The Mandate for Makemake

The Mandate for Makemake

“It is not true that the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party is a supreme power. The Political Bureau is only a shadow of the real supreme power that stands behind the chair of every Bureau member (...) The real power thinks, acts and dictates for all of us. The name of the power is NKVD—MVD—MGB (…) To tell that NKVD is a state secret police—means to tell nothing to the point. Intelligence Service is also a secret police, but in the eyes of the Britons its existence is as natural as the Health Ministry. To tell that NKVD is a body of mass inquisition also tells nothing to the point, because Gestapo also was a mass inquisition, although its chief Heinrich Himmler—would not be fit to serve as a sergeant of the Soviet State Security Service. To tell that NKVD is ‘a state within the state’ means to belittle the importance of NKVD because this question allows two forces: a normal state and a supernormal NKVD: whereas the only force is Chekism. A state Chekism, a party Chekism, a collective Chekism, an individual Chekism. Chekism in ideology, Chekism in practice. Chekism from the top to the bottom.”
- Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov

A Short History of Independent Makemake

Few celestial bodies yet encountered by mankind are as bitterly inhospitable as the dwarf planet of Makemake. It is an outrider riding on the very edges of the Solar System itself, swinging through the Kuiper Belt on a 310 year orbit. The temperature drops below -240° C, so viciously cold that nitrogen and methane freeze solid on the surface in twisting, cyclopean spires of ice. The only atmosphere for this forsaken world are a thin ribbons of sublimating gasses in the decades long summer, which drift back to the ground in some cruel mockery of snow. The surface is completely exposed, and regularly scourged by cosmic radiation. Yet, it was these very hostile conditions which attracted the first human travelers to the dwarf planet.

Scientists were highly curious about the potential of a network of observatories built on Makemake. With no real atmosphere and an unusual orbit at the edge of the system, sensors built there would be in a prime position to observe much of the Solar System and the rest of the galaxy. The icy nature of much of the surface promised to be highly effective for cooling vast arrays of super-computers for managing sensors, collecting and analyzing data. While the difficulties would be formidable, the rewards would be great, and no challenge would damp the youthful energy of humanity in the time of Exodus. A multinational effort established the Hau-Maka Observatories and the Hotu Matu'a Mainframe, supported by Basecamp Akenake. From this first shoot sprang a sleepy but comfortable colony of underground cities, the greatest of which would be the city Akenake. Humanity had taken root and flourished as best it could on Makemake, sprouting leaves of silicon and digging tenaciously into the cracks with tendrils of steel. The exigencies of years to come would not uproot it.

On the literal frontline of science, Makemake would proceed to become part of its intellectual frontier as well. The University of Akenake, founded early in the colony’s development with direct access to both observatory and supercomputer, would become one of the leaders in theoretical physics.

Makemake had hitherto been paid little attention by anyone other than the scientific community, but the overweening ambition of the resurgent Terran government would change everything. As the UES developed nearby Haumea into one of the largest fleet bases in the system, a fortress sentinel in the Kuiper, the Hau-Maka observatory gained the attention of CISC, the UES intelligence and state security apparatus. The General’s Staff were also interested in adding Makemake as a waystation for the outer fleet, further securing the Kuiper Belt. Mutual interest brought about swift results. The closely-knit cities of Makemake awoke to find a squadron of UES warships in orbit and their world a Mandate of the UES.

The Mandate for Makemake

“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.”
- Pardot Kynes, “Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune”

Officially, a UES Mandate is a three-way political partnership between a UES member state, the UES itself, and the people of an underdeveloped colony.

Many of the Mandatories responsible for Makemake dissolved during the Gaubertist War. Of the survivors, many chose to evacuate to Haumea instead. Still, in a cruel twist of irony, many refugees from the Mandatories became refugees were orphaned on the very territory that their nations were meant to develop. Already largely Cthonian in nature, the authorities on Makemake did their best to accommodate the refugees by burrowing deeper and farther into the planet, into the core itself. Makemake was promptly honeycombed, wormed through with chambers and passages which were filled to capacity straight from the outset.

