This, She Notes
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The Exiles provided everything. When her shuttle landed, there was a wheeled vehicle waiting with a uniformed chauffeur. He saluted, offered his name and rank. He got the passenger side for her, handled her luggage into the trunk and then asked for her desired destination. When quizzed where she could go, he provided a half dozen options, with the last being 'by your guidance, ma'am.'
The young man's hair was cropped tight to his scalp, visible as fuzz below the band of his peaked cap. He kept both hands on the broad wheel, eyes on the road, lower lip protruding a little as he focused. Everything about the vehicle appeared new, from its chunky, rubberized wheels to the boxy bulk of its frame and body. The seats were dense woven fiber, comfortable enough.
"I'm sorry about the truck, ma'am." he said.
"Pardon?"
"It's surplus military. Tauros frame, modified. Nothing fancy, I know. Sorry about that."
"Oh," she said, understanding. Her stylus moved, shorthand notation capturing that factoid away on her datapad, set in her lap. "That's just fine. Call me Brenaz." They merged onto a larger arterial, joining large and rumbling, multi-wheeled vehicles. A small divider of permacrete split apart two directions of traffic.
"Yes ma'am. There's restrictions on landspeeders, you understand." He gestured up, vaguely, toward the roof and the sky beyond. "They've been reclassified as aircraft. The Legion doesn't like aircraft around the landing fields. It has to be ground effect."
"It's really no problem."
Behind, the landing fields still spanned the horizon and they passed new spans of tarmac in construction. The smell of hot tar permeated the cab as they rolled past smoke-stacked crawlers, whose rears extruded the material. Red-robed figures stood along the perimeter, gesturing with limbs that caught the sun.
"They're building more fields," she observed. Her driver nodded.
"Yes ma'am. More every day, there's always more immigrants to process."
"Immigrants, Private?"
Red touched his cheeks.
"Refugees. It's policy to call them immigrants."
"Why's that?"
"'Promotes a positive air of camaraderie and acceptance', ma'am. 'Refugee' was determined to have too negative a meaning to people. Immigrants implies they're here to stay, you know. Be a part of all this."
She noted this down on her datapad.
"And you were an immigrant, Private Satch?"
One hand came off the wheel to rub at his neck.
"Agamar, ma'am. Me and my family, well, most of them."
This too she noted.
Through the windscreen, the arterial ran laser straight. Black tarmac, white paint lines, signs in a language she knew from her documents. Gothic. Never in Basic. It ran straight toward the looming city on the horizon.
"I thought I recognized your accent."
A swipe of her stylus, and his dossier populated her datapad's screen.
Alteen Satch, twenty standard years old. Human, to mother and father Wara and Tane Satch, forty-two and forty-seven. Four siblings, all alive: two brothers and two sisters. Their uncle owned and operated a refueling depot in one of Agamar's smaller cities and through that business had access to a YT-series freighter. The Satch clan, some thirty-five of them, entered SELCORE's database after fleeing Agamar in 60:8, shortly before the invasion.
None of the family were spacers and as the Outer Rim fell they tried to stay ahead of the surge. They filed applications as SELCORE outlined, once a week, rapidly burning through savings to keep fuel in their ship and food on the table. Their break came three months later, when Eboracum was added to SELCORE's roster of host planets.
The Satchs were approved for settlement on the planet. There was short discussion among the elders of the clan about the requirements of their new host, but sentiment was poor about the New Republic. The Core had, in their opinion, abandoned Agamar in favor of Ithor. There was little loyalty.
Among the first through Eboracum Orbital, the Satchs are a shining example of the success of integration onto Eboracum. Private Alteen Satch, twenty, with his hair clipped to his scalp and ruddy starburn on his cheeks and forearms, guides them with glances at signs, in Gothic. The choice of chauffeur was no accident.
This, she notes.
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Energy and expectation draped about Eboracum Civitas like a warm cloak. Each thoroughfare was clean and sharply marked, so crisp and so new she half-expected to still smell the fresh paint. Everything was white-washed, from soaring habitation blocks to sprawling medical facilities and stout, two-story schools. People walked and there were collapsible, twin-wheeled vehicles that she saw racked on bright and burnished metal stands. Few vehicles vied for space on the lanes. Private Satch drove them down, keeping a steady but sedate pace that allowed her easy observation through her rolled-down window. The air was pleasant. Neither too warm nor too cool and the smell of industry was light and present, enervating without being oppressive. The smell of worked metal, drying paint, starched cloth.
