Epilogue the Fourth.
The Lesser Intuit,
48 Elis, I.Y. 617
27 October 2163 AST.
“Are you used to it, now, Rodaka?” The older woman asked to the girl, who was now near to womanhood herself. “Living in this big manor as we have for these past months, surrounded by an alien people?”
“It's hard to get used to. They are all noble-born, this family, all of them the Princess Jhayka's relatives. They accept me... As a Patrician. And that by Ilavna's influence. But it is an unusual position to learn my place, especially because I am between the servants and the family. Though they mostly treat me as they do the priestesses. It's sad that I've not seen much of Ilavna of late.” Rodaka smiled, though. “Yet it is so much better. I'm glad my family's girls are happy here, and have mostly settled in, in the servant's quuarters, and.. I suppose the tutoring has gone better than I feared.”
“Learning the High Tongue is the hardest part, isn't it?” Priscilla Laurentii's experiences there over most of the course of the year had not been tremendously pleasant for her, either. The tonal language which outsiders called High Taloran, but which among Talorans was called the High Tongue or the Imperial Tongue was a derivative of the Ta'ertan dialects of the Imperial family. Despite the best tutors that money could pay for, it was not easy going for them at all.
“Yes. But it's very important for getting used to living normally here. We're... Eleven humans on a world of eighty billion Talorans. A drop of ink in a glass of milk, Priscilla. But I'm comfortable with the place. It isn't as dramatically built up as I'd imagined the tech-worlds to be. Everyone would say that they were soulless and material places, and yet, here we are, living in a manor which was first built before humans grew grain...” Rodaka had already learned quite alot. “No, I don't regret this at all.”
“If you're lonely now, I'm sure that it won't last. There's always traveling to Quesadia or Valeria; both the cities have large human populations. Boys there, perhaps...” She laughed vaguely. “I'm far more constrained in that regard than you. Practically, the Bureau of Titiulary considers me as a pretender to a Devenshirite Grand Duchy to be, in Taloran terms, a Duchess, and that means...”
“Lacking any recognized laws from your own people to be accepted by the Imperial court, you'll limited to marriages of similar emanation just as if you were a Taloran, yes. That's covered extensively in the tutoring lessons that I've been given. You don't much like it, do you?”
“I'm quite happy being General Laurentii of the Lesser Intuitan Army, officer commanding, third reserve of the home corps, and Lieutenant Colonel of the Regular Reserve, ITA. Honestly, I am, Rodaka. The Pretender to the ducal throne of Pranton? No, I'll never be comfortable with that.”
“And I'm not comfortable with my past, either. But it seems strange to be living in this luxurious idle, even if I'm learning. I certainly didn't expect to virtually resume the life I had before, just.. With everything around me shifted and different.”
“Well, both you and Fayza are considered gentry here. With so many servants around it would be scarcely considered appropriate for you to do household chores.” Priscilla grinned, standing up to push at the fire in the fireplace with a poker, and, more flames revealed, added a log to it. Technically she could have rung a bell for a servant to accomplish even that... “Me, I've had to tell serving girls why I didn't need them dressing and undressing me.” A pause. “Speaking of which, how is Fayza doing?”
“Better, actually. She's been studying the Taloran engineering books Ilavna sent to her, and Jhayka's gift of the Dynastic Histories. She doesn't have... Episodes... As often.”
“It's a pity there's no professionals available for her here, but she really has come a long way regardless. Spring will make her mostly better, I think; these long winters aren't something humans are meant for. They prolong depression, if you suffer from it.”
Outside, the rain splattered on the windows. It was a usual stormy night in late Elis. The Intu'itan states were Mediterranean and nearly subtropical in their climate, the warmest region in the whole of Talora Prime—which mean that for nearly a whole human year, there was a very little happening except windstorms with plenty of rain and lots of cool, damp weather in general. They had arrived in the midst of it, and it could get brutally depressing. The occasional snow had actually become a welcome break from the routine, and the prospect of a beautiful spring was heartening.
“Read the news to me, Priscilla?”
“Surely,” the General answered. She brought up a portable datalink and began to peruse what was available, then raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh, it apppears that the multinational forces in Gilead have finally come to a settlement. It will be announced in three days.”
“Really!?”
“Yes. It's taken them more than half of a year, but they've come to an arrangement. In fact, considering the timestamp on this report, the announcement may have already been made; but we'll get it later.”
“Do be sure to tell when it arrives.”
“Of course.” She switched over to domestic news... After Jhayka's acquittal less than two Taloran weeks ago there'd been a party in the manor, which also doubled as the seat of government for the whole Principality (though the parliament and the regional assembly were 50km's away in the town of Ulasti), an interstellary polity of a tiny slice of Talora Prime, and six colony worlds. It still amazed Priscilla that the government of such a state was so small that everything was housed in this single sprawling building, the courtiers, retainers, and service professionals all living close to the ancestral lands of Jhayka's family, of whom the 32 members counting the Princess who lived here occupied many of the positions in the 'government', which was handled so casually that sometimes tenants would trudge up in muddy boots, straight off the tram which stopped here, and before that, their farms, to file a complaint. Or freeholders coming to have border disputes settled. It was something out of another time.
The Talorans themselves thought nothing of it; but then Priscilla had been amazed to hear that they actually received few cases. Most of them wenty to the minor nobility of the principality, and only in certain circumstances was the authority of the ruling house invoked. It seems that all government here is conducted on the basis of personal relations, she mused for the upteenth time.
What caught her eye next was an announcement being prepared for release by the principality's government. “Uhm.”
“Priscilla?”
“The Princess Jhayka is formally engaged the youngest daughter of the King of Kings of Rasilan. Her name is Drishalras. Princess Drishalras of the Coasts.”
“The Coasts?”
“The mainland cities along the eastern coast held by Rasilan. It's a courtesy title.”
“Ohhh. What's her position, then?”
“She's professional military. A navy captain. The marriage will be after she returns from the trials of her new command, a Kalammi-class battlecruiser. She just left to start them... Which I suspect means that the Princess Jhayka is coming home soon.”
“Well, wonderful! I hope she can be happy. It must be very hard for her to do this while remembering Danielle...” Rodaka sighed. “That was such a tragedy for her.”
“The Talorans seem to think it made her into a better person.”
“I know. And that's strange. It hurt her terribly.”
“They're a very funny people, at times. And she seems less hurt than first glance would suggest. Or, at the least, she's found succor. Well, enough of that. Would you like to hear the results of the Quesadia counselor elections?”
“Surely.” A pause. “Though I certainly hope we'll meet this Drishalras soon. I should like to know what she is like.”
“Knowing Her Highness? Very interesting, indeed. We'll see in a few months...”
55 Days in Kalunda.
Moderator: LadyTevar
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The Duchess of Zeon
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The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
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The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Epilogue the Fifth
Central Military District,
Interior Taloran Space.
22 Istarli, I.Y. 618
12 December 2163 AST.
“Admiral on the bridge!”
“Attention!”
The crisp whites of the Dreadnought Rikamblid's bridge crew tensed and creased as the youthful Rear Admiral the Lady Halsina, Marchioness of Sapai, stepped onto the bridge and exchanged salutes with the captain. “Captain Ulambric, let your crew be at ease.”
“At ease.”
A moment's pause, and Ulambric offered to the freshly minted Rear Admiral, promoted up to her brevet rank for her actions around Gilead: “Welcome aboard, Your Ladyship.”
“Thank you, Captain. As you know,” she began, pacing the bridge, inspecting it, even as she spoke with the commander. “I've been chosen to command the Red Force for the special Fleet Problem we're holding to digest the lessons of the intervention. And based on her performance record I've chosen the Rikamblid for that task. Our job is to show the line Admirals of the Home Fleet just how much they need to learn about the tactics of the extrauniversal powers.”
She grinned. “And that means this very extended preparation period is the time during which I get to teach you, and all the other Captains and Admirals of the fleet, how to think like they do. We'll be paying special attention to starfighter operations, which the Alliance relies heavily on, so we can replicate essentially a melange of the tactics that were seen in use by the various powers, to.. Inoculate us against surprises.
“Though in theory I should hope that my efforts are quickly countered, as a practical and a personal matter, I intend to teach a sharp lesson, and when the Fleet Problem actually begins, I fully intend for it to be a Red Force victory. We're not just learning lessons, here, we're going to be implementing the best knowledge and abilities of our enemies based on all we studied around Gilead, and seeing to it that the fleet uses this knowledge to make our future operations as efficient as possible.”
“We're ready for it, Your Ladyship. We'll be glad to show up the Home Fleet in more than gunnery and manoeuvre practice, that's for sure. My crew is rearing for the chance to go, and...” A slight laugh. “It will be good fun to play the bad guys for a change.”
“Won't it?” Halsina tipped back, before running a crisp white glove over the edge of a console in a gesture as old as it was stereotypical. But she was gleefully reveling, for the moment, in the role of being appointed the youngest commander of one of the forces in the Fleet Problem in the last hundred years. Whatever else the Ar Incident and Kalunda Relief Expedition had been, it had been very much a boon to her personally, and she was going to use the opportunity to the best of her ability to establish her reputation before the inevitable period of half-pay while she accrued seniority before receiving a proper assignment as Rear Admiral. Going home for that period would be nice—but only with the feather of having beaten Home Fleet in a special Fleet Problem beforehand. And that's what she intended to achieve in the next month and a half. Thank you, Admiral MacCallister, and may you no doubt be repeating the same success on your side of the fence.
Central Military District,
Interior Taloran Space.
22 Istarli, I.Y. 618
12 December 2163 AST.
“Admiral on the bridge!”
“Attention!”
The crisp whites of the Dreadnought Rikamblid's bridge crew tensed and creased as the youthful Rear Admiral the Lady Halsina, Marchioness of Sapai, stepped onto the bridge and exchanged salutes with the captain. “Captain Ulambric, let your crew be at ease.”
“At ease.”
A moment's pause, and Ulambric offered to the freshly minted Rear Admiral, promoted up to her brevet rank for her actions around Gilead: “Welcome aboard, Your Ladyship.”
“Thank you, Captain. As you know,” she began, pacing the bridge, inspecting it, even as she spoke with the commander. “I've been chosen to command the Red Force for the special Fleet Problem we're holding to digest the lessons of the intervention. And based on her performance record I've chosen the Rikamblid for that task. Our job is to show the line Admirals of the Home Fleet just how much they need to learn about the tactics of the extrauniversal powers.”
She grinned. “And that means this very extended preparation period is the time during which I get to teach you, and all the other Captains and Admirals of the fleet, how to think like they do. We'll be paying special attention to starfighter operations, which the Alliance relies heavily on, so we can replicate essentially a melange of the tactics that were seen in use by the various powers, to.. Inoculate us against surprises.
“Though in theory I should hope that my efforts are quickly countered, as a practical and a personal matter, I intend to teach a sharp lesson, and when the Fleet Problem actually begins, I fully intend for it to be a Red Force victory. We're not just learning lessons, here, we're going to be implementing the best knowledge and abilities of our enemies based on all we studied around Gilead, and seeing to it that the fleet uses this knowledge to make our future operations as efficient as possible.”
“We're ready for it, Your Ladyship. We'll be glad to show up the Home Fleet in more than gunnery and manoeuvre practice, that's for sure. My crew is rearing for the chance to go, and...” A slight laugh. “It will be good fun to play the bad guys for a change.”
“Won't it?” Halsina tipped back, before running a crisp white glove over the edge of a console in a gesture as old as it was stereotypical. But she was gleefully reveling, for the moment, in the role of being appointed the youngest commander of one of the forces in the Fleet Problem in the last hundred years. Whatever else the Ar Incident and Kalunda Relief Expedition had been, it had been very much a boon to her personally, and she was going to use the opportunity to the best of her ability to establish her reputation before the inevitable period of half-pay while she accrued seniority before receiving a proper assignment as Rear Admiral. Going home for that period would be nice—but only with the feather of having beaten Home Fleet in a special Fleet Problem beforehand. And that's what she intended to achieve in the next month and a half. Thank you, Admiral MacCallister, and may you no doubt be repeating the same success on your side of the fence.
Last edited by The Duchess of Zeon on 2007-06-09 08:27pm, edited 1 time in total.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
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The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Epilogue the Sixth
New Avalon,
Federated Suns Capitol.
20 December 2163 AST.
"Just in time for Christmas, our own house," Christopher Richter commented, as he settled onto the sofa and wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders. Wendy Richter did not look so pleased as her husband as she settled down, staring off into space.
"How are things settling in with your job prospects, Chris?" She asked after a moment.
"It looks like I'll be able to reinvest my money into the opening of another superconductor factory here. The Federated Suns are industrializing very rapidly..."
"That's good, at least." She sighed and leaned up against her husband, eyes closing. "I was given a job offer during cryptography for a private firm in the capitol. It's actually run by an expatriot of the Earth Alliance; there's plenty of foreign investment here in the past few years..."
"Which is why we chose it."
"Yes. I'd honestly like to get back into military work, though. They're fairly accepting of mercenary tendencies, here, and... Well, you know I liked it."
"But there's some guilt there, isn't there, Wendy."
"Damned straight, my love. My own folly damn near destroyed Gilead. And that was my home..."
"Well, the settlement has been struck. Gilead shall remain intact."
"Yes. General Rosario did her bit. I'm amazed she was even able to accomplish it, even with such a.. Humiliating new government. But she knew where to compromise, and where to stand firm. If only I'd never supported Covington in the first place."
"He had to much power for the defection of his Chief of Staff to slow him down. We would have just ended up in hot water. At least Catalina kept her end of the deal..."
"At least."
"You've got to think of the future, dear, that this new world offers us. A new country, where we'll make a home for ourselves long into the future. A future which is growing up around us, bright and prosperous."
"Perhaps. But I'm only used to operating in the shadows and defending the prosperity. And the last time I tried that, I failed; but I'm not sure if I'll really be happy doing anything else."
"With time, you might find employment with the military here." Christopher started rubbing her shoulders lightly. "Come on. Let's break out one of the bottles of champagne and celebrate. No more apartment living, at least!"
Wendy smiled tiredly, and nodded. "But don't get me too drunk. I need some madeira, later on."
"Oh, you and your madeira."
"I made a promise, love. And the least I can do is keep that."
New Avalon,
Federated Suns Capitol.
20 December 2163 AST.
"Just in time for Christmas, our own house," Christopher Richter commented, as he settled onto the sofa and wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders. Wendy Richter did not look so pleased as her husband as she settled down, staring off into space.
"How are things settling in with your job prospects, Chris?" She asked after a moment.
