Their Last Full Measure

by Christopher Nuttall

  Martin shrugged. His family were the marines - and Yolanda. If he had any relatives in the Solar Union, or back on Earth, he didn’t know about them. His mother was probably dead by now. There was no one who might be pleased to see him, not now. Yolanda was the only person he really knew, outside the marines. It didn’t matter to him if he was stationed on Tokomak Prime or the hellhole Earth had become, as long as she was with him.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Do you think Admiral Teller would want you?”

  “He will need an aide,” Yolanda said. “And Admiral Stuart won’t. Not back home.”

  Martin grinned at her. “You’ll stay, then?”

  Yolanda nodded. “Why not?”

  She stood and struck a contemplative pose. “Well, there’s the terrible planet with its terrible rings. And there’s the terrible population ... seriously, do you know how they talked to me? My teachers didn’t talk like that to me and they hated my guts. The Tokomak don’t even care enough to hate me. And then there’s the lack of shore leave ...”

  “There are holodeck facilities,” Martin pointed out.

  “And you’re with me,” Yolanda said. “I think that makes up for everything.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Martin said. He pulled her back to him. “Should we volunteer first or go to bed?”

  Yolanda pretended to consider it. “Volunteer first, I think. We might think better of it tomorrow.”

  ***

  “So,” Hameeda said. “You’re going to be staying?”

  Piece nodded, stiffly. They lay together on her bed, the LinkShip humming around her as she kept her distance from the planet. Hameeda knew the Tokomak had largely stood down their defences, and that there were marines on the planetary ring to ensure they behaved themselves, but she wasn’t too sure they’d keep the peace indefinitely. There were already a handful of ‘observation squadrons’ from the other Galactics in the system, watching and waiting for something to happen. Admiral Stuart had told them to keep their distance, but no one expected them to obey her orders forever.

  “Admiral Teller is going to need me,” Piece said. He leaned back, relaxing. “He’ll want someone who can deal with the aliens on their own terms. How about yourself?”

  “Admiral Stuart wants me to accompany her back to Sol,” Hameeda said. “They’ll want to run a whole string of checks on me before they start recruiting more pilots. And hear what I have to say about being the only person on the ship.”

  “Good on their part, I suppose.” Piece smiled. “You don’t want to stay here?”

  “Not forever,” Hameeda said. She supposed that meant the end of their relationship. Piece wasn’t going to stay as brawn to her brain, even if he wasn’t needed on Tokomak Prime. “But I will come back.”

  “If they let you go,” Piece said. “Do you think they’ll make you pay for the ship?”

  “She’s literally priceless,” Hameeda said. She shrugged. “Right now, at least. Give us a few years and every ship will be a LinkShip.”

  “I doubt it.” Piece looked pensive, just for a moment. “A single ship like yours won’t be too big a problem, if she goes rogue, but a battleship would be a real headache.”

  “True.” Hameeda conceded the point with a nod. “But the push towards man-machine integration is growing ever stronger.”

  “And it may come back to bite us,” Piece said. “There might have been a reason the Tokomak were death on it.”

  “They didn’t want anything to rock the boat,” Hameeda said. She sat upright and grinned at him. “This ship is a game-changer. If she packed the same sort of firepower as a cruiser or a battleship, she’d kick their ass. Give us a couple of decades and they’ll change the galaxy, for better and worse. The Tokomak really didn’t want it to happen.”

  “And it would help if they explained the reasoning behind their decision,” Piece mused. “It could be a good reason or ... like you say, something to keep their servants from inventing something that would accidentally rock the boat.”

  “Or capsize it,” Hameeda said. “I’m already as fast as a courier boat. They’re saying they might be able to double or even triple my speed, with the advanced neural net controlling the stardrive. What’ll happen to the galaxy if someone can travel from Sol to Tokomak Prime in a month? Or less? You’d think they’ll appreciate it.”

  “It would also allow word of revolt to spread before they can put the revolt down.” Piece frowned. “Could put the revolt down, I suppose. I wonder what will happen when the rest of the galaxy realises things are not going to go back to normal.”

  “I dare say we’ll find out.” Hameeda pushed him down and straddled him. “And I think we should make use of what little time we have left.”

  Piece grinned. “Yes, Captain.”

  ***

  “I’m flattered by your trust,” Admiral Teller said. “I wasn’t expecting you to suggest me for this role.”

  “You handled yourself well,” Hoshiko told him. She’d read the reports, both the official statements that had been filed in the datacores and unofficial comments that had been passed up the chain by word of mouth. “I wish you’d gotten to the Twins sooner, but there was no way to time it properly.”

  She shook her head. “I trust you to handle things here, at least until the Admiralty assigns an officer to relieve you,” she added. “And I’ll try to ensure it happens as quickly as possible.”

  “Which will be at least eighteen months from today,” Admiral Teller said. “I’ll do my level best to make you proud, Admiral.”