This, she notes.
Citizens looked…content. Here, a family shepherded along a gaggle of children. There, two young adults walked hand in hand. Uniformed footmen moved at purposeful clip, carrying satchels on their back with clean labels in a script she did not know.
But if there were citizens about - they were matched in number by those in uniform. Everywhere she looked there were soldiers. Their uniforms were blue and utilitarian, matched to spit-shined boots and soft-bodied, billed caps. They moved in knots and clumps, in orderly marching formations and in open-air trucks just like this 'Tauros' she sat in.
This she did not need to note. It was well-known that Eboracum and the Imperium Exsilius was a military empire. It was, after all, founded by what was admitted to be a pacification fleet whose purpose was to conquer worlds and deliver them into the grasp of their far-distant Imperium. Much ado had been made about that, of course. An expansionist autocratic empire plucking a non-member world right outside the Colonies? It was certainly concerning and would have raised greater flags had the Imperium Exsilius not come to the table with clear statements that they:
A: had no blasted idea where they were
B: did not wish to enter in hostilities at all with the New Republic
It was hard to view the 4711th Expeditionary Fleet (and that name explained much) as anything but a strictly local, not even regional, concern. Their ships were big, their people were serious and their organization seemed robust, but on a grander scale? In SELCORE's offices, no one was willing to look a gifted starship right in the hyperdrive. If they wanted to take thousands - millions - of humans in and give them citizenship, food, medicine, you name it, then they could have been the Galactic Empire itself and SELCORE might not have batted an eye.
It was hard to undersell just how awful circumstances were becoming for the masses fleeing the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor.
Some racist humans were far from the worst place to drop refugees.
Their first stop was what the Exiles called a Schola Imperialis. It was a campus more than a single building. White-columned architecture struck a note of some grandeur, as did marble statues of serious looking men and women in greatcoats and bearing sabers, blasters and other tools of war. The grounds were green and everywhere she saw freshly sown grasses and young trees, transplanted, that would one day form bowers around the imposing statuary.
Seven large halls surrounded the central green and hundreds of humans moved along crushed gravel paths. She saw people carrying physical books alongside chunky datapads, talking and gesturing.
Private Satch opened her door and she stepped out, stretching after the long drive from the starport. A man - of sorts - awaited her at the curb, wearing a long tunic with red sash about the waist. He offered one of two right hands, smiling metallic teeth between normal, fleshy lips. His skull was shaved smooth and elongated, blinking with a series of lights that ran from his temples back to the nape of his neck.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. Inspector Sheen Brenaz, is it?"
"I am," she agreed, shaking his offered and mechanical hand. His flesh and blood one remained gently holding the edge of his tunic.
"Historitor Kechane," he inclined his head. "I'm a professor at the Schola, though I have no classes for the day. May I?" He gestured with his left hand, toward the central green.
"Lead on. I've heard a great deal of your Schola."
He explained the functioning as he led her along paths, pointing out heroes and notables captured in stone. As SELCORE already knew, the 'Schola Imperialis' was not just this campus but many, scattered throughout the ever-growing Civitas. Each was a place for not only the young to be educated by the older too. By edict of Fastus Foltrus, High Suzerain of Eboracum, all newly naturalized citizens were to be taught of the Imperium, Terra, and the nature of life as a 'member of humanity'.
"We teach history here, of course," the Historitor stated, rather obviously. "Both long distant history and recent. My speciality is the history of the Crusade, since its launching from Terra and Mars. It's the most important event in human history, after all. The reclaiming of our birthright among the stars. Very captivating stuff, I think. I've heard my class is popular."
Other classes spoke on social expectations, taught the language of 'Low Gothic' and further delved deeper into the particular strain of 'Imperial' culture that the 4711th brought with them: that of Ultramar, a realm within the greater Imperium.
Sheen Brenaz kept track of little mentions Kechane let slip, about other realms within the greater 'Imperium'. A picture grew in her mind of not a single monolith culture but an assemblage of unique and subservient 'client' states, something that made a great deal more sense if the Exiles were to be believed about ruling over an entire other galaxy. No one could seriously hope to enforce a centralized culture that way, even though Palpatine certainly gave it a good try.
