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[center]THE TRUE HISTORY
OF THE
TAURIAN CONCORDAT

AS TOLD BY

ARTHUR DILLENGER
PROFESSOR EMERTIUS
UNIVERSITY OF TAURUS

Copyright 3042, Concordat Free Press
Jamestown[/center]

Introduction

History, it is said, is seen through the prism of the victor. Such is the case with our own Concordat, a Star Nation that predates all of the other Great Houses of both the Inner Sphere and the Periphery, saving only the Terran Alliance itself. Our very history has been rewritten first by the propagandists of the Star League, and then by the hooded Acolytes of ComStar. It has been distorted for use by those who wish to make our realm seem filled with men and women driven by paranoia and rage. To the average citizen of the Inner Sphere, the Taurian Concordat appears to be a desolate place, inhabited only by those who are unable to flee to better worlds. They are told—those citizens—that they are better off than the denizens of the Periphery States; a lawless group of malcontents that breed pirates and raid each other for valuable water. And in some sections of the Periphery that may well be true.

But it is not true in the Concordat that I know and that I love. We value freedom, and the ability to act as we so choose; we are served by our government and not vice versa. We have proud cities and institutions of learning, and our standard of living is in many instances better than those who would lord over us. Our industries have suffered trials and tribulations, but always we have recovered and regained our footing. Even now, as other realms still shrink in size, and their citizens languish without the benefits of a legitimate social contract, we in the Concordat expand. We are colonizing new worlds and new star systems where mankind—where humanity—has never before trod. Unlike others who turn their envious eyes filled with greed upon their neighbors, we look outwards, towards the future. It is the promise of that future that drives us forward and makes us far more than simply another Successor State.

And we protect what is ours. When studying the history of our realm, we must remember that one simple fact; what we have built is ours, no one else may lay claim, no one else has the right to take it away. In the words of the ancients, we hold these truths as self-evident; that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is our core. That is who we as a people are. And we shall defend our rights, no matter what the odds, no matter who the challenger. We must also remember that we respect those same rights of others. What our neighbor does, or does not do, is not of our concern. We afford him the same rights we expect in return. In nigh upon eight centuries of existence we have launched but a single ill-fated and badly thought-out war; a war that proved itself as a comedy of errors. Can our upright and virtuous neighbors claim as much? No. Throughout our history, we have asked others for one thing and one thing alone: the right to be left alone in peace, to enjoy the fruits of our own labors in our own homes. That, it would seem, has been far too much to ask.

Like all good tales, this one must of necessity begin at the beginning. And so we will examine our real history—unfettered by religious trappings of the order of ComStar, unhindered by the lies spewed by the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere. We will peel back the curtain of time and seek to understand why our freedom and independence and liberty are so vexing to our neighbors. To do that, we must start in the depths of the abyss of history, back to the days before interstellar space-flight on Old Earth itself. A wounded world; scarred and battered by far too many people raping its resources and abusing the planet itself with chemical discharges into its atmosphere and water. A world where the promise of freedom and liberty—so briefly attained by a few in the West for a short, golden time—had withered away and died beneath a bureaucratic nightmare that engorged itself upon the property and wealth of billions.

It is difficult to imagine such a circumstance in this day and time. All of the masses of humanity, huddled together upon but a single world—just one asteroid strike or nuclear exchange away from annihilation. But it was that overtaxed, overburdened world of injustice that discovered the concepts behind the Kearny-Fuchida drive and opened the door for what we term the First Exodus. That gave humanity the stars themselves. This is where our history begins, shortly after that first great seminal migration of our people from the small green planet that gave us birth.

When we reached the stars, we soon found that we had not left the bureaucrats behind. Like all bad governments are wont to do, they sought to follow us and take from us the product of our labors; all in the name of the common good, of course. But they did so without allowing our ancestors representation. And that proved to be the undoing of the Terran Alliance. Across known space, men and women revolted, sparking a fire that raged across the inhabited universe, demanding freedom and liberty. After attempting to put out the flames, to stomp out the cries for justice, the Alliance suffered its own change in government—and it went to the opposite extreme. A pox on all of you, it declared. Ignoring all worlds further than a single jump from Old Earth, they turned inward, and began to devour their own young.

That point was the true turning point of History. Like slaves who had successfully slaughtered their masters, we found no sudden sense of propriety and idealism in the aftermath of the Outer Reaches Revolt. There was no sudden cessation of violence as we turned our spirits toward improving our selves and our worlds. There was no harmony among the different cultures of humanity who suddenly discovered that life is not fair, and food does not magically appear when you hunger. Fear, apprehension, doubt; all that and more built upon itself until the Reaches once again erupted in war. Planets without enough sought to obtain what they needed; and since the Alliance no longer provided it, they took it from their neighbors. In place of the men and women who should have learned from the lessons of the Alliance there were only strong-men and warlords. Few worlds could claim any peace during this time and history tells us that more men and women died in these years than any other two decades since we first began to walk upright.

On the little known world Aix-la-Chapelle, this constant internecine fighting had a tragic ending. A woman had lost her husband and daughters years before to an Alliance firing squad before the stormtroopers departed forever. Picking up the pieces of her life, she tried to rebuild, using the fortune her family had amassed. Yet, they would not leave her and her people in peace. Her ships were hounded, pursued, and destroyed by pirates operating under the banner of various petty warlords and greed-stricken men. Day by day, she watched as her coffers were drained and her people—her people—were killed. And for what? Political power? The control of her world? A financial profit?

She did the only thing which the woman that she was would allow her to do. She took control of her own fate—and the fate of those who believed in her. Dissolving her remaining fortune, she announced the formation of an expedition to beyond the rim of human space. She announced that she intended to leave the violence far behind and colonize a world where men and women could live in peace. And her words attracted tens of thousands of adherents. Acquiring ships, she purchased heavy machinery and industrial equipment, she stockpiled food, water, and air; she acquired the weapons with which to defend herself and the people who would follow her. And in the winter of 2250, Samantha Calderon led her Fleet away from Aix-la-Chapelle and into history.

Chapter One: The Calderon Expedition

As with much else of our history, the story of Samantha Calderon’s epic expedition across nearly one thousand light-years has been distorted and fabricated in order to meet public expectations. A recent ComStar intelligence report on the state of the Periphery bluntly stated that the expedition consisted of 25 ships carrying a total of 2,300 colonists. This is abject nonsense. At the time of the Calderon expedition, not even the concept of the docking collar borne DropShip had been invented. JumpShips—as we today know them—did not exist.

Some Acolyte, buried in some holy sanctuary on Old Earth, rewrote history to attune it to modern sensibilities—when it is difficult to transport large numbers of individuals, thanks to the decline in technological levels since the end of the Star League. Many people alive today fail to even realize that anything other than the JumpShips and DropShips they are familiar with have ever been used. In reality, the Calderon Expedition consisted of forty-eight ships—not twenty-five—carrying 149,100 colonists and crew. Twenty-five ships—perhaps the source of the ComStar scribes confusion—were Aquilia class Colonial Transports, each one capable of transporting up to 5,700 men, women, and children. Another twenty were Corona class bulk freighters, while the remaining three were Discovery class Scout Survey Vessels.

Many in the Inner Sphere—and among the ranks of ComStar—will scoff at these numbers, but consider the following: by 2330, the people of this expedition had expanded—without outside assistance—to having six colonized worlds and a population of 4.5 million. That is seventy-seven years to expand to this level, and these are numbers that ComStar reported accurately, as confirmed by historical census archives on Taurus. With a population of just 2,300—assuming that none of the original colonists died, which would be a false assumption—then each man and woman would have had to generate 2,000 progeny in the next eight decades in order to meet those numbers. That is 4,000 per pair of colonists—male and female. That type of population explosion—in such a limited amount of time—does not occur naturally among the species homo sapiens.