Under the cover of the movement of administrative personnel and military materiel, CISC established a listening post on Makemake nicknamed BOLTHOLE. Tapping into the Hotu Matu’a Mainframe, BOLTHOLE allowed CISC to all but read the mail of other Solar powers. BOLTHOLE grew and metastasized through the Mandate, going from a small to a massive central complex with branches all across its surface and its artificial satellites.

During the Gaubertist War, or what the rest of the Solar System calls The Scourge, Makemake became a battleground between the UES and Gaubertist sympathetic Kuiper belt states, the SSRK in particular. CISC Internal Troops stationed there and Battlegroup Makemake were very nearly destroyed, were it not for the last minute intervention of the rest of the Outer Fleet. The ultimate result was the later utter annihilation of the Erisian colony by the reinforced Battlegroup, a cruel and senseless vengeance strike driven by revenge, just one of many in the horrors of the Gaubertist War.

As the Gaubertist War drew to a close and the very fabric of the UES began to crumble, plans were drawn to evacuate to the strongholds of Haumea and Makemake. In heated discussions amongst the Politburo, it was predicted that an evacuation would bring with it many persons of questionable loyalty or simple undesirables. The plan proposed by CISC was to not only divide the refugee population between Haumea and Makemake based on their perceived loyalty to the UES, but the primary organs of the UES itself. The movers of the Renaissance, the heart of the UES, and their followers would retreat to the secure fortress of Haumea, protected by the General’s Staff and the weight of the loyal UES battleline. Those who were not trusted would be moved to the shakily held Makemake – under the direct watch of CISC, who would remove their headquarters to BOLTHOLE. They would create a careful internal security infrastructure, carefully rooting out , until Makemake was developed into a perfectly loyal.

As with all best laid plans, things went awry.

Somewhere along the line, CISC changed. Was it during the first food riots that the shape of the metamorphasizing monster could be first guessed at? Or perhaps it was the mass executions of the Red Summer? Though it had long ago abandoned principle or morality in its determination to safeguard the state, the new form it was taking was something particularly monstrous. Its staff may have forgotten the existence of inviolate rights, of constitutions or laws, but even the politicization of the organization under the NSF never shook its self-conception as a servant to the General Assembly.

Here CISC held the naked reins of power, unlimited and totally unrestrained.

It was too much for the mere mortals of CISC to handle. What was meant to be a careful sheepdog became a devouring wolf. The organs of state security became a regime, a mind, one of malice and a lust for power. Behind the Mandatory governments stood the puppetmasters of the state security organizations, every manager reported to the internal ministries, secret policemen sat themselves at the high seats of criminal organizations like potentates. Underneath them, the Mandates trembled with turmoil. Privation, rationing, long simmered resentment of the UES boiled over into violence just as they had predicted it would.

Many in the General Assembly wonder whether the Mandates are truly even a part of the UES anymore. The General’s Staff certainly consider CISC to be a rogue entity. Makemake is a bureaucratic battleground as the military grapples with the monstrous serpent, and Battlegroup Makemake is the frontline of this battle for authority.

Amongst all these troubles, the people of Makemake continued their lives as best they could. In a twist of fate, the University of Akenake would make the breakthrough of centuries – the theory of outracing light itself. CISC promptly locked the information and researchers down to preserve the secret solely for the UES, but in a rare break of the information cordon, an anonymous paper on the principles of “Macro-Spatial Displacement” was broadcast to the rest of the Solar System with a philosophical post-script extolling the march of human progress.

Ironically, the brave self-sacrifice was unnecessary – similar breakthroughs had been made elsewhere in Sol.

Here at last the General’s Staff saw an opportunity to seize the initiative from CISC. The security organs had clearly failed at their duty, and in the most spectacular fashion. It was time for the military to retake control. The Military Out-Sol Command was established on Makemake to begin practical experimentation with the Jump Drive.

The UES made first contact with Alpha-Centauri when the UESS Santa Clara completed what was also the first interstellar FTL Jump in human history.

