"The Outpost" — Terran Reconnaissance Office, Luna

POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Fleet Admiral)

The explosion started with a low, metallic groan in the tall silo. It tore itself apart instantly.

Booooooooooooooooooom.

The blast punched upward first — straight through the corrugated steel roof — sending a column of dust, shrapnel, and organic matter into the sky. The silo's seams burst wide like a pressurized soda can, panels flying off in jagged arcs. Its following pressure wave knocked over two trucks parked too close. One flipped, landed hard on its side, and slid several feet, leaving a smear of crushed metal.

Dust ignited midair. The flash turned night into orange daylight for a second, bright enough to silhouette a figure mid-run — arms flailing, too slow. It disappeared in the second fireball that bloomed outward from the ruptured silo base.

Steel girders twisted in place like they were made of wire. The fire reached the neighboring storage tank. Whatever safety measure in place failed half a second later, when a second explosion flared from it. It rocked the camera, jarring the view sideways, revealing a third silo.

Booooooom.

The third silo detonated in an identical explosion.

Freeze frame.

Amelia glared at Hersh, a stupid grin on his face as he watched the fireworks display on the main screen, mesmerized. "Seen this before?"

Hersh nodded. "Yeah, pretty cool, huh?"

Amelia snorted. "I knew it. If there's something shady happening anywhere in the galaxy, I knew I can just come here, take a deep breath, and smell the foul stench of TRO meddling—"

"You know… you can always not come down here."

"And let you run rampant with your barely accountable schemes?"

Hersh's smug expression turned into a frown as he protested. "No, no, this latest— latest operation was all on the up-and-up. Ethics committee approved. We've got all the forms and the legal intelligence audit logs—"

"Oh, don't worry, my people are reviewing those right as we speak."

"They'll tell you the same story."

Amelia crossed her arms. "And what story is that, exactly?"

"Well, when mommy and daddy love each other very much, where mommy is two thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and daddy is a little spark, on a planet with an atmosphere of twenty-six percent oxygen—"

"Uh-huh. And how did daddy get into a Znosian fertilizer silo complex specifically designed not to go boom?"

"Why, I imagine that might have something to do with the orbital launcher that crashed about fifty meters away." Hersh pointed innocently at a smoking column in the background. "Seems like their storage safety measures didn't quite account for that."

"Uh-huuuuuuuuh. And that big, flammable rocket got there how?"

Hersh's eyes lit up in mock excitement. "Oh, oh, I know this one. A dissident Bun transport pilot with an axe to grind with her government, who decided that her life was forfeited. Something to do with a mass culling. Did you read the manifesto they found on her datapad?"

"Yeah, I read it. And what happened after this?"

"The most obvious, predictable thing. The local State Security enforcers got very angry and executed everyone they found responsible, all the way from the silo managers to pretty much everyone within two degrees of separation of the responsible pilot. Which is like a couple village's worth of people. And then, they decided to move up the mass culling timeline for the entire star system."

"Predictable."

"Very. All the people in the district got suuuuuuper mad, which led to a massive riot. Which… led to a schism in which lots of Buns died."

"Oh, no."

Hersh frowned, almost convincingly. "Yeah. Terrible. Tragic."

"Right."

"Right. So… what's the problem?"

Amelia pressed a button on her tablet, and the silo complex on the main screen was replaced with the claustrophobic interior image of a cockpit, the walls lined from ear to toe with analog controls.

"What in the Prophecy?!" the single figure on the screen muttered as one of the indicator lights on her dashboard turned from green to orange. "That's not right."

She flipped a switch.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

There was a loud groan deep in the belly of the orbital launcher, and every light in the cockpit went to orange.

"Wah! Emergency! I have an emergency! Transport 302 to control tower! I have an emergency!" she screamed in panic even as she ran through a checklist.

No reply.

"Hello?! Hello? Can anyone hear me?"

The view remained stable, but it was obvious from the way everything in the cockpit was flying around that the trajectory of the rocket had become erratic.