However, taking the numbers given above, each of the original 149,000 or so colonists would have had to generate but 30 progeny across eight decades. That is still quite a large number, but frontier worlds tend to favor large families—and it is within the realm of human possibility. An additional argument can be made in how the founders of the Concordat retained their industrial capability—and their knowledge base. Such things are very difficult for small colonial groups to do when even a single death may destroy irreplaceable knowledge; when one fire might destroy the only database.

With a large and robust colonial expedition, the odds of that happening are lowered. Regardless of the attitudes of ComStar and the Inner Sphere, the numbers given above are accurate—as per the original forty-eight ship’s manifests stored in the Samantha Calderon Memorial Library in Samantha City on Taurus.

When Calderon and her Fleet departed Aix-la-Chapelle in the winter of 2250, she originally intended to set course towards the closest edge of human space, a move that would have taken her to the opposite side of the Periphery than where she eventually wound up. Events early on the voyage convinced her to alter her course.

Soon after the voyage began, the Fleet was hailed by several merchant ships whose captains were known to the Lady Samantha. These vessels—free traders, all—informed her of a vicious war ahead of her current course, between several of the small dominions that would in time become the Tamar Pact and the Rasalhague Republic. Furthermore, privateers from the Association of Galedon and several mercantile concerns in what would become the Donegal Pact were operating in the region, sowing yet more chaos in a region infested with it.

Conferring with her ship captains, Lady Samantha was impressed with Victor Taurens blunt statements that hope was not dead. If these vultures are blocking our path, then we go elsewhere, he is said to have said. Samantha Calderon agreed—and when other captains questioned her as to where, she replied to the ends of the universe if need be. The fleet changed course and made its way across warring fiefdoms and small alliances until it entered the Robinson system in the spring of 2251.

Trevor Howard was the current Dictator of Robinson at the time the Calderon Expedition arrived. Seeing the host of ships before him—and smitten by the woman leading the Fleet—he made the decision to seize her ships and force the colony to join the population of Robinson. Entertaining the Lady Samantha aboard his yacht, he apologized to her, and then ordered her to surrender her Fleet. Samantha Calderon smiled at Dictator Howard and took his microphone to transmit the surrender orders.

Instead she ordered the Fleet to destroy the yacht and all aboard if she was not freed in fifteen minutes. Howard ranted and raved about the perfidity of women, but his crew freed her before the fifteen minutes had expired—only to discover that a hand-picked team of security personnel from the Aquilia class transport Cygnus were preparing to board and take her back by force. The nascent Marines were led by their ship captain, thirty-two year old Victor Taurens.

Forcing Dictator Howard and his crew into their escape pods, Taurens launched them into space and ordered his ship to destroy the yacht—as a message to anyone who dares take a member of this expedition hostage, he then broadcast. The Robinson Space Patrol was given coordinates where they could retrieve their wayward dictator. Completing their resupply without further incident, the Expedition continued onward.

After wandering for almost fourteen months, the ships arrived on the spinward rim of known space, at the world of New Syrtis. On the long voyage, Samantha Calderon had fallen in love with Captain Taurens, and on New Syrtis the two were wed. For six weeks, the Expedition rested at New Syrtis, enjoying the company of people that they did not know quite so intimately. But, in late June of 2252, the Fleet set sail once more, this time jumping beyond the furthest settlement of humanity into the great black void.

Four weeks later, Samantha Calderon addressed the men and women of her Fleet. It was at this time that she finally told them of their destination—the Hyades Nebula, nearly 400 light-years past New Syrtis. It would take a further eighteen jumps to arrive at that destination with their primitive drives—but she assured the colonists that in the depths of the Nebula they would find shelter and safety.

Eight months later, as they approached the nebula, Samantha Calderon gave birth to her first son, Timothy Calderon. She and Victor spent a month enjoying life before they arrived at the Nebula that would soon earn the name of Hell’s Heart.

The Discovery class scouts had traveled ahead, and after spending two months studying the roiling red cloud of gasses had finally detected one usable jump point within. One of the scientists assigned to the survey vessels theorized that at such a stable point, a debris field could conceivably form—which would explain why no previous survey ship had ever returned.

But all previous ships had been unarmed and only lightly armored. Taking command of the Star Runner, Victor Taurens made the first jump, plotted by the finest navigator in the Fleet—Henry Flannagan. Two weeks later, the Star Runner jumped back to join the Fleet. Though she was battered and buffeted by the cloud of asteroids at the jump point, Captain Taurens had used her weaponry to clear enough of a zone to chance taking the Fleet through.

Transferring back to his ship—the Cygnus—he and Samantha parted. Records indicate she was furious with him ordering her—and the child—off of his vessel, but Taurens planned for his ship to be first one through. Samantha and the baby would be safer on a following ship. The Fleet jumped into the center of Hell’s Heart, and for two weeks fought off rogue asteroids suddenly appearing from the midst of the curtain walls of hellishly red and orange gas. During that time, Cygnus was destroyed with all hands when her power failed and she was struck directly amidships by an asteroid. Two other ships—one additional Aquilia class transport and one Corona class freighter—were also destroyed. Victor Taurens died aboard his flagship.

Less than sixteen hours after the death of Calderon’s second husband, the Fleet jumped into the clear and open space of the zenith jump-point of a G class star floating in a vast open cavity surrounded by the Nebula. For seventeen days, the Expedition waited in orbit as the scientists aboard the three Survey Ships took samples, but finally, they pronounced it eminently capable of supporting human life.

On January 23, 2253, Samantha Calderon set foot on the soil of her new home. Speaking to all of the surviving men and women who had accompanied her on the twenty-two month long voyage, she named their new world Taurus after her fallen husband. Less than six weeks later, the majority of the supplies and equipment had been landed, and the first crops sown. Landing City—which would eventually be renamed Samantha City—was founded and the colonists elected Samantha Calderon as their leader in a landslide.

While the original settlement on Taurus was being bounded, Henry Flannagan took command of the three survey ships and began a sixteen year project to survey the entire nebula from within. Six systems were found to possess worlds amicable to human life—four of those, including the star Taurus orbited, had TWO worlds with acceptable atmospheres, pressures, and free-standing water. These systems were surrounded by scores more—all filled with asteroids and debris, and resources unimagined elsewhere. The worlds of the Hyades had proven to be rich and bountiful, and the colony flourished.

This is a good piece.

It has some stuff that I do not recognize, but overall I think this basically fits with established canon and is a very realistic way of seeing just how the oldest surviving polity in the Human Sphere was founded.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Major Periphery States will be relased soon...

_________________
[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Medron,

This is MY version of the history of the Concordat--I make no attempt to call it canon in any way, shape, form, or fashion. LOL Seriously, I want to take a look at the Concordat that might have been. Additional chapters will 'flesh' out the early history, leading up to the Reunification Wars and beyond. I intend this as an ongoing project to make the Concordat (in my own universe, at least) something more than a cut out carictiture of paranoid gun-nuts. LOL

Matti,

I HAVE HB:MPS in PDF. And I was quite disappointed. All of the things that we have asked over the years--none of them got answered. We have no new information about the history of the states--except the Rim Worlds Republic. And that is just a crying shame. It was when I finished reading the latest canon product that I decided to go to work on this--the Concordat, Hell, the entire Periphery--deserves better.

Seriously, I hope that you guys will enjoy it, and please continue to let me know what you think.

