Entry 13
This is my interview with Fleet Master Jonuv Johnson.
Fleet Commander Jonuv Johnson of Imperial Escherian Navy
Occupation: Fleet Commander of Fifth Patrol Fleet, Captain of the IEN Sirius
Status: Alive and well, if a bit grim from recent losses
Once I got him to open up, Johnson was very adamant about the current emperor's lack of respect for the military, which has been thankfully offset by the Crown Prince and Third Prince's support of the military. He spoke of how the military has been scaled up but none have been deployed beyond the Inner Sectors, essentially making the Rimworlds defenseless. This is quite concerning because the rimworlds hold 30% of the total imperial citizen populations.
He also spoke of the factions within the military. Currently, the military was under the rule of the nobility-led officers, who have done their best to put down the common born commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers by either bribing them to leave the service or threatening them. The emperor knows little about the backstage politics within the military, but are in clear support of the noble officers.
The Crown Prince leads the second faction, the Untouchables. Due to Crown Prince's influence and the emperor's desire to allow the Crown Prince to do as he wishes, the Untouchables have grown to become their own little island within the military. While they perform their duties, they are very ignorant of matters outside of their own little circle and interest, which has both distanced them from the rest of the military and has cemented the idea that the Crown Prince would be little different from the emperor once he rises to power.
The third faction is the powerless Commoner Officers. Making up more than 70% of all officers but only 10% of commissioned officers, the Commoner Officers are led by our own Fleet Commander Jonuv Johnson. They seek to break the hold of nobles from the military, but the current emperor gives the nobles too much power. While the Commoner Officers have been successful in breaking the power of the nobles from patrol fleets and logistics, the rest of the military lies in the hands of the noble officers.
At this point, I wanted others' opinion on the current goings of the military and society, so I decided to ask the man about his family.
Fleet Master Johnson has four sons, and two of them died in the battle just yesterday.
[Hidden statement: Jonuv finally cried in front of me, and I promised him that no one would know]
Entry 17
Same day as Entry 13, interviewing Captain Romanov Greengrass-Quelnovsky.
Captain Romanov Greengrass-Quelnovsky of the Imperial Escherian Navy
Occupation: Captain of IEN Empire's Business, part of Fifth Patrol Fleet
Status: Alive and well, if a bit sarcastic
Addendum: Of the ten captains I've interviewed, Captain RGQ is the most sarcastic ever since I gave him express permission to talk as he wished.
He was very upset with everything. He was upset with me, upset with the Fleet Commander, and upset with the world. Why? He didn't like me. He didn't like the commander. And he definitely did not like the world. Why? Because I was a noble. Because the commander didn't do enough. Because the world took advantage of him. So on and so on. A normal case of very disgruntled man.
Entry 18
Same day as Entry 13, interviewing Captain Sarah Montegreo.
Captain Sarah Montegreo of the Imperial Escherian Navy
Occupation: Captain of the IEN Lesser Maw, part of the Fifth Patrol Fleet
Status: Wounded (broken left forearm)
Addendum: She tried to flirt me.
Captain Montegreo was very forward with me. She found me sexy. I told her I wasn't interested and needed to get continue her interview. She responded by saying she was "free tonight for a hot ride." I asked her if she was flirting to get out of interview for whatever reason she may have had. Her response had been if I would like to interview all of her. I asked her if she wanted a demotion. She shut up.
Entyr 19
Same day as Entry 13, interviewing Sergeant Johnathan Ulysu
Sergeant Johnathan Ulysu of the Imperial Escherian Army
Occupation: Sergeant of the 19th Imperial "Bearclaw" Regiment, attached to Fifth Patrol Fleet
Status: Alive and well, if a little bit nervous
Addendum: The youngest NCO I interviewed today
The man was nervous as hell. I asked him why, and the honest man told me that it was his first time being in front of a royalty, an honor within the Escherian Empire. I told him to treat me like his own grandfather. I asked him about the living conditions outside of the Fifth Patrol Fleet. He told me that life was good. I told him to answer honestly. He told me life was not good. Even though he was a member of the army, the empire didn't provide his family with living space in the Core Sector because his family was ex-pats from Systems Alliance. Because of this, one of his younger sisters died in a recent pirate raid, which explains why he was extremely happy about how he was allowed to participate in putting down pirates just the day before.
