Only hours later, Lieutenant General Salomon found himself standing at the top of the stairs leading into the Military Headquarters. With an approachable yet evidently un-civilian uniform on with a beret on his well-groomed scalp, he stood behind a podium. Behind him to the right stood Lieutenant Colonel Antelius, rifle in hand, and to the left was a member of Team Zero. Before him at the bottom of the stairs and all over the sprawling plaza that led to the building were up to a million Titanian civilians—a phenomenal number of people but only a tiny fraction of the roughly three billion individuals with Titanian ancestry across the solar system. Most of them wore clothes in the standard white that was loved all across the Empire, but some wore garments of gold or purple, meant to show that they were mourning. Indeed, Salomon had gathered them all to finally officially announce the devastation that had occurred on Terra.
“As most of you have heard through whispers, our Empire has suffered a great loss. What was supposed to be a historic night, meant to usher in a brand-new era for our people, became one that no one at all had expected. It remains historic, no doubt, but not for the same reason anymore. The man who we trusted and believed to have been one of our most loyal compatriots had unexpectedly revealed himself to be a traitor to the Empire. The usurper Egon Linden showed himself to be at the forefront of a never-before-seen terrorist organisation with operatives from the northern part of the Terran continent,”
Fabian gave himself a few moments to pause, allowing his great audience to react. Many gasped, many groaned, and some yelled but they were immediately silenced when guards at the sidelines glanced at them menacingly. There would be no second warnings, not in front of the Lieutenant General.
“The terrorists were not weak. The New Yeupisians, as we have decided to name them, traveled hundreds of leagues from the north of the continent to the centre of the southern portion covertly, carrying with them articles of weaponry and armor that terrorists of previously encountered groups had never possessed, and I believe we all know how. Not only were they funded by usurper Linden, but they also have the assistance of the Anti-Imperialists whom we had not taken as a serious threat for perhaps too long. Of the 287 guests, consisting of media, members of our nobility and military personnel, the terrorists had murdered 94 of them and gravely wounded 103 of them in cold blood, with many more who will live with psychological wounds. We also regret to announce that among the casualties was one of our strongest, most brave souls… our beloved General and Regent Rhona Karesti,”
Fabian paused again. Many groaned and yelled again, but more than a few were heard weeping. A number of attendees had arrived straight from the funerals of their loved ones to hear the Lieutenant General’s address.
“Although we do not know if he was connected to the New Yeupisians, the traitor known as Gareth Koppel added fire to the flame, but our fast-thinking General acted immediately to protect everyone. This beast, who has killed hundreds of our brothers and sisters mercilessly in the past, was finally taken into custody after an hours-long battle that left our dear General incapacitated. But fear not, she lives. This was the worst possible way for our Empire to start off our new year. However, our great military was quick to react and respond, and by the end of this encounter nearly half of a thousand of their members were dead. Our military has proved that no matter what novel challenges it encounters, we will always, always come out on top. To honour our fallen brothers and sisters and to prevent another terrible incident like this again, we will be starting a new military operation on the Terran continent to drive the New Yeupisians from our possessions in the south out and to neutralise them and whatever assets they have in the north. By the end of it, they will be yet another group wasting away in the dust, fertilising the plains that await the seeds we shall bring!”
The crowd erupted into great applause, the collective sound of two million hands clapping causing a very slight vibration throughout the area. Salomon copied them but was using the pause in his speech as an opportunity to observe the attendees at the front of the crowd, an area reserved for his fellow high-ranking military colleagues and members of important noble families. Most of them clapped to the same tempo, but a pair of slower hands caught his eye. They were covered in golden gloves covering up to the elbow. The rest of the person’s body was clad in a frilly white dress, save for a golden veil on their head to display their mourning. Underneath the lace that covered the young woman’s face was a subtle smirk that only someone who was as well-versed in reading body language as Salomon could discern.
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The Calvo family, Salomon observed. I must not let these people seize too much influence. With Rhona gone…
“As for the Martian terrorists,” he barked, ending their applause. “We will not allow their misbehaviour to go unanswered. To address their actions, we will…”
--
During those two days of stressful deliberation with the War Council, Fabian had made a few realisations. The point of the Shargara Conference was not simply to acknowledge the toil and loyalty of Terran-born Titanians towards the Empire but was also both a warning and invitation to the Terrans themselves. Rhona would’ve never even looked someone as low-ranked as a baron, let alone one raised among Terrans, in the eye but had accepted his proposal to host the conference in order to send forward the message that the Titanians everywhere were united against a common Terran threat. Security wasn’t at all her biggest objective—it would all be torn up and scattered by Gareth anyway, Fabian reasoned. After knowing of his survival on Terra, it was a trap for him as much as it was a battlement without stairs to leave from for Rhona. She was the only soldier of the Titanian Military present that was strong enough to defeat Gareth in any capacity and still survive at the end, even if barely. After all they were the oldest and strongest members of the most powerful remaining bloodline of Titanians, excluding the incapacitated Halsten.
The purpose of the Shargara Conference was to announce a requisition of fertile, rich lands up north, but there would be a justification for it. No, despite how cruel Rhona was, she didn’t purely wreak havoc on the innocents of Terra for the fun of it as her father had. She needed an official reason, and a terrorist attack on numerous high-ranking Angels would be just that. The general officers of the War Council agreed that Rhona had wished to mount an attack on the northerners as retribution for harbouring the Red Devil, but she couldn’t have expected a full-on terrorist attack from them. After all, how would they have known about it? All she could predict and expect was Gareth’s arrival, but what had actually transpired turned out better than what was originally planned.
The Titanian Military sent units of roughly 500 troops each equally spaced out over the width of central south Yeupis, half of each team surveying on the unfamiliar, foreign ground while the other 250 observed from above in Crafts, ready to provide support and transport any prisoners of war that would be captured. That is, if any survived the initial onslaught. Thus this would be a war of many battles, and whoever won the most would win the war. Once they reached the Marius Mountains, thousands more troops would be deployed for even more intense war and to seize agricultural lands while building settlements in close proximity to already existing Terran communities in order to intimidate and access necessary resources. But this operation would take time, and even traveling northwards to the Mountains would take at least a few months. At the very least, they would not have to worry about southerners protecting the soldiers from the north. The Titanians knew of their tense history and used it to their advantage.
For the southerners, the new operation was little more than a slightly larger than usual military presence. That didn’t matter much, for the threat of a northerner conflict was more of an issue for them than the continued presence of occupying extraterrestrial forces, using their lands and labour to produce materials for them. Long ago up until the last Solich Emperor, the southerners too were in a predicament similar to the northerners, not knowing when they’d be brutalised by them or why. But they’d made a deal with their overlords, offering their bodies for work with little compensation and their properties to do the work on in exchange for protection from the northerners. That was why the Marius Mountains had been constructed, using billions of tons of rock shipped in from the sparsely populated Titanian homeland over the course of a decade. A few more soldiers on their streets and above their heads? That was something they could deal with.