Arminas tar Valantil
Grand Master of the Ebon Rose

Chapter Two: The Lady and Her Son

Taurus proved to be a world virtually tailor-made for mankind. Ninety-eight point four percent the size of Earth, its greater density resulted in a gravity of 1.004—almost identical to the homeworld. Circling a G3 star—hotter and brighter than our original Sun—in the fourth orbital shell, Taurus consisted of roughly 71.3% water (both fresh and salt) and 28.7% land, with an axial tilt of 21 degrees. A single large moon orbited Taurus, giving the oceans and inland seas tides, and casting aside the dark nights with its silvery glow. Eight continents divided the waters, and like Mother Terra, all were filled with life. A single revolution of Taurus about its star took 25 standard months, giving the world lazy and long seasons, but the planet itself rotated on its own axis once every 26 hours. Being farther away from its primary than Earth, Taurus was cooler, but both poles were covered with water instead of land, allowing the seas to circulate warmth and moderating the temperature to near-Terran norms. While the polar seas were ice-covered, the majority of the continental formations were mostly free of glaciation, except on the highest elevations and mountain peaks.

Primeval forests and jungles and plains and savannahs covered the world Samantha Calderon had led her expedition to, along with a thriving local fauna of small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and scores of other forms of life. No large land animals had yet evolved—none capable of directly challenging a human being, at least—but the fossil record would reveal that many such had existed just a few hundred thousand years earlier. The expedition had arrived after an impact event destroyed much of the surface life of Taurus—similar to the event that wiped out Terra’s dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. While the flora had recovered, animal life—except in the seas—had yet to re-evolve into large herbivores and predators. The few forms of native ground life found seldom exceeded twenty or thirty kilos in mass, and for a specimen to mass even that much was relatively uncommon.

Teams of specialists from the scout-survey vessels selected one of the northern continents as the most promising for initial settlement. Dozens of small craft poured across Alpha Continent for days, mapping the ground, but finally the landing spot was chosen. On the flanks of a range of low mountains east of a broad, deep ocean, a wide valley filled with an immense fresh water lake was discovered. Fed by glacial streams, the lake teemed with local life—and the survey teams found the soil rich and fertile. When Samantha Calderon set foot on the site, she would found the capital of Landing City.

Despite the idyllic setting, those first years were ones of hardship for the colonists. Doctors and physicians struggled to deal with native diseases, while colonists toiled to clear the soil and sow crops, to lay the bricks of their new homes. Unknown dangers sprang up—and the children of the Earth were once again taught the lesson that even small and innocuous creatures can be lethal. By the time the first local winter approached fourteen months later, almost six thousand of the colonists had perished. But the survivors flourished. Within three years, the population had doubled in size and the construction of Landing was complete. The streets may have still been dirt and gravel, but the first fusion generator was operational, and every home in the colony now had power and heat. Terran crops had adapted well to their new world, and domesticated animals painstakingly cared for during the journey had adjusted. Men and women now spread out across the forests, mountains, hills, and valleys of Alpha. Dozen of new small townships were founded, including several that took advantage of natural harbors on the coast of the Azure Sea. A thriving fishing industry began to take shape, supplementing the meat and grains raised by farms in the interior.

By 2260, the population included the survivors of the expedition—now reduced to a strength of around 120,000—and nearly 400,000 children ranging from the newborn to pre-teens. Recognizing the need for some form of planetary government, the colonists enacted the Planetary Assembly with delegates from each township and Landing City. That first decade was one of wonder as the First Colonists explored their world and worked themselves to the bone building a future for their children. Yet, it almost fell apart shortly thereafter.

Despite her wealth, Samantha Calderon had not been able to finance the expedition by herself. Dozens of others had contributed—in exchange for immense sections of land once a habitable world had been found and colonized. The twenty-seven Landed Families each held grants encompassing thousands of square miles of virgin territory; and as always in our history, with power and riches comes corruption. The towns at the heart of each of these Land-Holds attracted many of the original colonists; and they began to farm and mine and build, as the Twenty-Seven doled out precious equipment in exchange for a portion of the fruits of their labor.

Soon enough, the Twenty-Seven made themselves into neo-feudal lords, forcing the men and women who lived on their lands into perpetual servitude. It sickened the Lady Samantha as she watched, but the government of Taurus offered little recourse to her—and to the colonists. As the Twenty-Seven waxed fatter and fatter from the labor of others, her measures put forward in the Assembly to abate the travesty were quashed time and again, as the delegates from the Twenty-Seven Land-Holds outvoted her and her followers.

Finally, in 2264, Samantha had suffered long enough in silence. She began to travel between the Free Towns and the Land-Holds and addressed the colonists and their children. She reminded them that the laws the Twenty-Seven had enacted held only on their own land-holds, and she called on the people who were suffering to leave for the Free Towns and for Landing City. She arranged transport for those brave enough to leave, and she debated the scions of the so-called Lords in the Assembly Hall.

For four years, Samantha would criss-cross the continent to plead with the Twenty-Seven to halt their actions—supported by just a handful of leaders from the original expedition. Patrick Flannagan and Henri Montour; Robert St. John and Heather Scott; Ian MacLeod and Olivia Santiago; Thomas Kincaid and Leslie Ann Styles; Frank Norman and Geraldine Richter; Althea O’Connor and Erik Braddock. These were the Twelve loyalists who followed Samantha.

Her voice had given rise to a great anger among the Twenty-Seven, however, and finally someone acted on that anger. On March 14, 2268, Samantha Calderon died in a crash as she flew back to Landing City from one of her trips to the Land-Holds. She had celebrated her 57th birthday just three days earlier. Investigators—led by Patrick Flannagan and Ian McLeod—found no sign that her aircar had been sabotaged; but the people of Taurus knew the truth. As the colony went into mourning for the death of the woman who had led them to their new home, representatives of the Twenty-Seven attempted to ram measures through the Assembly to codify the status of the people dwelling on their Land-Holds. Those measures would have turned those men and women and children into little more than serfs and slaves. Debate came to half, however, when Henri Montour reminded the Assembly that they lacked one seat—that which had been Samantha’s. The measures were delayed until after the election of a new delegate.

Into the picture stepped a man that would become known as the Father of the Concordat—Timothy Calderon. At just sixteen standard years, the youth had inherited the fire and principles of his mother, combined with the integrity and courage of Victor Taurens. Educated at his mother’s knee, Timothy was regarded as many as a child prodigy. Though he lacked a formal degree, he debated astrophysics with Flannagan, botany with O’Connor, philosophy with Santiago, and political science with his mother.

He was a young man who had absorbed all that others poured into him, and forged it into something far more than the mere sum of its parts. As the Twenty-Seven celebrated their moment of ascension to power, Timothy announced that he would seek the Assembly seat held previously by his mother. No law restricted the age of those who could become delegate to the Council he stated—and it was time for the new generation to begin taking upon themselves their fair share of the labors of the colony.

The Lords and Ladies of the Twenty-Seven waved his victory a month later off as residual sentiment for his mother. But then, Timothy—as was his right as a delegate—called for a census and new elections. The demographic tide had shifted against the Twenty-Seven as their Land-Holds lost people over the last eight years—and now the Free Towns and Landing City—controlled by the Loyal Twelve—could match the Lords vote for vote.

The new Assembly was almost evenly split when it assembled, and yet the delegates—by a margin of one vote—elected as Speaker young Timothy Calderon. For two years, Timothy begged and pleaded with the Twenty-Seven to turn aside from their path, but all for naught. The Old Families of the Land-Holds forced their people to remain on their lands, and armed their retainers with hunting rifles. In July of 2270, they declared themselves free and independent of the Assembly of Taurus, sovereign states in their own right.