Entry 21
It had been a day since I interviewed all of the captains and the few select NCOs. Gotta say, the empire is divided on four fronts, which was not good.
The emperor himself was a front. He pushed for reforms and reorganization he felt that the empire needed. He was opposed by the conservative businesses and nobles, who didn't want change in their empire (which certainly would mean they would have to work to keep their own mini-empires stable). These two sides were then buffered by the moderate nobles and the military who wanted reforms but to the extent of that the emperor wanted.
And then there was the last faction: the Rimworlds.
As much as the empire wanted to focus on the Rimworlds for development and security, there simply was not enough of everything. On top of that pirates were rampant in these sectors. Some pirate fleets were as half as large as one of the true fleets of the empire, a size that no mere patrol fleet could hope to fight against.
I had the luck that the Rimworld sector with that particular pirate fleet was on the other side of the empire.
I digressed. The Rimworld sectors were not receiving supplies, arms, or manpower. They were under the empire's flag in name only, and received no protection with the exception of very few lucrative or large Rimworld colonies.
Oddly enough, the rest of the empire (aka the commoners in the Core Worlds and the Inner Sectors) didn't show favor for any single faction because they too were equally as divided as the elites themselves.
I can't worry too much about the overall empire. I was barely established in my sector as it was, and the emperor told me that I had a year or so before the Fifth Patrol Fleet would move out from under my command.
... I needed more ships, equipment, and people.
I gathered the captains and their trusted officers into Onuxal's biggest private meeting room. The meeting room was designed minimally in regards to decorations. The metal tables were set up in a square with just enough room to put two pieces of letter paper vertically. Utilitarian plastic chairs were set up in rows for simplicity's sake.
I sat at the head of the room on the only chair with more cushioning than the others as the captains and their trusted officers entered the room. They seemed wary. I didn't say anything nor did they ask. They merely moved to the chairs where they assumed were set out for them.
The last officer to enter the room was Jonuv Johnson, the Fleet Commander. I nodded to him, and he walked up to the very front of the room, and took a seat right next to me.
We discussed this beforehand. I asked Johnson to give me support in the meeting to come after I explained to him what I was going to do. He agreed, and seemed excited about it.
"You must all be wondering why I called you here, yes?" I asked them, and most of them nodded. "Truth be told, I have no intention of taking part in the factional disputes this entire empire seems to have trapped itself in."
They looked at each other in confusion and relief. From what I understand, most of the officers here are of commoner origin, so having to work under a duke like myself must have been unnerving, not knowing when or how their words or actions would be taken as a reflection of their entire peerage and how the nobles (in their mind, me) would react.
"However," I began. "I will say this: keep the disputes out of my sectors. Noble or commoner, you all fall within my rule when you stay in my sector, so don't cause trouble. As long as you follow orders and don't cause trouble, I won't forbid your meetings, posting of your ideology, and the like. Is that understood?"
"Yes, my lord!"
I nodded. "Then let's start the strategic meeting for how we're going to root out those pirates..."
I watched as the mining fleet dropped out of warp drive and slowly entered Onuxal's hangers to drop off their day's worth of work. The fleet of two freighters, thirty five mining frigates, and ten mining corvettes slowed into the hangar one by one, and I waited for the man in charge of the fleet to come into my office.
And he did less than thirty minutes later (I played Crusader Kings X while I waited).
"So?" I asked the mining fleet commander. "I hope there's no news? No news is good news after all."
The man's name was Winston Kim. Dark skinned, white haired, and grey eyed man, Winston was a man in possession of a predatory aura. It was the kind of aura you wanted in a drill sergeant but not a human resources manager. As a fleet commander, the man kept good security and care over his men and ships, which learned him a lot of points from his subordinates and myself.
