“We dug the ovaries out of Labor and Integrity when we ‘temporarily’ let go of the Spine deal with its own issues, but the situation has changed,” Irene said passionately.
“But the cost, boss! We’re looking at total party suicide if this plays out wrong in the court of public opinion,” Constance protested.
“You can’t please everyone,” she said coldly, “let Border Integrity keep howling in the wilderness. Offer Labor more jobs and they’ll vote their interests like the prostitutes they are each and every time, and Industry Party is almost the same way. Promise them enough money, the rights to build more class one factories, and relax the regulations on future mineral extraction rights and they’ll shift with the wind also.”
“They might…might, if we could promise it, but say you’re giving up a third of the Confederation and—” he said before she cut him off.
“A fourth at best—and the marginal, undeveloped, unpopulated wilderness frontier portion, at that,” she shot back. “The Confederation has other frontier regions to expand and develop into if that is the concern.”
“This is career suicide, I just don’t know any other way to say it, Irene,” Assemblyman Constance sighed, “there you have it. I’m a traitor to the party and you can eject me for saying it. Maybe I’ll go over and join Border Integrity Movement in its pro-military, pro-expansion irrelevancy for this, but I have to speak my conscience. I love this party too much to just stand by and do nothing-”
“Constance, I understand your misgivings, I really do. But I think you’re being vastly too pessimistic here,” the current Assemblyherm soothed.
“I don’t see how,” Constance grudged.
“Bringing those seven Sectors back into the fold would be a tacit admission that the Confederation was partially responsible for this whole mess and, at the very least, we’d be obligated to pay to rebuild them. The honest truth is that the Grand Assembly simply can’t afford the bailouts it would need to cover up this entire fiasco. Not without severe budget cuts and with the Fleet already in mothballs that leaves very few discretionary areas left to trim,” she said.
Constance had a mulish expression. “It might hurt but if we have to do it…”
“If we had to, we would,” agreed the Party Leader. “However, even more important than the money is the fact that if we reestablished contact with the regressives on the fringe and brought them back into the Grand Assembly, a large number of recent policies would be under serious risk.”
Constance froze.
“Just take the Universal Mandate expansion for instance,” she pressed into the opening. “We finally took that away from the local and sector level, establishing a fixed rate and imposed it Confederation wide—that’s not even mentioning the Fairness Doctrine and several hundred other pieces of legislation. The closest we ever came before this was the Truth in Media legislation. Literally centuries of struggle for our way of life has finally culminated in our generation and, sad as I am to say this, it was only possible after those backward Border Sector regressive in the Spineward Region stopped paying their taxes and lost contact with the Greater Confederation, causing their elected Assemblymen, women and herms to slowly term-limit out.”
“But the people out there...” Constance said weakly.
Irene Gravity went in for the kill. “I am thinking about the people, that’s why we need to send in the Empire. They can afford to bear the cost of this,” she said fiercely, “frankly, it was their fault for pulling out of those Sectors in the first place.”
“The Empire? I’m really and honestly not sure that sending in the Imperials is the best answer. Some of their practices are quite questionable in the Border Regions, Gravity,” he muttered, “besides, it sets a terrible precedent.”
“All they have to do is stabilize the situation long enough for us to get past automatic legislative reviews and the Sunlight Provisions. After that we can righteously reclaim the Spineward Sectors in the name of the Confederation if we have to,” she soothed triumphantly. “The plan we’re proposing is one that lets Imperials pay to replace Rim Fleet, which they should have done in the first place. At the same time we’ll solicit Medical Aid, Refugee Services and Relief Ships from member worlds on a volunteer basis to help keep an eye on the Imperials.”
“...that might actually work,” he said doubtfully.
“Right now we hold votes to keep everything in place until Sunlight expires and it takes a super majority to overturn things. Which will never happen. All we have to do is hold on long enough to make that happen and our fundamental transformation of the Confederation will no longer be one wrong vote away, it’ll be set in stone,” she said with certainty. “All we have to do is properly remind the One Wayers of this inconvenient truth and exactly what is on the line and they’ll hold fast. Reluctantly, sure, but they will hold. After that, it’ll be our job to bribe Labor, pay off Big Industry, and soothe the rest of the wounded egos throughout our coalition. If we play it right, we might not even need to hold together the various minor special interest coalitions like the Healthcare Dogs. We could be talking about an enduring new order—a true realignment of political paradigms throughout the Confederation!”
Mr. Simpers nodded with satisfaction as the Assemblywoman slowly rallied her coalition. Now that Absolute Choice was locked down it was time to put out a few feelers to Responsible Labor the Balanced Tax Progressives.
Even a non-binding resolution, while not ideal, was something he could work with.
Chapter 33: On the Floor of the Grand Assembly
“A motion has been entered to bring a bill to the floor regarding the Spineward Sectors Region,” the Speaker’s Voice sounded from the overhead interrupting several hundred small conversations, “do we have a second?”
Grand Assemblyman Charles Thomas shook his head in disgust as yet another proforma bill regarding the Spineward Sectors was brought to the floor.
