Choices | Page 2

If there can be said of such a hard fought war that there was a winner, then it was the Federation that rose from the dust and rubble to claim victory. But in truth we're all losers in such struggles, and no more is that evident than in the existence of worlds like Tradur.
Our victory was bought at great expense. We sacrificed millions of men and women for the sake of principle, but in the end we sold those principles for a mess of potage. Peace came with compromise; and part of that was to allow worlds like Tradur to remain virtually sovereign, exempt from many of the provisions of the new constitution. It isn't something most people like, but after so much death and destruction no one wanted to continue the war simply for the rights and freedoms of a handful of people. Principles were what got us into this mess in the first place; and when all is said and done, just how many lives are worth sacrificing for the sake of ideals that many of the people on Tradur and worlds like it could care less about?
Some say that when we won the war against the Reds we should have wiped the religion off the face of the map. They argue that to have not done so is only asking for trouble later on; and it's true there are those among the Red Catholic polity who continue to agitate for rebellion. But even they realize the limitations of their cause, and understand that among their own there is no longer an appetite for war. Whole worlds were lost in the conflict. Hundreds of millions of people. No one is anxious to invite that upon the Empire again any time soon.
And so we live with conditions many of us find repugnant. We have no choice. There is neither the strength nor the will within the Federation to carry the fight beyond what we've achieved. One day we may well live to regret that, but for now we're happy enough to live at all.
I had seen the war first hand, having fought on the front lines during some of the worst of the conflict. I had watched many good people die. A lot of friends. A lot of people dear to me. I should have hated the Reds for that, and there was a part of me that did. But having been witness to the war in ways many had not, I understood better than most that we could never rid ourselves of the Reds. It's a difficult thing to fight ideas. More difficult still when those ideas take the form of religion and faith. Guns and bombs are ineffective against them. And to have tried to have done more than what we had, we would have had to have paid even more dearly than we already had. I didn't want to see any more graves, and most everyone else in Fleet felt the same. We'd had our fill of funerals.
In the early days following the war, Admiralty controlled the Federation. As I still held my commission, the powers-at-be decided that for the difficult posting of ambassador to Tradur they would prefer a person with a strong military background. I had captained the heavy cruiser FS Indomitable, and had been fleet captain when Chastity had fallen to Fleet warships. But my face was unknown to the Reds, which meant I could go into Tradur in the guise of a civilian.
Technically, as the Federation's ambassador, I was the most powerful person on the planet. But in reality the Federation's control over Tradur basically stopped a few hundred kilometres from the surface. The Reds still maintained an iron grip on the population, and to have replaced them with the sort of democratic government the Federation preferred would have been near to impossible given the unswerving allegiance many on the world had to the Red Catholic faith.
When I arrived I understood this pressure cooker I was stepping into, and the risk my background in the military posed. On Tradur there was still a lot of enmity for Fleet, who many regarded as their oppressor and enemy of the faith. They would never have knowingly countenanced the presence of a Fleet officer--active or retired.
Accordingly. I made every effort to play the part of diplomat--even to the point of hosting a reception not long after I arrived. It was here that I first met Kieara; and it is a moment I shall never forget. It changed my life forever--and may well have changed the future of entire worlds.

3.
"Probably the most powerful man on the planet," Burrye muttered to me in warning as a tall, elegantly-attired Tradurian approached us through the assembled guests. He was like a great ship whose prow cut the waves with