I hired him a few days after all of the confiscated ships were repaired and retrofitted for their new duties. He had been recommended to me by one of the more trusted mining companies. Being a retiree, he had suddenly come into debt after his grandfather died with a massive debt (his grandfather was 209 years old, and he was 88). 'Ah yes, the wonders of technology,' I thought sarcastically. 'Giving people more time to accumulate more debt.'
Kim had my respect. He had five other siblings, and instead of splitting the debt among them, he took on the entire debt. It helped that his own family was no longer dependent on him (with his wife being dead, his son missing, and his daughter married to a rich noble). I supposed I empathized with the man (his son being missing part), at least enough to hire him over others once his credentials, credits, and liability checked out.
He grinned at me. "We found a small pocket of ice belt, but I don't think it's big enough to set up any kind of large operation on it. Maybe a few frigates everyday until it runs out."
"How much do you estimate?" I asked.
MFC Kim closed his eyes, scrunching it before, he muttered out, "My baby's scanner said about half a million tonnes, but estimating losses in mining and refining, I'd say it's closer to ... four hundred kilo tonnes by the time it's in the station?" he estimated. "Yeah. Not much. Most of it was oxygen and hydrogen."
I nodded. "I suppose. We don't want to complete drain our sources so quickly. What about the local gas giant? Does it have any useful ice belts?"
The system's gas giant, nicknamed by the Fifth Patrol Fleet as "Blushitain," (short for blue shit stain), was three-quarters of the size of Jupiter back at Sol System. Its blue and brown atmosphere was melancholic to me, but my interest on the gas giant lay in its rings. Due to its distance from the local sun, Blushitain had a ice ring belt.
Unfortunately, the distance between each ice asteroid was ridiculously far apart unlike what movies made them seem like, and they moved fast. Chasing after ice blocks in space was not profitable due to fuel used.
It was another thing I had to learn: ice was valuable. This was because moving oxygen and water in quantities needed by space stations and spaceships from planets to space was unprofitable. Yes, while big freighters do move goods from planets to space stations (and thus making profit by quantity), it wasn't viable as the buying and selling of water and such goods had barely any profit, especially in rimworld sectors like Freyr Sector where the industry of water purification wasn't developed.
See the pattern? Everything was done how they were because of money.
Money that I lacked.
Thankfully, there was a base of income making its way through my sector now. The miners were hard at work, and the component factory inside Onuxal was now selling components and refined metals to Inner Sectors with convoys protected by my own ships, not the Fifth Patrol Fleet.
Speaking of the Fifth Patrol Fleet, it was on the other side of the Freyr Sector right now, rooting out another pirate base from a habitable planet.
Kim shook his head. "No, sir. The shit lives up to its name. It's mostly nitrogen and helium."
I shrugged. "Hmm, odd. Alright. You can have two of the mining corvettes go about taking care of that ice belt you found."
"Okay. Anyway, we drinking tonight again?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No. I got some business to attend to. You can join me tomorrow, though."
He barked out a laugh. "Me join you? You mean you join me."
I dismissed him halfheartedly.
I looked over the weekly report given to me by colony representative, Mr. Jackson, from Quentius.
As for Quentius (the planet upon which Onuxal orbits), the colony there was now blossoming. There was now forty thousand people living on the colony, many of whom had arrived mere days after the news of local pirates being driven off had reached the Inner Sector. Many of those very colonists were also those from the "first" Quentius colony, not the one headed by Mr. Jackson.
I didn't know this, but the planet had some history. It had been initially settled by imperial colonists seeking to make riches off of its rich soil (though they had to abandon the initial colony when pirates took root in the area), but was now inhabited by veterans who had been given land here. Some of those initial colonists were coming back as well as newcomers.
This raised a new problem, though.
Due to the legalities upon which the first colony was founded, I was not the owner of the planet as far as the lawyers saw it.
I just shoved them the emperor's edict (his appointment of me as the duke of the Freyr Sector). That got the lawyers to back off, but they began to rain down documents regarding lands on the planet being owned by certain people and whatnot.
