This has been rattling around my head for more than a month now. I know it's been done before, probably a thousand times, but what the hell, I'm posting it anyway.
Takes place more than a decade after the end of the movie.
____________________
äWith seven votes in favour of the resolution and two abstaining, this motion hereby passes. May God have mercy on us all.ô
It had been a long trip. Objectively, not subjectively. Time spent in cryo is a dreamless sleep. Years pass without any awareness.
It was a familiar pattern. At last, humanity had spread outward from Earth. Colonies on the moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and farther out ... and the first ships built were warships. Small at first, then larger as industry migrated from the surface of the Earth further out, into orbit.
Sultan Mehmet II el Fatih was a ship many times the size of those first trailblazers. A battleship, as the era of battlewagons re-emerged. Battles in space hearkened back to the Great War, battle-lines pounding at each other from range, ships built to give as well as take damage.
It was far from home now. Years away from Earth, even though barely a few weeks had passed for the crew and by the time they returned their children will be adults, their lovers old while only a few months had passed for them.
To serve in the navy meant to become a relic, watching the roll of years and decades in weeks and months. The world changes quickly and the officers and crewmen of the navies remain, untouched by time.
Fleet Admiral William Quinn is an old man in a young man's body. His parents and siblings were long dead and buried, during the endless patrols of the outer edges of Sol. The children of his siblings had grandchildren now and those grandchildren would have children of their own by the time he returned. He'd be just a name in the family tree to them, a man who impossibly appears both on photos of their ancestors and before them, looking far too young for the countless years that had passed.
There was resentment there, buried, just like in every other officer of Taskforce Ares. A decade would be lost before they returned home, a decade thrown into the wind. A decade during which the world would change even more while they remain, eternally young and unchanging.
Resentment breeds hatred. Hatred for the man who forced them into this, to lose so many years on a single man's whim.
Taskforce Ares, a fleet of ships launched in desperation and resentment, the hearts of the crew filled with rage ... launched to fire their weapons in anger for the first time since humanity launched their ships at the dawn of a new age.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
ä... the planned and willful extermination in whole, or in part, of any group based on common traits, whether they are skin colour, race, religion, language or any other trait. Let them hate us, let them blame us, but even then ... they will know, in their hearts, that we did this for them ... and that were they in our position, they would have done the same.ô
Admiral William Quinn was many things. Competent, cultured, a musician, cello his instrument of choice and, above all, loyal. And out of loyalty is born sacrifice. His life, the lives of his subordinates, the ships under his command ... and even his very own soul.
Did he feel regret at his course of action? Guilt when the reports came in? Remorse for all those killed without even knowing what killed them? All of those and more, but ultimately, William Quinn, Fleet Admiral, was loyal ... and as long as legal orders existed, he would do, no matter how he felt.
It wasn't difficult for him to give the order to fire, even as the holographic display of the innocent green world filled his vision.
It was difficult to look Captain Roberts in the eye in his stateroom that day as he tried to find words with which to comfort her, knowing full well that what had been done that day would never be forgotten, nor would the guilt fade.
It was difficult to watch a world burn as weapons rained down on the world and a thousand times an artificial sun rose over the jungles and a thousand times the world screamed in pain and agony as it died. Still, he watched, quietly.
He was many things, but William Quinn was not a coward and he burn that image into his mind, knowing that it would haunt his dreams for the rest of his long, long life.
äAthena is the goddess of just war and wisdom. Ares of mindless war and savagery. How quickly reason, mercy and benevolence flee when the people are hungry and poor, when the world begins to collapse around us. Taskforce Ares, then, it will be. Savagery is the word of the day, not wisdom, not reason, not benevolence and not mercy.ô
It was a fitting name, Pandora.
Like the woman of myth, that world opened it's own box. And underneath the layers of civility, culture and civilization, all the evils of the past lay ... there Pandora found it's doom as humanity proved that it was still, at heart, no different than their ancestors who would kill each other over the carcass of a deer with wooden clubs and stone axes.
And all because of a single man's thoughtlessness.
Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
äTheirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.ô
Their grisly work done, Taskforce Ares settled into orbit as ships began to disgorge smaller transports and shuttles. Thousands of soldiers, all willing to do whatever it takes to safeguard humanity and their homeworld.
And so, in the burning and charred jungles of Pandora, on the corpses of the natives who so valiantly fought wanting to simply live their own lives, free on their own world, an empire would be born.