"It looks like I'll be able to reinvest my money into the opening of another superconductor factory here. The Federated Suns are industrializing very rapidly..."
"That's good, at least." She sighed and leaned up against her husband, eyes closing. "I was given a job offer during cryptography for a private firm in the capitol. It's actually run by an expatriot of the Earth Alliance; there's plenty of foreign investment here in the past few years..."
"Which is why we chose it."
"Yes. I'd honestly like to get back into military work, though. They're fairly accepting of mercenary tendencies, here, and... Well, you know I liked it."
"But there's some guilt there, isn't there, Wendy."
"Damned straight, my love. My own folly damn near destroyed Gilead. And that was my home..."
"Well, the settlement has been struck. Gilead shall remain intact."
"Yes. General Rosario did her bit. I'm amazed she was even able to accomplish it, even with such a.. Humiliating new government. But she knew where to compromise, and where to stand firm. If only I'd never supported Covington in the first place."
"He had to much power for the defection of his Chief of Staff to slow him down. We would have just ended up in hot water. At least Catalina kept her end of the deal..."
"At least."
"You've got to think of the future, dear, that this new world offers us. A new country, where we'll make a home for ourselves long into the future. A future which is growing up around us, bright and prosperous."
"Perhaps. But I'm only used to operating in the shadows and defending the prosperity. And the last time I tried that, I failed; but I'm not sure if I'll really be happy doing anything else."
"With time, you might find employment with the military here." Christopher started rubbing her shoulders lightly. "Come on. Let's break out one of the bottles of champagne and celebrate. No more apartment living, at least!"
Wendy smiled tiredly, and nodded. "But don't get me too drunk. I need some madeira, later on."
"Oh, you and your madeira."
"I made a promise, love. And the least I can do is keep that."
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
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Alan Bolte
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2611
- Joined: 2002-07-05 12:17am
- Location: Columbus, OH
That was kinda painful to stumble across.The Duchess of Zeon wrote:“I've been choicing to command the Red Force
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
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There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
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The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Argh, I always miss one...Alan Bolte wrote:That was kinda painful to stumble across.The Duchess of Zeon wrote:“I've been choicing to command the Red Force
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Epilogue the Seventh
Worcesterville, Illustrious
Kingdom of the Devenshires
40 Elis, I.Y. 617
24 October 2163 AST
31 August 2842 CON-5 Calendar
The negotiations for the fate of Gilead had already been finished in Cranstonville, and the decision had been made, somewhat controversially for some, to create a monarchy on the planet Gilead itself and make it the hereditary titular head of state for the new Gilean Commonwealth, a slightly centralized answer to the decentralized mess of the old Confederacy even as it preserved autonomy for most of the old, positive governments and enclaves.
But only most, for the negotiations had also been marred and even placed in danger by such things as disagreements over territorial influences to the vicious Hispanic and Habsburg occupation of the LaVeyist Satanist enclave of central Atlantica, involving deliberate attempts to compel either conversion or flight, with most cases being flight to the Alliance and British zones (where they weren't particularly liked either, but were at least treated better). A handful of crises had actually broken out, both from Alliance refusal to cease war crimes investigations against some Gilean general officers to the Hispanic and Habsburg-backed refusal to require the Integralists to cease harrassment of non-Christian groups in their zones, as well as fights and tensions between Integralists and Alliance and British occupation forces for their forceful defense of Wiccan temples and the like and their arrests of Integralists for violence and other acts and threats against the non-Christians. The negotiations had only been kept alive by the recognized sword of Damocles over the heads of the intervening powers, the fact that the only politically viable alterantive to any of them would be partition of Gilead, which could only cause massive political instability and greatly increase the risk of further incident and even war.
Now that the negotiations were tentatively over, only their ratification remained, and the issue of who was to be granted the new throne. The venue changed with professional diplomats from the intervening powers meeting now in the Ducal Palace of Worcesterville, where Sara Proctor's ballrooms remained active; one held the negotiation table for the day, the other the dinner table for the nightly banquets or dinners where unofficial negotiations and wheeling and dealing took place.
The candidate list was large. Nobles across the Holy Roman Empire, the Taloran Star Empire, CON-5 itself, Universes AGC-1 and MWB-32, many had been considered. Plans were varied, ranging from offering the throne to Kuan Yin Allard-Liao (quashed because of her irreligious beliefs) to a German duke from the Taloran Empire (quashed for numerous reasons, including said duke's hasty message through the rift, upon learning of his name being popped up in the talks, that he had no intention of giving up his home for a "collection of sodomites and heretics"). And after all this time, no suitable candidate had yet to be found.
Now a banquet was being held to honor the arrival of Emperor Alejandro of Hispania after his state visit to Devenshire itself, who acted gracefully and charming to his hostess and to the assembled, even proposing a toast at the beginning to the attendant King Julio and insisting on the toast being attended by the Kalundan slogan and battle-cry "Kalunda Invictus".
The handsome young Emperor now stood with his country's ambassador, Marquis Magarino of Sierra Marietta, getting the ambassador's description of the present notables. The politicking of the assembled amused him greatly.
His attention was soon turned to a surprising sight in this banquet. Standing beside the well-uniformed, handsome Duke William, eldest grandchild of Sara Proctor by the illegitimate daughter she had as a teenager, was a young girl, already becoming lovely at her adolescent age and looking so very much like her grandmother save for her thinner face and blue eyes. "She is rather young for this gathering, Marquis. She doesn't look a day over fourteen."
"She is actually twelve, I'm told, Your Majesty," Magarino replied. "And you would be surprised. That is the young Duchess Sara-Marie, the second eldest of Her Highness' grandchildren from her only daughter. She is a rather exceptional girl, very mature for her age and bright in intelligence, and perhaps the most pious person in this room. She actually reminds me a bit of your blessed grandmother, Majesty."
Alejandro showed no response to the mention of the late Empress Maria Lucia, who would probably disapprove of his lifestyle and his policies given her overriding concern had been to the spiritual and not the temporal. But he did nod at the description of Sara-Marie. At that point, he continued asking about others, and Magarino spoke of the recent decision to shelve the plan to offer the throne to the Spanish Bourbons, one of the old royal families of CON-5 Europe that were still without a full kingdom.
At the moment, an idea occurred to him, and he awaited the next day to bring it to fruition.
The negotiations got off to a fresh, nine o'clock start the next morning, the palace staff serving a variety of breakfast pastries as the morning meal was prepared and the delegates got to work. As always, Sara Proctor sat at the main table serving as the Chairwoman for the negotiations. Around her were mostly aides, with King Julio on her right side and Sara-Marie on her left, at Sara-Marie's request, to fulfill her curiosity as to the progress of the proceedings. At present Sara had given the floor to the British delegate, her comrade Dame Tessa Stuart.
Tessa's Scots accent was refined and carefully toned from her years in Parliament, and Sara smirked at the thought of how she'd used to talk and how it would have effected the people here, but thought no more on the subject, simply listening as Tessa harangued the assembled for shooting down every choice made for the new throne.
When she was done, Sara was prepared to call Marqués Amaviscia, the Habsburg Ambassador to the Hispanic Empire and their senior negotiator, but he merely requested that Emperor Alejandro get to speak. Her eyes narrowed at the development, Sara nevertheless called upon the Emperor to address the assembled.
"We stand in accord with Her Excellency Dame Stuart," Alejandro began, speaking in refined, accented English. "Dozens of names have been considered here and none of them universally acceptable, and this must cease. The peace of Gilead and it's neighbors depends on finding a worthy ruler to inhabit the new throne."
Alejandro's eyes moved over the table. "There is, in fact, a suitable number of qualified candidates in this very palace, and one in particular I have in mind, from a family that has a decades old interest in Gilead. I have in mind a person to satisfy all of our concerns. Our concerns for the peace of Gilead, for the freedom of Gilead, and for the state of the souls of Gilead, all to be settled by one figure. Even those here wedded to mere cynical national interest will find this candidate acceptable."
"And what candidate do We speak of, you ask? Why, it should be obvious." Alejandro's hand stretched out to the main table. For a moment, it looked like he was indicating Sara herself, despite her prior announcement that she would not accept the new throne.
But it was soon clear, as he spoke, that he wasn't pointing at Sara.
"We propose that the rule of Gilead be granted to Her Grace Sara-Marie Proctor Heresford, the Duchess of Illustrious."
There were stunned looks around the room. Sara's mouth started to hang open at the announcement, and even Ambassador Amaviscia looked a little shocked at his ally's proposal.
Movement came from nearby, however, and very swiftly a voice called out, "The provisional government of General Rosario seconds His Majesty's proposal!" Eyes turned to see the Gilean "government" delegate, Ferdinand Marcos de la Gama y Velasquez, standing as well. The thin man was notorious as being responsible for the maintainance of the Integralist Coalition that was the secondary source of Rosario's power, the primary source being the remnants of the Gilean military and thus her actual legal legitimacy.
For a moment, silence reigned as those present fought in their minds to find some reason to reject the new candidate, but none could. A minor meant a Regent, or a Regency Council, that could ensure national interests could be present. Everyone present knew of Sara-Marie's piety, mollifying those concerned about ensuring Gilead's new government was "moral". And she came from a sect of New Plymouth's Church known for it's devotion to civil liberties and even religious freedom, with parents who were murdered by the Leewood regime for their dissent, meaning it unlikely that she would oppose freedom of religion or other freedoms. She was, as Alejandro had said, satisfaction to all their concerns.
For her part, Sara-Marie was looking blankly, stoically, at the assembled as they watched her intently. Forcing herself to find her voice, she only said, with humility, "I am a humble servant of the Lord God. I will follow where He leads me."
After Sara-Marie spoke, the next voice to be raised was an alien one, that of Teralundh, Count of Erasindi, a deputy in the service of the Taloran Foreign Secretary. "With the proposal of His Majesty the Hispanic Emperor seconded, I believe a vote is in order, Your Highness?" He looked to Sara.
For a moment Sara was frozen, shocked by the turn the negotiations has taken. She felt Julio's hand take her right hand, and this movement brought her out of shock long enough to make her fulfill her responsibilities by nodding. "Yes, a vote, then, on His Majesty's proposal to make my grandaught... to make Her Grace the Duchess of Illustrious Queen of Gilead."
Sara's heart sunk when she saw all of the hands at the tables go up.
That night, with the negotiations having ended and the treaty signing approaching, Sara made her way up through the halls of the upper floors and living quarters to the room she knew that Sara-Marie would be in.
It was a spacious bedroom, with two beds in it. The comfortable, luxurious one was occupied by the comatose figure of Danielle Verdes, dressed in a fine silken robe with Sara's family crest embroidered on the right breast.
The second bed was nearby, a simple thing literally brought back from Giles Township. Abigail Proctor sat upon the bed she had used since she was newly-wed, having chosen to sleep here to watch over the innocent woman being kept in the palace while surgeons prepared for the next expansive surgery to repair her damaged brain. In her arms was Sara-Marie, being comforted by her great-grandmother, the supportive authority figure she had known for much of her young life.
"She told me," Abigail said plainly.
"I knew as much," Sara said. "I'm sorry, Momma, that I haven't been around for them as much as I wished?"
"You have your duties now, as do we all," Abigail said, her withered hand gently carressing her great-granddaughter's head as she held it close to Abigail's heart. "Sara-Marie wanted to be a teacher at the school in Giles. She wanted to teach young children how to read the Holy Scripture and to add and subtract, to grow up and marry a carpenter, to bear him many children, and to live simply to the end of her days in Giles. She was the only one who loved Giles that deeply. And now these people want to make her a ruler of billions of people, condemning her to a life under a microscope."
"The burden is great, but she was the first choice everyone agreed upon, Momma. People are impatient, and...." Sara noticed the look on her mother's face and sighed. "I'll talk to them. I'll try to convince them that she's too young, that we have to find someone...."
"No," Sara-Marie said, looking up. She was not crying, looking scared but calmly so, and there was a clear acceptance in her voice as she added, "I know in my heart that this is what God has chosen for me. I am afraid, but God will be with me in this, I know it. I... I'll do this, Grandma Sara."
The statement was simple, but it carried much weight. Sara could do nothing but look down on her granddaughter with pride. "Then we should go tell the others that you are willing," Sara said looking with sadness at Abigail, who affectionally hugged Sara-Marie before releasing her into Sara's arm. They left the room together, leaving Abigail to the silence save for the monitoring machines watching over Dani as she slept nearby.
Kalunda, Gilead
Gilean Commonwealth
42 Istarli, I.Y. 618
1 March 2164 AST
1 Januar 2843 CON-5 Calendar
It had been almost one year to the day that the siege of Kalunda had been lifted. The city's recovery was nearly complete, after months of feverish building, with towering spires built between the residential areas outside of the city core and the Classical buildings and architecture of the rebuilt Kalundan Palace in the core of Old Kalunda.
On the south bank, not far from where Trajan Osis made his heroic last stand or from the infamous Sackon warehouse - still standing as a testament to the ferocious courage of it's defenders during the siege, was the new Royal Palace of Gilead itself, where the monarch being established by the intervening powers would rule over the planet Gilead and, somewhat less directly, over the entire Gilean Commonwealth that had arisen out of the ashes of the Gilean Confederacy.
The structure had been built to house most of the governments of both Gilead and the Commonwealth, though the planetary parliament would meet in another nearby structure being built over the ruins of one of the destroyed factories from the siege, and the Commonwealth Assembly and Senate would be meeting across the river in Old Kalunda in the classically-architectured Commonwealth Building. It had a lovely pair of courtyards, a chapel for the soveregn, and facilities to house the battalion-sized Royal Lifeguard and it's tanks and power armor. Underneath the palace a labyrinth connected it to the Palace of Kalunda and to other facilities and structures across the city, as well as an (incomplete) underground railroad that, when completed, would take it to the Planetary Defense Command bunker being constructed deep under the Henley Mountains.
Within it, in the living quarters almost directly above the spacious throne chamber where a crowd of dignitaries began to gather to witness the coming coronation, Sara Proctor walked through the splendid halls and toward the Royal Living Chambers where her granddaughter was being prepared for her great moment. She found the room, with two young Kalundan girls of Sara-Marie's age serving as handmaidens to help dress her in the regal attire she was to wear for the ceremony.
The girls were in the receiving chamber, a well-furnished living room, in their own formal wear and looking very carefully toward the actual bedchamber. They saw Sara and cowed a little, out of respect and a bit of fear that they had messed up somehow. She smiled at them and nodded, moving past them and into the bedchamber.
