Canto 145 – Senators and Senate Stuff
The biggest debate in the arguing about forming the New Star League had been about which planet was the best place to host the capitol of the newly formed multi-star government. The idea had formed around the planet Don’t Go Here, which was entirely too provincial and had never had a space-faring tech level before. In spite of its sentient orbiting space port, the Ancient construct known as Frieda, retrieved from the device made by the Ancients called the Crown of Stars, it was determined that the planetary system was simply not equipped to be an interstellar capitol.
Tron Blastarr, leader of the pirate space forces establishing the new union of solar systems, wanted his home base of Outpost to be the new capitol, but the main inhabited planet, Outpost itself, was an airless rock with no room for much beyond Nebulon colonies and military installations.
Xavier Tkriashav, the political leader who had brought all the worlds of the Psion exiles and the Lupin pirate hordes into the union wanted his home world of Zarane to be the capitol. But that world did not really have a central enough location to work well.
So, the leaders, meeting on the centralized world of Gaijin with its hybrid Gaijinese people and relatively high tech level, decided to build the new capitol in the city of Kiro on the planet Gaijin.
Tkriashav and the bald immortal Dr. Naylund Smith both retired to the Gaijinese tea garden behind Dr. Smith’s house with their cups of steaming white-stork tea.
“Well, Dr. Smith, it seems that everybody got what they wanted in the meeting. The constitution is practically written already.”
“Yes, you, it seems, got the choicest position, making yourself Senator Prime.”
The turbaned Zaranian smiled. “You will be my Number Two, so you will succeed me if anything happens.”
“Yes, but it was not a looked-for opportunity. I have other matters that urgently demand my time.” Dr. Smith stared into his cup of tea.
“But you are an immortal. Surely if anyone has all the time they will ever need to do anything, it is you.”
“I go on living practically no matter what happens to my body, it is true. But my precious daughter is not immortal. Even now, Sara is with Ged Aero on a mission she may not return alive from.”
“But she’s only one of how many children you have sired over your three-thousand-year-plus lifetime?”
“She may be only one of many, but they are all gone now in the well of time, and I vowed that her mother would be the very last woman I ever loved and then outlived. That kind of loss is taxing to the soul.”
“Yes, the sentiment is certainly understandable. But it is a great thing we are undertaking. Never before have so many different sentient species come together to form an interstellar planetary alliance. We have always been ruled in the past by the members of the Earther Human Race and the Human-Galtorrian Fusion Race. But now there are the Molluscan M’uduai Race, the Japanese/Sylvani Race we are now calling the Gaijinese, the Psion Race of Zarane and her sister worlds of the Old Psion Empire, the Pale Humans of the Geonee Race, the deep-space Nebulon Race, the Lupins, and the Dion Saurian People, as well as all the Genetically Altered Races of the Faulkner Genetics Worlds.”
“An impressive list to be sure. But can they hold together as one people with common interests in this new government?”
“I don’t see why you would doubt it?”
“Maybe because of the endless warring and race-hatred of the many human races. You know how the Imperium is. Zombie like Mechanoids, dead bodies brought back to life artificially are the backbone of their armies, space marines, space navy, and special forces. The ruling elite see all alien races as expendable and exploitable. They don’t even treat Dions and M’uduai as worthy of being called people. And they enslave and exterminate Nebulons and Lupins.”
“Yes, and we are not them. We are not Imperials. We will hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
“You have no idea how often I have heard that same sort of pronouncement come out of the mouths of well-meaning world rulers and empire builders. It almost never goes the way they see it in their glorious visions.”
“It will be different this time. The Prophecy of Xhan says it will be so.”
“I too have studied the prophecy, Xavier. I have also studied much too much history firsthand to have your confidence.”
The younger man smiled and softly slapped the old immortal on the back. “Fear not. There is much in the Prophecy of the White Spider yet to be realized. We are making history. But it is history that is foretold and will certainly come true.”
“It will if Ged Aero succeeds in his quest. And it will if the space forces on our side can get it all together to fight off evil old Admiral Tang, and the darker forces behind him. You would be wise to prepare for at least some parts of your prophecy not to come true in the way you are expecting.”
There was no doubting that Dr. Smith had a point. And even Xavier’s clairvoyant Psion abilities couldn’t remove the darker clouds from among all the cumulus constructs of the possibilities that lay ahead.
Catch a Falling Star 