Speaking from the podium of the Assembly Chamber, Timothy Calderon acknowledged their secession and bade farewell to their delegates. It was an eerily shrunken and silent chamber that awaited him to speak again. For twenty-eight days, Taurus held its breath as Timothy Calderon apparently did nothing. But records from our archives show that he was completing steps to deal once and for all with the Twenty-Seven and their misdeeds. Eighteen years earlier, Samantha Calderon had left the contents of one cargo hold, aboard one ship untouched. That ship remained in orbit ever since—as did the other forty-four survivors. Their skeleton crews manned weapons stations watching for any stray rocks that might enter the atmosphere, in order to destroy them before impact.

But over the past two years, Timothy had secretly—with the aid and assistance of the Twelve—arranged for young men and women of his generation to be added to the ship crews. Several hundred had been aloft, and while they were there, they had trained in the use of the military weapons and armor Samantha had hid from the rest of the Colony. They learned tactics and operations from the surviving security personnel of the original expedition—and they made plans.

On September 3rd, 2270, twenty-seven strike teams of the suddenly revealed Taurian Guards attacked the capital of each of the Land-Holds simultaneously. Using non-lethal means wherever possible, they managed to capture or kill every member of the Twenty-Seven families—and their most loyal retainers—at the cost of just seven dead Guardsmen and twenty-three wounded.

Addressing the people of Taurus four days later, Timothy declared the Assembly disbanded. He read to the citizens of his new world a document he entitled the Concord of Taurus; it was this document that would establish him as Protector of Taurus—later amended to Protector of the Taurian Homeworlds. The Concord outlined the new government and its powers—and its limitations. In a fiery speech, the young Protector announced the adoption of egalitarian principles that would continue to shape us to this very day—eight centuries later.

No work—no food. The Concord was blunt and simple in its terms and made clear in ways that few others in the history of man had accomplished that each individual citizen was free and independent. Civil liberties were enshrined in the Concord—the right of assembly, the right of speech, the right of a free and open press, the right to bear arms. He spoke for two hours giving the people of Taurus his vision of the future.

And then he simply told them—you decide. Will it be business as usual; politics as usual? Will it be a world formed in the fashion of the hated Alliance or can we dare to try something new?

Elections were set for one month later with but a single choice on the ballot: Yes or No. Yes would result in the adoption of the Concord and the elevation of the Calderon line as the hereditary Protectors of Taurus. No would see a return to the Assembly—and a trial for Timothy Calderon under the Assembly’s laws for his actions.

Ninety-nine percent of the citizens aged twelve and over voted in that election. Ninety-seven percent of those chose to follow a Calderon once again. Four days after the election, Timothy was anointed as the Second Protector of Taurus by Father Jack Sinclair. When asked afterwards why he was proclaimed as the Second Protector, Timothy replied that his mother was—and always had been—the Protector that everyone on the planet had truly deserved. While she never held the title in life, Samantha Calderon has been ever since acknowledged as the First Protector of Taurus, and of the Taurian Homeworlds, and of the Taurian Concordat.

The Twenty-Seven were stripped of all wealth and given a chance to swear their fealty to the Concord of Taurus—not to Timothy himself. Most decided to do so. Those were did not were taken to the Zeta Continent—uninhabited at that time—and given a rifle, sixty bullets, and a knife; and then left there alone—separated by hundreds of miles from any other of the criminals.

Over the next forty years, Protector Timothy ably led his people, expanding to colonize all eight of the continents of Taurus. Industries were constructed—but his strict environmental laws prohibited the destruction of the environment. Substantial sections of the planet were declared natural preserves where human inhabitation was forbidden.

Finally, in 2308, Timothy Calderon asked for volunteers to begin settling the other worlds of the Hyades Cluster. In 2310, Megaris was founded, followed by Samantha in 2312, Parian in 2316, Menion in 2317, Ishtar in 2320, Ina in 2322, Jamestown in 2324, New Columbia in 2327, and Aurora in 2330. The discovery of rich germanium deposits on New Columbia in 2329 spurred efforts to begin building ship-yards capable of constructing new FTL vessels, though Timothy would not live to see their completion.

After a five-year bout with cancer, Timothy Calderon died in the Hall of the Protector in Samantha City on 17 December, 2330 at the age of 78, attended by his wife Sarah, three daughters, two sons, seventeen grand-children, and twenty-three great-grandchildren. He is to this day remembered as the man who forged our soul. He bequeathed to his daughter Sandra—the Third Protector—ten inhabited worlds with a population of more than four and a half million citizens.

I like what I see. Good writing!

_________________
[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Very nice.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Chapter Three: Forging the Concordat

When Sandra Calderon rose to power in 2330 she found herself as the sole ruler of a realm that many in the Inner Sphere of the time would envy, if they had known of its existence. Ten worlds, all located within the sheltering walls of Flannagan’s Nebula—Hell’s Heart—all within a single jump of each other. The total population of the Taurian Homeworlds was still miniscule when compared to the worlds surrounding Old Earth, or to the vast realms being forged amid the stars by those who would eventually come to rule the Great Houses.

The shipyards orbiting New Columbia—begun by her father Timothy—were completed in 2332 and within another two years, the first Taurian designed and built ships were being launched. While small in size, these merchants and explorers came to represent the pride that the Taurian people felt in their accomplishments. Sandra gave these men and women her full backing and encouraged them to exit the Nebula and explore the uncharted worlds outside the sheltering walls of gas and debris.

By 2334, the first reports had returned showing at least a dozen worlds within two or three jumps of Flannagan’s Nebula that were uninhabited, pristine, and filled with natural resources. She began a public service campaign among the people of the Hyades later that year, emphasizing the need of the Taurian people to continue their expansion. The campaign was successful, and Sandra got her volunteers. Over the next two decades, twelve Taurian colonies would be founded outside of the Nebula—Bromhead, Brockway, Horsham, Hyalite, Illiushin, MacLeod’s Land, Midale, New Ganymede, New Vandenberg, Pinard, Renfield, and Sterope. By mid-century, the population of the Concordat had swelled to slightly more than 27 million.

At home, Sandra Calderon relaxed her father’s strict egalitarian ideas; added to the Concord of Taurus as essential human rights were the right of medical care and the right of education. From her reign forward, all Taurian citizens were entitled to health care and education provided by the central authority of the Concord—later the Concordat. To pay for such a massive undertaking, Sandra revamped the tax system—eliminating the income taxes her father and grand-mother had instituted. In their place, she proposed and then enacted a single flat sales tax on all products, goods, and services sold throughout the Taurian worlds. This simple tax system—which required a minimal number of bureaucrats—appealed to the libertarian ideals that had risen in the Taurian society. If one did not want to pay taxes, he could simply refuse to buy anything. The wealthy paid more because they bought more.

Within a year of adopting the new tax codes, enough funds were flowing into the coffers of the treasury to pay for all of her proposed projects—including free health care, free education, and the new colonial expansions. During this time she also established the Concordia Courts; a new judicial system. In addition to acting as normal criminal and civil courts, the Concordia Courts—one per world—were empowered to rule on the actions of the leaders of their world. The Courts could strike down any new laws or decrees—and the High Court on Taurus could reverse even the Protector’s decisions. These Courts were seated with one instruction from Protector Sandra Calderon—protect my people, even from myself and my heirs. Since that day, the Courts have carefully watched over the government of first the Concord, and then the Concordat, as well as the individual worlds that comprised those nations. On many occasions since they have acted to preserve the liberties and freedoms of the citizenry of the Concordat from those in power that would take away those rights.

On August 27, 2335, however, the Concord was shocked to learn that Sandra Calderon had been assassinated by Gerald LaSalle—a middle-aged man that had long suffered from mental illness. Paranoid as well as schizophrenic, LaSalle shot Sandra Calderon five times in the middle of a rally in Samantha City. Taken into custody at the scene, he babbled to police investigators about the ‘Calderon Conspiracy’ to rob the common people of their rights. His ramblings during the trial resulted in his being sentenced to life imprisonment in a facility for the mentally ill.