Sara-Marie was only half-dressed, in the silken vest and trousers over which would go the layers of formal robes. She was on her knees at the bed, her hands clasped together as if in fervent prayer with her head bowed and her face not visible. Her weeping filled the room. Sara walked quietly up to her and sat on the floor beside her. "Sara-Marie?"
When the thirteen year old's face looked at her, Sara could see the plentiful tear streaks on her eyes and the forlorn, terrified expression on her face. Here, in private, with the moment upon them, she had shed the stoic and humble quietness toward her new position and revealed what was within; a frightened girl, just now a teenager, who's heart was set upon a quiet and happy farmhouse in Giles and not a grandiose palace in the majestic metropolis that Kalunda was becoming. She had come to this final step, and here her step had finally faltered before the enormity of what was about to happen.
Sara allowed Sara-Marie to embrace her and bury her face against her left shoulder, her sobs drawing tears from Sara's eyes as she embraced her homesick granddaughter tightly. "Shh, it's okay Sara-Marie.... It's okay..." Her right hand felt the back of Sara-Marie's head, mussing up her carefully-prepared hair.
"I want to go home," Sara-Marie cried. "I don't want this, I want to go home...."
She continued to sob in Sara's arms. "I know," she said quietly, even as she knew that time was growing short for the coronation, and in these matters, even the slightest delay could be taken the wrong way. "It isn't fair, what they've done to you, my dear Sara-Marie. It isn't in the slightest fair."
"Oh God, please let me go home. Please, Lord, have mercy." Sara-Marie's cries became a bit louder now, given she had someone to hear them other than the Almighty she believed in with all her heart. "I want to go back to Giles. I want to go back to the farm. I don't want to do this, I can't do this, I can't do this Grandma..."
Finally, the anguished sobs drove Sara to pull her head back and look Sara-Marie face to face. As tears streamed down her own eyes, she wept, "I used to cry that every night, Sara-Marie. For years, all I wanted to do was go home." Putting a hand on Sara-Marie's tear-streaked left cheek, she said, "I don't want you to be unhappy like I was. If you want it, I'll end this. I'll go right now and tell them that you're not going to sit in that throne, that you're going home, and then I'll take you straight to the Fabian and fly you and Momma right back to Giles." Knowing full well what trouble that would cause, the scandal, the political crisis, Sara found that when measuring it against her love for this sweet girl, her failure to come back for her mother and their entire family, she didn't give a damn at all about what would happen. In her heart, she rejected whatever duties others might have claimed she had to make her granddaughter take this throne handed over to her, and opted to wisk Sara-Marie away to Giles where she would be happy for the rest of her life.
And there was a look in Sara-Marie's eye as her sobbing subsided, if only slightly, while the tears kept coming. "You... what would they..."
"They can all burn for all I care, all of them. You are what is important to me, you and our family. I.... " At this moment of truth, Sara's sobs matched those of her granddaughter. "If you ask me to do anything, Sara-Marie, I will. If you want to go home to Giles, I'll take you. If you want all of us to go home, I'll bring the children and I'll relinquish the titles they gave me. I'll even get rid of the Fabian, and we'll live for the rest of our lives back in Giles, going on picnics on the Sundays after Church is over and the chores are done, swimming in the river..."
Sara-Marie shook her head. "I... I can't do that to you, Grandma Sara, it's not right..."
"You deserve to be happy, Sara-Marie, and I will give up everything to make you happy. Everything."
Though the tears remained in her eyes, something seemed to come over Sara-Marie. Her face grew calm and her fear, her terror, gave way to a strange serenity, a peace that seemed heavenly as she stood to her feet before her sobbing grandmother, torn by her own guilt and pain of loss and wanting to end the suffering of her family. "Thank you, Grandma, thank you. But... I.... God has chosen me for this duty. I cannot forsake it."
Sara just looked at her granddaughter, her heart's burden lifted at seeing how well Sara-Marie was recovering, and accepted Sara-Marie's new embrace. The girl continued to speak. "I will take this burden, Grandma. God wouldn't give it to me if I couldn't carry it. He wants me to have it."
"Then.... I suppose we should get you ready," Sara said. She whistled for the Kalundan hand-maidens to return and went to work helping them to get Sara-Marie ready.
At the appointed hour, at the appointed second, the band in the audience chamber of the new Palace began to strike up a somber, regal tune. The trumpeteers played and the crowd of notables and dignitaries remained standing in their places, looking toward the great doors.
They were pulled open by men dressed in the new uniform of the Gilean Royal Lifeguard, and through the doors stepped Sara-Marie Proctor Heresford. She was adorned regally in a long coat of ermine and fur colored with royal purple, the robe covering a smaller velvet robe and trousers with her silken pants and tunic under that. A prominent cross of gold and latinum hung from her neck as a visible reinforcement of her noted piety.
Behind her in the procession was a figure performing a rare exercise of his office. Wearing the simple black dress of a Puritan Minister, save for the traditional vestments of Church leadership, Presiding Bishop Henry Martyn of New Plymouth followed Sara-Marie toward her waiting throne. His part was derived from the fact that Sara-Marie was still, officially, a minor in the Church of New Plymouth, the Church that he was the head of, and given the religious foundation of her position it would fall upon him to place the crown upon her head and proclaim her rule.
Behind him walked Sara and Julio, representing her family, though they would move to the side when they arrived at the front and stand with the other Heresfords and Abigail Proctor as the coronation proceeded.
The attendants were placed according to rank, save for the space reserved for her family, with the front rank including Queen Xiao Li of the Zhai and her husband Prince Kevem, and most prominently among the figures, Emperor Alejandro I of Hispania, who had come feeling honorbound to witness the coronation of the girl he had thrust the new crown upon. Beside him stood, in full uniform, Catalina Rosario, who would chair the Regency Council that would rule Gilead in Sara-Marie's name until she turned eighteen. In effect, she would actually be Regent, but her autonomy in the position would not be complete and, in a year's time, it would rotate to another on the Council, a businessman with Slavian connections, and so on every year.
All eyes were on Sara-Marie, who with rigid discipline walked forward, her eyes barely blinking at times and focused forward upon the golden throne, a cross placed upon it's velvet-lined back. In time to the music, every step deliberate as she had been trained in for months, Sara-Marie arrived at the throne and sat upon it carefully. It was actually not very comfortable, and could only give comfort if she sat with back rigid, which had been the purpose of the design.
The procession having ended, Henry Martyn stood to the side and asked the assembled to bow their heads in prayer. He recited the Lord's Prayer, and then added to it with his own, asking the usual by imploring God to bless Sara-Marie and her reign with longevity, wisdom, happiness, and health.
When the prayer was over, a teenage girl stepped forward. Sara looked in some surprise as she recognized her; it was Magdalena, the slave-girl she had found crucified in Thentis, having fully recovered and with her body healed from the Norman abuses against her. Clad in formal silks and robes and with a cross as equally prominent as Sara-Marie's, Magdalena bowed before the throne and presented the crown and sceptre fashioned for the new monarch upon the velvet pillows she had been carrying.
Henry Martyn took up the crown carefully, a hand on each side in carefully rehearsed fashion. It was golden, with inset rubies, amythests, and sapphires, with latinum crosses inlaid at the four cardinal points. The sceptre was similarly adorned with crosses and Chi-Rhos, the designers having clearly gone a little too far in reinforcing the religious foundation of the monarchy being established here.
Henry Martyn stepped up with the crown to the throne, and Sara--Marie remained still as the crown slid down almost to her temples, it's weight uncomfortable upon her head. With a booming voice, the war hero of New Plymouth - ironically as the enemy of a number of the nations represented amongst the assembled - declared, "With the authority of the Church, granted by Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Heavenly Father, I proclaim you to be Queen of Gilead."
He stepped away and looked outward at the assembled, proclaiming in loud voice, "All hail Her Majesty Queen Sara-Marie, By the Grace of God Queen of Gilead, Sovereign of the Gilean Commonwealth!"
"Long life and health to Her Majesty!" a voice boomed first, and the crowd took up the cheer.
Few could see as a lone tear appeared at Sara-Marie's face, her heart and soul heavy with the great weight upon her shoulders, but she sat perfectly still, and allowed for the ceremony to continue to it's inevitable conclusion.
Worcesterville, Illustrious
Kingdom of the Devenshires
40 Elis, I.Y. 617
24 October 2163 AST
31 August 2842 CON-5 Calendar
The negotiations for the fate of Gilead had already been finished in Cranstonville, and the decision had been made, somewhat controversially for some, to create a monarchy on the planet Gilead itself and make it the hereditary titular head of state for the new Gilean Commonwealth, a slightly centralized answer to the decentralized mess of the old Confederacy even as it preserved autonomy for most of the old, positive governments and enclaves.
But only most, for the negotiations had also been marred and even placed in danger by such things as disagreements over territorial influences to the vicious Hispanic and Habsburg occupation of the LaVeyist Satanist enclave of central Atlantica, involving deliberate attempts to compel either conversion or flight, with most cases being flight to the Alliance and British zones (where they weren't particularly liked either, but were at least treated better). A handful of crises had actually broken out, both from Alliance refusal to cease war crimes investigations against some Gilean general officers to the Hispanic and Habsburg-backed refusal to require the Integralists to cease harrassment of non-Christian groups in their zones, as well as fights and tensions between Integralists and Alliance and British occupation forces for their forceful defense of Wiccan temples and the like and their arrests of Integralists for violence and other acts and threats against the non-Christians. The negotiations had only been kept alive by the recognized sword of Damocles over the heads of the intervening powers, the fact that the only politically viable alterantive to any of them would be partition of Gilead, which could only cause massive political instability and greatly increase the risk of further incident and even war.
Now that the negotiations were tentatively over, only their ratification remained, and the issue of who was to be granted the new throne. The venue changed with professional diplomats from the intervening powers meeting now in the Ducal Palace of Worcesterville, where Sara Proctor's ballrooms remained active; one held the negotiation table for the day, the other the dinner table for the nightly banquets or dinners where unofficial negotiations and wheeling and dealing took place.
The candidate list was large. Nobles across the Holy Roman Empire, the Taloran Star Empire, CON-5 itself, Universes AGC-1 and MWB-32, many had been considered. Plans were varied, ranging from offering the throne to Kuan Yin Allard-Liao (quashed because of her irreligious beliefs) to a German duke from the Taloran Empire (quashed for numerous reasons, including said duke's hasty message through the rift, upon learning of his name being popped up in the talks, that he had no intention of giving up his home for a "collection of sodomites and heretics"). And after all this time, no suitable candidate had yet to be found.
Now a banquet was being held to honor the arrival of Emperor Alejandro of Hispania after his state visit to Devenshire itself, who acted gracefully and charming to his hostess and to the assembled, even proposing a toast at the beginning to the attendant King Julio and insisting on the toast being attended by the Kalundan slogan and battle-cry "Kalunda Invictus".
The handsome young Emperor now stood with his country's ambassador, Marquis Magarino of Sierra Marietta, getting the ambassador's description of the present notables. The politicking of the assembled amused him greatly.
His attention was soon turned to a surprising sight in this banquet. Standing beside the well-uniformed, handsome Duke William, eldest grandchild of Sara Proctor by the illegitimate daughter she had as a teenager, was a young girl, already becoming lovely at her adolescent age and looking so very much like her grandmother save for her thinner face and blue eyes. "She is rather young for this gathering, Marquis. She doesn't look a day over fourteen."
"She is actually twelve, I'm told, Your Majesty," Magarino replied. "And you would be surprised. That is the young Duchess Sara-Marie, the second eldest of Her Highness' grandchildren from her only daughter. She is a rather exceptional girl, very mature for her age and bright in intelligence, and perhaps the most pious person in this room. She actually reminds me a bit of your blessed grandmother, Majesty."
Alejandro showed no response to the mention of the late Empress Maria Lucia, who would probably disapprove of his lifestyle and his policies given her overriding concern had been to the spiritual and not the temporal. But he did nod at the description of Sara-Marie. At that point, he continued asking about others, and Magarino spoke of the recent decision to shelve the plan to offer the throne to the Spanish Bourbons, one of the old royal families of CON-5 Europe that were still without a full kingdom.
At the moment, an idea occurred to him, and he awaited the next day to bring it to fruition.
The negotiations got off to a fresh, nine o'clock start the next morning, the palace staff serving a variety of breakfast pastries as the morning meal was prepared and the delegates got to work. As always, Sara Proctor sat at the main table serving as the Chairwoman for the negotiations. Around her were mostly aides, with King Julio on her right side and Sara-Marie on her left, at Sara-Marie's request, to fulfill her curiosity as to the progress of the proceedings. At present Sara had given the floor to the British delegate, her comrade Dame Tessa Stuart.
Tessa's Scots accent was refined and carefully toned from her years in Parliament, and Sara smirked at the thought of how she'd used to talk and how it would have effected the people here, but thought no more on the subject, simply listening as Tessa harangued the assembled for shooting down every choice made for the new throne.
When she was done, Sara was prepared to call Marqués Amaviscia, the Habsburg Ambassador to the Hispanic Empire and their senior negotiator, but he merely requested that Emperor Alejandro get to speak. Her eyes narrowed at the development, Sara nevertheless called upon the Emperor to address the assembled.
"We stand in accord with Her Excellency Dame Stuart," Alejandro began, speaking in refined, accented English. "Dozens of names have been considered here and none of them universally acceptable, and this must cease. The peace of Gilead and it's neighbors depends on finding a worthy ruler to inhabit the new throne."
Alejandro's eyes moved over the table. "There is, in fact, a suitable number of qualified candidates in this very palace, and one in particular I have in mind, from a family that has a decades old interest in Gilead. I have in mind a person to satisfy all of our concerns. Our concerns for the peace of Gilead, for the freedom of Gilead, and for the state of the souls of Gilead, all to be settled by one figure. Even those here wedded to mere cynical national interest will find this candidate acceptable."
"And what candidate do We speak of, you ask? Why, it should be obvious." Alejandro's hand stretched out to the main table. For a moment, it looked like he was indicating Sara herself, despite her prior announcement that she would not accept the new throne.
But it was soon clear, as he spoke, that he wasn't pointing at Sara.
"We propose that the rule of Gilead be granted to Her Grace Sara-Marie Proctor Heresford, the Duchess of Illustrious."
There were stunned looks around the room. Sara's mouth started to hang open at the announcement, and even Ambassador Amaviscia looked a little shocked at his ally's proposal.
Movement came from nearby, however, and very swiftly a voice called out, "The provisional government of General Rosario seconds His Majesty's proposal!" Eyes turned to see the Gilean "government" delegate, Ferdinand Marcos de la Gama y Velasquez, standing as well. The thin man was notorious as being responsible for the maintainance of the Integralist Coalition that was the secondary source of Rosario's power, the primary source being the remnants of the Gilean military and thus her actual legal legitimacy.