The returning colonists themselves, however, weren't as compliant. You would expect the colonists of an absolute monarchy like Escherian Empire to be more fearful or more obedient towards the members of the royalty.
There are plenty of ways to earn a living in the Core Worlds or the Inner Sector. Hell, there are plenty of uncolonized, unowned (by any corporation or singular entity outside of the emperor), and colonizable worlds in the Inner Sector! So why were these particular colonists here? It had to do with that lack of deference to authority I mentioned earlier. That was the exact reason why these people were colonists; they were exiled from the Core Worlds and the Inner Sector for whatever they did, be it ideological difference, unwanted religion, or species; the list of reasons go on and on.
Of course, they weren't exiled by the emperor personally nor by the judicial courts. In fact, exile is a bit of an incorrect term. Self-exile would be more correct. Driven out by their peers, "encouraged" to leave the area and not being accepted anywhere else they moved to, marked by the intelligence agency as "malcontent," and the list goes on.
The "unwanted" of the empire.
In essence, they were outcasts of the empire. Those who didn't like the empire but chose to stay regardless in the Rimworlds, the furthest reaches of the empire within itself.
And that's where the problem lay.
To them, I was an outsider who came to rule over them.
Now, I had two choices regarding these people. I can be the outsider they view me as. I can use force and law to move them as I see fit. I was a duke, not a bloody president.
Or... I can go about this ruling business in a softer approach. I know that I am not the best of rulers, but the first lesson I learned as a leader was to ensure the "picture of safety and assurance." That is, don't make your people panicky by looking weak or submissive. This wasn't to say that I had to become ruthless and cruel. I had to be firm and soft ... life a cartilage!
And this meeting with the leader of the returning colonists was what that was about.
A woman dressed in a grey business suit entered the meeting room. She looked at him. "Duke David?" she asked.
I gazed at her for a second, taking in her character. She was a woman of average build. Her luscious and wavy hair draped around her left shoulder, half-covering her left eye, and teasing any viewer of her half-exposed chest (I saw better in my own granddaughter). Her amber, downturned eyes clashed with her purple lipstick, though. Overall, an attractive woman, but my brain was wired and controlled by machine more than hormones or instinctual responses. My observations here were just that, observations.
I nodded as I stood up. I walked around the table and extended a hand. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Clearwater. I am indeed Duke David."
She hesitated before she shook my hand. "I have that you were an odd noble, but shaking a commoner's hand goes beyond what they say," she replied with a raised eyebrow.
I frowned. "Is that what the nobles are like these days?"
"Yes. Disdainful and rude."
"I suppose they make poor business partners then."
She chuckled. "Yes, that is true. I hope we can make productive ends by the end of this meeting."
"As do I," I replied in kind as I gestured for her to take a seat.
This meeting room was unlike the one I used to talk to the officers of the Fifth Patrol Fleet. It was smaller, for one, and one of the public meeting rooms in the public sector of the Onuxal Space Station. I had brought in furnitures and the like from the Inner Sector, and the meeting rooms were the first to be decently furnished. This room showed that with the soothing lamps, moderately expansive statues, and marble table at the center of the room.
I sat on the other side as Miss Clearwater took her seat. "So how may I help you, sir?" she asked me.
"... I think you have it wrong, miss," I spoke up with a tone of feigned confusion. "It's not about me but about us."
She didn't make any changes to her facial expression. "Would you mind explaining?"
"Of course," I said as I placed a holoprojector on center of the table. I activated it, and a detailed -if partially classified- roster of the Freyr Sector was shown before her. "Truth be told, the colonists on Quentius are the only registered colonists in my sector, and I intend to keep them."
She didn't speak, but her eyes accused me with how they constricted.
I've read up on Miss Clearwater's history. She was born to a middle class family in the Inner Sector, but lost her family to gangs and debtors. She and many others who had been hit by similar fate gathered together to demand the local noble and judicial court to give them justice. The noble in question, a count, instead fired into the protesters (the intelligence agency has proof that the count still worked with the very gangsters that robbed Miss Clearwater and countless others of their livelihood and family).