Among the men and women of the Homeworlds of the Hyades, debate began over some form of gun control in order to prevent such an action from occurring again. Tempers flared on both sides as supporters both for and against argued their points. It is at this point in the history of the Concord that an action happened that would shape us for centuries to come. Three weeks after she was murdered, Sandra’s will was published by the Concordia Courts. In it she named her choice for her successor—her twenty-seven year old youngest son, Richard Calderon.

Bypassing five older children—and numerous nieces and nephews—she stated in the document that Richard possessed a quality that she had seen in few others, one that the Concord needed desperately. That quality was, in her words, an unflinching integrity and an ability to do the right thing, regardless of the personal cost. That, combined with an outstanding intellect and genuine desire to serve the people of the Concord made him her only choice.

On September 22, 2335, Richard Calderon was sworn in by the Chief Magistrate of the Concordia Courts as the Fourth Protector. He quickly ended the debate over gun control in his inaugural address to the people of the Hyades. Free men and women, he said, need not fear criminals who would—as a matter of course—ignore or evade any laws they choose to; at least, they would not fear if they were armed. Tragedies such as my mothers death; this is the price we must accept if we are to live as a free people. As much as the right to speech, as much as the right to assembly, the right to keep and bear arms prevents the government from enslaving its own people. History, he said, has shown that when the guns are taken away, personal liberties wither and die. Since that address, no world in the Concord or the Concordat has ever attempted to place limits upon the rights of man or woman to bear arms.

Richard quickly proved himself a man of rare ability in the mold of his grand-father Timothy and great-grandmother Samantha. He oversaw the colonial expeditions that settled the twelve worlds outside of the Hyades and completely revamped the monetary system. In 2337, he instituted the Taurian Bull as the official currency of the realm, backed by reserves of gold, silver, and other precious metals. From that time forward until the dark days of Star League occupation, the Concord and the Concordat would remain on the gold standard. His reign also focused on fiscal responsibility. Addressing the Privy Council, he told the Councilors that the money collected by the government was not theirs to dole out, but instead belonged to the people and should be spent wisely. Surpluses were tucked away in safe-keeping, for these frontiersmen knew bone-deep that hard times could be just a bad harvest away. The Council—and the other home governments of the member worlds—followed his lead and example, causing the Concord to prosper. By 2341, the Concord was enjoying a massive boom-time in their economy. The new worlds were slowly expanding and the population of the Hyades Cluster itself had risen to nearly seven million. And then contact was reestablished with the other branches of humanity.

The exploration ship Daedalus encountered a colony on the world of Diefenbaker in June of that year. Formed by panic-stricken refuges fleeing the upheaval in the Inner Sphere, the colonists of Diefenbaker were sorely in need of supplies and industrial equipment. Captain Preston Little of the Daedalus met with the leaders of the Diefenbaker colony and learned of the wars and brutality that had caused the refuges to flee into the great unknown. Though the colonists were initially suspicious of Little and his crew, they did agree to accept several tons of emergency supplies his vessel carried as cargo. Weeks of discussions between Little and the leaders of Diefenbaker eventually overcame their initial unease, and when he and his ship departed for the Hyades in July, it carried aboard a greeting from the leaders of Diefenbaker to Richard Calderon.

Over the next five years, seventeen more worlds settled by the refuges were found—and to each of these worlds Richard Calderon gave aid and assistance. Some of the colonies might not have survived without such. With Taurian industry aiding the refuges in building their own infrastructure and with Taurian merchants exchanging resources between worlds, there was a massive population explosion. By 2350, the total population of the 22 Taurian worlds and the 18 unaligned systems had reached a combined total of over thirty-two million.

In January of that year, Richard Calderon dispatched envoys to all eighteen of the unaligned worlds to begin talks about the formation of ‘grand union of worlds’ that would be called the Taurian Concordat. To each of the worlds he approached, he gave assurances though his representatives that their own governmental structure and local laws and customs would be upheld—provided that the rights guaranteed to Taurian citizens were also given to their own people. In exchange, there would be totally free trade, plus the government of the Concordat would build hospitals and schools and see to the common defense.

With the revelation of just how close they were now to settled space, the Concord of Taurus began in 2342 to form its own military forces based around the now well established Taurian Guards. The beginnings of an aerospace Corps were started, though these early fighters were primitive in nature and relatively ineffective. Plans were drawn up for the first naval WarShips, though it would be a decade before the hulls were even laid down.

It took Richard five long years of constant communication, but in August of 2355 delegates from all eighteen of the unaligned worlds arrived on Taurus to begin deliberations over his proposal to form the Taurian Concordat. For four months, the ambassadors and diplomats met daily with the Protector, hammering out provisions and clauses that would serve a common goal. Many of the delegates—such as Virginia Shire of Diefenbaker and Harold Waterson of Maia—wanted to join; they needed their worlds to join the Concordat to share in the economic boom that the Taurian worlds were experiencing. They needed investment and they needed technology, but more than that they needed people. But they—and others—also feared that the expanding Federated Suns under the House of Davion would soon come into contact with their worlds. An unaligned world would be swallowed, true enough, they reasoned, but a defensive pact would turn their homes into a possible war zone.

Three days before the delegates were scheduled to leave Taurus—without the treaties being signed—Richard Calderon asked all eighteen delegations to meet together one final time. Grieving for his wife Amanda—killed eighteen hours earlier in a vehicular accident—he set aside his pain and his anguish to finish what he had begun. To build the nation that would become the Taurian Concordat. As he appeared onstage with his five year old son—Daniel—at his side, his speech that day was broadcast across Taurus and recorded both for posterity and for transmission to all of the affected worlds.

‘Today we stand as individuals—alone, separate, able to move forward only by what we can claim from the virgin soil and naked rock of our homeworlds. And if we leave without agreeing to form this Concordat of Worlds, then ladies and gentlemen, that is how we shall perish. Yes, Madame Shire, great powers are forming in the depths of the war-torn Inner Sphere. And soon enough, Monsieur Waterson, they will set their eyes on our worlds—pristine and new; our resources almost untouched by human hand and unspoiled by human greed.’

‘We will be swallowed up and consigned to the very dust-bin of history as might-have-beens, our liberties and freedoms extinguished under THEIR laws and THEIR ideals of society. We will see THEIR so-called nobles and lords set to rule over you and your children and you will be as slaves and serfs before them. Long ago, centuries before we left Old Earth, a wise man once said, “We must hang together; or surely we shall all hang separately.” Together we are more than what can be apart. Together we can find strength to help our neighbors, because in the act of doing that kind deed, we aid ourselves. When Ridgebrook suffers from famine, we will all aid them—because they will be our brothers. When Electra cries and mourns from sickness, we will heal them—because they will be our sisters. Alone, we are just a pebble thrown into the great waters of this lake we overlook, beneath this city founded by Samantha Calderon—my great-grandmother. Together, we can be as solid and firm as the bedrock that this hall rests upon.’

‘You will keep your own identities, you will keep your own customs. We of Taurus ask nothing of you that have not asked of yourselves—we ask of you your courage, your honor, your sense of liberty and justice, we ask of you that you let us band together so that in the years to come, when danger approaches we are a strong pack able to protect all that we love and hold dear. Not a flock of shattered and frightened sheep, my friends, but a pack. A pack that does not prey on others, but protects its own from danger; shields them with their own lives if need be so that those ideas they hold true can flourish in peace and safety and security.’

