Tukphen
Jun 15th, 2016, 07:03:05 AM
Alliance Cruiser Defiance
It was a rare experience that Tukphen enjoyed today: staring down at the slowly rotating orb of one of the homeworlds, through a viewport constructed by Mon Calamari hands. It was not his homeworld of Mantan of course, nor the Mon Calamari spawnworld of Dac that he represented in the Senate: in fact it was Pammant, a world settled largely by the Quarren cousin-race. Perhaps there was a time when that distinction might have been important; but if that had ever been a viewpoint in Tukphen's heart, it had been purged from it now.
He had researched on an idle whim, wondering if any of the young men and women serving aboard this starship had even begun to breathe life's waters at the time of the Clone Wars, and the last great schism that had turned the Quarren and Mon Calamari against each other. Soldiers of his generation remembered the war; remembered the Quarren culpability in it; retained the age-old impulse to blame the Quarren for the Imperial occupation that had been brought down upon them - retaliation for the aid the Quarren had provided the Separatists with. People of Tukphen's age knew from birth to blame the Quarren's for all their ills, rightly or wrongly. But the officers aboard this ship? Aside from seven out of a crew of thousands, all had been born under Imperial rule. They understood the important truth: that the Empire was the true enemy, and that freedom demanded unity. That was the prybar by which they had liberated themselves from occupation. That was the tool they had forged into a weapon to strike back at the Imperials on the Rebellion's behalf. That was the absolute truth, the one that mattered: two species, but one race. That was the reality Dac and it's sister worlds needed; and that was the truth that Tukphen had embraced into his soul.
Yet, the divisions still existed. While the Mon Calamari strove for integration, the Quarren people demanded equality: balance, rather than unity. Were the Defiance's orbit lower, he would see that the dockyard constructs orbiting the world below were not marked with the symbol of the Mon Calamari Shipyards, but rather of Hoersch-Kessel Drive: a corporation gifted to the Quarren leadership, to empower their contributions to Alliance industry, independent of those of the Mon Calamari. Perhaps it was a step in the wrong direction; or perhaps it was the pragmatic reality, rather than his idealistic hopes for oneness. Perhaps the Quarren truly did deserve the agency and freedom to leverage their own role within the Alliance, instead of sharing the one that the Mon Calamari had carved and designed. Yet, there were those among his own people who saw it as a dangerous choice: Hoersch-Kessel was, to the minds of many, irrevocably entangled with the Confederacy it had produced ships for; on Minntooine in particular, the Quarren had helped to forge some of the Separatists' most dangerous warships. By gifting such a corporation to the Quarren, some saw it as a dangerous past adversary rearming itself, gathering it's strength to betray the Mon Calamari people yet again. Perhaps there was some shred of truth to that also; or perhaps it was nothing more than the persistence of old paranoias.
So much truth. So many different, conflicting viewpoints; none of them false. Tukphen squeezed processed oxygen from his air bladder as he had often seen the humans do: a sigh, they called it; an auditory expression of so many states. For Tukphen, it conveyed weariness, and the realisation that for all his hopes for the future, the utopian ocean he drempt of was still far from reach.
A sound chimed through the Defiance's internal communications, a few words - uttered in Basic, as per Alliance protocol - notified the crew of their impending departure from orbit, advising them to brace themselves for hyperlaunch in the next few minutes. Tukphen paid the warning little mind: he had what the humans called sea legs, a notion that amused him greatly; and until a few months ago, this fine vessel had been the seat of Admiral Tukphen's command. There was little that she could do that the Senator's old bones were not instinctively prepared for.
