Dimension

<-2-> Chapter 6

Hi!

Welcome back!

Mostly Buren and Lyctove/Kuznetsov this chapter, although there is some Carson, and just a warning - it gets pretty bloody.

And with that out of the way, 

Here goes nothin'!

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Five Years Ago

It was time.

There was nothing left to do. Kuznetsov couldn't magically teleport the Aurora Flare into Carok. Redeploying a puddlejumper was not a simple task. It would take years.

At which point, it would fall into the El'saas's hands to effectuate the operation. Kuznetsov, against his better judgment and every fiber of his being, entrusted the schematics of Aurora Flare to the businessman. He could only pray that everything he had been told, everything he had come to believe about Carson over the course of a decade wasn't a ploy, and that the businessman would truly work on behalf of all peoples.

And anyway, he'd come to believe there was no other option. Granting the Republic the opportunity to work on superimposed space would certainly be ideal -- unfortunately, this would undoubtedly invoke the aggression of a perpetually-paranoid Caroki Star Union, whose not-entirely-misguided belief that the Republic only existed to torment Caroki inevitably got in the way of negotiations. Kuznetsov couldn't endorse donating superimposed space to the Coalition of Interior Systems, and the Kingdom of Taryia - well, they wouldn't accept it, to put it mildly.

Which left the Prythian Assembly. A country indefinitely imprisoned by the Republic, to the point where its government existed solely as a comfort to the oblivious subjects of the Assembly who could see nothing beyond the supposed rivalry between themselves and the Union. Granting superimposed space to the Assembly was ultimately granting superimposed space to the Republic unless directly bestowed upon the Prythian Chancellorship, in which case there was such comically minuscule chance of success that the Union would actually make more progress over an equivalent period of time.

The Assembly was a tragedy that would never be recognized in his generation, Kuznetsov realized. Once, before his time, it had been a gleaming symbol of what Carok could be, a light which pierced through the dark shadows cast by the Union. A democracy on par with the Republic, perhaps not militarily but certainly in terms of equity and justice.

Now it was a shell. The carcass of a great nation, feeding what little it had left to keep Paragon out of the grave. It existed in a baffling, almost mocking state of parity, wherein the Assembly was permitted to maintain a navy and had absolute and final control over what it did, even as Republic flotillas maintained pitiless control over a dozen resource-rich systems. The Republic protectorate system had been ruthlessly designed, built to grant the citizens of the Assembly a taunting, cruelly tangible fragment of self-governance while equally challenging any who recognized the truth to stand up and subsequently be forced back down under the steel boot of a Republic battlegroup.

And it was all done out of pure necessity. The Republic wasn't evil - President Lyctove wasn't evil. For if the Assembly was a carcass, Paragon was something even viler, a pool of rotten sludge liquified after a decade of decay, utterly helpless on its own and completely reliant on what Carok could provide. Only the most basic natural resources now flowed from Paragon's most utopian worlds, and food was not often among them.

Redeployment of Aurora Flare would require extenuating circumstances to be present. She was the flagship of the Republic navy, first of the Caroki Protectorate Fleets and only recently transferred to head the Republic Home Fleet in the advent of ever-increasing tensions with the Coalition. With the first Alexandra-class battlecruisers slated to leave drydock in a mere five years, Aurora Flare's position as flag would undoubtedly be challenged, but for now, she maintained an almost reverent position among the Republic citizenry.