‘If not today, then when shall we come together? If not now, will we ever unite to preserve our homes from those who would bring war to our lands? Ask yourself this question, ladies and gentlemen; are you better off alone than to share with us—all of us—the burdens and responsibilities of our own common defense, our common welfare? Remember what you fled, what your fathers and mothers fled and left behind and ask yourself this—did they flee so that you would tamely accept the rotten and corrupt systems of governance they left behind them? Or did they flee to give you—their children—hope for a better future? That hope, my friends, is here, today. It is now. In three days time it will be dimmed if we do not agree. And our honored dead—our sacred dead—that sacrificed and bled for me and for you and for my children and for your children will be shamed if we just stand by meekly and let ourselves be swallowed whole by the very abomination we thought to leave behind forever.’

He lifted his son, the tapes show, at that moment and held him in his arms, looking into the young boys eyes. And then he turned back to the delegates and to the cameras. ‘Will you tell this child—any child—of any of our worlds that you failed them when the barbarians of the interior place shackles around their ankles? Will you weep and shed tears at what might have been? Or will you give my son—your sons, your daughters—the chance to become a bright shining city that will become a beacon of liberty and freedom in a dark sea of oppression and cruelty? That choice, my friends, belongs today to you and to you alone. My own mind is set. My own heart tells me where we must travel. And I would be proud, my brothers and sisters, to stand besides you with one voice as we proclaim to all those who would threaten us—we are strong. We are united. We are not frightened, nor are we children who need your guidance. We will set our own path, travel our own road, and we will forge a legacy for which we shall NEVER need to render an apology.’

Richard’s speech turned the tide, and on November 4th, 2355, the articles of the Taurian Concordat were signed. Only the world of Mandarce refused to join, fearful of the aggressive Davion-led Federated Suns. Still, Anaheim, Brusett, Caldwell, Carmichael, Diefenbaker, Electra, Flintoft, Keuterville, Lindsey, Maia, Merope, Ridgebrook, Robsart, Warren, Weippe, Werfer, and Wrentham joined, swelling the Concordat to thirty-nine inhabited worlds.

Chapter Four: The Face of Evil

January of 2356 promised the Taurian people—whether descendents of the original colonists under Samantha Calderon or the new Taurian citizens of the refugee founded worlds—a glimmer of hope for the future of their realm. Protector Richard Calderon spent his reserves of treasure, industrial capacity, and human talent like water throughout the course of that year, surveying each of the new worlds and helping them to bootstrap themselves into the 24th Century. The three worlds of the Pleiades Cluster—Electra, Maia, and Merope—boomed into heavily industrialized worlds in less than a decade, fueled by over a hundred thousand new Taurian colonists each. While the other systems did not receive quite as much as the resource-rich Pleiades, each saw its population increase by factors of ten or more. Furthermore, Richard kept his promise to the people of those systems—each of the new worlds added to the Taurian Concordat were provided with health care systems equal to those in the Hyades, and educational systems that would later prove the envy of the whole of mankind.

In July of that year, one of the Diefenbaker former refugees approached Envoy Thomas Reins, the Protector’s personal liaison officer to the Diefenbaker government. The man—Walter Quentin—had not been from any of the nearby proto-realms when the colonists first fled to Diefenbaker. He had himself fled the newly formed Terran Hegemony shortly after James McKenna came to power, and when the people he had chosen to live among fled again, he did so as well. Quentin spoke with Reins for four hours that day, revealing the past that he had hid successfully for almost three decades. Before he hurriedly left Terra, he had been one of the engineers working upon the construction of the newest and deadliest ships in the Hegemony Fleet. He had wanted a simple life, he said, away from the death and destruction that he engineered with his designs. No more blood on his hands. But, Concordat physicians had just saved the life of his wife and daughter from a local illness, an illness that would have been lethal to both just two years earlier.

The Terran refugee offered to Reins—and the Concordat—his knowledge of Terran naval systems—including an entire library of schematics and designs that he had smuggled out when he left.

At this time, the Concordat was still using what is today termed as ‘primitive’ systems aboard their ships. These systems consumed nearly a fifth part greater volume aboard ship, especially in the KF Drive Cores, sub-light drives, and weapons. Armor was heavier and provided less protection than in modern times as well. With the data-base Quentin handed over, and his personal instruction to dozens of Taurian experts who traveled to Diefenbaker, the Concordat was able to make the transition to modern systems in less than four years. Quentin had handed the Protector the keys to defending his realm.

When Richard had promised the delegates on Taurus that he would see to their common defense—and asked only that the colonists contribute to it—he had begun plans to build a Fleet. With their low population, the Concordat would be unable to raise a large standing army, he realized. But armies only mattered if the enemy could get to the planet itself. A Navy, on the other hand, he saw that as a means of protecting the border worlds as well as conveying the small, well-trained, professional army he wanted to eventually build around the core of his Taurian Guards.

The ships that would comprise his Taurian Concordat Navy had not yet begun construction at the New Columbia shipyards when Quentin revealed his past to Reins. All preparations for construction were halted as engineers studied the new schematics and factories were retooled to produce the more efficient equipment. Unlike the Hegemony—and later the Great Houses—the Protector made no attempt to hide this project under a veil of secrecy. Instead, he asked the Taurian public to assist in integrating the new technology into their society.

University students across the Hyades, and both the Old and New Colonies alike, began to experiment with the technology, and within a year of Quentin’s knowledge being released patents were filed and new products were entering the markets. While some more conservative businesses faltered and stalled, the economy as a whole boomed with a vibrancy seldom seen in the history of Man. Richard’s gift of the knowledge to his people spurred a technological renaissance that in turn motivated his people to use what they had been given to its fullest.

By the autumn of 2358, the engineers at New Columbia—and some post-graduate students at Universities throughout the Concordat, and even one middle-aged war-gamer who e-mailed his ideas and concepts from his flat in Samantha City—had settled upon a design for the Concordat’s first Naval vessels. Rejecting the idea of bigger is better, the team instead proposed a simple, yet rugged, design to serve as a test-bed of the new systems before proceeding with more powerful ships. Since even this early WarShip would cost more than a billion and half Taurian Bulls, the team wanted to ensure that their calculations and specifications were indeed correct before committing themselves to even more expensive vessels.

A small—but significant—minority, however, wanted to go whole hog, citing the Terran Essex, Dart, Aegis, and Dreadnought class ships as their example. Their competitive design—which would eventually reemerge in slightly modified form as the Winchester class Cruiser—would push the very limits of Taurian industry and ability. These men and women lobbied hard for their design to be accepted, even adopting slogans such as ‘Why settle for a Corvette when you can have a Cruiser?’ They highlighted all of the ‘flaws’ with the proposed new vessel, and launched a public campaign to discredit the lighter design. Among their number were several industrialists who simply wanted the biggest possible defense contract.

After six months of this constant bickering between the opposing viewpoints, the Protector himself stepped in and ended the argument. ‘The Corvette test-bed design will be the one built’, he said as he glared down at the engineers, students, and war-gamer in his private conference. He turned that glare upon the industrialists and military officers who had loudly and publically supported the larger and more expensive design. ‘This debate is over—and if it continues I will have anyone pushing it charged with treason. We don’t know if the ship will even work, and this money you are arguing over is not yours; it is not MINE; it belongs to the PEOPLE THEMSELVES.’ He then pulled out his pistol from its holster and laid it upon the table. ‘Take it’, he said, ‘if you disagree. Take it and remove me from office. If you don’t do that, and you continue to work to undermine this project, then I will be the one who pulls the trigger against you.’

He waited, but no one moved. ‘No takers?’ he asked with the corner of his mouth twitching. ‘Then let this be done, here, today. I shall hear no more talk about this until the prototype finishes her trials. We are done’, he finished as he reholstered the weapon. A subdued and quiet group of engineers, industrials, and officers left his palace.

