The Confederation Agreement was Vance’s brainchild, patterned loosely after the structure of the Martian Superpower’s own founding documents. It was a solution that made almost no one happy, which he considered a good sign.
The Alliance’s colonies were to be guaranteed immediate and permanent self-rule. The Alliance government would have no involvement whatsoever in the internal affairs of the colony worlds, provided the new planetary republics adhered to their obligations under the Agreement.
The colonies agreed to recognize the authority of Alliance Gov to negotiate with all foreign powers, and to be bound to such policies as it may establish. The colonies would be allowed limited trade with each other, but all other interplanetary commerce was regulated by the Alliance.
The Marine Corps and navy were to be reformed. The Marine Charter was reaffirmed and strengthened, explicitly setting forth the rights and obligations of the Corps in greater detail. The navy, which had not been governed by such a document, would henceforth have its own charter, clarifying its rights and obligations. The two services would no longer be part of the terrestrial Alliance Joint Chiefs of Staff. A civilian oversight panel would manage the two services. Initially, half of the members of the group would be named by Alliance Gov, the other half by the colonies. In ten years the ratio would shift to 2/3 named by the colonies. The top military command would be a new board, consisting of two senior officers from each branch. The first Chairman would be Augustus Garret, elected by unanimous vote of the senior officers in both the navy and the Corps.
The colonies were to elect a Confederation Council, which would manage all inter-colony affairs not governed by the Alliance under the Agreement. The individual planets would form their own local governments, subject to the terms of the Colonial Constitution, which was set to be negotiated on Armstrong as soon as the Confederation Agreement was signed. But before it could be signed there were days and days more ahead, filled mostly with useless prattle and arguments. Such is the way diplomacy grinds slowly forward.
Vance sat in his office and considered how things had worked out. The end result was, in no small part, the result of his machinations. The colonials would have lost if Mars hadn’t intervened, of that much he was certain. Gavin Stark’s plans were masterful, and if they’d been allowed to continue, he would have controlled the navy and destroyed the Marine Corps. The Alliance would have ruled its colony worlds with an iron fist, strengthening its position even further from the preeminent status it had achieved in the last war. All of the Superpowers would have been threatened by the disruption to the balance of power.
Now the Alliance was weakened, forced to constantly negotiate with its unruly and partially independent colonies. Its armed forces were severely degraded. Indeed, in a perverse twist of fate, its navy had been compelled to hunt down and destroy many of its newest ships. And the Marine Corps was shaken to its very foundations by the treachery of General Samuels…though Vance didn’t doubt that General Holm and his able commanders would quickly restore the morale and effectiveness of the organization.
He was satisfied overall. A dangerous situation had worked itself out, at least temporarily, and some level of stability had been restored. It was all short term, of course. The Alliance Directorate was already taking steps to build its own interstellar military, which they would undoubtedly use to force a rematch with the colonies one day. And the colony worlds bristled at their continued ties to Alliance Gov, no matter how much they knew deep down they needed them. One day, they too would revisit the Confederation Agreement and look to assert true independence. But that was at least ten years away, and probably longer. Neither side had close to the resources and capabilities to defeat the other in the near term.
Perhaps the greatest master stroke was the seizure of Epsilon Eridani IV. The Martian forces took control and immediately invited all of the Superpowers to send a garrison and a scientific team. Vance could only imagine Gavin Stark’s rage when he got the word. But there was nothing Stark could do. Mars had immediately opened the system up to all, and if the Alliance wanted to take back sole control they would find themselves facing the rest of the Powers, all unified. It was brilliantly handled, and even Vance had to give himself credit for the flawless execution.
He looked through the dome to the untamed Martian surface. They had been terraforming the planet for fifty years, but he would be dead and gone before men could leave the domes and walk on those reddish hills without breathers and pressure suits. Technology, he thought…we are so advanced in some ways, yet in other it feels as though we’ve so far to go. Where would Epsilon Eridani IV lead them? Stark had been promulgating the absurd idea that the massive facility was some type of religious shrine, but Vance knew that was propaganda nonsense.
His intelligence was clear. In all likelihood, the structure on Carson’s World was an anti-matter production facility…a big one. Man could produce anti-matter too, but in miniscule quantities and at prohibitive cost. But by all accounts, the alien artifact had once produced massive amounts, harnessing the planet’s seismic energy to do it. It was as far ahead of mankind as a mag rifle was from a sling.
Someone built that, Vance thought with equal amounts of wonder and trepidation. We need to harness that technology, and we need to do it for all mankind, not for Gavin Stark’s power games. Someone built that, he thought again. “And we have no idea what else is out there.” His words were softly spoken, just for himself. “No idea at all.”
Chapter 32
Jack Winton walked out into the bright sunshine. It was spring on Armstrong, and the weather had been perfect. He’d never been to the massive Marine hospital before, and it had been a sight to see. As big as it already was, there was construction underway on a massive expansion. Armstrong had been chosen to host the combined military establishment of the new Alliance Colonial Confederation, and there was construction everywhere.
Jack was smiling, for the first time in a long time. Jill was responding to her treatments, finally. She had a long road to full recovery, but when he’d first seen her in Weston he had given up hope his daughter would ever come back from the psychotic break she’d suffered. He struggled whenever he thought of how she must have suffered in that camp, what horrendous deprivation and torment it must have taken to turn her into what she’d become.
The mobs had killed thousands – innocent Columbians as well as federals. They had branded any who lived under federal rule as collaborators, and hundreds of people, whose only offense was living quietly and staying unnoticed, were dragged into the streets and murdered.
When the rebel troops and Holm’s Marines liberated Weston, they found the city a ghost town full of horrors. There were bodies everywhere, lying unattended where they’d been killed. The mob had started to come apart, people wandering around in a state of near shock. They were broken men and women, driven past the point of rationality by Cooper’s brutality, and in their despair they had acted no better than the hated governor himself.
Jack found his daughter, sitting alone against a half-wrecked building. He ran to her, but she looked at him without emotion, without recognition. He kept calling her name, but she just stared at him, through him really. Finally, Sarah Linden and her people began tending to the refugees. They weren’t trained in psychiatry, but they did the best they could until Admiral Garret was able to land specialists from the fleet.
There was no liberation for the camps in the other areas of Columbia. When the rebels reached the facilities in Hampton and Southpoint they found everyone dead. Cooper’s orders had been carried out with ruthless efficiency. The camp guards were gone by then, but General Marek had issued a death sentence on all of them, and he dispatched a large portion of the rebel army to hunt them down. It would take months, years maybe, to get them all, but he vowed they would pay.