Abandoning his viewport, Tukphen turned to his sweeping desk, disc-like eyes drinking in the details of the bureaucratic display now arrayed before him. He missed the Rebellion: missed the tangled makeshift complexity by which it functioned. He missed his uniform, and the role that went along with it: not merely the Alliance Minister of Supply, but the Admiral of it's Ordnance & Supply Corps, commander of a fleet of starships, transports, and medical frigates that catered to the Alliance's every need. It was not as glamorous as the commands of Admirals like Ackbar or Reshmar, it did not bring with it the same kind of glory and prestige; but it felt valuable, a contribution worth making. Nowadays, Tukphen had been elevated; hoisted from his position like a faulty drive coil, another Admiral nestled in leadership of the Sixth Fleet while he languished like a beached Whaladon atop a sandbank of politics and bureaucracy.
At least on occasion he was able to escape, find excuses to spend time here aboard his old ship, commandeering it by Senatorial decree for important business. Such was the case these past days; the opportunity that had allowed him to return to the Calamari Sector, ostensibly to tour the various shipyards and construction sights to review their production readiness. It was not entirely a fictitious excuse: maximising the output of the Mon Calamari Shipyards, and bringing these Quarren yards back into operation was of vital importance if they wished to supply the Alliance with the ships it would need to patrol her boarders and safeguard her space. Starkiller weapons were all well and good for discouraging the Empire, but they did little to allay the pirates and smugglers that had already begun to plague the Alliance; and when the Imperials finally grew too impatient with peace and sought to test the Alliance's resolve, the fleets would need to be ready to act, lest the Alliance be forced to do the unthinkable - again.
Tukphen reached for his comlink, attaching it to the lapel of his uncomfortably civilian robes. He felt the slight shift in the air, the faint rumble through the deck, and felt himself brace in reflex as the Defiance hurtled itself to speeds beyond that of mere light. A glance at the viewpoint confirmed as much. The last leg of their shipyard tour complete, the Defiance's commander had ordered to convey Tukphen and his Quarren counterpart back to Dac, to deliberate with local leadership before they were forced to return to the woefully arid savannahs of Bothawui.
With one last look at his desk, and a gentle caress of the Defiance's nearby bulkhead, Tukphen squeezed out another sigh, and set off into the bowels of the ship in search of Thada Adel.
It was a rare experience that Tukphen enjoyed today: staring down at the slowly rotating orb of one of the homeworlds, through a viewport constructed by Mon Calamari hands. It was not his homeworld of Mantan of course, nor the Mon Calamari spawnworld of Dac that he represented in the Senate: in fact it was Pammant, a world settled largely by the Quarren cousin-race. Perhaps there was a time when that distinction might have been important; but if that had ever been a viewpoint in Tukphen's heart, it had been purged from it now.
He had researched on an idle whim, wondering if any of the young men and women serving aboard this starship had even begun to breathe life's waters at the time of the Clone Wars, and the last great schism that had turned the Quarren and Mon Calamari against each other. Soldiers of his generation remembered the war; remembered the Quarren culpability in it; retained the age-old impulse to blame the Quarren for the Imperial occupation that had been brought down upon them - retaliation for the aid the Quarren had provided the Separatists with. People of Tukphen's age knew from birth to blame the Quarren's for all their ills, rightly or wrongly. But the officers aboard this ship? Aside from seven out of a crew of thousands, all had been born under Imperial rule. They understood the important truth: that the Empire was the true enemy, and that freedom demanded unity. That was the prybar by which they had liberated themselves from occupation. That was the tool they had forged into a weapon to strike back at the Imperials on the Rebellion's behalf. That was the absolute truth, the one that mattered: two species, but one race. That was the reality Dac and it's sister worlds needed; and that was the truth that Tukphen had embraced into his soul.