  He snapped a salute, then hit a switch. His holographic image vanished, leaving Hoshiko alone. She wasn’t entirely sure Admiral Teller was a good choice, but she was short of options. She had to go home and face the music, while the other admirals had to command fleet elements assigned to the Twins, N-Gann and Apsidal. They were actually more important than Tokomak Prime, at least for the next few months. Keeping the supply lines open was going to be a major headache.

  Particularly if the successor states start fortifying the gravity points, she mused, rubbing her forehead. The Tokomak had managed to enforce a ban on doing anything of the sort, but she couldn’t. She had a feeling it was just a matter of time before the Galactics started doing just that, if they hadn’t already. It will be one hell of a headache.

  She stared down at the reports, not really seeing them. She had no idea, despite everything, how the Solar Union would react when it heard the news. Her people were a practical breed - they understood that some threats had to be eliminated - but not everyone would accept that she should have carried the war into the heart of the enemy’s territory. And, if the waves of chaos made things far worse, they’d blame her for unleashing forces that might destroy the Solar Union itself. There might even come a time when they’d look back on the Tokomak Empire and miss it.

  The doorbell chimed. “Come.”

  Steve stepped into the compartment, looking tired. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better,” Hoshiko said. There were a lot of loose ends to tie up, but she felt as if she couldn’t muster the energy to tie any of them. “Yourself?”

  “I just completed discussions with the Harmonies,” Steve said. “They’ve agreed to open trade talks with us, in exchange for us pretending to accept that they acted under outside compulsion. Which may well be true, just ...”

  “We don’t really believe it,” Hoshiko said. The Tokomak had given the remaining Galactics special treatment, in exchange for submission and collaboration. She wanted to make the Harmonies pay for the attack on Odyssey, even though there probably had been some degree of compulsion when the Harmonies had lured the human ship to their homeworld. “Do you think they can be trusted?”

  “For the moment.” Steve sat, facing her. “And, given time, they’ll have to change or die.”

  “Or just be left behind,” Hoshiko said. She glanced at the xenospecialist report. They’d spent the last day on Tokomak Prime, digging into files no human had eve
r been allowed to see. It would be centuries before they’d seen every file, according to their statement, but they’d seen enough to make a preliminary report. The Tokomak had, quite deliberately, ensured their own stagnation. “If they can still change ...”

  She sighed. “The Tokomak ensured they couldn’t change very quickly, if at all. They were lucky they had one officer who could think outside the box.”

  Steve nodded. “It helped they didn’t need to, before they met us.”

  “You don’t understand,” Hoshiko said. “I read the file. Neola - the Empress - was practically a child by their standards. Physically and mentally, she was an adult; socially, she was still a child. She was a bratty teenage daughter as far as her superiors were concerned. They didn’t take her seriously because of her extreme youth.”

  Her eyes met his. “And she was old enough, by human standards, to be your grandfather.”

  Steve frowned. “We knew they rejuvenated themselves,” he said. “What’s your point?”

  “Just this.” Hoshiko didn’t look away. “Great-Uncle Mongo is still the titular commander of the Solar Navy, the senior uniformed officer. His immediate subordinates have been in their jobs for at least the last thirty years. There has been almost no turnover since the Solar Union was established. The Senate has term limits and other rules to keep senators from remaining in power indefinitely, but there are no such limits elsewhere. A bunch of positions are not opening up because their occupants are neither retiring nor dying. Admirals, CEOs ... everywhere and everyone.”

  Steve said nothing for a long moment. “And what’s your point?”

  “I’m ambitious.” Hoshiko was honest enough to admit it, at least to her grandfather. “And I’m not the only one. I - we - want chances to shine, to take the helm and see what we can do. Right now, the galaxy is big enough for the young and old alike. But what will happen when we literally run out of space? Or of positions we can hold? What happens when our ambitions are frustrated through no fault of our own?”

  She waved a hand at the bulkhead, indicating the distant planet. “The Tokomak show us one answer,” she said. “Their entire system ossified into stagnation. They couldn’t compete with a threat they couldn’t meet with overwhelming force. I imagine their younger officers became bitter and jaded, then simply gave up. They couldn’t think of a way they could take power for themselves.

  “But humans are not Tokomak. And what’s going to happen to the young when our ambitions are continually thwarted?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “What do you think will happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Hoshiko echoed. “But I think we’ll soon find out.”

  End of Book Six

  Do You Want More?

  Let Me Know.

  Afterword

  “I am, of course, not a lover of upheavals. I merely want to make sure people do not forget that there are upheavals.”

  -General Aritomo Yamagata, Imperial Japanese Army, 1881

  “It’s all part of the life-cycle of an economy. First it’s lawless capitalism until that starts to impede growth. Next comes regulation, law enforcement, and taxes. After that: public benefits and entitlements. Then, finally, over-expenditure and collapse.”

  -Andy Weir, Artemis

  I don’t know if anyone noticed, but - in another of my series of books - Neola would be the hero.