For a moment, silence reigned as those present fought in their minds to find some reason to reject the new candidate, but none could. A minor meant a Regent, or a Regency Council, that could ensure national interests could be present. Everyone present knew of Sara-Marie's piety, mollifying those concerned about ensuring Gilead's new government was "moral". And she came from a sect of New Plymouth's Church known for it's devotion to civil liberties and even religious freedom, with parents who were murdered by the Leewood regime for their dissent, meaning it unlikely that she would oppose freedom of religion or other freedoms. She was, as Alejandro had said, satisfaction to all their concerns.
For her part, Sara-Marie was looking blankly, stoically, at the assembled as they watched her intently. Forcing herself to find her voice, she only said, with humility, "I am a humble servant of the Lord God. I will follow where He leads me."
After Sara-Marie spoke, the next voice to be raised was an alien one, that of Teralundh, Count of Erasindi, a deputy in the service of the Taloran Foreign Secretary. "With the proposal of His Majesty the Hispanic Emperor seconded, I believe a vote is in order, Your Highness?" He looked to Sara.
For a moment Sara was frozen, shocked by the turn the negotiations has taken. She felt Julio's hand take her right hand, and this movement brought her out of shock long enough to make her fulfill her responsibilities by nodding. "Yes, a vote, then, on His Majesty's proposal to make my grandaught... to make Her Grace the Duchess of Illustrious Queen of Gilead."
Sara's heart sunk when she saw all of the hands at the tables go up.
That night, with the negotiations having ended and the treaty signing approaching, Sara made her way up through the halls of the upper floors and living quarters to the room she knew that Sara-Marie would be in.
It was a spacious bedroom, with two beds in it. The comfortable, luxurious one was occupied by the comatose figure of Danielle Verdes, dressed in a fine silken robe with Sara's family crest embroidered on the right breast.
The second bed was nearby, a simple thing literally brought back from Giles Township. Abigail Proctor sat upon the bed she had used since she was newly-wed, having chosen to sleep here to watch over the innocent woman being kept in the palace while surgeons prepared for the next expansive surgery to repair her damaged brain. In her arms was Sara-Marie, being comforted by her great-grandmother, the supportive authority figure she had known for much of her young life.
"She told me," Abigail said plainly.
"I knew as much," Sara said. "I'm sorry, Momma, that I haven't been around for them as much as I wished?"
"You have your duties now, as do we all," Abigail said, her withered hand gently carressing her great-granddaughter's head as she held it close to Abigail's heart. "Sara-Marie wanted to be a teacher at the school in Giles. She wanted to teach young children how to read the Holy Scripture and to add and subtract, to grow up and marry a carpenter, to bear him many children, and to live simply to the end of her days in Giles. She was the only one who loved Giles that deeply. And now these people want to make her a ruler of billions of people, condemning her to a life under a microscope."
"The burden is great, but she was the first choice everyone agreed upon, Momma. People are impatient, and...." Sara noticed the look on her mother's face and sighed. "I'll talk to them. I'll try to convince them that she's too young, that we have to find someone...."
"No," Sara-Marie said, looking up. She was not crying, looking scared but calmly so, and there was a clear acceptance in her voice as she added, "I know in my heart that this is what God has chosen for me. I am afraid, but God will be with me in this, I know it. I... I'll do this, Grandma Sara."
The statement was simple, but it carried much weight. Sara could do nothing but look down on her granddaughter with pride. "Then we should go tell the others that you are willing," Sara said looking with sadness at Abigail, who affectionally hugged Sara-Marie before releasing her into Sara's arm. They left the room together, leaving Abigail to the silence save for the monitoring machines watching over Dani as she slept nearby.
Kalunda, Gilead
Gilean Commonwealth
42 Istarli, I.Y. 618
1 March 2164 AST
1 Januar 2843 CON-5 Calendar
It had been almost one year to the day that the siege of Kalunda had been lifted. The city's recovery was nearly complete, after months of feverish building, with towering spires built between the residential areas outside of the city core and the Classical buildings and architecture of the rebuilt Kalundan Palace in the core of Old Kalunda.
On the south bank, not far from where Trajan Osis made his heroic last stand or from the infamous Sackon warehouse - still standing as a testament to the ferocious courage of it's defenders during the siege, was the new Royal Palace of Gilead itself, where the monarch being established by the intervening powers would rule over the planet Gilead and, somewhat less directly, over the entire Gilean Commonwealth that had arisen out of the ashes of the Gilean Confederacy.
The structure had been built to house most of the governments of both Gilead and the Commonwealth, though the planetary parliament would meet in another nearby structure being built over the ruins of one of the destroyed factories from the siege, and the Commonwealth Assembly and Senate would be meeting across the river in Old Kalunda in the classically-architectured Commonwealth Building. It had a lovely pair of courtyards, a chapel for the soveregn, and facilities to house the battalion-sized Royal Lifeguard and it's tanks and power armor. Underneath the palace a labyrinth connected it to the Palace of Kalunda and to other facilities and structures across the city, as well as an (incomplete) underground railroad that, when completed, would take it to the Planetary Defense Command bunker being constructed deep under the Henley Mountains.
Within it, in the living quarters almost directly above the spacious throne chamber where a crowd of dignitaries began to gather to witness the coming coronation, Sara Proctor walked through the splendid halls and toward the Royal Living Chambers where her granddaughter was being prepared for her great moment. She found the room, with two young Kalundan girls of Sara-Marie's age serving as handmaidens to help dress her in the regal attire she was to wear for the ceremony.
The girls were in the receiving chamber, a well-furnished living room, in their own formal wear and looking very carefully toward the actual bedchamber. They saw Sara and cowed a little, out of respect and a bit of fear that they had messed up somehow. She smiled at them and nodded, moving past them and into the bedchamber.
Sara-Marie was only half-dressed, in the silken vest and trousers over which would go the layers of formal robes. She was on her knees at the bed, her hands clasped together as if in fervent prayer with her head bowed and her face not visible. Her weeping filled the room. Sara walked quietly up to her and sat on the floor beside her. "Sara-Marie?"
When the thirteen year old's face looked at her, Sara could see the plentiful tear streaks on her eyes and the forlorn, terrified expression on her face. Here, in private, with the moment upon them, she had shed the stoic and humble quietness toward her new position and revealed what was within; a frightened girl, just now a teenager, who's heart was set upon a quiet and happy farmhouse in Giles and not a grandiose palace in the majestic metropolis that Kalunda was becoming. She had come to this final step, and here her step had finally faltered before the enormity of what was about to happen.
Sara allowed Sara-Marie to embrace her and bury her face against her left shoulder, her sobs drawing tears from Sara's eyes as she embraced her homesick granddaughter tightly. "Shh, it's okay Sara-Marie.... It's okay..." Her right hand felt the back of Sara-Marie's head, mussing up her carefully-prepared hair.
"I want to go home," Sara-Marie cried. "I don't want this, I want to go home...."
She continued to sob in Sara's arms. "I know," she said quietly, even as she knew that time was growing short for the coronation, and in these matters, even the slightest delay could be taken the wrong way. "It isn't fair, what they've done to you, my dear Sara-Marie. It isn't in the slightest fair."
"Oh God, please let me go home. Please, Lord, have mercy." Sara-Marie's cries became a bit louder now, given she had someone to hear them other than the Almighty she believed in with all her heart. "I want to go back to Giles. I want to go back to the farm. I don't want to do this, I can't do this, I can't do this Grandma..."
Finally, the anguished sobs drove Sara to pull her head back and look Sara-Marie face to face. As tears streamed down her own eyes, she wept, "I used to cry that every night, Sara-Marie. For years, all I wanted to do was go home." Putting a hand on Sara-Marie's tear-streaked left cheek, she said, "I don't want you to be unhappy like I was. If you want it, I'll end this. I'll go right now and tell them that you're not going to sit in that throne, that you're going home, and then I'll take you straight to the Fabian and fly you and Momma right back to Giles." Knowing full well what trouble that would cause, the scandal, the political crisis, Sara found that when measuring it against her love for this sweet girl, her failure to come back for her mother and their entire family, she didn't give a damn at all about what would happen. In her heart, she rejected whatever duties others might have claimed she had to make her granddaughter take this throne handed over to her, and opted to wisk Sara-Marie away to Giles where she would be happy for the rest of her life.
And there was a look in Sara-Marie's eye as her sobbing subsided, if only slightly, while the tears kept coming. "You... what would they..."
"They can all burn for all I care, all of them. You are what is important to me, you and our family. I.... " At this moment of truth, Sara's sobs matched those of her granddaughter. "If you ask me to do anything, Sara-Marie, I will. If you want to go home to Giles, I'll take you. If you want all of us to go home, I'll bring the children and I'll relinquish the titles they gave me. I'll even get rid of the Fabian, and we'll live for the rest of our lives back in Giles, going on picnics on the Sundays after Church is over and the chores are done, swimming in the river..."
Sara-Marie shook her head. "I... I can't do that to you, Grandma Sara, it's not right..."
"You deserve to be happy, Sara-Marie, and I will give up everything to make you happy. Everything."
Though the tears remained in her eyes, something seemed to come over Sara-Marie. Her face grew calm and her fear, her terror, gave way to a strange serenity, a peace that seemed heavenly as she stood to her feet before her sobbing grandmother, torn by her own guilt and pain of loss and wanting to end the suffering of her family. "Thank you, Grandma, thank you. But... I.... God has chosen me for this duty. I cannot forsake it."
Sara just looked at her granddaughter, her heart's burden lifted at seeing how well Sara-Marie was recovering, and accepted Sara-Marie's new embrace. The girl continued to speak. "I will take this burden, Grandma. God wouldn't give it to me if I couldn't carry it. He wants me to have it."
"Then.... I suppose we should get you ready," Sara said. She whistled for the Kalundan hand-maidens to return and went to work helping them to get Sara-Marie ready.
At the appointed hour, at the appointed second, the band in the audience chamber of the new Palace began to strike up a somber, regal tune. The trumpeteers played and the crowd of notables and dignitaries remained standing in their places, looking toward the great doors.
They were pulled open by men dressed in the new uniform of the Gilean Royal Lifeguard, and through the doors stepped Sara-Marie Proctor Heresford. She was adorned regally in a long coat of ermine and fur colored with royal purple, the robe covering a smaller velvet robe and trousers with her silken pants and tunic under that. A prominent cross of gold and latinum hung from her neck as a visible reinforcement of her noted piety.
Behind her in the procession was a figure performing a rare exercise of his office. Wearing the simple black dress of a Puritan Minister, save for the traditional vestments of Church leadership, Presiding Bishop Henry Martyn of New Plymouth followed Sara-Marie toward her waiting throne. His part was derived from the fact that Sara-Marie was still, officially, a minor in the Church of New Plymouth, the Church that he was the head of, and given the religious foundation of her position it would fall upon him to place the crown upon her head and proclaim her rule.
Behind him walked Sara and Julio, representing her family, though they would move to the side when they arrived at the front and stand with the other Heresfords and Abigail Proctor as the coronation proceeded.
The attendants were placed according to rank, save for the space reserved for her family, with the front rank including Queen Xiao Li of the Zhai and her husband Prince Kevem, and most prominently among the figures, Emperor Alejandro I of Hispania, who had come feeling honorbound to witness the coronation of the girl he had thrust the new crown upon. Beside him stood, in full uniform, Catalina Rosario, who would chair the Regency Council that would rule Gilead in Sara-Marie's name until she turned eighteen. In effect, she would actually be Regent, but her autonomy in the position would not be complete and, in a year's time, it would rotate to another on the Council, a businessman with Slavian connections, and so on every year.
All eyes were on Sara-Marie, who with rigid discipline walked forward, her eyes barely blinking at times and focused forward upon the golden throne, a cross placed upon it's velvet-lined back. In time to the music, every step deliberate as she had been trained in for months, Sara-Marie arrived at the throne and sat upon it carefully. It was actually not very comfortable, and could only give comfort if she sat with back rigid, which had been the purpose of the design.
The procession having ended, Henry Martyn stood to the side and asked the assembled to bow their heads in prayer. He recited the Lord's Prayer, and then added to it with his own, asking the usual by imploring God to bless Sara-Marie and her reign with longevity, wisdom, happiness, and health.
When the prayer was over, a teenage girl stepped forward. Sara looked in some surprise as she recognized her; it was Magdalena, the slave-girl she had found crucified in Thentis, having fully recovered and with her body healed from the Norman abuses against her. Clad in formal silks and robes and with a cross as equally prominent as Sara-Marie's, Magdalena bowed before the throne and presented the crown and sceptre fashioned for the new monarch upon the velvet pillows she had been carrying.
Henry Martyn took up the crown carefully, a hand on each side in carefully rehearsed fashion. It was golden, with inset rubies, amythests, and sapphires, with latinum crosses inlaid at the four cardinal points. The sceptre was similarly adorned with crosses and Chi-Rhos, the designers having clearly gone a little too far in reinforcing the religious foundation of the monarchy being established here.
Henry Martyn stepped up with the crown to the throne, and Sara--Marie remained still as the crown slid down almost to her temples, it's weight uncomfortable upon her head. With a booming voice, the war hero of New Plymouth - ironically as the enemy of a number of the nations represented amongst the assembled - declared, "With the authority of the Church, granted by Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Heavenly Father, I proclaim you to be Queen of Gilead."
He stepped away and looked outward at the assembled, proclaiming in loud voice, "All hail Her Majesty Queen Sara-Marie, By the Grace of God Queen of Gilead, Sovereign of the Gilean Commonwealth!"
"Long life and health to Her Majesty!" a voice boomed first, and the crowd took up the cheer.
Few could see as a lone tear appeared at Sara-Marie's face, her heart and soul heavy with the great weight upon her shoulders, but she sat perfectly still, and allowed for the ceremony to continue to it's inevitable conclusion.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Just as a note, the date in that last piece on the Taloran calendar should be the 29th Day of the Month of Rissah of the Imperial Year 618.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Jinimani Bay, Ytalla Island,
World Ocean of Talora Prime.
42 Istarli, I.Y. 618
31 December 2163 AST
(note-to synch slightly differing day-lengths the Taloran calendar "skips" ahead one day per each Taloran year viz. the human calendars.)
