Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Interlude - Playing Politics

It was generally agreed that humans had a vulgar and artless name for the ancient institution, a name which had a more appropriate level of poetry to it in nearly every other language known to the milky way, spoken or otherwise. Humans called it the "Parliament of Stars".

The Parliament of Stars, by any name, was a loose assembly of the various hyperspace capable species, the so-called FTL Players. The Parliament was the only means by which the group could police itself. It was kept relevant only by the support of the three great galactic powers: the Successors of Inxon, the Erkglurk and the Aggregate of Societies. By the weight of their might was the Parliaments laws enforced.

The vast bureaucracy of the Parliament was housed in a grand cathedral of a space station known to the limp-tongued humans as Concordance Orbital. The enclosed cylindrical station was a work of alien beauty that could not be comprehended by humanity any more than its name could be translated.

Concordance Orbital was older than the first appearance of life on Earth. The star around which it orbited had long ago cooled to a brown dwarf.

Here two FTL Players, the Chuusqod Salient Authority and the Zo Cluster, were sponsoring a petition by the Gug-Gug-Gugs to have the Human Cooperative's war against them declared illegal on basis of technological asymmetry. The Chuusqods of course being long standing allies and former clients of the Old Ones, and the Zo Cluster being territorial rivals of the Cooperative. Biased or not the petition was properly made and it was to be heard before the Tribunal of Peerage.

The most insulting part of the whole affair was the fact that the Cooperative had nothing to do with the war. The Cooperative scrupulously kept its nose out of other people's business to a level that some found downright pathological. These attacks were all A.R.C.'s doing.

The Shalkernon-Rezabeik Gestalt was sympathetic to the goals of A.R.C. He even tried to help them when he could do so without being seen to be helping them. Be he resented how difficult they made his job.

"The fact of the matter is the war isn't illegal because we're not fighting the Gug-gug-gugs," said Elaine Quartermass, Lodge Mistress of the Neutronium Dragons, "they're just proxies for the Old Ones. We've known the plan for over a year now: the Old Ones provide weapons technology to the Gug-gug-gugs and support their annexation of Xalax, Home/Click-*-Click-*-Click-Click and now Eccustea, right under your noses inside your sphere of influence by the way, and then once their claim is legitimized the Gug-gug-gugs apply to the Old Ones as a client species."

"And the Old Ones steal a decent chunk of human space without ever having to actually risk war with the Cooperative," added Oona Grimaldi, Lodge Mistress of the Violet Motley.

"I'm not going to make that argument," said Rezabeik, the half of the Shalkernon-Rezabeik Gestalt currently meeting with the two A.R.C. leaders in a small office inside his personal starship.

"That's not a problem," said Quartermass, "let me do it."

"That's out of the question," said Rezabeik.

"This is outrageous, you're just going to sit back and take this?" asked Grimaldi.

"I'm doing no such thing," said Rezabeik, "I am cleaning up your mess and trying to keep it from blowing back on the rest of humanity. In," he checked his implant, "thirteen minutes and change I have to go before the Tribunal of Peerage and try to argue that A.R.C. is not the military arm of the Three Rings Cooperative and that you're a bunch of out of control rogue actors, which by the way you are. And it's going to be very difficult to make that argument if I'm calling upon you to speak on our behalf."

"Our argument is better," said Grimaldi.

"And you're welcome to make it when you're dragged before the Tribunal of Peerage, after I convince them that the Three Rings Cooperative has nothing to do with any of this. Which is true. You're probably right about the Old Ones but I'm here to represent the Cooperative and that's not our position."