2175 C.E.

V: Aftermaths

Signed Nobuyuki Ito, Admiral of the Terran Star Fleet 6th Task Force

08/15/2175 0955 EST: Transmission Sent Terran Interstellar Authority: PO Sol: 08/15/2175 0956 EST: Transmission Received TSS Alexander Nevsky BCM-1102

Begin Transmission

Admiral Nobuyuki Ito. You have committed an act of insubordination and tarnished the good name of the Terran Interstellar Authority with vicious slander. As such, you have been stripped of your command, your rank, your privilege, and your standing with the Terran Interstellar Authority. If you do not hand over your keys and command codes to your former flagship the TSS Alexander Nevsky, you will be considered hostile and treated accordingly. If necessary, the order will be given to destroy your ship and its crew in order to maintain order within the Terran Star Fleet. These orders will not be repeated. You must comply within twelve standard hours or you will be treated as hostile.

End Transmission

Letter: From Chinwe Opeyemi, 440 E Ormarith Rd, Jimeso, Ghana: To Eglantine Kayode, 1001 Sherman St, Imladris, Nova: Translated by Ibrahim Wassume

My dearest,

Life has lately taken a most strange turn. I wrote before of the Chinese stranger who followed us from the Ambience laboratory that we attacked. We have since tried to speak to him, but he seems to understand no languages. We tried even to feed him, and he seemed at first unfamiliar with the concept of food, and chewing his meal. We have had to spoon feed him from our rather limited supply of food in storage. His eyes watch us with fervent consideration, as if each one of us were the most fascinating thing upon the planet. He laughs and smiles often so that we are afraid that he will be heard beyond our hidden home. Do you remember Andrei, who resided down the street from us, who was afflicted from birth by neural disease? This man reminds me of him, and of young children who know nothing. But he has been taught to know fear; often, when one of us makes a sudden move, or raises our voice to him, he staggers back in fear, as if afraid of some sudden blow.

And even other strange things have begun to occur. We sent a report of this man to the Ghana freedom patrol; less than a day later, we have been accompanied by a member of the dissident movement centered in Congo. It is a woman who calls herself Alexandra Troy, whose calling card is the queen of clubs. She has put us on a forced march away from our hideaway, and none too soon, for shortly after her arrival, we began to see Hegemony fighters overhead, sweeping the area. They are hunting for us. We have also begun to catch sight of ground troops in Ambience armor. Ms. Troy tells us that they are searching for us, and that they will kill us if they find us. She won't tell us why, for she claims that we may become at risk if we know too much about what we have uncovered.

We have begun to travel by night and sleep in sheds. Many have been abandoned in recent days. I have not heard the news of the war in recent days, but Ms. Troy tells us that the Hegemony has declared martial law in Africa since the arrest of Gennady Semyonov, who was discovered to be in league with the Zaha-Katchem. Many have fled since then and gone to other places, some to South America, some to India, and the rest have stayed despite the risk of invasion or bombing campaigns.

It is times like this when I think most about you, Eglantine, my only love. I stare up at the stars above and I think about you, for I know that you are in orbit of one of those stars. I know not which one; I once pinpointed Proxima and looked to it, and prayed for it. But you aren't in Proxima Centauri anymore. I don't know which star is your home anymore. I look up to the heavens and I wonder which star is yours; but I can't know. So I pray for them all, hoping that you are alive and well, and circling one of those stars.

I love you, Eglantine, my dearest. I hope you think of me too.

Love,

Chinwe.

[Letter not sent, dated 08/15/2175]

Official Transcript: HNN News Update: 08/15/2175

LERMAN: In other news tonight, the President has authorized the launch of a full scale invasion of the African Union. The military has launched an aerial supremacy campaign targeting African air forces and military infrastructure. At the same time, Terran troops operating out of China and Northern Europe have launched invasions along the coasts of Somalia, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, and Angola. They are being met with heavy resistance from homegrown terrorist organizations under dissident leadership. We will be covering the fighting in regular news segments, as well as continued fighting in major sub-aquatic settlements on the reclaimed Nova colony. For HNN News, I'm Carrie Lerman.

Personal Journal: William Aucaman

08/16/2175

Since the riot Hegemony started dropping bombs a couple of days ago, there have only been a couple hours of peace that I can remember. I can't make out what sort of artillery it is; a lot of it sounds like cannon or naval artillery shells, but the rest seems like missiles. There aren't any nuclear warheads, thank heaven, but there are a lot of cruise missiles from launch pads somewhere up north. I think the Chinese must have been hoarding non-nuclear ICBM's for the past hundred years or so; a lot of the really big ones are just falling straight from the sky and landing wherever they choose. For a couple of days there were consistent drone strikes, but eventually the air force took care of those. The air battle has been going on pretty constantly too. The past couple of days have been a bit close; a lot of pilots are being killed, I think. The Hegemony doesn't use pilots, of course; I see a lot of UA-82 drones up in the sky. Our pilots clearly have the upper hand when it comes to dogfighting; their planes are more maneuverable by a lot, but ours are very clever and better trained than the AI. Unfortunately, the air attacks coming in are so constant that I'm afraid a lot of the pilots are just going to be exhausted to death until the Hegemony has air supremacy. I suspect that that's the plan for the Hegemony. I can't say I think much of it. It seems cold and robotic like everything else they do.

The bombs have me a bit on edge. I have to admit that I've been a bit shaken ever since they learned that Semyonov had been controlled by one of those black creatures. A few days ago, when we were still in Montana, I thought we should go to Russia to meet up with his dissident faction. Of all of them, Semyonov was the only one to really fight for change; the rest had always been willing to talk about making change in the Hegemony, but never to take action and force the government to take notice. If we'd gone to Russia, would we still be alive now? If we were, it would almost certainly be as slaves to the black creature.

I wish the artillery would stop. It's playing with my nerves.