Left off of traditional Taloran maps for a vast length of time, Ytalla Island had a mysterious past. The continents of Talora Prime were clustered together, only fairly recently having separated. The great sub-continents of Ghastan Island, the size of India and immensely fertile, and the low-lying "Great Reef"--a jagged subcontinent which had once been formed by an aggregation of volcanic islands at the very beginning of the planet, but were now worn into a great desert of volcanic sand which the early Talorans had colonized with incredible tenacity--were the most distant lands imaginable; because of the insularity of the great powers, they were not discovered until the very edge of the steam age, when simple, coast-bound galleys gave way to true sailing ships. Kavarae's Ring had only been discovered decades later, in response to piracy; but it was Ytalla Island which awaited the longest discovery.
Talorans were drawn to efforts at records, like others. The Honaki Islands, for instance, were discovered during a series of expeditions which ultimately also found the southern polar continent. They had actually discovered the islands which would yield to Ytalla in an incredible expedition of hardy north-sea fishing boats, more suited than the thin galleys of the great fleets to voyages of exploration, long before the steam age. Touching at the island of Ulstan in Kavarae's Ring without exploring the extent of the Ring, they had sailed ever westward, through an immense ocean dotted by coral reefs and atolls, and the occasional immensely volcanic island chain rising from a hotspot. The commander, a seawoman of humble origin from Lelola Colenta named Mrinia, pushed her crew on relentlessly until, at last, they sighted, north of the equator, an immense chain of volcanic islands stretching north for as far as they could press. Mrinia would never know it, but if she had turned to the south she would have discovered another subcontinent.
It was an immensely long and narrow continent, slightly smaller than Earth's Australia, and strangely similar in shape and size to Zealandia, the submerged continent of which the North and South Islands of New Zealand are vast plateaus. Likewise, thanks to continental drift, this little chunk of a continental plate was torn between the two vast oceanic plates which made up the great eastern ocean, and thereby featured immense volcanism. To the north and south along the meeting-place of the two oceanic plates a chain of islands had been thrown up.
These had been colonized by the lifeforms of Ytalla itself, which were separated from the beginnings of life on Talora Prime almost immediately. They resembled nothing of the rest of the life on the planet; their evolution had favoured six-limbed creatures rather than quadrapeds on the higher orders, and much of the flora and fauna was quite poisonous. Ytalla itself, though, had been colonized by Talorans in ages past, moving on simple reed boats from atoll to atoll until they had arrived at the verdant yet often lethal paradise of Ytalla. Unlike in many similar periods in human history, on Talora Prime, this lone outpost of another evolutionary path fought back, and fought back hard. Hexapedal pseudoreptiles twice the size of Komodo dragons found Talorans an acceptable prey, and it is a testament to Intelligence that the stone-age peoples who found the great island-continent did not simply survive, but ultimately thrived in constant conflict with the land, and spread up and down the Rift chains as well.
Mrinia, her crews having several disastrous encounters with cunning natives and strange beasts alike, named them unflatteringly the "Islands of Deception", and sailed on to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe.
All things come to an end. The Lelolan branch, stuck with the minor prize of Kavarae's Ring while the Midelans claimed the gravely misnamed Great Reef and warred with Dalamar for control of the Honaki islands, and the Grenyans grew rich off the great fishing runs of the far northern polar seas, and built a second southeastern fleet to vie with Rasilan (anciently Rasilar) for control of Ghastan Island, which they ultimately won, sought out the islands of the Great Ocean as a consolation prize. Following the charts of the great explorer Mrinia, they seized countless minor islands; they reached the clashing of the tectonic plates, the volcanic islands above them, and attempted with revolving-cannon and steamship what Mrinia had not bothered.
It proved profitless until one day a steam sloop-of-war blown south in the midst of a tremendous storm sighted mountains and mountains rising up and out of the sea. No mere island, it stretched on into the mists, and tacking to the east they skirted it until landing at a small bay, they were able to trade with the natives for wood to replace the coal exhausted from the bunkers by the battle with the storm, and erected a cairn claiming the land in the name of the Great Queen of Lelola Colenta. They named the island Ytalla, which in the genesis tongue of Lelola Colenta meant a high land plunging down to the sea, a true enough description.
This had not stopped Rasilan from seizing about half the island; one of the two great north-south Fjords where the volcanic action had sundered the northern part of the continent into three mountain chains with deep water between them, with their exit-points on the northern shore, served as the boundary line; the westerly of the two was entirely in the hands of Rasilan. The native wild-life and the natives themselves fought back with incredible hardiness, the natives, used to fortifying their villages against the hexaped predators of the island, quickly learning how to modify their earthenworks for the maximum effectiveness against cannon and dig trenches in which they could take cover while sending flights of obsidian-tipped arrows on high trajectories at any attackers.
Ultimately the fighting had ceased; the creatures were preserved for the sake of the Hunt, the peoples were overwhelmed and converted as the others had been, the last resisting pagans on Talora Prime. Settlers had flooded in and cultivation had begun. But most of the land was preserved in a premieval state.
At the very end of the westerly Great Fjord, to be navigated with exceptional care as volcanoes might thrust themselves in violent eruptions out of the water at any time with the speed of Young Krakatoa, or annihilate themselves the same, the fjord terminated in a vast escarpment, a volcanic upthrust straight out of the ground, mixing the bizarre basalt formations of Devil's Tower with the shape and magnitude of Table Mountain. It had eroded enough that it was covered in verdant wildlife, and at the top, the King of Kings of Rasilan had built an immense hunting lodge, connected by three cog railroads which had to ascend at up to 48% grades to the top. One reached the verdant valleys to the south, an immense hunting preserve; one went to the east, to the harbour of Ilurani, and one went to the north, plunging straight down to the sea where a private cove of deep and pure water, with a great waterfall crashing down into the turquoise sea, held an extension of the lodge, a series of bungalows dipping into the water.
And it had all been a gift to the battered war hero, Jhayka, and her wife Drishalras, by Drishalras' father the reigning King of Kings. To be held in common between them for their lifespans, before it would revert to the Retgariu, as a sign of his esteem for Jhayka and the fact that he dotted over his youthful and eccentric daughter.
It was here, in a small and private ceremony, that they had been married, the moment that Drishalras returned from her command's gunnery trials. And it was here that they had spent the sixteen days of their honeymoon, which now came to an end. They had ridden in hunt against Kralish-beasts and swum naked under the light of the Distant Sun and the little moons in the depths of the night. They had made love in a dozen different beds all within the same palatial complex; they had dined on the meat of their kills, which had to be cut and prepared in special ways to avoid poisoning the diners; and generally, Jhayka had flung herself to Drishalras with the need of the drowning.
Despite all the perfection, each night, Jhayka had woke up sobbing at least once. Drishalras knew why; Jhayka had promised not to use the combat drugs to which she was addicted during the honeymoon. And the loyal girl held and comforted Jhayka through it all, understanding. But there was more than that, she had come to realize. She had guilt. Guilt over their relationship. They had both been pushed into it, and fast; the arrangements and the contract stipulated permanency, and there was a definite air about it.. That Drishalras' role as Jhayka's wife was really to be her keeper, to make sure no dramatic political escapades took place again.
But she was going to love the woman, too, as she had promised; and Drishalras spent those sixteen days piecing together the bits of Jhayka's soul. It was like a rush job with some superglue, all things said, though it was expressed from the very depths of her heart. At last, on the evening of their last full day together--late the next evening she would leave to report for her first tour of duty as a Battlecruiser Captain--Drishalras approached, dressed immodestly in a short robe, and wrapped her arm around Jhayka, who rested against the railing, looking up at the sky where the towering mountains obscured the sunset and the clouds in the air lent it a wild tinge, the greenwhite of the Near Sun or Great Sun fading into a myriad prism of colour.
She had to ask the question. "You still miss her very much, don't you, Jhayka? You... You wish she was here."
"I told you, back in Valeria," Jhayka answered, though a tad evasively. "I know my place, though, and my duty; but... At the very least..." It was clear that only Jhayka's immense ingrained self-control, just as Drish had herself been taught, held back the sobs. If she had been suffering more of the detox process, she would not have been able to resist. And Drish could not help but muse if her wife... Really used the need to detox as an excuse to cry. To admit the weakness in that acceptable form that, from the first moment of sentient, a Taloran noble was rigorously disciplined to never show.
"...At the very least," Jhayka continued, "I want to see her recovered, to see her happily with some beautiful human woman... And to loan them this lodge for their own honeymoon."
"Jhayka.." Drishalras ran her hands through the once-again vibrant pink hair. "You know that it is only the will of the Lord as to if she comes back or not. But for what I can help... I promise you that I would have no problem, in such a case, with letting Danielle stay here for months. Even a human year. That will be shorter than my upcoming deployment, after all..."
"Six months," Jhayka sighed vaguely. "I'm going to miss you, too, Drish... Make no mistake of it. I find it far too easy these days to miss everyone."
"I will write you a letter every day, and send it, telling you what I did that day."
"I can't promise the same. I'm horrible about keeping up with such things."
"Well, then, you will get to know me very well... And I will just have to read court documents to get to know you."
Jhayka's laugh was tinged with nervousness. It was true, most of the records of her that existed, beyond the wall-to-wall coverage of the Siege of Kalunda, were from her two great hearings before the Convocate. "Don't worry. I shall write fairly often. Just in an irregular fashion."
"That's more than good enough. You won't stay off the drugs, will you?"
"No."
"Well, we'll have ten months next time. I'll deal with it then."
"Thank you, Drish. I was all used up before you gave yourself so selflessly to me."
A rakish smile was offered in return, a familar one which made Jhayka happy. "That's why I'm here. To give you succor. Just as you are here.... To banish my loneliness. And you surely have done so."
"Fly back with me to the Lesser Intuit tomorrow, Drish? I... Don't want to stay in this place while I'm alone. We'll have a grand supper with the family before you leave."
"Agreed." She squeezed Jhayka's hand, and Jhayka squeezed back, before murmuring: "It's not just Danielle. Sometimes I see the ghosts of others. Of the clansman, Trajan, whose memory I shall only give respect to through the salvation of his people; of Amber, forgiving me for her own death... But so sad that her sister is consumed with bitter hate. For me, and for what I have wrought for their people and their lands. One I can alleviate. The other will change only if Sarina forgives me. And standing behind them a parade of faces which like all those before will be buried only with time.
"I owe debts. And sometimes I fear... Sometimes when we've been together, here, in this paradise, that Justice is simply setting me up for my own fall."
"I will suffer, I swear it, Jhayka, before I let you fall. That is the essence of love, and the essence of what I feel toward you." She wrapped herself against her wife. "Now let us not speak of such things. If sacrifices must be made in the future, we will make them together."
World Ocean of Talora Prime.
42 Istarli, I.Y. 618
31 December 2163 AST
(note-to synch slightly differing day-lengths the Taloran calendar "skips" ahead one day per each Taloran year viz. the human calendars.)
Left off of traditional Taloran maps for a vast length of time, Ytalla Island had a mysterious past. The continents of Talora Prime were clustered together, only fairly recently having separated. The great sub-continents of Ghastan Island, the size of India and immensely fertile, and the low-lying "Great Reef"--a jagged subcontinent which had once been formed by an aggregation of volcanic islands at the very beginning of the planet, but were now worn into a great desert of volcanic sand which the early Talorans had colonized with incredible tenacity--were the most distant lands imaginable; because of the insularity of the great powers, they were not discovered until the very edge of the steam age, when simple, coast-bound galleys gave way to true sailing ships. Kavarae's Ring had only been discovered decades later, in response to piracy; but it was Ytalla Island which awaited the longest discovery.
Talorans were drawn to efforts at records, like others. The Honaki Islands, for instance, were discovered during a series of expeditions which ultimately also found the southern polar continent. They had actually discovered the islands which would yield to Ytalla in an incredible expedition of hardy north-sea fishing boats, more suited than the thin galleys of the great fleets to voyages of exploration, long before the steam age. Touching at the island of Ulstan in Kavarae's Ring without exploring the extent of the Ring, they had sailed ever westward, through an immense ocean dotted by coral reefs and atolls, and the occasional immensely volcanic island chain rising from a hotspot. The commander, a seawoman of humble origin from Lelola Colenta named Mrinia, pushed her crew on relentlessly until, at last, they sighted, north of the equator, an immense chain of volcanic islands stretching north for as far as they could press. Mrinia would never know it, but if she had turned to the south she would have discovered another subcontinent.
It was an immensely long and narrow continent, slightly smaller than Earth's Australia, and strangely similar in shape and size to Zealandia, the submerged continent of which the North and South Islands of New Zealand are vast plateaus. Likewise, thanks to continental drift, this little chunk of a continental plate was torn between the two vast oceanic plates which made up the great eastern ocean, and thereby featured immense volcanism. To the north and south along the meeting-place of the two oceanic plates a chain of islands had been thrown up.
These had been colonized by the lifeforms of Ytalla itself, which were separated from the beginnings of life on Talora Prime almost immediately. They resembled nothing of the rest of the life on the planet; their evolution had favoured six-limbed creatures rather than quadrapeds on the higher orders, and much of the flora and fauna was quite poisonous. Ytalla itself, though, had been colonized by Talorans in ages past, moving on simple reed boats from atoll to atoll until they had arrived at the verdant yet often lethal paradise of Ytalla. Unlike in many similar periods in human history, on Talora Prime, this lone outpost of another evolutionary path fought back, and fought back hard. Hexapedal pseudoreptiles twice the size of Komodo dragons found Talorans an acceptable prey, and it is a testament to Intelligence that the stone-age peoples who found the great island-continent did not simply survive, but ultimately thrived in constant conflict with the land, and spread up and down the Rift chains as well.
Mrinia, her crews having several disastrous encounters with cunning natives and strange beasts alike, named them unflatteringly the "Islands of Deception", and sailed on to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe.
All things come to an end. The Lelolan branch, stuck with the minor prize of Kavarae's Ring while the Midelans claimed the gravely misnamed Great Reef and warred with Dalamar for control of the Honaki islands, and the Grenyans grew rich off the great fishing runs of the far northern polar seas, and built a second southeastern fleet to vie with Rasilan (anciently Rasilar) for control of Ghastan Island, which they ultimately won, sought out the islands of the Great Ocean as a consolation prize. Following the charts of the great explorer Mrinia, they seized countless minor islands; they reached the clashing of the tectonic plates, the volcanic islands above them, and attempted with revolving-cannon and steamship what Mrinia had not bothered.
It proved profitless until one day a steam sloop-of-war blown south in the midst of a tremendous storm sighted mountains and mountains rising up and out of the sea. No mere island, it stretched on into the mists, and tacking to the east they skirted it until landing at a small bay, they were able to trade with the natives for wood to replace the coal exhausted from the bunkers by the battle with the storm, and erected a cairn claiming the land in the name of the Great Queen of Lelola Colenta. They named the island Ytalla, which in the genesis tongue of Lelola Colenta meant a high land plunging down to the sea, a true enough description.
