Birth of a Hero Part 2

Itron Construction Consolidated
Capital, Itrom
Aurigan Reach, Outward Periphery
3 December 3120

Max wrestled with that trepidation for days. He said nothing of his thoughts or concerns to his fellow construction laborers. He returned to work, spending his days inside the cockpit of his LaborMech or sitting quietly in the break room eating his lunch. He was an efficient but quiet worker. His peers knew something was bothering him, but Max was evasive when they asked.

“What can I do?” he pondered in his mind as he bit into his sandwich. It was probably the 10,000th time he’d asked himself that question. Truth be told, he knew the answer. He had influence, authority in the WorkMech labor union. He could summon the workers to strike in protest of Ashley’s unjust moves, particularly on the hiring of her personal batch of scabs to build the new plaza. That job should have gone to his company, to ICC, who had a long standing arrangement with the city government and the city business council for all such projects. Ashley had bypassed all that.

But Max didn’t want to do that, or at least, not for that reason. The lost contract was not what bothered him. What bothered him was the half-dozen or so refugee families that were rotting in jail while their homes were demolished and built over. He knew he couldn’t make an argument for a bunch of Capellans to his fellow workers, most of whom were just as disdainful and prejudiced as the Old Man.

Max however was certain that there was going to be more to this than just the destruction of six houses and the arrest of a handful of immigrants. This was a test, a test by Ashley Madeira to see how far she could take things. How much she could get away with under House Gallas, the ruling noble family of Itrom. If she got away with this, with taking the homes of a group of people no one really cared about and throwing their owners in jail via false charges, what would stop her from doing it to someone else? A political rival perhaps? That rival’s supporters? All swept up under the pretense of, how did the Old Man put it, anti-government sentiments.

The WorkMech union had been consistently behind anyone who had stood up to challenge Ashley at the ballot box. She still won her now-two terms easily, the most recent just a few months ago. The people of Itrom were conservative as a rule and were probably far too trusting of those with noble blood than they should be. In truth, they weren’t wrong in most cases to do so. House Arano, the ruling house of the whole Reach, really embodied well the term “noble” in all of its meanings and both Houses Madeira and Gallas had sought to do the same. Ashley was an exception, not the rule, but one that was definitely milking her family’s good name to get away with whatever she could.

Basically, that meant until Ashley’s malfeasance was brought out in the open, anyone challenging her would be defeated soundly in any election simply because of her name alone. That hadn’t stopped a few from trying nor from the union throwing its weight behind those challengers, mostly because Max knew Ashley far better than the general populace and his people trusted he knew what he was talking about. Hard to argue that anyone who could truthfully claim to have slept in her bed for a year didn’t know who Ashley Madeira really was.

Max just shook his head as these thoughts rattled around in his mind. The emotion he felt as he reflected on this was sadness, not anger. He’d loved her once and she was a very different person when he did. But watching the Capellans burn down whole villages with their Firestarter mechs on Laconis just because they could and Ashley not being able to stop them even with all the soldiers at her command had made her hard and bitter. She failed because she was weak, she once told Max. She would never be weak again. That was the moment he knew there would be no future for the two of them.

Now she was inflicting similar cruelty on those who’d fled a nation that would sanction that sort of slaughter. The Capellan refugees on Itrom were the not the people who’d murdered the innocent of Laconis, but were likely victims of similar tactics on other worlds. No one doubted Daoshen Liao was a madman. Most of House Liao, it seemed, was and had been for a long time.

Everyone knew the stories of Maximilian Liao, whose mind was shattered by the near destruction of his kingdom during the Fourth Succession War. They also knew of Romano Liao, his daughter, whose barbarity during the middle years of the 31st century was legendary. Kali Liao, her daughter, who sold herself body and soul to the Word of Blake and assisted with their Jihad. Kali was long dead, but she was Daoshen’s aunt, so that touch of madness was not so far away as people would have liked. Only Daoshen’s father, the cunning and wise Sun-tzu Liao, had proven the exception to his family’s failings. But he too was now dead and the tyranny and savagery had returned anew in his son.