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They were exiting one of the halls, this one set aside from language and literature when she passed an Arkanian. Brenaz did a double-take, slowing, watching the pale-skinned alien walk away. Kechane noted and paused as well.
"That's an Arkanian," she said, confused. The Exiles had been explicit and emphatic on their refusal to accept any refugees beyond human. For some, a major sticking point, for others, an unfortunate and unsurprising requirement. Brenaz, who grew up under the Empire, had taken the news in stride, though privately disappointed.
"Ah." Kechane rubbed his hands together - very strange in motion, given he had three. "The 'Arkanian' designate substrain. It's curious that your Republic classifies them as 'near' human, when they are, by all metrics, human."
Feeling rather off balance, she instead just sort of waved a hand toward the Arkanian's back and raised an eyebrow.
"Pigmentation variations are exceedingly common among branches of the tree of homo sapiens. Exposure to extraterrestrial pressures can often result in genetic drift to better suit new environments. It's a mark of how robust humanity is, you see, that we are able to both shape new worlds to ourselves and shape ourselves to fit new worlds. There are unacceptable degrees of deviation, of course - what we would term 'mutant', but the Arkanian branch passes all scrutiny with ease. Pigmentation variance, slight expansion of visual light spectrum, the loss of a single digit? Well within acceptable."
"So…Eboracum will accept Arkanians?"
"We accept humans," Kechane stressed. "It's not our fault that you miscategorize your own species."
Brenaz looked about, scanning the crowd, looking with new eyes for - ah, another.
"Zeltrons?"
"Zeltros-substrain also within normal variation."
Now that she had noticed, it was like she was noticing them everywhere. She saw a few more Zeltrons, another Arkanian, a few Pantoran and a Mirialan.
"The mistake your Republic makes is one of cultural obsession, rather than genetic precedence. Many of what you term 'near-human', we have found to be purely human, merely with mildly divergent traits. You look at an Arkanian and see 'an Arkanian', not a human with arkanian features. Reproductive capability and the production of viable and fertile offspring further proves this fact." Kechane beamed a great smile. "This is the beauty of what the Imperium brings to teach. That all these people, who thought themselves apart and different, are instead but branches on the vast and mighty tree that is humanity. It is an honor to be able to open their eyes."
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With the Schola behind and Kechane's declarations bouncing around her mind, Brenaz was led through entirely less interesting but far more important tours. Private Satch delivered her to a bustling and noisy manufactorum, where sweaty-faced men and women worked at long and winding assembly lines to produce piles upon piles of well-machined blasters.
"Lasrifles," barked the manufactorum's overseer in correction, a red-robed melange of meat and metal that called itself 'Cybersmith Tlakos'. That this thing was considered 'human' made Kechane's considerations on what defined a human make a little more sense.
She took the time to speak with some of the workers, those on break and those coming into their shift. The former were tired but appeared content, telling her that the work was demanding and the 'Cybersmith' had high standards to follow, but the pay was fair and the hours manageable. Everyone was paid in 'Thrones', a local currency that was accepted by all trade and merchants in the Civitas. Credits, it seemed, were quite out of favor on Eboracum.
Brenaz pressed on treatment of workers and learned that during education at the Schola, newly arrived refugees were given aptitude testing to find where best they could serve the Imperium, and then offered a short list of jobs to accept once their 'education' was complete. Re-education, really, and Brenaz heard a lot speaking Basic still, alongside their clumsier Low Gothic knowledge.
She picked another factory nearby, one that had not been on the planned itinerary and to her surprise and some pleasure, Private Satch was allowed to drop her off there as well. This one did not have a member of the 'Martian Mechanicum' overseeing it directly, but rather, to the Exile's credit, an original citizen of Pirve, who had worked their way up the ranks. She was a stern and serious woman, but was willing to walk Brenaz through her factory and demonstrate a few things here and there. Instead of lasrifles, this one produced the packs that carried the charge for the weapons, and as such dealt with much more hazardous materials. Workers here wore thickened overalls, rubberized gloves and filtration masks. Again, a good sign.
Hard work, but none of it like the rumors from SallicheAg.
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The next, and second to last stop, would be the Civitas' Arbites precinct. Then after that, a fifteen minute audience with the High Suzerain himself, which Brenaz was very much looking forward to. She'd heard a lot about these 'Ultramarines' and while a few had been visible at the starport, it was always from a distance.