This had not stopped Rasilan from seizing about half the island; one of the two great north-south Fjords where the volcanic action had sundered the northern part of the continent into three mountain chains with deep water between them, with their exit-points on the northern shore, served as the boundary line; the westerly of the two was entirely in the hands of Rasilan. The native wild-life and the natives themselves fought back with incredible hardiness, the natives, used to fortifying their villages against the hexaped predators of the island, quickly learning how to modify their earthenworks for the maximum effectiveness against cannon and dig trenches in which they could take cover while sending flights of obsidian-tipped arrows on high trajectories at any attackers.
Ultimately the fighting had ceased; the creatures were preserved for the sake of the Hunt, the peoples were overwhelmed and converted as the others had been, the last resisting pagans on Talora Prime. Settlers had flooded in and cultivation had begun. But most of the land was preserved in a premieval state.
At the very end of the westerly Great Fjord, to be navigated with exceptional care as volcanoes might thrust themselves in violent eruptions out of the water at any time with the speed of Young Krakatoa, or annihilate themselves the same, the fjord terminated in a vast escarpment, a volcanic upthrust straight out of the ground, mixing the bizarre basalt formations of Devil's Tower with the shape and magnitude of Table Mountain. It had eroded enough that it was covered in verdant wildlife, and at the top, the King of Kings of Rasilan had built an immense hunting lodge, connected by three cog railroads which had to ascend at up to 48% grades to the top. One reached the verdant valleys to the south, an immense hunting preserve; one went to the east, to the harbour of Ilurani, and one went to the north, plunging straight down to the sea where a private cove of deep and pure water, with a great waterfall crashing down into the turquoise sea, held an extension of the lodge, a series of bungalows dipping into the water.
And it had all been a gift to the battered war hero, Jhayka, and her wife Drishalras, by Drishalras' father the reigning King of Kings. To be held in common between them for their lifespans, before it would revert to the Retgariu, as a sign of his esteem for Jhayka and the fact that he dotted over his youthful and eccentric daughter.
It was here, in a small and private ceremony, that they had been married, the moment that Drishalras returned from her command's gunnery trials. And it was here that they had spent the sixteen days of their honeymoon, which now came to an end. They had ridden in hunt against Kralish-beasts and swum naked under the light of the Distant Sun and the little moons in the depths of the night. They had made love in a dozen different beds all within the same palatial complex; they had dined on the meat of their kills, which had to be cut and prepared in special ways to avoid poisoning the diners; and generally, Jhayka had flung herself to Drishalras with the need of the drowning.
Despite all the perfection, each night, Jhayka had woke up sobbing at least once. Drishalras knew why; Jhayka had promised not to use the combat drugs to which she was addicted during the honeymoon. And the loyal girl held and comforted Jhayka through it all, understanding. But there was more than that, she had come to realize. She had guilt. Guilt over their relationship. They had both been pushed into it, and fast; the arrangements and the contract stipulated permanency, and there was a definite air about it.. That Drishalras' role as Jhayka's wife was really to be her keeper, to make sure no dramatic political escapades took place again.
But she was going to love the woman, too, as she had promised; and Drishalras spent those sixteen days piecing together the bits of Jhayka's soul. It was like a rush job with some superglue, all things said, though it was expressed from the very depths of her heart. At last, on the evening of their last full day together--late the next evening she would leave to report for her first tour of duty as a Battlecruiser Captain--Drishalras approached, dressed immodestly in a short robe, and wrapped her arm around Jhayka, who rested against the railing, looking up at the sky where the towering mountains obscured the sunset and the clouds in the air lent it a wild tinge, the greenwhite of the Near Sun or Great Sun fading into a myriad prism of colour.
She had to ask the question. "You still miss her very much, don't you, Jhayka? You... You wish she was here."
"I told you, back in Valeria," Jhayka answered, though a tad evasively. "I know my place, though, and my duty; but... At the very least..." It was clear that only Jhayka's immense ingrained self-control, just as Drish had herself been taught, held back the sobs. If she had been suffering more of the detox process, she would not have been able to resist. And Drish could not help but muse if her wife... Really used the need to detox as an excuse to cry. To admit the weakness in that acceptable form that, from the first moment of sentient, a Taloran noble was rigorously disciplined to never show.
"...At the very least," Jhayka continued, "I want to see her recovered, to see her happily with some beautiful human woman... And to loan them this lodge for their own honeymoon."
"Jhayka.." Drishalras ran her hands through the once-again vibrant pink hair. "You know that it is only the will of the Lord as to if she comes back or not. But for what I can help... I promise you that I would have no problem, in such a case, with letting Danielle stay here for months. Even a human year. That will be shorter than my upcoming deployment, after all..."
"Six months," Jhayka sighed vaguely. "I'm going to miss you, too, Drish... Make no mistake of it. I find it far too easy these days to miss everyone."
"I will write you a letter every day, and send it, telling you what I did that day."
"I can't promise the same. I'm horrible about keeping up with such things."
"Well, then, you will get to know me very well... And I will just have to read court documents to get to know you."
Jhayka's laugh was tinged with nervousness. It was true, most of the records of her that existed, beyond the wall-to-wall coverage of the Siege of Kalunda, were from her two great hearings before the Convocate. "Don't worry. I shall write fairly often. Just in an irregular fashion."
"That's more than good enough. You won't stay off the drugs, will you?"
"No."
"Well, we'll have ten months next time. I'll deal with it then."
"Thank you, Drish. I was all used up before you gave yourself so selflessly to me."
A rakish smile was offered in return, a familar one which made Jhayka happy. "That's why I'm here. To give you succor. Just as you are here.... To banish my loneliness. And you surely have done so."
"Fly back with me to the Lesser Intuit tomorrow, Drish? I... Don't want to stay in this place while I'm alone. We'll have a grand supper with the family before you leave."
"Agreed." She squeezed Jhayka's hand, and Jhayka squeezed back, before murmuring: "It's not just Danielle. Sometimes I see the ghosts of others. Of the clansman, Trajan, whose memory I shall only give respect to through the salvation of his people; of Amber, forgiving me for her own death... But so sad that her sister is consumed with bitter hate. For me, and for what I have wrought for their people and their lands. One I can alleviate. The other will change only if Sarina forgives me. And standing behind them a parade of faces which like all those before will be buried only with time.
"I owe debts. And sometimes I fear... Sometimes when we've been together, here, in this paradise, that Justice is simply setting me up for my own fall."
"I will suffer, I swear it, Jhayka, before I let you fall. That is the essence of love, and the essence of what I feel toward you." She wrapped herself against her wife. "Now let us not speak of such things. If sacrifices must be made in the future, we will make them together."
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
(written by Steve.)
Epilogue the Ninth.
Linfield Islands, Illustrious
Kingdom of the Devenshires
40 Rissah I.Y. 618
11 March 2164 AST
11 January 2843 CON-5 Calendar
When Sara Proctor had accepted the mantle of Grand Duchess of Illustrious, that was not the sole title she had been given possesion of, since the rulers of all of Devenshire's component Grand Duchies tended to have many subordinate titles. Sara herself had been granted no less than seventeen, counties and baronies mostly with two marquessa titles.
One of her lesser titles was that of Countess of the Linfield Islands. They were a tropical chain straddling Illustrious' equator, popular for their beauty and bounty of tropical flowers and fruits. The largest island of Charles was actually the size of Wales on Earth, and included a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall - though short - that had been added to the Grand Ducal estate built there centuries beforehand by the third Grand Duke of Illustrious under the old, now dispossessed Repucci line. And it was this gorgeous, expansive estate that Sara Proctor and her newlywed husband, Julio Kalundius, King Julio III of Kalunda and now Grand Duke of Illustrious by right of marriage, had opted to take their honeymoon.
Their wedding in Kalunda had been held only two days after Sara-Marie's coronation, in the confines of the rebuilt Kalundan Palace. Sara-Marie's younger sister Bethany had been their flower-girl, while Carlis stood as best man for Julio, and the service provided by Henry Martyn, who had asked for and received permission to marry them - as he had put it to Sara, "just one act of many we of the Church owe to you for the harm we've caused you".
The attendees had been numerous. Queen Minerva had come, unable to leave early enough to see Sara-Marie's coronation but not wanting to miss Sara's wedding, and Emperor Alejandro had opted to remain on Gilead for the extra two days to attend the event. Foreign ambassadors and dignitaries, as well as the many local people who had been wanting to see it. Sara had gotten to see Sarina again and learn she was happily involved, her belly swelled with the baby girl growing quietly inside of it. It had been a loving, remarkable experience.
They spent their wedding night in the bed that, so many years ago, they had first made love together, and afterward left for Illustrious and the Ducal estate on Charles. The estate was sparsely staffed, which was to their delight as they spent their time always together, making up for the decades of almost constant seperation with impassioned love-making and quiet embracing in the moonlight of the estate's upper floor moondeck.
Their day's activities of swimming in the river playing in the waterfall had ended, and the sun was starting to go down. They sat upon the sun-deck, clad only in white robes, with margueritas on the table between them as they watched the sun go down again. "I'll miss them" Sara said to Julio finally, speaking of her grandchildren and of her mother. All of them save for William had moved to live with their sister in Gilead, accorded Princely rank due to their familial ties and Samuel Heresford, now ten years old, standing as the immediate heir to Sara-Marie.
"They'll be fine. Your mother is watching over them." Julio looked over to her. "Did she sell the farm?"
Sara nodded her head. "She sold it to the Riley brothers. They've sworn that they'll never take the Proctor name off the farm, though, and have promised to sell it back to Sara-Marie if she ever wants to return one day."
Julio nodded at that. "Your grandchildren have that quality of your's. That inherent sense of rightness, of sacrifice. I am proud that I can call Sara-Marie my granddaughter now. She is... remarkable. Did you hear what she said to that Integralist who came to her about Kalunda's people?"
Sara smiled fondly. "Yes, I did. She told him bluntly that if he wanted to 'win souls for God, he and his followers should convert by example and not threats'." Sighing, Sara added, "I'm glad that I could introduce you to my mother, Julio."
"As am I." Julio smiled back. "After all, isn't that how serious relationships start? Introduction to the parents?"
At that, both laughed. They each sipped at their drinks before being distracted by the arrival of a formally-attired butler. "Your Highness, I have a call for you from Doctor Lutman in Worcesterville."
Sara's smile disappeared a little, and Julio knew why; Doctor Lutman was the neurosurgeon monitoring Danielle Verdes' treatments. "Give me the phone, Lewis."
The butler handed her the small phone unit and she brought it up to her ear. "Doctor?"
"Greetings, Your Highness. I called to tell you that the patient's condition has changed."
"In what way?"
There was a few seconds before Lutman answered. "She's awake, Highness. Miss Verdes has naturally awakened from her coma."
Epilogue the Ninth.
Linfield Islands, Illustrious
Kingdom of the Devenshires
40 Rissah I.Y. 618
11 March 2164 AST
11 January 2843 CON-5 Calendar
When Sara Proctor had accepted the mantle of Grand Duchess of Illustrious, that was not the sole title she had been given possesion of, since the rulers of all of Devenshire's component Grand Duchies tended to have many subordinate titles. Sara herself had been granted no less than seventeen, counties and baronies mostly with two marquessa titles.
One of her lesser titles was that of Countess of the Linfield Islands. They were a tropical chain straddling Illustrious' equator, popular for their beauty and bounty of tropical flowers and fruits. The largest island of Charles was actually the size of Wales on Earth, and included a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall - though short - that had been added to the Grand Ducal estate built there centuries beforehand by the third Grand Duke of Illustrious under the old, now dispossessed Repucci line. And it was this gorgeous, expansive estate that Sara Proctor and her newlywed husband, Julio Kalundius, King Julio III of Kalunda and now Grand Duke of Illustrious by right of marriage, had opted to take their honeymoon.
Their wedding in Kalunda had been held only two days after Sara-Marie's coronation, in the confines of the rebuilt Kalundan Palace. Sara-Marie's younger sister Bethany had been their flower-girl, while Carlis stood as best man for Julio, and the service provided by Henry Martyn, who had asked for and received permission to marry them - as he had put it to Sara, "just one act of many we of the Church owe to you for the harm we've caused you".
The attendees had been numerous. Queen Minerva had come, unable to leave early enough to see Sara-Marie's coronation but not wanting to miss Sara's wedding, and Emperor Alejandro had opted to remain on Gilead for the extra two days to attend the event. Foreign ambassadors and dignitaries, as well as the many local people who had been wanting to see it. Sara had gotten to see Sarina again and learn she was happily involved, her belly swelled with the baby girl growing quietly inside of it. It had been a loving, remarkable experience.
They spent their wedding night in the bed that, so many years ago, they had first made love together, and afterward left for Illustrious and the Ducal estate on Charles. The estate was sparsely staffed, which was to their delight as they spent their time always together, making up for the decades of almost constant seperation with impassioned love-making and quiet embracing in the moonlight of the estate's upper floor moondeck.
Their day's activities of swimming in the river playing in the waterfall had ended, and the sun was starting to go down. They sat upon the sun-deck, clad only in white robes, with margueritas on the table between them as they watched the sun go down again. "I'll miss them" Sara said to Julio finally, speaking of her grandchildren and of her mother. All of them save for William had moved to live with their sister in Gilead, accorded Princely rank due to their familial ties and Samuel Heresford, now ten years old, standing as the immediate heir to Sara-Marie.
"They'll be fine. Your mother is watching over them." Julio looked over to her. "Did she sell the farm?"
Sara nodded her head. "She sold it to the Riley brothers. They've sworn that they'll never take the Proctor name off the farm, though, and have promised to sell it back to Sara-Marie if she ever wants to return one day."
Julio nodded at that. "Your grandchildren have that quality of your's. That inherent sense of rightness, of sacrifice. I am proud that I can call Sara-Marie my granddaughter now. She is... remarkable. Did you hear what she said to that Integralist who came to her about Kalunda's people?"
Sara smiled fondly. "Yes, I did. She told him bluntly that if he wanted to 'win souls for God, he and his followers should convert by example and not threats'." Sighing, Sara added, "I'm glad that I could introduce you to my mother, Julio."
"As am I." Julio smiled back. "After all, isn't that how serious relationships start? Introduction to the parents?"
At that, both laughed. They each sipped at their drinks before being distracted by the arrival of a formally-attired butler. "Your Highness, I have a call for you from Doctor Lutman in Worcesterville."
Sara's smile disappeared a little, and Julio knew why; Doctor Lutman was the neurosurgeon monitoring Danielle Verdes' treatments. "Give me the phone, Lewis."