Takes place more than a decade after the end of the movie.
____________________
äWith seven votes in favour of the resolution and two abstaining, this motion hereby passes. May God have mercy on us all.ô
It had been a long trip. Objectively, not subjectively. Time spent in cryo is a dreamless sleep. Years pass without any awareness.
It was a familiar pattern. At last, humanity had spread outward from Earth. Colonies on the moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and farther out ... and the first ships built were warships. Small at first, then larger as industry migrated from the surface of the Earth further out, into orbit.
Sultan Mehmet II el Fatih was a ship many times the size of those first trailblazers. A battleship, as the era of battlewagons re-emerged. Battles in space hearkened back to the Great War, battle-lines pounding at each other from range, ships built to give as well as take damage.
It was far from home now. Years away from Earth, even though barely a few weeks had passed for the crew and by the time they returned their children will be adults, their lovers old while only a few months had passed for them.
To serve in the navy meant to become a relic, watching the roll of years and decades in weeks and months. The world changes quickly and the officers and crewmen of the navies remain, untouched by time.
Fleet Admiral William Quinn is an old man in a young man's body. His parents and siblings were long dead and buried, during the endless patrols of the outer edges of Sol. The children of his siblings had grandchildren now and those grandchildren would have children of their own by the time he returned. He'd be just a name in the family tree to them, a man who impossibly appears both on photos of their ancestors and before them, looking far too young for the countless years that had passed.
There was resentment there, buried, just like in every other officer of Taskforce Ares. A decade would be lost before they returned home, a decade thrown into the wind. A decade during which the world would change even more while they remain, eternally young and unchanging.
Resentment breeds hatred. Hatred for the man who forced them into this, to lose so many years on a single man's whim.
Taskforce Ares, a fleet of ships launched in desperation and resentment, the hearts of the crew filled with rage ... launched to fire their weapons in anger for the first time since humanity launched their ships at the dawn of a new age.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
ä... the planned and willful extermination in whole, or in part, of any group based on common traits, whether they are skin colour, race, religion, language or any other trait. Let them hate us, let them blame us, but even then ... they will know, in their hearts, that we did this for them ... and that were they in our position, they would have done the same.ô
Admiral William Quinn was many things. Competent, cultured, a musician, cello his instrument of choice and, above all, loyal. And out of loyalty is born sacrifice. His life, the lives of his subordinates, the ships under his command ... and even his very own soul.
Did he feel regret at his course of action? Guilt when the reports came in? Remorse for all those killed without even knowing what killed them? All of those and more, but ultimately, William Quinn, Fleet Admiral, was loyal ... and as long as legal orders existed, he would do, no matter how he felt.
It wasn't difficult for him to give the order to fire, even as the holographic display of the innocent green world filled his vision.
It was difficult to look Captain Roberts in the eye in his stateroom that day as he tried to find words with which to comfort her, knowing full well that what had been done that day would never be forgotten, nor would the guilt fade.
It was difficult to watch a world burn as weapons rained down on the world and a thousand times an artificial sun rose over the jungles and a thousand times the world screamed in pain and agony as it died. Still, he watched, quietly.
He was many things, but William Quinn was not a coward and he burn that image into his mind, knowing that it would haunt his dreams for the rest of his long, long life.
äAthena is the goddess of just war and wisdom. Ares of mindless war and savagery. How quickly reason, mercy and benevolence flee when the people are hungry and poor, when the world begins to collapse around us. Taskforce Ares, then, it will be. Savagery is the word of the day, not wisdom, not reason, not benevolence and not mercy.ô
It was a fitting name, Pandora.
Like the woman of myth, that world opened it's own box. And underneath the layers of civility, culture and civilization, all the evils of the past lay ... there Pandora found it's doom as humanity proved that it was still, at heart, no different than their ancestors who would kill each other over the carcass of a deer with wooden clubs and stone axes.
And all because of a single man's thoughtlessness.
Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
äTheirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.ô
Their grisly work done, Taskforce Ares settled into orbit as ships began to disgorge smaller transports and shuttles. Thousands of soldiers, all willing to do whatever it takes to safeguard humanity and their homeworld.
And so, in the burning and charred jungles of Pandora, on the corpses of the natives who so valiantly fought wanting to simply live their own lives, free on their own world, an empire would be born.