Daoshen Liao, circa 3110

“And now, Ashley thinks she can be better than all that by transforming into it.” grumbled Max in his mind. “Apparently, madness and hate are contagious.”

---

St. Luke’s Lutheran Church
Capital, Itrom
Aurigan Reach, Outward Periphery
5 December 3120

Max’s internal wrestling had continued throughout the weekend. When Sunday dawned, he got up and went to church. This was one way in which Max had changed by his experiences on Laconis. He was never religious before his time in the military. He’d barely darkened the door of any house of worship outside of the occasional wedding or funeral.

Worship in the Lutheran Christian tradition, as Max understood it, had changed very little after humankind headed out into the stars. It was still the same Mass that the followers of Martin Luther inherited from Roman Catholicism over 1500 years ago. There was some comfort in that. With all the things that changed in one’s life and one’s world, there were some things it seemed that never did. Perhaps that was what drew Max to faith after Laconis. Seeing such atrocity often drove the faithful to unbelief, but for Max it had done the opposite. He needed to know there was something that would outlast the chaos and brutality of the human race. He found that something here.

After worship was Bible Study, and Max was a diligent student. Having no experience with religion as a child, the myths, legends, and stories of his new faith were fascinating to him. A thousand years of theological thought and more than a few political defeats had largely driven the twin heresies of fundamentalism and Biblical literalism out of Christianity, so long gone were those who thought every word of these stories was historical fact. The study of holy writ now was that of metaphor and allegory. What did this mean for today?

Normally, that quest for meaning and purpose would have delighted Max, but not today. No, today he found a frightening intersection between his struggles with current events in his neighborhood and the ancient text he was reading.

”Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.” Max read aloud from the book of Psalms for the benefit of the whole class. He’d barely finished verse 4 before uttering a bit of personal commentary, “Ah, crap.”

“I beg your pardon?” retorted the pastor.

“I can’t get away from it, can I? Even the Bible’s telling me to champion their cause.” lamented Max.

“What’s on your mind, Max? I get the sense something's bothering you. You’ve been a little off all morning.” queried the Pastor. The rest of the class leaned forward in curiosity.

Max let out his breath and told the whole story. What he’d seen when he’d gotten off the bus from his trip, what the Old Man had told him (and what he’d learned after doing some digging on the planetary Infoweb), and how it all just didn’t seem right.

“...those people fled from hell itself.” He concluded. “I know; I’ve seen what Liao does to its enemies, real or imagined. And this is how we treat them on Itrom? Is this who we are?”

Several of his fellow students looked aside, as if in shame. Clearly they had either given a blind eye to what had happened to the refugees or had outright supported it. The pastor, on the other hand, kept steady unwavering, yet sympathetic, scrutiny of Max.

“I had the same thought,” he admitted.

“Then maybe the church can do something.” blurted out Max.

“We could,” said the pastor, looking around at the assembled churchgoers. “But the election is past and our numbers are few. You yourself know that most folks are not religious, nor have they been for many generations. We don’t have the voice we once did. It’s likely we’d be ignored.”

“So you’re throwing it back at me. If we here assembled are not enough to bring justice, what can I do by myself?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.” concluded the Pastor.

A disdainful snort came from the man sitting next to Max. “Really? You’re going to encourage this?” He said to the pastor. Then he turned to Max. “Those people were traitors. That’s why they were arrested. It had nothing to do with where they came from.”

“You keep telling yourself that.” mocked Max in response. “I know Ashley Madeira and I know what Laconis did to her. She hates Capellans with every fiber of her being. If she says this isn’t about their origins, she’s lying.”

The pastor sat upright nervously, sensing rightly that this was escalating into an ugly argument. Never mind that it was increasingly off-topic from the Scripture text in front of them. But Max saved him the need to cool things down. He stood up and walked out in anger.

“I guess it is up to me. I have to be the one to bring her down. I have to be the one to stop this.” he mused as he headed for his car.