|Viraliv|[20-14]Sliue-Ececs|Ora’s Eye|Tepi|Tepi-3|
11,163,955,738cy
Terraformer Station ‘Favala’, Low Tepi-3 Orbit
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#Point of View of Simiffin
I let out a groaning noise as I rub my digits against my forehead, an attempt at relaxing my nerves. My, now noticeably, tight face relaxes a bit at the touches. The battle just ended, the main battle in the reactor room may have ended hours ago but small skirmishes were still abundant. Not to mention that my situation was not restricted to conflict aboard the station but also involved the colonies, now seemingly habitual, descent into chaos. Luckily the colony was, in comparison, easier and decidedly less bloody to control. Without any real cause to their chaos they quilted down quickly once they realized that everything on the station was under control.
Many were lost, from both sides, and the station will have a hard time recouping the losses. Some sections of the station sustained critical damage and had to be cordoned off for a long repair cycle. It was a win, but considering all that was lost it can’t be considered as much. The only win was that I got to stay in power; personally I don’t know if that’s a position I deserve to be in anymore. It seems like ever since I got into power it’s been downhill. Not that there’s anything I can do about it right now, finding someone to replace me would just cause more instability right now. And there’s always the worry that the one you entrust has other, more extreme, ideas on how to be Captain.
Another thing gained from this was time. The other factions won’t be as opportunistic for the time being, not to mention that many of them were destroyed or damaged. On the other hand it means that the surviving factions will grow stronger by absorbing what’s left. It’s not something that I can worry about right now though, the soldiers need rest. Honestly, I need rest too but I can’t bring myself to, not when there’s so much to do. There’s a huge backlog of the general administrative duties but there’s an additional load of things due to the conflict. What to do with the prisoners, the other factions, all of that. Oh, right! The Medentis faction is still awaiting our decision regarding the political parties.
There’s so much to do and yet it seems like everytime I go to focus on it, something new pops up and demands my attention; or some situation occurs that sets me back. Really the stress is getting to me, usually Shanak’Ti is there for that but, all civilians were evacuated from the station at the first notice of organized combat. She’ll likely be here tomorrow at the earliest. A shame really.
Another thing that has been drawing on my mind is the mysterious situation involving a bomb going off not too far away from the main CIC. The enemy for sure but why did they set the bomb off there, at worst it takes resources to repair the hull and for now it makes logistics harder but there are stupendously better targets. I’ve heard rumors of unknown people moving in that area around the same time, the enemy or some unknown ally. The fact that there’s very little information outside of rumors worries me the most. They might have been our allies this time but their unwillingness to show themselves means that they don’t align with us fully. And they seem capable enough to access our most important sections of the station, and to do so without us noticing.
We should be receiving another ship from TFS, we’ll have to put in an order for more people and the resources necessary to repair the Favala. Those aren’t resources that most planets can produce, even the hull is made from a cutting edge source of titanium. Not to mention the methods used to produce it are even more secretive. Honestly the “fireworks” were more demoralizing than open conflict. The station is meant to provide some mental stability to the people, like a giant shield to hide behind. So long as it's stable, and in most cases it will be, then the people can hold onto hope. Explosions on the inside are not something that it particularly excels at though. Hopefully something good happens soon, the transports might bring some news about the war, that’s sure to brighten the people up. And hopefully make them forget about the blossoming that they saw. But, maybe they’re already sick of conflict and more news of it will be worse than no news.
Most of the soldiers were sent down to the colony, both in efforts to reestablish control and as a form of shore leave. Many of them require time to deal with the mental weight of what happened. Normally conflicts like that don’t happen, we couldn’t use heavy firearms and it was in tight enclosed spaces so you could see every bit of graphic detail. The battle dragged on too, enough time for the soldiers to drop their guards after they won. That’s what killed many even after the actual battle was long past, a small group of rogue soldiers rushed out of the generator room and escaped down to the colony below. One of them, a Thelsk, even more reckless for its kind, threw a high explosive into the room. Luckily nothing catastrophic happened and they were quickly captured and put in prison but the story spread throughout the colony quickly. The other factions were quick in using them as living heroes who valiantly went against my tyrannical government, of course, and still managed to live.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
That’s the tale anyway. It didn’t seem to work as much as they wanted though, the people seem to see the conflict as going too far to achieve whatever goals they desire. In time they might forget though.
