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Another day out here, contemplating how my life has progressed, even as my very thoughts are transcribed into the databanks for storage I wonder what life would have been like if things had been different. Perhaps if my father had chosen a different career, maybe as a champion in the games instead of rising in the ranks of the military, things would be different. If he had turned down the position that left him as an aide to one of the most vocal supporters of Karun, maybe my family wouldn’t be living in a state of quiet disgrace. If Karun had defeated Oernon instead of the fight ending in such ambiguity, perhaps everything would be different. Maybe if the Serco weren’t so focused on the skewed view of challenge that the games present.

The games, it all goes back to the games, how I wish that people could understand how futile they really are. Combat for the sake of combat, minimal risk, oh there’s danger, and people are wounded and killed, but it’s all for bragging rights, not for anything real. If only people understood that, but that’s all they see, the glory of the games, the thrill of combat, the myth of Serco superiority in everything, after all, just look at the top contestants, none who are not Serco could possibly best them, right? Sure, and the guise’s will come up with a way to create artificial wormholes next week. The games exist to ensure that the competitive nature of us all has a focus, to be sure that we aren’t scrutinizing the policies of the triumvirate.

Probably it is the games more than anything that damns us to this continual strife with the Itani. But enough of my musings, I have a task to finish, at some point I can recall these thoughts to flesh out my reports. For now I merely get them down for reference while they remain fresh in my mind. Out here in the fringes of known space, I haven’t been to a Serco system other than Pyronis and Initros in so long I hardly remember what they look like. For over a year I have been assigned to monitor the various corporations and factions that make up the UIT, to determine what makes them function. To, in the absurd phraseology used in my orders, “find out how their cowardly forces continue to exist as a functional society.”

Thus for the past year I have roamed the space lanes out here, wandered through grey space and the UIT systems; Building trust with the assorted factions and corporations that are scattered about out here with no discipline or order. I found no good way to gain access to Itani space, but my orders didn’t require me to. That task was left to others. Somehow I’ve even managed to succeed, acting within the wide boundaries of my orders I was even able to help the Dominion out by involving myself with the cargo convoys, gaining some small measure of recognition even from those who would have preferred me to remain in obscurity far from the corridors of Skycommand.

My secondary task remains uncompleted, the Akanese remain a mystery to me, I have run across not the smallest clue as to where they might be; none of my contacts at any of the stations will admit to ever having even dealt with them.

I digress however, the factions that make up the UIT cannot survive by all the reasoning of our best minds, yet not only do they exist, they also thrive. The only thing they have in common is a wish to go their own way, and do what they want to do as individuals. There is no national pride, no binding loyalty that ties them to each other, yet if any one of them is threatened, all band together to come to the aid of that faction. Not because they feel any loyalty to that group, but because somehow they understand that if one group is subdued, eventually all will be. Finding a way to fragment them and play them off of each other will be almost impossible, my reports back to skycommand have reflected this, but I fear that any findings that are contrary to official thought will be ignored, to the long term detriment of our people.

Paperwork; Administrative tasks; These are not duties for a warrior, yet I find myself assigned to yet another report. Disgraced by the fact that my father was an aide to one of Karun’s supporters, not officially disgraced of course, there are no entries in my personnel file listing me as being unfit or disloyal. Still, it’s amazing how many tasks can be found to minimize the chances for glory if your opinions are considered tainted. Oh well, someone must do it, I suppose if it must be done, better that I do it than some rear echelon paper pusher who’s never tested his augmentations in anything more dangerous than the games.

I at least have seen real combat, faced a valkarie across an asteroid field and felt the coldly calculating electronics of a chaos swarm searching for my hull. Now they want my opinion, they want to know my views on the convoy situation. Despite my exile from anything even approaching an official combat command, despite the roaming, free agent assignment they have given me to keep my out of a position where my views might influence policy, as if I care about Serco policy.

Again our unsanctioned, unofficial forces have managed to bring home enough Purified Xithricite to allow the Neutron III to be constructed; again we have denied the Itani enough to allow them to manufacture their own. Unstable stuff this purified Xithricite, It has to be processed right out of the asteroid belts, no time to transship it anywhere before it has been subjected to the extraction process. Even then it has such a short half-life that if it doesn’t get used almost immediately thereafter it looses the volatility that gives the neutron III so much power. Leave it for a week and you only have a fifth of what you started with, a week later, you’ll only have a fifth of that.

Not that any of that has any bearing at all on us, out here its just another cargo to be moved. The serco military cant do it, the UIT and all the outlying corporations get all panicky when the battle cruisers make an appearance, so it’s left up to us. Out here, on our own, separated from the officials at skycommand by several million kilobytes of bureaucratic nonsense we can do what needs to be done without upsetting the sensibilities of those corporate money grubbers who want to sell us Xithricite at the same time they demand that we not bring any warships near their regions of control. Control, the word doesn’t even mean the same thing to them, chaos is more like it.

5 weeks now, for 5 weeks we have managed to keep the Itani off balance and unable to counter our deliveries. Skycommand wants to know how; apparently the fact that we are succeeding at something they don’t have a hand in planning has them worried. We all know that most likely we will never be a part of the regular chain of command again; we’ve had to learn to improvise and plan on our own too much for that.

For the time being we continue to succeed, not because we are better, although that is a factor. We manage because the Itani have the same problems we do, they can’t leave it to their regular military, because then even if the UIT didn’t object we would be able to respond with our military. The Itani don’t want war, they never have. Thus we face pilots in the same situation we are in, but without even the advantage of our military background. They have no concept of a unified chain of command, or supporting strikes, or distraction raids, or any of the hundred other tricks of modern space warfare.

They are talented, they have good equipment, but by their very nature they are individuals, one on one they make tolerable opponents, but we support each other, so they never gain a one on one battle. Even when there are several of them together, they foolishly expect us to pair off and engage in a series of individual contests, thus they do not assist each other, allowing us to pick them off one by one. These are not the games, where honor and protocol reign supreme, and ganging up on a single enemy is viewed with disdain. This is combat, battle at its most primal, where the only rule is survival.

We win because the Itani do not embrace the thrill of combat, they don’t group together to take us on. Even though there are far more Itani roaming the depths of space, most of them are self absorbed, focusing on personal goals, and not concerned with the welfare of their nation. Even as we, living in a semi-exile, strive for the betterment of all Serco, fighting for the honor of what we have become. This is why the Itani cannot succeed.

They show some ability to learn, groups of them have started trying to work together, but even the groups are not organized within themselves, much less with other groups. They have too many generals and not enough troops, they don’t plan from what I have seen, and they improvise, often with disastrous results. I’ve seen members of different groups fail to assist each other in the heat of battle because they had no fast way to call for aid. As long as they continue in this fashion, we will continue to succeed.

Final note to self, Skycommand wants a traditional report, remember to include the reference keys this time.
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