Yet, the divisions still existed. While the Mon Calamari strove for integration, the Quarren people demanded equality: balance, rather than unity. Were the Defiance's orbit lower, he would see that the dockyard constructs orbiting the world below were not marked with the symbol of the Mon Calamari Shipyards, but rather of Hoersch-Kessel Drive: a corporation gifted to the Quarren leadership, to empower their contributions to Alliance industry, independent of those of the Mon Calamari. Perhaps it was a step in the wrong direction; or perhaps it was the pragmatic reality, rather than his idealistic hopes for oneness. Perhaps the Quarren truly did deserve the agency and freedom to leverage their own role within the Alliance, instead of sharing the one that the Mon Calamari had carved and designed. Yet, there were those among his own people who saw it as a dangerous choice: Hoersch-Kessel was, to the minds of many, irrevocably entangled with the Confederacy it had produced ships for; on Minntooine in particular, the Quarren had helped to forge some of the Separatists' most dangerous warships. By gifting such a corporation to the Quarren, some saw it as a dangerous past adversary rearming itself, gathering it's strength to betray the Mon Calamari people yet again. Perhaps there was some shred of truth to that also; or perhaps it was nothing more than the persistence of old paranoias.
So much truth. So many different, conflicting viewpoints; none of them false. Tukphen squeezed processed oxygen from his air bladder as he had often seen the humans do: a sigh, they called it; an auditory expression of so many states. For Tukphen, it conveyed weariness, and the realisation that for all his hopes for the future, the utopian ocean he drempt of was still far from reach.
A sound chimed through the Defiance's internal communications, a few words - uttered in Basic, as per Alliance protocol - notified the crew of their impending departure from orbit, advising them to brace themselves for hyperlaunch in the next few minutes. Tukphen paid the warning little mind: he had what the humans called sea legs, a notion that amused him greatly; and until a few months ago, this fine vessel had been the seat of Admiral Tukphen's command. There was little that she could do that the Senator's old bones were not instinctively prepared for.
Abandoning his viewport, Tukphen turned to his sweeping desk, disc-like eyes drinking in the details of the bureaucratic display now arrayed before him. He missed the Rebellion: missed the tangled makeshift complexity by which it functioned. He missed his uniform, and the role that went along with it: not merely the Alliance Minister of Supply, but the Admiral of it's Ordnance & Supply Corps, commander of a fleet of starships, transports, and medical frigates that catered to the Alliance's every need. It was not as glamorous as the commands of Admirals like Ackbar or Reshmar, it did not bring with it the same kind of glory and prestige; but it felt valuable, a contribution worth making. Nowadays, Tukphen had been elevated; hoisted from his position like a faulty drive coil, another Admiral nestled in leadership of the Sixth Fleet while he languished like a beached Whaladon atop a sandbank of politics and bureaucracy.
At least on occasion he was able to escape, find excuses to spend time here aboard his old ship, commandeering it by Senatorial decree for important business. Such was the case these past days; the opportunity that had allowed him to return to the Calamari Sector, ostensibly to tour the various shipyards and construction sights to review their production readiness. It was not entirely a fictitious excuse: maximising the output of the Mon Calamari Shipyards, and bringing these Quarren yards back into operation was of vital importance if they wished to supply the Alliance with the ships it would need to patrol her boarders and safeguard her space. Starkiller weapons were all well and good for discouraging the Empire, but they did little to allay the pirates and smugglers that had already begun to plague the Alliance; and when the Imperials finally grew too impatient with peace and sought to test the Alliance's resolve, the fleets would need to be ready to act, lest the Alliance be forced to do the unthinkable - again.
Tukphen reached for his comlink, attaching it to the lapel of his uncomfortably civilian robes. He felt the slight shift in the air, the faint rumble through the deck, and felt himself brace in reflex as the Defiance hurtled itself to speeds beyond that of mere light. A glance at the viewpoint confirmed as much. The last leg of their shipyard tour complete, the Defiance's commander had ordered to convey Tukphen and his Quarren counterpart back to Dac, to deliberate with local leadership before they were forced to return to the woefully arid savannahs of Bothawui.
With one last look at his desk, and a gentle caress of the Defiance's nearby bulkhead, Tukphen squeezed out another sigh, and set off into the bowels of the ship in search of Thada Adel.