occupation

The Blood-Brain Barrier

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From: Alvis Antarianus, Expansion Renewal Union
To: Heriath Calliste, Inevitable Justice Foundation
Subject: Re: Cleaning up the Union once and for all

Look, your proposed operation is well designed. I’ll give it that. But there’s no chance whatsoever that it’ll pass the Senate. Galactic Relations or State Security’d kill it in a heartbeat even if Military Affairs were to let it pass, which they won’t.

Even if you can persuade all the right people that it’s a worthy cause, preemptive occupations are a dead letter for a reason, and it’s not just a few faded scrolls at State & Outlands with a peace addiction. Academician Doctor Excellence Selidië Cíëlle killed them the moment she figured out how to meme-map a mind-state and back-port alterations to the original living brain. She gave us desire control, meme rehab, psychedesign, and the Guardians of Our Harmony, but she shot the knees out from under the belligerati doing it.

People can tell themselves that they won’t crack under torture, even when it’s a nerve stapler or a death cube. They can tell themselves that they can resist any bribe, withstand any temptation, not succumb to any cunning memetic campaign, and intimidate or plain murder any of their neighbors who do. There’s even some damn fools who convince themselves they have the mental integrity to shrug off a YGBM.

But no-one, no-one, can resist psychedesign applied directly to their brain, and everyone out there knows that.

The Conclave of Clionomy have run the vectors on this. Our reputation for ethical stringency keeps people calm and trusting, under normal circumstances. But take a voluntary trip down into the tar-pit, and you’re going to get rumors and propaganda flying about how we’re mass-reprocessing people into good little libertist meme-bots, or weaponizing infectious nanotech that rewrites the loyalty circuits of people’s brains, or some such bitswarf, and if their projections are right, that has a high probability of taking us to CASE SKYSHOCK RED and a hard civilization kill event within two years, five at the outside.

You know they’d be lies, and I know they’d be lies, but try to imagine just how terrifying literally changing someone’s mind would be to a paranoid peon with a poor grasp of consensuality.

Maybe you could try pitching it to the waserai ambassador?

– Alvis

 

Epistolary Experiment (6/30)

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“Very well, gentlesophs. Since the main intrusion’s down coreward in the Reaches and the Expanse, the Warmain’s cleared us to go raise hell in the Vonnies’ 31st-sector backlot. We’re dividing the flight into talons by threes.”

“First Claw, under Flamefang, head rimward up through Kordal; your primary target is the fuel depot at Dantry. Blow it all t’hell. That should make sure their fleet operations stay quiet in this sector.”

“Second Claw, under Shadowstrike, straight spinward via Adesh; you’re going after the repair yards at Manar. Make it look like a raid. What you’re actually doing is planting replicant disorder in their systems. Any starship that refits there in the next year’s to have a raging case of ship-cancer, okay?”

“Third Claw, under Voidchill, down coreward, Adesh then Uinul. Commerce raiding for you, hitting up and down their main routes to the constellation. Bleed ’em white, and report to flag instantly by tangle if you observe – when you observe – military support coming up from coreward.”

“Meanwhile, Impertinence will be punching through to their colony at Vontok II. We’ll be securing local space and waiting for the Legions to arrive. Then we’ll see how they like ground fighting.”

– flight briefing, CS Impertinence, Quor (Csell Buffer) system

From: Phoebe Dracotarthius, Sheriff, Nightside Rock
To: Strategos Lucian Avaranaith, 73rd Imperial Legion (“the Apex Predators”)
Subject: Accomodations

Certainly we can accomodate you physically. This place is huge. We’ve got a fully-fitted class V star station here.

But you do realize that we have a physical staff of four – and five more-or-less helpful residents – to cover the whole of Uílel System? You’re going to have to bring your own tail, because while you’re welcome to our spare logistic capacity, we don’t have any in the first place.

Phoebe Dracotarthius

P.S. Any of your chaps in need of a warhorse?

Captain, I’ve occupied the Imperial enclave as you instructed, but I can’t hold it.

So far, I’ve lost two men to poisoned food, three to coolant leaks, eight to runaway transpods, five to runaway nanotech blooms, nine to basilisk hacks, and one has vanished entirely. We’ve had to blow out all the nanofabs to stop them from manufacturing some sort of attack spiderbots, everyone’s covered in bites from cyborg rats, and the whispering WON’T STOP.

And this is after we lobotomized the AI core.

Let’s just get clear and blow it. No way we can sterilize this.

– records of the occupation force on Ódeln (Vanguard Reaches)