"I have a dead— dead stick! I take full responsibility—" the pilot's panicked report was interrupted by the hiss of an activating radio.

Then, she heard her own voice broadcast out of her cockpit speaker. "Transport 302 to all receivers. This is Pilot Vozenschvi. I take full responsibility for what I'm about to do."

The pilot of the unstable rocket sat up in shock. Her eyes darted around the cockpit, searching for the source of her own voice. "What? Who?"

"Wake up, Znosians," her voice said coldly. "Wake up to reality. State Security has been supplanted by predators and apostates. The ongoing mass culling of hatchlings is only the beginning. Once they're done with us, they will kill all of you too. Resist! Fight back! There are more of us than there are of them! For all of you traitors to the species in State Security, this is a message from the Slasograch Resistance Front. Vive la Résistance!"

"No, no… But that's— that's not me…" the pilot muttered uselessly even as her voice continued to evangelize on the radio.

Freeze frame.

Amelia glared at Hersh again. "The Slasograch Resistance Front?"

"That ending's a nice touch, no?"

"And they fell for this?!"

"They're not very used to these kinds of problems. What's your problem with it?"

Amelia sighed in exasperation. "My problem is… if you haven't noticed, there's an ongoing ceasefire right now. And while we'll probably easily control Grantor if it breaks down, there are about a dozen planetary colonies in Granti territory where our landed troops haven't outnumbered the Znosians… yet. And if you'd just wait a couple months—"

"We did consider waiting. But… we decided that this was a time-sensitive opportunity. And they have other problems. I mean, they have like a hundred systems in schism by now. They already know we're screwing with their hatchlings. If they wanted to resume the war, we think they'd have done it already."

"You're supposed to tell us before you pull stuff like this."

"So you can tell us not to do it?"

"So I can prepare our fleets in case the Buns try to— never mind. Why do I bother? It's like explaining a desert to a fish." She switched off her tablet and shook her head. The main screen of the control center reverted to its display of a collage of surveillance footage of the unfolding situation in the Dominion.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

On one screen, a Znosian outlier was leading a mindless mob into a bloody charge against an unprepared squad of Marines defending what looked like an important government building. On another, it was a long range telescopic video of two Znosian missile destroyers opening fire on each other at near point blank range. There was some orbital recon footage of a battery of artillery guns opening fire on a nearby unit.

Hersh gestured at the monitors. "See? Our wallpaper has been getting very colorful lately. And this is just the start. If you think you've seen excitement, just wait for Act Two…"

Amelia stared quietly at the wanton violence for a few seconds before she asked, "Can't Znos just crush whatever comes their way? Like they have in the past? Isn't the job of their entire State Security—"

"To prevent this sort of thing from happening? Yeah. Really screwed it up, didn't they?"

She snorted. "Yeah, you could say that."

"Hey, give us a little credit. We were very thorough. If this had been the Dominion of two years ago, the rebels would be crushed quickly, as you said. But this isn't the Dominion of two years ago. Now, with so many of what they call tainted outliers in positions of importance, high-ranking or otherwise, it's going to be so much worse. You've got governors for entire systems wondering why they should follow orders that end in their recycling. And in other systems, you've got janitors at the governor's palace who are so much smarter and better at critical thinking than the people they're cleaning the floor for."

"Smarter? Please. We all know there's more to a war than that."

"By smart, we're not talking about the difference between Einstein and me. We're talking about the difference between me and my golden retriever. So yeah, they're going to have some problems putting this one down."

"Heh. Your golden retriever must be— Is that Znos-6?" Amelia pointed at a screen depicting a riot on what appeared to be a mining base.

"Yup." Hersh sounded incredibly proud of himself. "Right in the heart of the Dominion. Don't get too excited about that one, though. It will probably get put down in a week or two, but it's the principle of the thing."

"A civil war. An actual civil war," Amelia said, glancing around at the screens in awe. "How did this all just happen over— over the weekend?!"

"You remember back in history class? That farewell speech by President Harper. About how the Republic formed? And how empires fell?"

