“I don’t mean to be rude, but might it be the case that the fine people of Your Excellency’s home world don’t well know how the Star Forces behave?” asked Yestesh, dealing the final blow.
“That’s... that’s maybe true,” Jint acknowledged reluctantly.
It was known throughout the galaxy how the Empire behaved. Otherwise, the safety of Abhs in places the Empire’s tentacles didn’t reach couldn’t be safeguarded. As it stood, it was deemed a fool’s endeavor to take an aggressive attitude against Abh ships without resolving to go to all-out war. However, it was highly questionable whether the Martinese, who hadn’t even known of the existence of the Empire until a mere decade prior, knew any of that. In fact, if they had known, they wouldn’t have attacked the Baucbiruch.
“So, were there any casualties among the crew?” asked Jint, changing the subject.
“None whatsoever. Ninety percent of the crew didn’t even realize we had gotten attacked to begin with.”
“That’s a relief,” he replied, though his self-esteem as a Martinese did get wounded. “Did you get attacked out of nowhere?”
“Yes, we did. They gave us no warning.”
“Why in heavens did they go and...”
“Perhaps they found our continual low-orbit revolutions trying for negotiations objectionable,” said Yestesh calmly. “We were attacked from the surface.”
Jint had already been informed of this through the report he’d read. He reckoned this was a half-baked state of affairs — if the attack had come from a force up in space, then they would’ve riled the ire of the Star Forces, which would then attempt to eradicate all hidden enemy fleets. An attack from the surface, however, wasn’t liable to change anything at all.
“Even if that’s the case, I still don’t get it,” said Jint. “Don’t they know attacking a ship from the surface isn’t going to have any effect...?”
“I was secretly hoping you would be able to explain it to me, Lonh-Dreur.” Yestesh’s tone was dripping with low-key disappointment.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations.”
The transporter arrived at the conference room. They moved to the table in the center, and listened to the official report.
Above the flower garden that extended across the room, the map of Martinh was suspended in the air.
“The numbers of hostile forces on the surface is estimated at around twenty thousand,” began Yestesh. “They are principally composed of the Ma’tye 12th Division of the People’s Sovereign Stellar Union.”
“The PSSU, huh,” said Jint, a little surprised. He was aware that the Empire’s enemy was the Three Nations Alliance, which included the PSSU. But he always ended up chalking up the nations besides the United Humankind as the UH’s second bananas. Plus, it would have been less surprising if they’d been troops from the Greater Alkont Republic.
Each of the interstellar powers found securing the loyalty of their constituents a significant challenge. The Humankind Empire of Abh alone was totally unconcerned, expecting no loyalty out of the landworld citizens of its star systems. On the contrary, they wanted the land peoples under their rule to spend no time thinking about the world beyond their planets, and to focus on making their respective landworlds as wealthy as possible. Those oddballs who did care about worlds beyond had a place in the Empire as imperial citizens.
Unlike the Empire, the other four nations did worry themselves over questions of nationalist loyalty, each trying to solve the issue in their own ways. The UH was the most zealous, as they were expending almost poignant amounts of effort attempting to homogenize the culture of all the planetary societies under them. Then again, only outside observers were so prone to deem such efforts moving. There were many among the direct recipients of the zeal of the UH’s interstellar government who cringed and recoiled. Various currents of strife and dissension existed, especially in the star systems that joined the UH in recent times.
By comparison, the Greater Alkont Republic was a rather more compact nation, yet even they had not succeeded in painting all their systems in a single stroke of homogenization. They were only barely managing to maintain interstellar hegemony through the prominence of the politics, economics, culture, and sheer population of its main star system (named “Alkont”).
The landworlds of the Hania Federation were made up of settlers from the Sumei Star System and their descendants. They didn’t need to put in much effort for cultural homogeneity to persist. They did, however, have a small number of systems with heterogeneous cultures, and moreover, the localism of each star system was on the rise as of late, chipping into the overall homogeneity.
Finally, there was the People’s Sovereign Stellar Union, which had given up on arousing patriotic sentiment toward the interstellar government among the general public. In other words, they were the Lander interstellar power that ran things under the most Abh-like philosophy. Each star system had great autonomy, and the coalition was a loose one. Each star system even maintained its own army. The PSSU was, in essence, a mere mish-mash of affiliated systems. Of course, this made its confederate-style
