We deem our cause most holy,
We know we're in the right,
And twenty million freemen
Stand ready for the fight.
Our pride is fair Columbia,
No stain her beauty mars,
On her we'll raise the brave old flag
That bears the stripes and stars.
-Union song of the American Civil War
It was a common complaint of Imperial propagandists that the 'so-called democratic Alliance' President-Chair happened to be one of its wealthiest heiresses and businesswomen. Their efforts might have borne fruit with humbler citizens, had they not generally proceeded to call Jennifer Dolittle a painted lesbian pervert. Exemplary of the ruined womanhood, no less than enfeebled manhood, that like an untreated foul disease, etcetera.
Hugh and Dolittle had indeed been the largest shipping conglomerate in the Alliance, almost since its foundation. Until John Dolittle's eldest daughter had absconded from a political engagement and rolled out the Fairy Jane company, which overtook H&D before she finished university. She had invested her allowance brilliantly, taken swifter advantage of new technology, made invaluable contacts both in society and at school – friendship and considered courage had been her watchwords, since her first presidency of the old school yacht club.
It was as if the people all wanted her to win, which was in fact the general case. H&D were an ossified business dynasty, almost Imperial in their tediousness. Jenny Dolittle was brilliant as she was generous, beautiful as she was gay, an invincible romantic heroine. The triumph of all the Alliance's pride; the hope of all her people's dreams.
Following a fairytale wedding to childhood sweetheart Lynn Lambretta – possibly the most dashing butch ever to rock a tuxedo – the happy couple were among the first same-sex partners to be blessed with beautiful, biological children. Their conception burdened both little girls with genetic defects, but the millions of dinar Jenny poured into their treatment redounded to the benefit of medical science and tens of thousands more children throughout the Alliance. Their mother called the girls her little pioneers, and devoted herself to their comfort.
After all the extraordinary things she and her friends had done, it still shocked the galaxy when Jenny stood for President in her fortieth year, without prior political experience, and was handily elected. On a platform of absolute and unrelenting enmity to the Galactic Empire.
"Fellow citizens, my friends; please imagine a little girl. Born to the richest noble house of the Empire, or their poorest serf. Neither family imagine any use for their girl but marriage, indissoluble as a chain, to the richest man willing. As soon as decently possible - sooner, even in the core worlds. If this child has any other dream, there is no remedy but beating and starvation. If she loves women, there is no cure but rape. If she flees, as I fled, then a thousand complaisant star systems hunt, mock and shame her, driving her back to the rape of the soul that is slavery. If she survives, it is as a woman whose only pride is in the amputation of her rights and powers. Whose only ambition is to support her fathers and brothers in the destruction of democracy, our entire way of life, everything our children hold dear.
"My friends; may we coexist with this vast and evil Empire? The Hun have changed since Goldenbaum's day, they have their reformers! Whose spoken purpose is the purge of weak leaders and return to the glory days of the vilest monster in history – strong leadership and genocide! Count Lohengramm, the great young hope of the Empire, openly takes Goldenbaum as his model. I assure you, he is the true heir, with his impotent Kaiser, to that blind and idiot cosmic monster! Goldenbaum, the insatiable murderer, who strove to banish freedom, justice, reason itself from his universe – yet the bloody dog is dead, and 13 billion children of Arne Heinessen live!
"Still, the Hun revere that dead monster as their god! They have never repudiated his genocide, repealed his laws, or conceived that dictatorship, father of genocides, has never been a principle fit for the governance of humans – unless cowardice cannot admit a millennial mistake. Count Lohengramm's 'enlightened dictatorship' is poison for the pigeons; whatever rights he offers his grateful slaves, he shall snatch back at will. If the Empire should ever gain final victory in this war that I mean to end, I promise you the old work will begin again. I will be killed for what I am. With my wife and our children, who carry our tainted genes. With as many of your children as will not bow in silence to the tyrant, as all who know love and freedom, who will not bow - !"
Thousands of hearers who did, in fact, value their liberty, could no longer keep silence. Jenny's rosy neck shone with sweat under the stadium lights. Her still-lovely head, golden as a schoolgirl, bowed solemnly to the people.