The following morning, construction began on TCS Warlock and three sister ships. Ten months later, on February 14th of 2360, she would be commissioned into service as the very first modern WarShip of the fledging Taurian Concordat Navy. Her acceptance trials were passed with flying colors, and while those who had supported the larger Cruiser design pointed out her flaws, they also grudgingly acknowledged that their own project would have suffered far more teething problems—and taken almost five more years to complete. A further twenty of the little ships were immediately authorized for construction while the engineers and naval officers would work to finalize plans for heavier, more robust, and more powerful designs. These ships would be entering the Fleet not one moment too soon.

In June of 2360, a Taurian survey/exploration vessel—TCS Challenger—arrived at the system of Tentativa. While the system was close to Davion space, it was also supposed to uninhabited. That was not to be the case.

Captain Tracy Ashton Pendleton, the commanding officer of the vessel, was shocked to discover a small colony on one isolated section of the planet during the initial mapping survey. Attempts to contact the colonists via radio were unsuccessful and high-resolution photographs from orbit generated concern among her and her crew of 234 officers, spacers, and surveyors. The colony was located in a very rugged badlands, without ready access to water or agriculture, despite their being much more desirable locations on the planetary surface. Furthermore, it was concentrated in an extremely small area—far less than her staff thought could support the more than 15,000 people below.

She ordered the drop-shuttles prepped for launch, asking for volunteers among her crew to accompany her to the surface. Meanwhile, Challenger launched two recon drones that made low-level passes over the colony site. The telemetry links streamed back data that revealed fences of barbed wire, surrounded by guard towers manned by soldiers who watched the prisoners held within. Circling the camp high above, the drones continued to show live feeds the following day of those held within being forced to endure hard physical labor breaking rocks and carrying ore into several buildings adjacent to the camp. And still there had been no response to their radio calls.

Knowing that she could be causing an interstellar incident, Captain Pendleton decided to lead a recon party aboard one of Challenger’s small craft down to the surface on the second night. Her team made contact the following day with one of the prisoners on the outskirts of the camp. That prisoner revealed that he and the other captives were civilians from the Capellan world of Bell, and that their captors were troops of the Federated Suns. House Davion had recently launched an offensive that captured their world, and the captives had been transported here in order to mine germanium under harsh conditions. Several hundred had already perished, the prisoner told Pendleton.

Appalled by the conduct of the Fed Suns troops—and its government—Pendleton once again decided to use her initiative as one of Richard Calderon’s ship commanders. Challenger was left with only a skeleton crew in orbit, while more than 200 of her vessels company were transported to the surface via small craft and drop-shuttle. That night, she attacked the Davion forces guarding the captives in a blistering surprise raid.

Pendleton’s spacers managed to decimate the unsuspecting Fed Suns garrison force in less than five minutes. None of the garrison survived her assault, at the cost of seventeen wounded and eight killed among her own personnel. Ordering her small craft and drop-shuttles to land next to camp, a hand-picked team went through the garrison buildings gathering all of the intelligence they could. In the radio room, they discovered why no one had responded—the equipment was inoperable. However, their next scheduled supply ship would be arriving in four days, according to a schedule posted in the garrison operations center.

Captain Pendleton somehow managed to squeeze all 15,127 surviving Bellites aboard Challenger, along with the invaluable data they had collected from the garri-troopers below. Several examples of Fed Suns military equipment was also shipped topside to be turned over to the Concordat government. Bringing her ship as low as she dared in orbit, Pendleton then used her weapons to obliterate the former labor camp, and then she turned the ship around and ran for Concordat space. Three weeks later, she arrived in the Caldwell system, her life support systems on the verge of complete failure.

On October 16th of 2360, Tracy Ashton Pendleton was the first recipient of the Concordat Sunburst, the highest award for valor in the Taurian Concordat. The medal was placed about her neck by Protector Richard Calderon himself, who also awarded citations and honors to every member of her crew. ‘For the risks that Captain Pendleton ran, not only for herself and her crew, but for the Concordat, some might say that she was foolish, or perhaps not prudent enough. Her actions endanger us all, those critics might say. But I do not agree. We Taurians hold ourselves to a higher path; we value freedom and liberty and justice. So I say to you all, that no one who calls themselves a Taurian could have acted with any more honor and understanding of who and what we are than Captain Pendleton and her crew did. Evil exists in our universe, and there on a rock called Tentativa, Tracy Ashton Pendleton looked into its face. She—and her gallant crew of explorers—looked into the face of evil; an evil that had dragged FIFTEEN THOUSAND men, women, and children hundreds of light-years from their home. An evil that sentenced them with no appeal to life at hard labor and confinement within the wire; an evil that would have seen all of them perish and for what? For what purpose was this done?’

‘I cannot answer that question. None of us can answer that question, for evil does things incomprehensible to good men and women. She saw the evil that was before her; she heard the cries of children suffering. And she said NO. Not while I draw breath; not while I have strength in my arms; not while I can make a difference. Captain Pendleton and her crew are heroes this day for what they have done. They have made a difference. They looked evil in the face and they said NO FARTHER.’

‘Accordingly, I have ordered the Taurian Guards and the Taurian Fleet to secure Tentativa as an outpost—an outpost where we will watch our neighbor carefully; an outpost where we will remember, even if no one else does. Long ago, a man once said that for evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to do nothing. Today, we celebrate that a good woman—Tracy Ashton Pendleton—choose to do something. And because of her actions, there are now fifteen thousand men, women, and children who would have died that will now live as part of our Concordat.’

Protector Calderon did offer the Bellites a choice—they could stay on any world of the Concordat they wished, or they would be conveyed home. Fearful of Davion occupation of their homeworld, all choose to stay. Captain Pendleton, her crew, and her ship became heroes for the Taurian people, an inspiration for generations to come.

TCS Warlock led the three other newly completed WarShips—TCS Necromancer, TCS Enchantress, and TCS Invoker—and one modified cargo ship—TCAS Provider—back to Tentativa seventeen days later. The Taurian Guards landed, but no trace of any further Davion settlement was found. The original camp site that Pendleton had struck from orbit had been completely razed with a nuclear strike, the only evidence that the Davions had returned. The detachment of the Guards established their outpost and began to keep a careful eye upon the border.

Chapter Four: Confronting the Swords

From 2360 to 2368, the Concordat continued to flourish under the reign of Protector Richard Calderon, adding new ships to its Fleet and founding the Taurian Defense Force. Established in 2362, the TDF was to consist of a small regular force of military professionals outfitted with the best armored vehicles, VTOLs, and equipment that the Concordat could produce. In order to supplement the regular TDF, each of the member worlds was expected by the central government to raise additional local forces that would fall under TDF command during a crisis.

Opening the Treasury, Protector Calderon poured money like water during these years, bestowing grants to the member worlds. The fledgling TDF—built around a cadre of the Taurian Guards—rapidly expanded, but then immediately broke up into small cadres assigned to each of the now fifty member worlds (as the following had just been colonized: Cyrton, Desolate Plains, Hanseta, Horsham, Landmark, Mavegh, Montour, Pierce, Sartu, Tentativa, Victralla) to train the local forces.

Taurian industries manufactured vast quantities of vehicles and equipment, and the nascent TDF was provided with arms and munitions in overflowing quantities. But the member worlds had difficulty in raising sufficient numbers of personnel. At this point in Taurian history, the overall population was still quite low—barely fifty million divided among fifty worlds—and each member of the local defense force was one less pair of hands to be put to work doing all of the things a new colony needed done.