“Aye, Speaker!” said the Balanced Tax Progressives leader, leaning forward and toggling his microphone.
“A third?” queried the Speaker.
“Oh, let’s get on with it,” sighed the head of the Health Care Dogs, “in case that wasn’t clear. That was a 'yes'.”
“The bill has officially been brought to the floor,” said the Speaker, to Assemblyman Charles’s more than moderate surprise. Still, it wasn’t like anything was going to happen. Border Integrity had been trying to get a relief effort approved and reestablish trade and contact with the Spineward Region for years now and had been blocked at every turn.
This bill was going nowhere fast. So why even bother?
“Motion to bypass debate and proceed directly to a vote,” Assemblyman Ernest Vonnegut the Elected Leader of the One Way Caucus sounded incredibly bored.
“Seconded,” Irene Gravity said, rolling her eyes, “the sooner this is over and done with the better.”
Charles Thomas felt a wave of intense apathy at the sign that the fix was in once again and then he bristled. One Way and Absolute Choice may have practically gutted the Confederation in their search for power and control of government, but not everyone was as spinelessly useless as those two pairs of populist demagogues. They’d lost the popular vote but somehow still managed to carry the Grand Assembly and seize control of government five years ago, and their actions ever since then had seen the Confederation all but ruined.
“A third?” asked the Speaker.
“Objection,” Charles Thomas stood up and activated his Faction Leader override, determined to give the pair of partisan hacks a good solid piece of his mind. He might be old and increasingly marginalized but he still remembered the days when being a part of the Confederation used to mean something, “The people of the Spine—citizens of this Grand Confederation body—deserve better than yet another in a series of up or down, 'no' votes and, by the gods, I aim to give that to them if nothing else,” he growled.
“Aye! I third the motion,” chimed in a Ranking Member of the Health Care Dogs.
>
“Then the motion is carr-” started the Speaker.
Charles Thomas mashed his override. “Objection-objection-objection and objection again,” he exclaimed angrily, “I demand my right to be heard!”
“As the Grand Assemblyman has no second, he is overruled,” said the Speaker shooting Charles Thomas a quelling look.
Yet another override signal was placed followed by part of a snore and the snort of someone just waking up. “Wah?” said the member.
“There’s a bill on the Spine, Sir,” hissed the voice of what probably had to be an aide.
“Grahahahha! Objection,” came the quarrelsome voice of what had to be the Grand Assembly’s oldest serving member, and one of the Spineward Region's few remaining representatives in the assembly, “I demand the right to speak.”
Charles Thomas pounced, furious that the only support he seemed to have in the Grand Assembly these days was a non-voting member from the very region affected by the crisis. Although 'crisis' was perhaps a weak word to use since the situation had been raging for the past several years.
“The motion to object and bring the discussion to the floor has a second and we demand our right to be heard on the issue,” the Grand Assemblyman said, his jaw jutting pugnatiously.
The Grand Speaker hesitated. “I’m not sure that a non-voting member can stand as second for an objection,” he finally said.
Charles Thomas purpled with outrage. “So after squashing all of our bills in committee, you’ll finally bring a bill up for a vote only so you can shoot it down without any debate whatsoever,” he said, throwing his hands in the air with disbelief, “unbelievable! And this is supposed to be the greatest democracy in the galaxy in action?!”
“Without a viable second to the objection, the objection is overruled and we will now proceed with the-” the Grand Speaker said with pompous satisfaction.
“Oh, let the men speak. Since it’s not like it will do any good anyway, it seems the least we can do,” the Head of the Judicial Committee, and a Balanced Tax Progressive, chimed in causing a small furor among the ranks of the One Wayers and Absolute Choice parties.
Which was the first sign Charles Thomas actually had that this was more than just a proforma up or down vote on a forgone piece of party line political legislation.
His senses as minority opposition leader had been honed over nearly fifty years increasing marginalization, followed by five years in the proverbial wilderness of Confederation politics. The silent alarms that let him know when he and his people were about to get screwed started going off in the back of his head.
“Well then who's going first?” the Grand Speaker said with ill humor.
There was the sound of more throat clearing. “I defer to the gentleman from Fargone Sector without yielding my right to the floor,” said Granthor Danth the longest serving member of the Assembly.
“It’s your show, Assemblyman Thomas,” the Speaker said crossing his arms.
Charles Thomas’s eyes swept the floor, only now seeing what he should have noted from the beginning. A quick search verified his hunch: just about every single member of Absolute Choice and One Way were on the floor and milling about in their designated sections.
He surreptitiously smashed the internal roll call button on the side of his panel, sending out an alarm to every member of his party both on—and especially off—the floor to rally up and get to their seats.
Worst case, he was wrong. But already he could feel the thrill of a call to action and he didn’t think he was. More than fifty years off the deck of his last flagship might have dulled his instincts, but one didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that an ambush was in the works.
After one more look he decided to air his grievances and simultaneously stall for time. “As I, and the Border Integrity Movement, have been warning this Assembly for years: if you let a boil like the Spineward Sectors fester it will come back and bite you in the rear. This is something that I believe my fellow Assemblymembers on the other side of the room have finally,” here, he fired a proverbial shot in the dark, “started to twig, to but once again and as per usual, it is either too little too late or far too much and far too fast going in the wrong direction.”