She grunted in the affirmative. "Gradually, then suddenly. I believe he was quoting Hemingway."

"Exactly right. Gradually, then suddenly. They're still back at square one, trying to control the spread of information on Znos-4. But given the outliers they're dealing with, that's like trying to nail jello to the wall. Many of the rebels might get killed doing this," Hersh said. He pointed to a particularly violent ongoing riot playing out on one of the screens with zero hints of irony or self-awareness. "And that's a tough sacrifice we're willing to make. Our thoughts and prayers at the TRO go out to all their families and bloodlines and whatever—"

"A real revolt… Against— against the thousand year Dominion."

"To be precise, a schism, not a revolt. Which is worse. Each of the new factions is claiming to be the legitimate authority of the Dominion. And boy, are there a lot of them. There are the Znos loyalists, as there always would be in such a conflict. There are the star systems that refuse to implement the culling and no longer recognize the authority from Znos. There are the ones that are partially implementing the culling by trying to test for outliers — heh, that won't work. There are the ones that refuse to cull, but still recognize that Znos has authority over some of their other affairs. There are the ones that declare neutrality until—"

"I get it. It's a massive cluster— it's a total mess over there." She finally took her eyes off the footage. "Alright. Who are the good guys? Who are we rooting for here?"

Hersh shook his head. "None of them. Or rather… we support whoever is losing the most."

"What?!"

"Think about it. Imagine the best case: imagine if Znos came out of this a free and open society that governs with the consent of its people, a republic much like our own, one that weans its species off their xenocidal Prophecy myth. Would such a Dominion roll back its conquests? Would they swear off war and replace its alien policy with cooperation and diplomacy? Would they pay full reparations to the species they've destroyed?"

"I guess… maybe? I don't know. That seems like it might follow—"

"The correct answer… is no. No, they would not. Not any time soon. This is an empire of pure evil, one built off the graveyard of dozens of other species. Hundreds. For thousands of years, they've been arranged around their little project of extermination. Every institution, every tradition. We are not going to convince them to turn good with a few textbooks and radio messages. We are not going to change their cynical interests with our preaching of freedom and peace. Nor will our temporary military superiority cow them for long. No, they will be back at our throats within the decade, stronger possibly."

"That sounds… all a bit pessimistic, doesn't it? Surely, even the worst people can change." Amelia gestured at the screen. "Some of them certainly did. We didn't expect all this from them."

"Some people, yes. States, less so," Hersh said, shaking his head. "The only way to change the path of the Dominion… is to change its reality. When this bloody civil war plays out, after decades — or centuries, I hope — of devastating internal fighting, then… then whoever wins, Znos will talk to us about concessions, about reparations, about whatever you and the politicians want to talk about. Until then, our job is to back every underdog faction, fund every rogue group, and arm every dissident, until all of the Dominion is engulfed in a chaotic fire that will burn for as hot and as long as we can help them feed tinder into the flames. A forever war, decades or centuries of bloodletting of thoughtless Buns who feel no remorse, see every death as a triumph, and respond to every horrific atrocity with an equally terrible vengeance that—"

Amelia gaped at him. "Jeez, do you psychos listen to yourselves down here?!"

Hersh broke out into a wide grin. "Thanks for playing. I practiced my astro-realist impression in front of the mirror for quite a bit, just for you."

"Bismarck would be proud… No, seriously. Who are we supporting?"

Hersh tilted his head. "The enlightened anti-war outlier faction that aligns most with our values for now, of course. The Free Znosian Navy, they're calling themselves. I mean, they have practically no chance of actually winning, so it's functionally the exact same thing as what I said, but whatever helps you sleep at night and sell program funding to the Senate."

