Into the Black

“—and tensions continue to rise as talks between the Confederacy and the Terran Empire continue to break down.”

“Allan, can you give our viewers a sense of how we came to this point?”

“Sure thing, Ashera. As you know, two months ago then Prince Travis, backed by a coalition of nobles and military leaders, staged an assassination and coup, killing all but two other members of the Imperial Royal family. Princess Merida managed to escape her attackers, and took refuge in the Imperial Senate building.”

“Using collaborators within the Imperial Fleet, Travis attacked the Senate. A full tally of the dead has not been released, but it is known that at least two hundred and forty-six of the five hundred members of the Senate have been killed, without counting the dead staffers or those guardsmen who were loyal to the Senate instead of a patricidal Prince.”

“Princess Merida, by rights the rightful Empress of the Terran Empire, fled with half of the First Fleet, and what remained of the Senate. We have been getting scattered reports that the fighting that has happened between First Fleet has spread to other fleets within the Empire, and so-called Rebels have been joining Princess Merida’s forces in the Kuprulu Sector.”

“So will the Terran Empire devolve into a full civil war, Allan?”

“It isn’t clear at this time, Ashera. Certainly, the Princess appears to be organizing a resistance movement against her brother, but the extent of her support is unknown. In addition, many of the higher-ranking members of the military approve of Emperor Travis’s more militaristic stance. As you know, the Emperor recently gave a speech promising to return the Empire to its ‘glory days’ of Emperor Valerian’s time.”

“For those viewers who aren’t familiar with Terran history, Emperor Valerian was the emperor who started the first of the Great Insterstellar Wars, what the Terran Empire calls the ‘War of Righteous Destiny’.”

“Indeed. It has become clear that this coup was backed primarily by the more conservative members of the Empire, who believe that Humans have a Manifest Destiny to rule over all Known Space. As you are aware, these conservative factions instituted the ‘Non-Human Slavery Act’ twenty years ago, making it so that any nonhuman who enters Imperial space is to be enslaved immediately upon discovery by any imperial citizen. This has strained relations between the Empire and other stellar factions, as most of those factions are primarily made of nonhumans, and the law makes no exception for ambassadors or other state officials.”

“A sad state indeed. I’m told you have new information about the latest provocation by the Imperial Navy?”

“Indeed I do, Ashera! While Nomads have been exiled from Sol system for the duration of the civil war unless they have permission from either the Admiralty or the Emperor himself, here in Alpha Centauri, there is still a thriving Nomad presence. These Nomads appeared on the galactic scene mere months ago, but they already appear to have information networks of their own, some completely undetectable to non-Nomads.”

“As we reported previously, Princess Sheila managed to escape her assassins on Luna. CNN has now learned that she did so by enlisting the help of a Nomad who owned a small freighter that blasted its way out of Luna spaceport. This same Nomad was apparently the one behind the Choson Ring Massacre. Members of the Red Orchid criminal organization attempted to stop the Nomad and four females that are assumed to be the crew of his ship, apparently demanding that he turn the Princess over to them. The Nomad then proceeded to kill those men, and proceeded to fight his way to the hangar bay, bringing the death toll to just over fifty before the fighting was through.”

“After blasting his way out of another port, the Nomad’s freighter has now been confirmed to have destroyed two fighters launched from Choson Ring, as well as an Imperial Navy destroyer that had been sent to waylay them by then-Prince Travis. In the chaos of the wave of destruction, the freighter appears to have made its way to Alpha Centauri.”

“The Nomad appears to have docked at the Fleet Base in a daring move that my sources claim was to try and let the Princess make contact with the local commander, who she hoped would still be loyal. My sources amongst the Nomads aren’t sure if the meeting happened, but afterwards, the Nomad is reported to have been involved in several events in the Alpha Centauri, including the killing of a notorious pirate captain.”

“I can now report that, according to sources among the Nomads, the Aquaria Gate Incident from two weeks ago was caused indirectly by this Nomad. The rogue freighter which crashed the Imperial checkpoint leading into the gate was the freighter owned by this Nomad, tentatively labeled as the Azeroth’s Call. The Navy, led by three frigates from the ‘Loyalist’ fleet in Sol, attempted to intercept the freighter, but the pilot of the Azeroth’s Call managed to evade missiles long enough to get through the gateway, and then immediately engaged his hyperdrive, leaving the missiles which followed through the gate to seek new targets, leading to the CNS Defiant being critically damaged. The three Loyalist frigates chased the freighter through the gateway, in defiance of Confederation sovereignty, and were destroyed, while the freighter escaped.”

“These sources identified one of the aliases the Nomad is known as in their networks, ‘M.Mollen’. There are four thousand, five hundred and thirty-seven human male Mollens in the Galactic Registry with a given name or registered nickname beginning with the letter M. So the true identity of the Nomad is unknown. However, according to these sources, Princess Sheila is still alive and with the Nomad, though their current whereabouts are unknown.”

“Excellent work, Allan! Can your sources provide any more information about what the Princess is doing with this Nomad? Are they planning to hook up with Princess Merida’s Resistance?”

“Sorry, Ashera. The plans of the Princess and the Nomad are not something the Nomad community seems to know at this time, although there is a lot of speculation about the relationship between the two, and whether the Princess might have joined the Nomad’s crew. The closest I got to any real evidence of their intentions was a consensus that they had decided it was safer to lay low in the Confederation until tensions dropped, than moving through Imperial space, chasing Princess Merida’s Resistance while avoiding Emperor Travis’s fleet.”

“That was Allan Tudyk for CNN, behind Imperial lines in Alpha Centauri. I’m Ashera Paran, and when we come back, we’ll be speaking with Senator Thecy Vuth, of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on what an Imperial Civil War could mean for Confederation security.”