“If the Grand Assemblyman could confine himself to policy and refrain from personal attacks on other members, the Chair would appreciate it. You can consider this a warning, Assemblyman,” said the Speaker, and that’s when he knew that not only was he right, he might not have been right enough.
The rest of the party had better not be sitting on their duffs drinking coffee in the ante-chambers and trying to secure pork barrel projects for their worlds while he held the lines out here, Charles Thomas thought.
“My apologies, Speaker. But as your learned self knows quite well: if you slash our military to the bone until it's nothing more than a glorified customs and border patrol unit, when a real crisis comes along there’s nothing we can do,” he said, falling straight back into his personal pet peeve, while furiously tapping away on his data slate as it finally occurred to him that it might be a very good idea to know just what exactly was in the bill the current majority coalition controlling the Grand Assembly and the Speakership had brought to the floor.
“I mean, honestly,” he continued passionately, which wasn’t hard to do even though he had to be almost completely off subject, because this was a series of issues that was near and dear to his own heart, “what are we supposed to do if the Bugs, or uplifts, droids or—goddess forbid—an actual AI comes back to life to haunt us? You can look at the record and see that I’ve been consistent all these years. Well now, it appears,” he paused as he ran a quick key word search with an adaptive program and came up with a name of an Imperial Senator and an Imperial Fleet, “that our chickens have come home to roost and I have to ask both myself and this Grand Assembly…what now? Are we finally willing to let military volunteers who have been actively petitioning this body—for years—for permission to reactivate their reservist commissions without pay and reoccupy our old star bases, starships and fleet shipyards? Or are we finally going to admit we’re impotent and concede our last final shred of dignity, selling seven Sectors of space to the Empire of Man!”
The speaker started pounding his gavel on his podium as an uproar swept over the floor of the Grand Assembly.
“Order! I demand order!” the Grand Speaker shouted furiously, and Irene Gravity gave him a look so poisonous that a lesser man would have immediately thought about hiring bodyguards.
Well he’d already hired a squad of former marines for his personal protective detail two decades earlier, when several of his former shipmates were downsized out of their careers.
“The Assemblymember from the Fargone Sector will refrain from any further slander on pain of censure!” shouted the Speaker.
“Truth in Media may be able to silence the watchdogs of the fourth estate, but I thank the space gods every day that it doesn’t, by its very nature, apply to the elected members of this Grand Assembly!” yelled Charles Thomas.
“Order!! Order!!” cried the Speaker, “or you will find yourself in CONTEMPT!”
“Mr. Speaker, if I may!?” snapped Irene Gravity the Leader of the Absolute Choice party within the Assembly. “Despite attempted fearmongering by the esteemed member of our Pro-military-industrial-complex, this Assembly never has negotiated—and never will negotiate—with terrorists! Just like we will never cave on our principles and give into the machinations of the vast Pro-border, Pro-military, Pro-forced-Labor Conspiracy!”
“I protest this false characterization in the strongest terms, Mr. Speaker!” Charles Thomas shouted, but the speakers carrying his voice throughout the Assembly floor cut out mid-sentence.
“Assemblyherm Gravity has the floor!” thundered the Speaker as he slammed his gavel onto the Speaker’s Com-Panel.
“Mr. Speaker, I protest! I did not yield the floor!!!” Charles Thomas shouted, simultaneously mashing open the direct faction-leader to Spea
ker com-channel while smashing the hot key that sent his protest simultaneously to the Grand Assembly Ethics Panel for a rules clarification.
“He freely admits that if it were up to him he would actually have this assembly pay, as in forced to pay, for a massive defense spending and budget expansion,” she said, throwing out a tirade of furious rejection, “this would not only throw our entire economy into chaos but cut the ovaries out of any bail out bills put to the Grand Assembly’s floor! How can you simultaneously fund a seven Sector bailout bill and a military expansion at the same time???”
Charles Thomas furiously mashed his communications holo-button without success before making a fist and waving it through the holo-interface to remove the images from his point of view.
“In his fervor to bring back the Military Industrial Complex that ruled the Confederacy with an iron, fascist fist for centuries, the esteemed leader of our very own Pro-Border Integrity Movement won’t even consider any alternatives!” she thundered, pointing furiously at her com-muzzled opponent.
“Alternatives such as, Hrs. Gravity?” the Speaker asked, looking interested as his voice echoing across the assembly floor as Absolute Choice flaunted its ability to break the rules of the Assembly floor using its position and leverage with the Grand Assembly Speaker.
Now it only remained to be seen if they would get away with it or not.
“When the Imperial Senate, which has quite reasonably, to my mind, offered to pay for everything and send in a liberation fleet as the cherry on top to fix a mess like this—a mess I’ll add that they in no small measure created by their own actions—I think we’d be fools to dismiss their offer out of hand,” she turned away from the speaker and glared at Charles Thomas. “Have you no shame? For shame, Sir!!!” she demanded hotly.
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