Post

The Silent Conquest

Tuuvan looked him up and down, and found not a hint of this senator before him that was not full-blooded civil servant. His hair, combed back into a slight slick back, was a dark black. His face was wiry and long, his chin absolute, his eyes a constant judgemental glare. He looked ready to snap, like every second cost him money. He could imagine this man in any role. A stock broker, perhaps? Or maybe a factory boss? What he didn't expect, by all regards, was that he was once the chief logistics manager for a small Acadian shipping company based upon the second moon of Orono.

"I was a zippy at the time, this was before my boss was replaced. They called it ... a 'reform', the Reforms. Every government-affiliated business had to go through with them. But they weren't reforms, they were purges - the Acadian government was eager to appease their new masters, after all."

"Why did they focus only on the leadership?"

"Simple. Nobody else mattered. The Laconians aren't tyrants, they're just rulers - Winston knew he wouldn't be able to control us all directly, so he played ball, rearranged the leadership and made his rule more of a liberation. He didn't put a single boot on Acadian soil, after all. Not like we could resist if he used his navy to cut off food shipments from Prentiss. It made us such suck-ups that we didn't just tolerate it, but we lapped up everything he gave us, not just out of fear but sometimes out of a real belief in his oration of a new unified Acadian Empire. There was no need to change the status quo, no Acadian nationalism. None at all. We were the perfect conquests, the little workhouses of the empire."

"So nobody attempted any rebellion?"

"We had a few skirmishes, mostly out in Maurizani, near the subcontinents, around the less economically developed statelets. Places with big religious, cultural connotations, reasons to want a united Acadia independent from Mars, or Laconia, or ... whatever fück-off racism they had towards the colonies. No, that's a mischaracterisation. It was pride. I don't blame them, even if they were stupid to try what they tried. It's hard bowing every time some admiral with trees growing out of his head walks into the room ... but with what they've done for us, we'll manage. They were places that really didn't like the idea of Orono coming back into the fold, too, even if the original treaty said that we'd be deciding our own immigration and trade policies - they had good reason to, mind. Laconia was boss now. Who said they'd keep their word? But nobody could ever awaken a large-scale rebellion for one simple reason."

"What reason was that?"

"There's an old quote, from an Acadian merchant. Before the Planetary Assembly. 'Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws'. He was right, whoever he was. The government here on Acadia isn't tyrannical, but it's hardly a democracy, and it's most certainly closer to the methods of a Vulpine despot than it is a full fledgling senatorial republic. But the control we have over our citizenry? The way we've utterly destroyed their reliance on themselves, put their worth into money and their power into our hands and bank accounts?" He scoffed, "We took Acadia, this ... frothing, bubbling cesspool of nationalism, infighting, hatreds. And we dismantled all that made it dance out of tune. Projected it outwards, all forty billion of us, and burned all the bridges that were behind us, millennia of insubordination, in a way no government has ever done before in history. Do you know how many Acadian citizens there are on food stipends?"

"Thirty billion?"

"Bingo. A little less come the next count, I'm sure, and with heaping of agricultural techno-marvels ... see why we bow to the uniform? Bless these new colonial initiatives. Now, some countries call our unemployment rate - or, well, unproductive employment ratio - a detriment. A big national shame to the game of nations with one-hundred percent employment rates and housing markets, and who do not believe in finite resources. Fück that. It's the greatest invention in Acadian history. Because we did have nationalists, and we did have presidents and prime ministers of our provincial states who wanted to rebel, protectorates especially, and do you know what we did to their soldiers? Their ministers and their factory workers? We told them if they considered rebellion, everybody connected to the insurgency would be off the stipend. The only logistical lifeline worth a damn that we had ever given them - well, if you don’t count food, water, economic development, the ousting of third world authoritarian despots and dictators…"

"I see. Like that?"

"Like that. Grandmothers, cousins, brothers, fathers and mothers, all losing their only lifeline. Three in four people are on stipend, after all. If they rebelled, they would let them starve, and know that they would have starved their own homelands into submission, and if any self-sufficient regions tried anything ... well, again, who says the Planetary Assembly was ever democratic?"

He looked beyond me, to where I knew a plaque for 'excellent martial service to the empire' was placed upon his wall. It was two Laconian swords, crossed over an artistic picture of Acadia herself. He paused for effect. I took a sip of my tea.

"Besides, we had enough favours to stock our political capital for the next decade. The Assembly had made sure of that. Banks, electronic cash ... yes, all ours. All easily made to the specifications of confiscation. Why would a man with real estate, taxes to pay, a family to care for, ever look beyond that threat? Wordlessly, and without a single shot fired, the cradle of Acadia and her many billions had been incorporated into the empire of Duarte's creation."