The butler handed her the small phone unit and she brought it up to her ear. "Doctor?"
"Greetings, Your Highness. I called to tell you that the patient's condition has changed."
"In what way?"
There was a few seconds before Lutman answered. "She's awake, Highness. Miss Verdes has naturally awakened from her coma."
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Epilogue the Tenth.
Cranstonville, Gilead
Gilean Commonwealth
44 Rissah I.Y. 618
15 March 2164 AST
15 January 2843 CON-5 Calendar
Catalina Rosario had been dictator of the Gilean Confederacy for slightly more than one year. That was suitable: The term of the Roman dictators had been exactly one year, and she had not desired to make it a life appointment when she had proclaimed it.
The formal transfer of power had taken place the day after the coronation. It was then that the Regency Council took over the reigns of the government, and Catalina had put them down. That had been three days ago, and she had spent the time packing up her belongings from the old Presidential mansion in Cranstonville.
Nobody really wanted her. She had betrayed the Integralists by not directly enshrining distributivist principles in the constitution, as if the free trade powers like the British and the Alliance would have allowed it; she had betrayed them also by letting a Calvinist rather than a Catholic sit on the throne. She had betrayed half the population of Gilead by allowing a monarch at all instead of maintaining a Republic.
But she had not betrayed the nation itself. She had kept it in one piece, and they had muddled their way through, to ultimately place the nation, as she had hoped, in the hands of a family which had done more for it than any of its citizens. She had originally planned on making Sara Proctor herself the Queen; but better than that, her granddaughter, who would in time see herself only as a Gilean, and not so much share her mother's bad memories, while recalling her special ties to the people and the land.
It didn't matter to Catalina Rosario. She was, like so many of the officers of the old Gilean Army, what the Japanese would call ronin. Oh, she was welcome to stay, but it would be politically inexpedient for the new government to give her any post, military or civil, after the record of her efforts and her actions. A comfortable exile in Hispania had initially been her plan.
Catalina, however, was a soldier, and Hispania with its long military traditions had little need of a woman like herself, lacking in titles and with a blighted political legacy. Not like she had much taste for them, anyway, after reading the news:
-- So read the Cranstonville Times, declaring that the Hispanians and the Habsburgs had, in the negotiations, secured control of a vital lane of commerce which nobody realized they'd be handing over to them at the time. A lane which they could use for direct and secure communication betrween their territories, among other things.
The whole affair had turned into a diplomatic masterpiece of cynical cunning for the two nations, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth. How much they had manipulated the events, rather than just seized the opportunity, she did not know, but her plans for exile in Hispania were abandoned.
She would have to leave fast, however; the bodyguards the new government gave to her after she stepped down would only be around for the rest of that month. It was then that, laughing, fate intervened.
The other message she held was a printout of a note:
Cranstonville, Gilead
Gilean Commonwealth
44 Rissah I.Y. 618
15 March 2164 AST
15 January 2843 CON-5 Calendar
Catalina Rosario had been dictator of the Gilean Confederacy for slightly more than one year. That was suitable: The term of the Roman dictators had been exactly one year, and she had not desired to make it a life appointment when she had proclaimed it.
The formal transfer of power had taken place the day after the coronation. It was then that the Regency Council took over the reigns of the government, and Catalina had put them down. That had been three days ago, and she had spent the time packing up her belongings from the old Presidential mansion in Cranstonville.
Nobody really wanted her. She had betrayed the Integralists by not directly enshrining distributivist principles in the constitution, as if the free trade powers like the British and the Alliance would have allowed it; she had betrayed them also by letting a Calvinist rather than a Catholic sit on the throne. She had betrayed half the population of Gilead by allowing a monarch at all instead of maintaining a Republic.
But she had not betrayed the nation itself. She had kept it in one piece, and they had muddled their way through, to ultimately place the nation, as she had hoped, in the hands of a family which had done more for it than any of its citizens. She had originally planned on making Sara Proctor herself the Queen; but better than that, her granddaughter, who would in time see herself only as a Gilean, and not so much share her mother's bad memories, while recalling her special ties to the people and the land.
It didn't matter to Catalina Rosario. She was, like so many of the officers of the old Gilean Army, what the Japanese would call ronin. Oh, she was welcome to stay, but it would be politically inexpedient for the new government to give her any post, military or civil, after the record of her efforts and her actions. A comfortable exile in Hispania had initially been her plan.
Catalina, however, was a soldier, and Hispania with its long military traditions had little need of a woman like herself, lacking in titles and with a blighted political legacy. Not like she had much taste for them, anyway, after reading the news:
MASSIVE SUPERNOVA HERALDS DAWN OF NEW HYPERSPACE LANE
-- So read the Cranstonville Times, declaring that the Hispanians and the Habsburgs had, in the negotiations, secured control of a vital lane of commerce which nobody realized they'd be handing over to them at the time. A lane which they could use for direct and secure communication betrween their territories, among other things.
The whole affair had turned into a diplomatic masterpiece of cynical cunning for the two nations, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth. How much they had manipulated the events, rather than just seized the opportunity, she did not know, but her plans for exile in Hispania were abandoned.
She would have to leave fast, however; the bodyguards the new government gave to her after she stepped down would only be around for the rest of that month. It was then that, laughing, fate intervened.
The other message she held was a printout of a note:
"Colonel Richter's sense of humour is distinctly bloody-minded, but a job's a job for an old soldier, and mercenaries are accorded far more respect there than here." Catalina sighed, finished talking to herself. Her mind was made up. She'd be drinking madeira with the Colonel again. The tables weren't turned.. But it was safe to say the odds were evened.Governor-General Katherine Davion, head of government here in the Federated Suns, is looking for officers willing to take work in the military forces of the Draconis Special Governate. Consider yourself recommended--you did what you promised, after all--through what power and contacts I have here.
You may think me degenerate scum, but we're both maligned Gilean patriots, and I need company that likes madeira.
Smirkingly Your's,
You know who it is
P.S. General Rulos sends his regards. I am to understand you're old friends.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Epilogue the Eleventh.
HSMS Jhuris,
Gilean Orbitals.
73 Riddah I.Y. 618
25 June 2164 AST
27 April 2843 CON-5 Calendar
The official date for the withdrawal of all military assets of the intervening powers in Gilead had been 1 May, 2843. It was coming in four days, and already most of the assets were gone. The cruiser Jhuris was one of the small division of four cruisers in orbit of Gilead itself which was the last remnants of the great expeditionary force.
The Talorans were leaving earlier, the next day, three days before the last contingents of most of the rest of the powers, because it coincided with the beginning of a new month for them back home. The last three days of each month were of course festival days, and that meant that for the past 72 hours the crew had been on the surface having a very, very good time. They were now getting dragged onboard, most of them at least partially drunk.
Their Captain allowed them that last moment of indulgence. The Baroness Frilasuia itl Urasalia sat across from a friend she had made this trip, Sir Johnathan Cartwright of His Majesty's Starfleet, commander of the cruiser Nottingham. Since the two had run into each other--almost literally--they had stayed in touch, dining on each other's respective ships from time to time, and a few times, on the surface.
Once, Captain Cartwright had been embarrassed and a bit amused when another Taloran had made a comment which had resulted in drawn swords and a terse demand for an apology, which was reluctantly given. When he'd asked afterward what it had been about, Frilasuia answered, "Oh, she implied we were lovers," which had prompted a discussion of their respective families (both were married) and the very different family life of the two races.
Captain Cartwright had to admit through it all that he had not come across a more personable and humanlike alien race in his time; yet they were also clearly very alien in many ways. The two had grown to be friends despite those differences, and this was then their last meeting, more than a year after the first, but then both militaries favoured long deployments.
"You will send me notification if you and your wife have anymore, children, hmm? I should like to say a few birthing-prayers on their behalf."
"Oh, certainly, Your Ladyship. I trust the same for your family?"
"Certainly. And.. Some academy pictures when your son Andrew graduates? As I have no doubt he will do."
Johnathan smiled. "It won't be a problem. Just as I hope your daughter's first tour is going as well as those of my sons shall in the future."
"She's in very good hands. She was assigned to the battlecruiser Slashahkimmar--it's a Jikari name--under the command of Captain Her Highness Drishalras of the Coasts. A very fine up-and-coming officer, the youngest daughter of the King of Kings of Rasilan. They're in the midst of a six-month tour right now."
"More than a human year. As long as we've been here, actually, if I recall your calendar right."
"So it is." Their meal was finished, and they were just talking, now.
"Well." Cartwright paused for a moment. "We are both going to back home and give some very interesting stories to some very interested people, are we not?"
"Most likely." Frilasuia poured them another round of Tilasch liquer. "A toast, Captain? That God may keep us from ever needing draw our swords on each other.. But if our sovereigns demand, we shall conduct ourselves as if it were a true noble joust."
"May God make it so." Their glasses clinked, both well knowing that the only way they would ever meet again in person is if one surrendered to the other in time of war; and both were quite fine with that. For friendships of this sort never lasted long, and they were always tinged with the reserve of professional officers from two different lands, who knew they might someday be at war.
Palace of the Dhin Intuitan Princes.
4 Eibermoni I.Y. 618
29 June 2164 AST
1 May 2843 CON-5 Calendar
Scritch, scritch, scritch. Jhayka wrote the letter by hand, a long one on a full scroll, to be sent out with the next courier to the position where the Slashahkimmar was operating. She made sure to get one, and often two, letters delivered on each courier to the Battlecruiser, while Drishalras sent back a flood of electronic messages which arrived daily in return. When Drish had realized that her wife intended to write to her by hand in all her communications, she'd actually taken it as quite romantic, even though it was a noble affectation of the first order of the kind she supposedly despised.
Now Jhayka was dutifully preparing another letter, the only expression sometimes allowed being a twinge of guilt. After all, there was a bottle of pills, and a long, elegantly done and finely silvered hypodermic, sitting comfortably on her desk, and between the painkillers and the stimulant drugs, both of which she was quite aware she was addicted to, her body had a rather haggard quality. But she resumed the running of her Principality, and ran it well as always, and was now busy in the process of organizing the settlements which she had promised, on a new world that she had selected, purchased, and was now in the process of preparing for habitation by up to a few tens of millions, in the long term. It kept her busy, if nothing else; and it was not "nothing" else, for she was at heart a Taloran noblewoman, and she kept her word.
Unfamiliar footsteps. Her ears shifted in the direction of the sound, and she carefully settled the quill into the resevoir, turning her head with a very deliberate motion. "Why, Fayza, thank you for your presence... How are you doing?"
"I... I'm alright," the Arab girl--and honourably discharged former member of the Alliance Navy (for severe mental shock and trauama, with the honourable amendment due to her actions after the trauma was suffered in coordinating the landings of the relief forces with Priscilla) answered--her gaze, though, looking surprisingly intense, as though she had something on her mind.
"What may I do for you, then?" Jhayka's ears, fortuitously fully healed, perked in curiousity, as she motioned with a hand to a high-backed, leather covered seat near her own.
Fayza sat, and gazed earnestly across at the pink-haired alien who had been her best friend's last lover. "Tell me about the siege. Tell me about everything Danielle did there. Let me know how the last two months of her life were for her. Tell me the happy times you had together... I must know, or else I'll never be content with accepting what's befallen her."
Jhayka shuddered bodily, and her ears flicked down, but she nodded, aware of the gravity of the request. "Ahh... Where to begin. Where the two of us met, I suppose." A pause. "But the phantom pain in my leg is acting up again. A moment, if you will?" She spun her chair around, the back concealing her from Fayza's view as she took the syringe and worked it expertly to give herself another blessed injection. As the pain disappeared, phantom, real, and strictly mental all, and the needs of the addiction faded, she settled the syringe down and turned back.
Fayza knew, but she didn't say a thing. She just waited, and prepared to listen.
"Ah yes, where we begin, in a dingy little underground slave market in East Port, with me the guest of that perfidious Norman, Altonas...."
HSMS Jhuris,
Gilean Orbitals.
73 Riddah I.Y. 618
25 June 2164 AST
27 April 2843 CON-5 Calendar
The official date for the withdrawal of all military assets of the intervening powers in Gilead had been 1 May, 2843. It was coming in four days, and already most of the assets were gone. The cruiser Jhuris was one of the small division of four cruisers in orbit of Gilead itself which was the last remnants of the great expeditionary force.
The Talorans were leaving earlier, the next day, three days before the last contingents of most of the rest of the powers, because it coincided with the beginning of a new month for them back home. The last three days of each month were of course festival days, and that meant that for the past 72 hours the crew had been on the surface having a very, very good time. They were now getting dragged onboard, most of them at least partially drunk.
Their Captain allowed them that last moment of indulgence. The Baroness Frilasuia itl Urasalia sat across from a friend she had made this trip, Sir Johnathan Cartwright of His Majesty's Starfleet, commander of the cruiser Nottingham. Since the two had run into each other--almost literally--they had stayed in touch, dining on each other's respective ships from time to time, and a few times, on the surface.
Once, Captain Cartwright had been embarrassed and a bit amused when another Taloran had made a comment which had resulted in drawn swords and a terse demand for an apology, which was reluctantly given. When he'd asked afterward what it had been about, Frilasuia answered, "Oh, she implied we were lovers," which had prompted a discussion of their respective families (both were married) and the very different family life of the two races.
Captain Cartwright had to admit through it all that he had not come across a more personable and humanlike alien race in his time; yet they were also clearly very alien in many ways. The two had grown to be friends despite those differences, and this was then their last meeting, more than a year after the first, but then both militaries favoured long deployments.
"You will send me notification if you and your wife have anymore, children, hmm? I should like to say a few birthing-prayers on their behalf."
"Oh, certainly, Your Ladyship. I trust the same for your family?"
"Certainly. And.. Some academy pictures when your son Andrew graduates? As I have no doubt he will do."
Johnathan smiled. "It won't be a problem. Just as I hope your daughter's first tour is going as well as those of my sons shall in the future."
"She's in very good hands. She was assigned to the battlecruiser Slashahkimmar--it's a Jikari name--under the command of Captain Her Highness Drishalras of the Coasts. A very fine up-and-coming officer, the youngest daughter of the King of Kings of Rasilan. They're in the midst of a six-month tour right now."
"More than a human year. As long as we've been here, actually, if I recall your calendar right."
"So it is." Their meal was finished, and they were just talking, now.
"Well." Cartwright paused for a moment. "We are both going to back home and give some very interesting stories to some very interested people, are we not?"
"Most likely." Frilasuia poured them another round of Tilasch liquer. "A toast, Captain? That God may keep us from ever needing draw our swords on each other.. But if our sovereigns demand, we shall conduct ourselves as if it were a true noble joust."