Disillusioned with the empire by the event, she led people to the Rimworlds, only to be kicked out by pirates and mechanoids. She returned today with her people as soon as the sector had grown safer.
"You see, I don't understand the empire."
She finally let an expression through that blank mask of hers: confused.
"You have not researched me, I presume?"
"...I tried, but I couldn't find anything about you. Only that you were made duke a few months ago."
I nodded. "That would be because I wasn't alive until a few months ago."
"... An AI?"
I laughed. "Oh, goodness, no. I'm a cryostasised man from few centuries ago."
She stared at me.
"Duke David, please do not joke with me. We're here on a serious business."
I glared at her. "And you should listen to me, young woman, when I say that I am being completely serious," I retorted hotly.
She reared back a little, though it was barely perceptible, even with my bionic eyes.
"What does that have to do with our meeting, my lord?" she asked after taking in a measured breath.
"Ah!" I smiled, all hostility gone from my face and body expression, which was exactly what I willed it to do; good thing about a near completely bionic body is that you can control all expressions of the body. "You see, before I was Duke David Escher Senior of the Freyr Sector of the Escherian Empire, I was the father of Dimitriv Escher and a brigadier of the British Army."
Oh, I loved bombdropping that on people. The facial expression, that shock they showed, was too fun to see.
Before she could refute my statement, I spoke up. "And being a man from the twentieth century, this whole empire business is ... new to me. Some parts are commendable while others, not so much. Count Wall, for example, would've faced criminal charges back where I was from."
Her eyes narrowed. Count Ural Wall was the one who killed the protesters and her family(indirectly), after all.
"And I understand that there are people within the empire who ... have issues with the way that the empire is run. I intend to take them in."
"For what reasons, sir...?"
"... I suppose I was born to be shepherd rather than a general," I smiled sadly. "It became a tick of mine. I mentored NCO's, CO's, civilians, kids, adults, and even my peers as much as I could without thinking about it. Now, you're thinking I would. I did and will do because I like seeing people ... blossom," I grinned. "My primary job is to take care of the sector as I see fit, and I see fit to invite the unwanted of the empire to a place where they can be ... isolated, I suppose," I gestured. "Due to my position as both a Rimworld sector leader and a Duke, I can classify the Freyr Sector as an semi-autonomous sector, thus allowing me to create laws that only affects us and not allow certain other laws to affect us from the empire."
"Y-You intend to do that?" she stuttered.
I nodded. "I've discussed this with the emperor."
"A-And he agreed?"
I nodded. "He did. I could've done it by the law, but it was easy to get approval, making this entire process easier on us," I said, stressing the "us" in the sentence.
After I watched Miss Clearwater leave, I leaned back on the chair and groaned.
Nothing I said was a lie. Mere hours before meeting Miss Clearwater, I called the emperor and was able to receive the approval. The emperor was happy to remove the unwanted, and I agreed with him.
Of course, neither side knew that I was a moderate and had my own agenda beyond "helping" them. I was making myself look like a social reformist -or at least, a sanctuary- to Miss Clearwater, and I was to an extent. I didn't like some parts of the empire, and wished that they could be changed.
I made myself look like a pillar of society wanting to take the burden that was the unwanted from the empire to the emperor. The unwanted in the center of a nation was a disaster waiting to happen, one way or another, and we both knew it.
I was neither that social justice man or a martyr of the empire. To me, they were people that needed a place to thrive in, and I could provide them that sanctuary they wanted, albeit they would have to follow my rules more closely than that of the empire. At least I was going to be more lax on them.
Doesn't mean I won't keep on eye on them.
Nothing I said so far was a lie, but maybe the perceived political and emotional state that they thought they saw in me was a lie.
...
Politics. I hate it. Too fucking complicated.
I sighed and made my way to my home. 'I'd rather be on the battlefield than deal with people...'
...
I was a dumb fucker for asking a battlefield because six months after taking in Miss Clearwater and her people, I got exactly what I asked for.