"My friends; can we fully defeat this vast and evil Empire? I can never see my wife's smile in my daughter's eyes without knowing this; free people are both stronger and smarter than tyrants and slaves! Freedom is invention and innovation. The hard but happy work of honest citizens, for our friends, families and futures, not for the luxury of bloated barons! You will see how much of my fortune shall be poured into this crusade, and you have seen by my divestments that I do not stand to make one unnecessary dinar – but I swear that the poorest of us all will profit, in ridding the universe of tyranny. Our military technology is superior, our civil technology greatly superior. Our productivity, the education, innovation and motivation of our workers, ridiculously superior! The Hun has nothing on their side but numbers. Vast resources, managed with such absolute corruption that its whole history has been one long disaster. Armies of slaves – and not one of them, still capable of human feeling, who does not know his children's lives will be safer and sweeter for freedom's victory!
"I do not believe that ours is a perfect Alliance – we have our crimes and corruptions, but we have just laws and fair trials that I will see end them! I believe our beloved Alliance is still marching ahead, to Uncle Arne's promised land. I believe it is worthy to advance and will, and is the greatest republic of friends that human history has known! We will join hands in the strength of trust, against the coming trial. The absolute selfishness of our worst enemies makes them dangerous, but there is no trial, no danger, that our grit, ingenuity and friendship cannot overcome!"
-0-
The 796 UC invasion of the Galactic Empire ended with the direst military defeat in Alliance history. President Dolittle's statement to the High Council was her most succinct.
Fleet Admiral Lobos, among others, was fired. Commodore Falk would be permanently memorialised in the log of every warship as 'unfit to serve the republic in the uniform of a bellhop'. The hero of El-Facil had been promoted to Admiral. Reported war crimes by Alliance soldiers against border worlds would be tried and punished. The greater crimes of Reinhardt von Lohengramm, architect of history's hugest man-made famine and millions of civilian deaths, would be avenged.
"And?" Job Trunicht, Transport Secretary, was on his feet, "Your resignation, Madam President?"
"NUTS"
Jenny Dolittle sat down with no other word. Four years had etched the lines of unsleeping nights in her face – still fearsome as an eagle, and as lovely. No one else dared a single word; they knew now that no words would ever defeat Jenny Dolittle, any more than Reinhardt von Lohengramm.
Public controversy was furious. The President's massed supporters asserted that she could not be blamed for the incompetence of senile generals. Her detractors countered that she was a dumb trust-fund dyke, playing at politics, who had probably bought her election (The license of straight white men with trust funds or titles to prosecute senseless slaughter having been long established).
The eminent professor of history, Yang Wenli, averred that if Lincoln had resigned over Fredericksberg, or Churchill over the fall of Singapore - history in the long run wouldn't have been much changed. Few knew what to make of that, and fewer paid any attention.
"Ours isn't a neurotic half-democratic state, transfixed by authority," His young but responsible husband, Julian, hastily expanded to their friends, "We're not the ancient Romans, or late Japanese. Our leaders aren't obliged to fall on their swords, whenever disaster strikes. We honour our civilian leaders above our military, as they are, in fact, ranked above them in democracy. As our brave, loyal military has deferred to our chief representative's judgement...on this terrible disaster."
Defence Secretary Cornelia Windsor, the President's heir-apparent, refused all inducements to throw her old schoolchum under the bus. The only other possible replacement was Job Trunicht; not only a very boring man, but incompetent, transparently corrupt and despised by everyone except his supporters. Politicians who had opposed the invasion on the grounds of expense, as if another richer or stronger republic was about to appear and save humanity, resigned from the Dolittle administration. Jenny was only saddened that her former friends had proved sheep in sheep's clothing.
With loans from Phezzan, the Alliance was in no danger of bankruptcy. Owing to her vast pool of skilled and ambitiously diligent workers, unhindered by Imperial corruption, civilian life had suffered less from the defeat than the Empire had from victory – except for the millions who had lost parents, spouses, siblings, children and friends to the slaughter in space. The forthcoming election - that would have been a shoo-in, if Jenny had stuck at Iserlohn fortress and a worthless treaty of peace - would be difficult. To say nothing of ending an unended war. So, Jenny left the Council Chambers for a private conference with the hero of El-Facil, Admiral Kaizuka Kei, and Representative Jessica Edwards, the face of the Citizen's Anti-War Union.