Traffic was thicker toward the center of the Civitas, though never standstill. It still didn't make sense why they didn't use airspeeders and stacked traffic lanes, but at least the groundcar never ended up stuck and waiting. Whoever designed the layout of the Civitas' traffic grid had done so with room enough for the imagined growth of the city.
"Just how many people do live here, anyway," she mumbled, not expecting an answer.
"I think it's just over five million, now."
She goggled at Satch, the Private still focused on traffic.
"Five? Pirve had a population of just barely that!"
"Every day brings more!" Satch's voice was filled with pride. "I've heard that in another year, it should be ten, maybe fifteen!"
Muttering an oath, Brenaz shook her head. A local power now, but at this kind of expansion, maybe discounting them as a regional power wasn't quite right… And SELCORE was feeding it with every approved refugee liner. She worried her lip with her teeth, glancing down at her datapad and scrolling back through her notes. Nothing but positive impressions so far. She was looking for problems and so far, Eboracum was irritatingly accommodating.
And why shouldn't they be, Brenaz couldn't help but think. It behooved them to keep the flow of immigrants coming. If they weren't now fighting the Yuuzhan Vong at Fondor and now in-system - the news had been flowing in for the past several days - she'd almost be wary about how perfectly timed the Exile's appearance was to capitalize on the burgeoning refugee crisis.
A strong military, a clearly capable industrial base, all just waiting for the people to make it work? Very convenient for them. Very convenient.
Her thoughts were cut short by a low, rolling wail that ramped up, up and up and louder until it made her chest vibrate and teeth rattle.
"What in the stars is that?" she shouted, barely audible. The klaxon wail rolled off, trailing into near-silence before beginning again.
Satch slowed the truck, rolling to a halt against the curb. His face was white, bloodless under his cropped hair.
"Those are the sirens-" he cried. "They do a test at the end of every week, but this isn't-"
Brenaz swung her door wide, hopping out, craning her neck and peering up.
The ghostly-blue/grey disc of Eboracum Orbital hung straight above, large as her thumb held out at arm's length. Shapes moves around it, traffic coming and going - and then there were tiny threads like silver, blinking and flickering. Lights, like morning stars lit and bloomed and Brenaz had seen this all before.
"They're fighting in orbit," she breathed, the words stolen and lost under the siren's wail.
Private Satch slid over the hood, grabbing hold of her elbows and tugging her off the street, toward a nearby, column-faced building.
"We need to get into the bunkers! Come on!"
She had to see. There was a shape up there, details barely visible, that she knew was the dreadnought Mantallikes. She could see it firing, endless streamers of bright points that reached out toward darker, smaller shapes that, even as she watched, stretched and vanished into hyperspace. Satch tugged at her, tugged hard, but she shook him off and even he paused, gape-mouthed, watching too. Explosions bloomed like tiny, tiny shining flowers around Eboracum Orbital.
A needle-like shape of one of the incoming barges puffed and became a cloud of fire, shadows growing sharper around her. She felt the brightness of day increase for a moment.
Sirens wailed. Citizens hurried, in surprising order, toward the closest buildings, entering through doors flung wide by the occupants. Soldiers dashed around, shouting and barking orders and then lightning flashed hard on the horizon, out toward the low range of mountains that were a smear of dark color. Flashed again, and again, in straight lines that pierced up and up, vertical lightning that struck from ground to sky in reversal of nature.
Orbital cannons, she thought numbly.
"This isn't like before!" Satch shouted into her ear. "We need to go!"
One thing caught her eye.
Eboracum's largest moon, a pale disc twice the size of Eboracum Orbital, wrapped in thin cloud and electrical storms. It had emerged over the horizon around midday, pale and washed out. Brenaz, ears ringing and teeth vibrating in her skull, half deafened by the sirens, narrowed her eyes at the celestial body.
"Private," she shouted, but he couldn't hear her. She looped an arm over his shoulders, pulling him close, mouth to his ear. "Private Satch, what's wrong with the moon?"
Cloud patterns boiled suddenly on its face. Even so far away, ripples of light from what had to be continent-spanning sheets of lightning illuminated rapidly growing smudges of hurricanes.
He shouted back four words and Brenaz felt gooseflesh ripple up her neck and arms.
"Is it getting bigger?"