Seeking to address that problem, in 2366 the Protector passed the Defense Service Act into law. This Act required all citizens of the Concordat, upon the age of 18 or upon the graduation of the individual from secondary school (provided that the citizen in question was still attending school), would be required to serve a two-year term. The Protector spent almost a year making speeches about the need for all Taurians to join in and help each other—and reminded the people again and again of all the benefits that the Concordat provided for them. Health care at no charge. Education to the college level and beyond at no charge. A guaranteed retirement pension, irregardless of profession or savings at no charge.

Though the population was divided on the issue, Richard was shrewd—he included in the Act a clause that would permit any whose conscience prevented them from military service to select other national service duties. In May of 2366, plebiscites on all of the member worlds passed the DSA with 62% of the voters choosing to adopt his ideas. The following spring, more than a quarter of a million citizens were sworn in to their term of service.

Buried in the DSA was a small section that detailed a citizen’s responsibility to remain in a reserve pool for a period of ten years, and an inactive reserve for ten years after that. With the stroke of a pen, Richard had assured that he as well as all future Protectors would have at their disposal a tremendous portion of the Concordat population should a crisis strike.

As the TDF experienced its growing pains, the TCN and the Taurian Marine Corps aggressively patrolled the border systems—especially on the border where the Concordat butted up against the expanding Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns. Though neither power had yet to realize the Concordat existed, that would change one fateful month in 2368.

On 17 August, 2368, three transports—battered and scored with damage from weapons fire—jumped into a pirate point over Ridgebrook. Each of the transports carried the survivors of Lord Vlad Tormassov’s attempt to withstand Franco Liao’s order for the independent Freikorps of Tikonov nobles to disband. Consisting of three regiments of armor and six of infantry (all under-strength), Tormassov’s Galactic Rangers had fled into what they believed was uninhabited space from the Capellan system of Ashley.

The Rangers were surprised when they encountered TCS Cultist and TCS Oracle, along with enough satellites in orbit to suggest a rather populous colony below. Captain Hal Ransom of TCS Oracle refused to allow the Rangers to land, but did agree to send word to Flintoft where the Protector was touring one of the new TDF facilities.

Twenty-seven hours later, Richard arrived at the pirate point and spoke with Lord Tormassov. Although he did not want to get involved in the internal politics of the Confederation—recognizing what a danger that could be for his young nation—Richard did agree to meet with Tormassov on the planet below. Tormassov’s troops, however, would have to remain in orbit under the guns of three TCN Corvettes (TCS Warlock having joined Cultist and Oracle).

For his part, Lord Tormassov soon learned of the disdain Richard had for the Federated Suns as a result of the Tentativa incident. Seeking to use that to his advantage, the Tikonov noble argued for four hours that Richard and the Concordat could use him and his men— battle-hardened—to secure their border. There was a catch, however. Tormassov wanted Calderon’s support for a free Tikonov against the Capellan Confederation.

Both men wanted to reach an agreement, but Richard simply refused to back any of Tormassov’s proposed actions against the Confederation. The Capellan grew angry and the Protector responded, while overhead the Rangers and the Fleet watched each other closely. Finally, Richard had enough. He stood and told Tormassov that the Concordat would not take any preemptive action against either of its neighbors. He did extend his hand in friendship, and offered the noble and his men a refugee—but they would either have to disband and disarm or be broken up to serve in the TDF. History does not tell us what Tormassov would have done, for at that point the second act began.

At the pirate point, the Capellan General Anthony LeBlanc suddenly emerged, along with a small flotilla of WarShips—mostly Corvettes and a handful of Destroyers. LeBlanc had been pursuing Tormassov when he and his men had abruptly jumped from the Ashley system. A handful of the Rangers were left behind in their fighters, abandoned by their leader. One of those men offered to give up Tormassov’s next destination if LeBlanc spared him. LeBlanc, of course, accepted, and learned that Tormassov was bound for Ridgebrook—which Capellan charts listed as an unexplored and uninhabited system.

Shocked by the presence of three unknown Corvettes, LeBlanc ordered an immediate attack on both the Rangers and the Taurians. Captain Ransom returned fire, and a wild melee immediately broke out on both sides. LeBlanc’s older, more primitive ships may have outmassed the Taurian corvettes, but the TCN had the firepower advantage. Even as the ships slugged it out, the Rangers panicked and made an emergency jump.

In their state of panic, Tormassov’s transport ships communicated with each other—without encryption—transmitting coordinates for their destination; the signal was heard by all of the ships in the fight, be they Taurian, Capellan, or Tikonov. Taking serious damage from the unknown ships he assumed were pirates, LeBlanc decided to withdraw in pursuit of the Rangers. Suffering heavy damage to his own vessels, Captain Ransom decided to let the Capellan go.

As LeBlanc withdrew from orbit, his ships began to hot-load their KF Cores, and within minutes they followed the Rangers to the Sanurcha system—in Davion space.

When the Rangers arrived in Sanurcha, they jumped right into the sights of a Davion Naval Service Flotilla conducting maneuvers near the Nadir point. Within minutes, all three ships—which opened fire upon the Davions when they emerged—had been destroyed. Less than twenty minutes later, LeBlanc’s ships jumped in—and the Davions were in no mood to talk.

Only one of LeBlanc’s ships would manage to use their superior agility and thrust to evade and escape, eventually returning to Capellan space to inform Franco Liao of the ‘squatters’ infesting Ridgebrook.

As Richard Calderon and Vlad Tormassov listened with dawning horror to the events unfolding above, the Protector knew that his time of isolation was over. Lord Tormassov went white with horror as his men fled, abandoning him and his dreams of a Free Tikonov. Sitting down at the conference table, he told Richard there were now no more reasons to continue—and then he drew his pistol and fired a single round into his own temple.

Two days later, Richard was still on Ridgebrook when a Davion force appeared in orbit. Dispatched by their commander to smash what they thought was a secret Capellan base at Ridgebrook, the Davions attacked the Taurian ships in orbit. For the first time, Davion fought Calderon, and despite the loss of TCS Cultist with all hands, the Taurian Concordat Navy gained its first victory. The smaller, more efficient Taurian ships—expertly handled by crack crews—wrecked two of the Davion destroyers into shattered hulks, while their Marines boarded and captured a third vessel. The fourth vessel was forced to flee, and Ransom’s surviving ships had suffered far too much damage to pursue.

Even though the captured Davion ship would reveal some of the latest Inner Sphere military technologies, Richard Calderon was worried about how Reynard Davion would react. That leader was not one who would let the destruction—let alone capture!—of his WarShips go unanswered. And while the Federated Suns might not yet know WHO they had fought at Ridgebrook, they certainly now did know WHERE they could be found. On his return to Taurus, Richard declared a state of emergency and doubled his efforts to build his small Fleet and army.

Over the next two years, skirmishes occurred between the TCN and the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns Naval Service at Ridgebrook, the Pleiades Cluster, Brusett, Keuterville, Anaheim, Warren, and Weippe. Both sides gingerly probed against the other, but in the end, Reynard was too focused on his struggles with Franco Liao to devote much attention to an ‘organized band of pirates’ beyond the rim of New Syrtis.

Even after the skirmishes slowly came to a halt in 2371, Richard Calderon would retain those emergency powers granted to the Protector in a crisis. He was convinced that if not today, then tomorrow, a full-scale Davion invasion force would arrive in Concordat space. For the next sixteen years until his death in 2387 at the age of 79, Richard would know few nights of peace.

Very cool.

Though I did note one factual error. The Taurian terms of service are 4 years, not 2.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
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Oops.

Arminas

Very good read. That's the kind of thing I want to see if the Concordat ever gets its own source book.

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Lyran-ism: You have two cows. One starts a business and becomes insanely rich. The other buys rank in your military and subsequently loses three assault regiments and two worlds to a band of pirates in Locusts.