the Marlann Memory.

  The only thing remaining is a cold haze of gasses carried on the solar wind.

  Mode Record.

  Still hard to grasp. Nothing but gas.

  Mode Record.

  Cold, yes. Rational, yes. How else to reason, when one has to sacrifice in order to retain room for the heart later.

  It was necessary.

  It wasn't right.

  Warfare in space is strict mechanics, laws of physics and logistics.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 7

  Mode Record.

  We have committed a crime against the humanity we wish to save. There is no denying that.

  A sacrifice which demands of us to take responsibility, to face and deal with the consequences. Private and collective. The universe knows that the Republic has destroyed one of the most sacred accomplishments of human kind.

  What else can I say. We virtually sterilised a planetary system to contain the risk of exposure.

  Mode Record.

  We now are barbarians, at the gates of civilization. Harbingers of indiscriminate destruction.

  I know we had no choice. That does not change the outcome however. The war we feared is guaranteed to become a conflagration.

  Mode Record.

  We're not ready. We had barely just begun. The latest reports indicate the Polities are unlikely to wait for finding out why we did it. The Corporate Worlds are using the current situation as a catalyst towards getting all the noses to point the same way. Our way. Not smiling. Their spreadsheets have a long memory.

  Mode Record.

  Awesome odds. One Battle Group against most likely half the polities.

  Not in the least the waking giant of the Premis polity.

  We do still have some advantages however. Production is moving along well, training and testing at an equal pace. The technological divide between us and them is enormous, and even with what has happened that is still not known. If we have to show our hand though, that takes out a lot of our means to get us ready for when we thought the cataclysm would come - in the future. Not now.

  Mode Record.

  We're going to have to find a way to keep the bear at our backs from waking, alternatively we'll be forced to make a stand and face the enemy on their terms.

  There are natural limits to the effective use of an advantage from technological disparity. Ultimately, everything is a game of numbers. If you must play that game, you need to make damn sure you can keep putting the numbers on the board.

  We're going to have to consider doing something even worse than the burning of Marlann's Memory.

  I can see an option. Definitely worse than what we did in the Marlann system. But it is an option. I'll have to run it by the grapevine. Not going to be easy to put it on the table of Command.

  You know what, we will do something worse if we have to. Not because it's logical, or somehow right. But exactly because we have to, when we have no other feasible option. In this universe you do what's required, if you don't, nothing will be left alive.

  Warfare in space is chasing information, this decides on all.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Chapter 8

  Mode Record.

  Still looking back. Not much more we can do at the moment.

  Right now, most of my guys and girls are sitting in the bar on board the Deus, in orbit around HQ. We're looking at the feed of an obsolete discarded barracks down on the planet, where our Admiral sits alone at a table. Telemetry shows the quiet crying, with neither sound nor tears.

  My superior, my great-grandmother. The woman who tried not to be a part of history, but who became one, again and again. Not by her choice, but by our actions as human beings screwing up. Remember the Catari Accounts we had to learn at school? The Three Funerals1 chapter? Try to guess.

  It is a complex matter, so they say. There she is, in seclusion now. Someone who has been with us as a people before we became one. Responsible for many of our advantages. Not the person we thought she was, yet still the same. Even just from a singularly military perspective, there sits the woman who created the strategy required for our survival. Speaking of that, just look at this Battle Group. I've commented on that before, as have others, on the grapevine2.

  We have all been watching the screens. We see it, we accept it. Whatever her nature or origin, she's still like us.

  It's been forty days, whether she is still one of us? We continue to wait for the word from upstairs.

  Forty days in complete isolation. Try to imagine that.

  Whatever happens, I'm convinced she has a plan. We need one.

 

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