Amelia glared at him frostily. "No chance of winning, because you're not that invested in their success or…"

He waved a hand casually. "Nah. It's just a matter of simple astropolitics long term. They're scattered all over the place, and the few systems that are going to come down to it their way don't have many ships, nor any of their new shipyards. By the time the civil war really gets going, they'll be behind everyone else in tonnage. Not enough ships and shipyards, no prospect of interstellar expansion. All they can do is wait for someone else to come to their planet, and hope they aren't in the glassing mood. In hindsight, we might have been able to do more to guide their development, but that wasn't our mandate. We're at war. We break things. Who wins in the end — that's not up to us. Either way, our computer simulations show the Free Znosian Navy gets absorbed by another faction, nine out of ten times."

"Which faction?"

Hersh flicked his fingers again, and the monitors now showed a complex 3-D star map of the Dominion in bright colors. He pointed at the expanding swaths of yellow near the outer rims. "The authoritarian isolationists led by outliers. We project they win this civil war about half the time."

"Authoritarian isolationists… that's… hm… isn't that kind of—"

"Dangerous? Yeah. A slight improvement on our dear Director Svatken, who is a slight improvement on her… less paranoid alternatives. But those guys aren't so much for peace as they're willing to acknowledge they're losing this war. And as authoritarians, they're perpetually a couple of bad days away from deciding they need an external distraction for their internal problems."

"So… you're not going to do… something about them?" Amelia asked.

"It doesn't really matter, does it? As future enemies of the Republic, we don't like how in-touch with reality they are. But… like I said, even if they win, it'll take the Buns a few decades to hash everything out. Frankly, I'm not too worried about who ends up on top." He pointed around the various simulations playing out around the Outpost. "A few decades is plenty of time for us to come up with a better long-term containment plan with the rebuilt Granti and Malgeir civilizations."

"And then what? We go back with our fleets and kill more of them, after they're done with this civil war? Rinse and repeat until we kill enough of them? Or, as you say, change their reality?"

"Sure, why not? We seem to be pretty good at that."

"And if we slip up again, if we fall asleep at the wheel and they come for us, if there's a crack in the wall, a hole in the fence — like the Battle of Sol — it's bye-bye for all of humanity?"

Hersh tilted his head. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, after all."

"I prefer not to entrust the continued existence of my civilization to a 19th century misquote… What else is there?"

Hersh gestured around his office. "This is what we have. You have a better idea? Be my guest."

Amelia pointed at the tiny splotches of blue on the map. "Hm… The good Znosians. What if we can get them some equipment? You know…"

"Get them some— hah, good one. Forget it, Admiral. This isn't about a few crates of anti-tank drones. This is going to be dozens, hundreds of planets fighting against each other. Most of them exceeding the population of Earth, many with non-military industrial outputs exceeding ours. Real wars. You've studied history, right? Imagine the 20th century world wars, imagine hundreds of them at the same time, and imagine that they have not just tanks and artillery, they have spaceships. We're talking… the ships they've been building to try to fight us. Full-sized missile destroyers. Hell, we didn't even give those to the Puppers until after we started— Anyway, you think the Senate's inclined to authorize a fleet deployment to intervene in a Znosian civil war? Don't miss the big picture, Amelia. The plan was to keep them fighting for the throne for as long as we can, not to install our favorite Bun as king or open a burger restaurant on Znos-4."

"But… what if we can?"

"What are you talking about? We can't just— This is a delicate time for everyone. You know that Napoleon saying about what to do when the enemy is making a mistake? The Buns are about to do our jobs for us, all our jobs. It's time for us to be clear-eyed about our objectives, not reaching for the impossible like a bunch of idealistic fools."

Amelia smiled softly. "Idealistic fools?"

Hersh scowled. "Yes, that's what we'd be if we did what you want. We can't afford to be confined by the expectations and constraints of our own histories and preferred ideologies… We can't afford the risk—"

"The Republic was built by idealistic fools."

If not us, then who?

Hersh took one look at her expression and sighed deeply.

Neither of them said anything for a long minute as the violent footage around the room continued to play out.

Hersh tilted his head. "Aw crap… Let me guess, you'll need our people and equipment on Station Europa."

"Yes, please, if you don't mind."

"Alright, alright, give me a minute. I'll tell our guys to clean their rooms while we head over."

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