  Think about it. She’s fighting to preserve an empire that, for all its flaws, is far superior to the chaos that would follow its fall. She’s fighting to protect a way of life that isn’t too bad, at least for her people; she’s fighting to protect her people from the inevitable consequences of loosening their grip without taking steps to ensure the people they’ve abused wouldn’t be able to take revenge at some later date. It’s easy to say, from the comfort of one’s armchair a thousand miles (or light years) from the danger zone, that someone who fights to uphold such values is evil. It isn’t so obvious when one happens to be in the danger zone. On one hand, an evil system should be destroyed and replaced with something else; on the other, the new regime might be extremely dangerous, perhaps fatal, to the people who didn’t create the evil system but are tainted by being its favoured children.

  Her tragedy is that the empire has fallen too far to be saved. She might have been better off if she’d fled, leaving the empire to fall, and build a new home somewhere far away. But that wasn’t an option for someone like her. She had to fight to preserve it, only to lose when it became apparent that her people could no longer maintain themselves. And so she lost to the barbarians at the gates. Sic transit Gloria mundi.

  ***

  Let me start this essay with an observation that, at first, appears to be totally unconnected to the theme. Why did the Marvel Cinematic Universe make bank, while the DC Cinematic Universe had a string of failures - their only real success was Wonder Woman - and Disney’s Star Wars start a steady slide towards box office failure?

  The answer is not ‘toxic fandom’ or ‘men skipping female-led movies’ or ‘internet trolls’ or one of a hundred excuses that have been trotted out over the past few years, when it became apparent that success had failed to materialise. The answer is not ‘sexism’ or ‘racism’ or ‘Donald Trump.’ The answer is far simpler. Marvel remembered what made its characters popular in the first place, while DC and Disney did not. Marvel remembered what worked and what didn’t and built on it. DC and Disney have control of vast amounts of intellectual property and should have been able to use it to make billions of dollars, but lost sight of why their characters became successful in the first place. They had no respect for the past - Kathleen Kennedy recently claimed there was no source material for the Sequel Trilogy, which was a surprise to anyone who read the Expanded Universe (now Legends) - and no real concept of what worked and what didn’t. Marvel picked and chose from both the Marvel and Ultimate comic universe to craft the MCU. DC and Disney chose to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

  It’s fair enough to say that Star Wars Legends was not a complete success. The novels ranged from utterly brilliant (The Thrawn Trilogy) to great ideas with poor execution (Jedi Search, Darksaber) all the way to deeply problematic (The Courtship of Princess Leia) and downright weird (The Crystal Star). I stopped reading after the brilliant Hand of Thrawn books. But there were hundreds of ideas that could and should have been worked into the sequel trilogy. Instead, Disney chose to make new stories out of whole cloth. This might not have been such a problem if the writers had concentrated on writing a good story, then building up the rest around it. Instead, they did immense damage to the Star Wars brand.

  Now, it doesn’t really matter what Disney does with Star Wars, not on a global level. It doesn’t do any real harm to anyone if Disney’s movies make so much money that we have to invent new numbers to describe it or flop so badly Disney has to pay people to watch. We don’t have to have decent Star Wars movies to live. We’ll always have The Thrawn Trilogy.

  But what does matter is that Disney’s mistake is being repeated on a global scale.

  An organisation, anything from a simple internet start-up to a full-fledged government, tends to go through three separate phases.

  First, the organisation is founded. The founders have a vision and aim to put it into practice. They know what’s important. There are few rules, little stratification ... a certain willingness to do something first and get permission later. This can lead to either great success - the organisation makes a killing - or complete disaster, such as happened to Elizabeth Holmes when her ambitions outstripped her talents and/or technological limits. For every organisation that succeeds, there are thousands of failures.

  Second, the organisation matures. The founders don’t always remain in control. There are a whole new range of departments as the organisation struggles to cope with opening up to the outside world. Budgets and HR (etc) become important. The links between the shop floor (however defined) and management tend to fray. It’s not easy to keep the organisation focused
when it’s expanding and drawing attention from outsiders (rivals, taxmen, etc). An organisation that expands too fast may stumble at this point. If it doesn’t, it will stabilise and - hopefully - remain relatively stable.

  Third, the organisation starts to die. The founders are gone. Management no longer talks to the shop floor. Beancounters, compliance officers, diversity enforcers (etc) take control. Corners get cut. The bottom line - pleasing the stockholders - becomes more important than doing a good job. The better employees start looking for jobs elsewhere, where they’re valued, once they realise that good work and bonuses are no longer linked and there’s no path to higher management. Depending on the size of the organisation, it may take some time to realise that it’s in serious trouble. (People outside the organisation will notice sooner, then start taking their business elsewhere.) Even if it does, it can be difficult - if not impossible - to fire the useless employees (i.e. everyone who isn’t involved with the organisation’s core business) and reboot the company. But if the organisation cannot arrest its fall, it will collapse or be destroyed by its more powerful (and younger) competitors.