Nothing to do about that right now, I don’t want to stir up any trouble. However, this does give me an opportunity. Now would be a good time to finally decide on what to do concerning political parties, Shanak’Ti might not be here for advice but that’s fine. Making my own decisions is something that I need to get used to. And it’s something that I need to decide before I can even think about going to bed, of course the actual work will be done long after but I need to decide the direction today.
Many hours go by, just working on the busy work that built up during the conflict. I can only approach it in a distracted manner, too many thoughts weigh on my mind; especially guilt. I know that I shouldn’t be feeling guilty, Shank’TI would chastise me, but it’s not something I can help. I do think that leaders should feel some guilt when something goes wrong, even if they didn’t cause it, just to ground them to the common person. Even through it, I eventually finish, likely with some errors but those can be fixed sometime later. Then I sit there thinking, balancing the advantages and malisis on the different approaches to political parties. Now’s the best time to do this, we can show the people that we understand their desire to have their voices more directly heard. That would also show that even after we had won a large dispute with one of those potential parties that we are willing to look past it for the people. Other governments, more focused on unchallenged authority, would’ve used this momentum to root out all other factions.
The choice was simple after some deliberation on what I’m trying to achieve. That is, to give the people a fair government, for the people to have confidence in us in an effort to reduce the chaos, and to steal away the more extreme faction’s foundations. The last one is the crippling blow needed to cull off any of the factions that would resort to more conflict to get their way as those who joined them will surely be disheartened with their recent losses. Especially when a safer and steadier alternative exists in the form of a party. In that case the final decision is a representative party system, whereby if a party gets enough of the voter base then they are a party with full rights. Get below the specific amount of votes and you are allowed to sit in on government meetings and voting but cannot play an active part, at least not directly.
This is also a move that will satisfy the deal with the Medentis faction, ever mysterious as always. At least if the recent conflict hasn’t changed anything on their side of the deal. Regardless I plan to move ahead, what follows will be lots and lots of meetings with the various councils and also the temporary government. We can finally begin to bring things back to order and the factions are nearly out of the way, well the extreme ones, the more peaceful ones will be welcomed as official and legitimate parties. It’s unknown how the people will exactly react, other than excitement at the prospect of a democratic and more familiar government.
With the direction going forward decided I find myself with nothing to do. It’s late in the night, even the other officers, also busy with backlogged work, have gone off duty for the night. I quickly sign out for the night and head to bed, too mentally tired to even eat though I didn’t notice I was even hungry until my mind was absent.
The day after my decision was made was incredibly eventful, or perhaps lively would be a better way to put it. I quickly set about to pulling my advisors and head officers into a meeting. They thought it would be about the conflict and were all very prepared for that. Once I told them what the meeting was actually about they went into a stupor for a while. Obviously they didn’t think that it was the time for this but I told them, precisely, why I thought it was in fact the best time for this. Eventually they relented, out of respect or because I convinced them I don’t know, and the meeting room very quickly grew a few octaves in volume. Shouting, yelling, and vibrantly colored hair was a common sight in every meeting but especially one such as this. Perhaps it was the energy carried over after having won an engagement; a feeling that some in this meeting haven’t felt at all and for others something not felt in a long time.
It was… fun to me, somehow. Just watching them argue, all of it in the best interest of the colony. This is what I wanted, no factional disputes or bloody conflict. This feeling cemented my decision about the parties in my mind. Even the deal with the Medentis faction falling apart wouldn’t stop me at this point.
A resolution was quickly found, working off of our previous work on the same topic expedited the process. The actual content of it, the writing, figuring out how it would fit into the current system, things like that took a few more days and after that the government was brought into the conversation. Although the current government is mostly just the minimum needed to run, no actual leadership is present besides managerial, they’ll still be needed to work out all of the fine details of our scheme.
That took even longer. About a dozen days passed before we got a substantial update. It gave me the idea that there should be a better system to implement things but on the other side, the government is meant to be doing all of this in the first place. This was simply an emergency situation and further integration of the military command and government would be crossing a line. Luckily, going by the reports, it seems like the factions were substantially cowed and didn't try to intervene. Or just that the remaining influential factions desire such an outcome.
In such a rush, we forget to tell the people. They were simply waiting in silence after seeing the station deteriorated into chaos, soldiers rushed into the colony to regain control, and then nothing. Nothing official from me anyway, no flags were changed or anything like that so the people assumed the status quo but still, usually something like that is acknowledged. I’ve never been good at these and all of the excitement from getting all of this work done has already left my body. I decide to save it for the next day, they can wait a bit longer for the news.