"May God make it so." Their glasses clinked, both well knowing that the only way they would ever meet again in person is if one surrendered to the other in time of war; and both were quite fine with that. For friendships of this sort never lasted long, and they were always tinged with the reserve of professional officers from two different lands, who knew they might someday be at war.
Palace of the Dhin Intuitan Princes.
4 Eibermoni I.Y. 618
29 June 2164 AST
1 May 2843 CON-5 Calendar
Scritch, scritch, scritch. Jhayka wrote the letter by hand, a long one on a full scroll, to be sent out with the next courier to the position where the Slashahkimmar was operating. She made sure to get one, and often two, letters delivered on each courier to the Battlecruiser, while Drishalras sent back a flood of electronic messages which arrived daily in return. When Drish had realized that her wife intended to write to her by hand in all her communications, she'd actually taken it as quite romantic, even though it was a noble affectation of the first order of the kind she supposedly despised.
Now Jhayka was dutifully preparing another letter, the only expression sometimes allowed being a twinge of guilt. After all, there was a bottle of pills, and a long, elegantly done and finely silvered hypodermic, sitting comfortably on her desk, and between the painkillers and the stimulant drugs, both of which she was quite aware she was addicted to, her body had a rather haggard quality. But she resumed the running of her Principality, and ran it well as always, and was now busy in the process of organizing the settlements which she had promised, on a new world that she had selected, purchased, and was now in the process of preparing for habitation by up to a few tens of millions, in the long term. It kept her busy, if nothing else; and it was not "nothing" else, for she was at heart a Taloran noblewoman, and she kept her word.
Unfamiliar footsteps. Her ears shifted in the direction of the sound, and she carefully settled the quill into the resevoir, turning her head with a very deliberate motion. "Why, Fayza, thank you for your presence... How are you doing?"
"I... I'm alright," the Arab girl--and honourably discharged former member of the Alliance Navy (for severe mental shock and trauama, with the honourable amendment due to her actions after the trauma was suffered in coordinating the landings of the relief forces with Priscilla) answered--her gaze, though, looking surprisingly intense, as though she had something on her mind.
"What may I do for you, then?" Jhayka's ears, fortuitously fully healed, perked in curiousity, as she motioned with a hand to a high-backed, leather covered seat near her own.
Fayza sat, and gazed earnestly across at the pink-haired alien who had been her best friend's last lover. "Tell me about the siege. Tell me about everything Danielle did there. Let me know how the last two months of her life were for her. Tell me the happy times you had together... I must know, or else I'll never be content with accepting what's befallen her."
Jhayka shuddered bodily, and her ears flicked down, but she nodded, aware of the gravity of the request. "Ahh... Where to begin. Where the two of us met, I suppose." A pause. "But the phantom pain in my leg is acting up again. A moment, if you will?" She spun her chair around, the back concealing her from Fayza's view as she took the syringe and worked it expertly to give herself another blessed injection. As the pain disappeared, phantom, real, and strictly mental all, and the needs of the addiction faded, she settled the syringe down and turned back.
Fayza knew, but she didn't say a thing. She just waited, and prepared to listen.
"Ah yes, where we begin, in a dingy little underground slave market in East Port, with me the guest of that perfidious Norman, Altonas...."
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Kalunda, Gilead
Gilean Commonwealth
Universe Designate CON-5
42 Istarli I.Y. 624.
25 February 2183 AST
28 December 2861 CON-5
The Capital of the Gilean Commonwealth was in full splendor as it's inhabitants commemorated, with celebration and memorial, the twentieth anniversary of the final days of the legendary Siege of Kalunda. The services, linked to the days of the most intense combat, had been culminating to the day's impending services to the successful destruction of the bridges to preserve the northern bank of the city.
It was hours before this, however, in the early dawn light, that a handful of people were standing at the small park upon the southern end of the Trajan Memorial Bridge, which carried Highway ER-12 through the heart of Kalunda and beyond to the bustling tri-city area of Amberville, San Magdalena, and Verdesmarn (formerly Besnit, Tharna, and Ar of the Norman Empire, respectively), where the hereditary Duchess of Henley ruled the former Norman, al-Farani, and Amazonian lands and tributaries, mostly repopulated now by people from across Gilead (initially by Wiccans and other paganists fleeing the Hispanic occupation zones during that most tragic of periods following the fall of the Gilean Confederacy to the intervening powers).
It was a small, modest family. Two boys with their parents, their father a business executive for a fairly wealthy company from the Taloran home universe's Earth. The children looked up and gawked at the life-sized statue of Trajan Osis, carved from fine marble and showing the warrior dressed in the ceremonial leathers and fur-skins of the Clan Smoke Jaguar, with the inscription below reading, "Here Lies Trajan Osis, Savior of Kalunda. He Now Stands In The First Rank Of The ARMY OF GOD."
"He's biiiigggg," the younger son said said, craning his neck. "Was he this big in real life?"
Their mother nodded. "Mommy knew him," she said in a strange accent. "Mommy knew him well."
"How did you know him, Mom?"
Their father looked toward her, smiling at her and touching her cheek as she looked at the statue, tears in her eyes. "He helped your mother years ago, boys. He saved her." Taking her by the hand, he whispered into her ear, softly, saying, "I'm here for you, Juliana, it's okay..."
Holding onto her husband dearly, Juliana wept at memory of her fallen guardian, the man who had pulled her out of a slave cage, who had treated her like a human being when everyone else saw her as a pet for their pleasure, and who had avenged all of the horrors she had suffered when she was young. "I miss him. I wish he could see us."
The two boys watched, in some bewilderment, as their mother cried in the arms of their father, who stared silently at the grand statue. He held Juliana tightly, loving her with every bit of his soul, as he had since he'd first met her. He had heard of the things done to her when she had been a slave. He knew of the whippings, the scorchings, the electrocutions, the terrible rapings and torturings she had endured when she was not much older than their sons.
He thought of the evils that had once been wrought on this planet Gilead. The innocent lives so horribly destroyed, and lost, to the idea that one person could claim another as his or her personal property, to do with as he or she pleased without regard for their "property"'s humanity, even killed without so much as a thought.
He thought of the insane idea that it was okay to tolerate these things, so long as the victims wanted to be victimized - a notion that was insane at it's very core - and even okay for a cabal to deny a people access to basic technology in pursuit of some "purer" form of living.
He thought of the girls like Juliana had been, of boys much like his own, who were torn from their families, collared, leashed, brutalized, and reduced to property, defenseless against the whims of their captors.
And, inevitably, his mind turned from that evil to the good that had risen up against it. To the martyred heroes and heroines that had struggled, for centuries, to end these barbaric practices that had emerged so long after Mankind had risen to the stars in this universe.
The pious, humble nun from Nueva Cartagena who had endured torment and sacrificed her life for the belief that God had made no man or woman a slave.
The farmgirl from New Salem who toppled an empire and who had freed its slaves, as well as the great King she loved, who had turned his kingdom from a city that enslaved its women into a beacon of freedom and civilization, worthy of being the capital of an interstellar state.
The alien princess of the Talorans who had come to this world to learn and who had found herself dealing the deathblow to the system of slavery, and the human woman she had loved so dearly.
The Taloran priestess, with her third eye, who had led men and women into battle against slavery and who had saved so many lives on the strength of her faith.
And last, but certainly not least, the man who's likeness stood in marble grandeur before them, the warrior of a dead culture of warriors who sought his destiny as a warrior and found it, not as a slayer of men (though he did slay very many), but as the protector and avenger of a young and helpless slave-girl, the girl who had grown to womanhood and was now crying in his arms, the mother of his sons.
That day, the celebrations would continue. They would mark the glory that the city of Kalunda enjoyed, a glory won by the sweat and blood and tears of her native sons and daughters so many years ago. A glory won in a great siege, a siege of just a few million persons that won the attention and imaginations of trillions of beings from across the Multiverse, the siege that was the focal point of a war that broke the powers of Slavery and Cruelty on the planet Gilead and ushered in a new age of Liberty for her people. A siege where History had proclaimed a great number of heroes and villains, and which guaranteed that the names Jhayka itl dhin Intuit, Danielle Verdes, Amber d'Kellius, and Trajan Osis would be forever remembered in the hearts of billions.
For 55 Days, a war had been fought for Freedom against the barbarian hordes of Slavery. For 55 Days, thousands upon thousands of brave men and women had fought to save their homes and families. For 55 Days, the city of Kalunda endured in the name of her honor and glory.
And because of those 55 Days, the City of Kalunda and her people would be remembered Forevermore.
FINIS
Gilean Commonwealth
Universe Designate CON-5
42 Istarli I.Y. 624.
25 February 2183 AST
28 December 2861 CON-5
The Capital of the Gilean Commonwealth was in full splendor as it's inhabitants commemorated, with celebration and memorial, the twentieth anniversary of the final days of the legendary Siege of Kalunda. The services, linked to the days of the most intense combat, had been culminating to the day's impending services to the successful destruction of the bridges to preserve the northern bank of the city.
It was hours before this, however, in the early dawn light, that a handful of people were standing at the small park upon the southern end of the Trajan Memorial Bridge, which carried Highway ER-12 through the heart of Kalunda and beyond to the bustling tri-city area of Amberville, San Magdalena, and Verdesmarn (formerly Besnit, Tharna, and Ar of the Norman Empire, respectively), where the hereditary Duchess of Henley ruled the former Norman, al-Farani, and Amazonian lands and tributaries, mostly repopulated now by people from across Gilead (initially by Wiccans and other paganists fleeing the Hispanic occupation zones during that most tragic of periods following the fall of the Gilean Confederacy to the intervening powers).
It was a small, modest family. Two boys with their parents, their father a business executive for a fairly wealthy company from the Taloran home universe's Earth. The children looked up and gawked at the life-sized statue of Trajan Osis, carved from fine marble and showing the warrior dressed in the ceremonial leathers and fur-skins of the Clan Smoke Jaguar, with the inscription below reading, "Here Lies Trajan Osis, Savior of Kalunda. He Now Stands In The First Rank Of The ARMY OF GOD."
"He's biiiigggg," the younger son said said, craning his neck. "Was he this big in real life?"
Their mother nodded. "Mommy knew him," she said in a strange accent. "Mommy knew him well."
"How did you know him, Mom?"
Their father looked toward her, smiling at her and touching her cheek as she looked at the statue, tears in her eyes. "He helped your mother years ago, boys. He saved her." Taking her by the hand, he whispered into her ear, softly, saying, "I'm here for you, Juliana, it's okay..."
Holding onto her husband dearly, Juliana wept at memory of her fallen guardian, the man who had pulled her out of a slave cage, who had treated her like a human being when everyone else saw her as a pet for their pleasure, and who had avenged all of the horrors she had suffered when she was young. "I miss him. I wish he could see us."
The two boys watched, in some bewilderment, as their mother cried in the arms of their father, who stared silently at the grand statue. He held Juliana tightly, loving her with every bit of his soul, as he had since he'd first met her. He had heard of the things done to her when she had been a slave. He knew of the whippings, the scorchings, the electrocutions, the terrible rapings and torturings she had endured when she was not much older than their sons.
He thought of the evils that had once been wrought on this planet Gilead. The innocent lives so horribly destroyed, and lost, to the idea that one person could claim another as his or her personal property, to do with as he or she pleased without regard for their "property"'s humanity, even killed without so much as a thought.
He thought of the insane idea that it was okay to tolerate these things, so long as the victims wanted to be victimized - a notion that was insane at it's very core - and even okay for a cabal to deny a people access to basic technology in pursuit of some "purer" form of living.
He thought of the girls like Juliana had been, of boys much like his own, who were torn from their families, collared, leashed, brutalized, and reduced to property, defenseless against the whims of their captors.
And, inevitably, his mind turned from that evil to the good that had risen up against it. To the martyred heroes and heroines that had struggled, for centuries, to end these barbaric practices that had emerged so long after Mankind had risen to the stars in this universe.
The pious, humble nun from Nueva Cartagena who had endured torment and sacrificed her life for the belief that God had made no man or woman a slave.
The farmgirl from New Salem who toppled an empire and who had freed its slaves, as well as the great King she loved, who had turned his kingdom from a city that enslaved its women into a beacon of freedom and civilization, worthy of being the capital of an interstellar state.
The alien princess of the Talorans who had come to this world to learn and who had found herself dealing the deathblow to the system of slavery, and the human woman she had loved so dearly.
The Taloran priestess, with her third eye, who had led men and women into battle against slavery and who had saved so many lives on the strength of her faith.
And last, but certainly not least, the man who's likeness stood in marble grandeur before them, the warrior of a dead culture of warriors who sought his destiny as a warrior and found it, not as a slayer of men (though he did slay very many), but as the protector and avenger of a young and helpless slave-girl, the girl who had grown to womanhood and was now crying in his arms, the mother of his sons.
That day, the celebrations would continue. They would mark the glory that the city of Kalunda enjoyed, a glory won by the sweat and blood and tears of her native sons and daughters so many years ago. A glory won in a great siege, a siege of just a few million persons that won the attention and imaginations of trillions of beings from across the Multiverse, the siege that was the focal point of a war that broke the powers of Slavery and Cruelty on the planet Gilead and ushered in a new age of Liberty for her people. A siege where History had proclaimed a great number of heroes and villains, and which guaranteed that the names Jhayka itl dhin Intuit, Danielle Verdes, Amber d'Kellius, and Trajan Osis would be forever remembered in the hearts of billions.
For 55 Days, a war had been fought for Freedom against the barbarian hordes of Slavery. For 55 Days, thousands upon thousands of brave men and women had fought to save their homes and families. For 55 Days, the city of Kalunda endured in the name of her honor and glory.
And because of those 55 Days, the City of Kalunda and her people would be remembered Forevermore.
FINIS
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
Alan Bolte
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2611
- Joined: 2002-07-05 12:17am
- Location: Columbus, OH
She's awake, but is she herself? How much is left of her mind?
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
Avatar credit
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
Avatar credit
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Questions to be answered later... *chuckles*Alan Bolte wrote:She's awake, but is she herself? How much is left of her mind?
A better question is "how much of her mind is still squishy" instead of being made out of positronics and cybernetic enhancements. A series of microsurgeries to use cybernetics to reconnect the intact portions of the brain, and replace the damaged ones that couldn't be repaired, were conducted... Experimental work on the bleeding edge, funded at a rate of tens of millions of Alliance credits by someone who has a treasury in her basement with a pile of latinum rialas in it rivalling the haul from a Spanish treasure-fleet.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.