As the forerunner in Jump Drive technology, the two greatest disasters in the history of human faster-than-light travel occurred under the auspices of the Military Out-Sol Command. The UESS Otto von Kotzebue, whether due to a gross miscalculation or a critical failure, was lost with all hands while making a jump to Earth from Alpha Centauri. The twisted wreckage, which had ripped itself to pieces in a centrifugal pattern, arrived several AU from its expected destination point in the middle of international space, scattered across space in a light-second long trail. It was promptly salvaged by various other powers over the ferocious protest of the UES.

To this day, the UES maintains that all of Sol’s jump drives are derived from the wreck of the Otto von Kotzebue, and as such, is due reparations and royalties.

Later that same year, the crew of UESS Magellan broadcast several panicked warnings in the process of a routine jump to Alpha Centauri. It never arrived. Searches by the UES Fleet and the Fourth Polish Republic failed to find any sign of the vessel, which has been assumed destroyed in similar fashion to the Otto von Kotzebue.

These catastrophes, among others including the hushed up defection of the ambassador to the Alpha Centauran power ACCEL along with the jumpship UESS Santa Maria, spurred the dissolution of the Out-Sol Command and the creation of a new government ministry called the Strategic Superluminal Operations Office. With serene, professional efficiency, the SSOO has been loyally pursuing the mission parameters as set by the General Assembly. Each of the successive Secretaries have successfully navigated the political landmine of Makemake to accomplish clear cut policy aims. Its procurement programs and construction projects have almost universally been on time and on, or even under, budget.

Combined Intelligence Services Committee

“Some say concentrated power leads to abuse, but I believe that if an institution has a solid foundation it can survive the narrow aspirations of the people it employs.”
- Sam Carter, “Deus Ex”

The Combined Intelligence Services Committee, or CISC, was formed early in the history of the UES to provide oversight for the numerous different intelligence, security, and interior ministries of its member states and the overall Sphere government. The only intelligence or security organization not under its purview was Military Intelligence which remained an exclusive fief of the Ministry of Defense. Answering solely to the highest officials of the General Assembly, CISC advised on the priority of intelligence gathering efforts and the

In the lead-up to the Gaubertist War, often seen as synonymous with The Scourge by the rest of Sol, the CISC’s mandate expanded to include the control of the

CISC is believed to be involved in criminal enterprises across the entire Solar System. From Red Duncanites operating in the haven of piracy that is the Saturnian Ring Consortium, arms runners from , to . How much of this is genuine intelligence gathering, and how much is simply greed and graft is an unresolved question.

Battle Group Makemake, The Ericide

"'...What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data which the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.' 'Ghenghis…Khan? Was he of the Sardaukar, m'Lord?' 'Oh, long before that. He killed…perhaps four million.' 'He must've had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or…' 'He didn't kill them himself, Stil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There's another emperor I want you to note in passing--a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.' 'Killed…by his legions?' Stilgar asked. 'Yes.' 'Not very impressive statistics, m'Lord.'"
- Frank Herbert, “Dune Messiah”

The Strategic Superluminal Operations Office

“As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid, we have become as a vapor and will expand to fill all available space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained.”
- Sister Miriam Godwinson, “But for the Grace of God”

Often verbally abbreviated as zoo, the Office of Strategic Superluminal Operations was an independent paramilitary department established by writ of the General Assembly shortly after the dissolution of its predecessor, the military Out-Sol Command. Its declared purpose was to allow the General’s Staff to focus on the critical matters of defense while expanding the resources available to extra-Solar missions. The breadth of its official competencies is threefold. First, to pursue and regulate the further maturation of UES Jump Engine theory, design, and ship design for general use by the rest of the UES. Second, to chart, secure, economically develop, and provisionally govern the UES’s growing extra-solar claims. Third, to explore the galaxy!

In truth, the SSOO was a result of a number of heated backroom negotiations between the parties involved in Out-Sol operations following the unmitigated string of disasters that plagued the early Out-Sol missions, the most prominent of which were the twin tragedies of the UESS Otto von Kotzebue and Magellan and the defection of the ambassador and the UESS Santa Maria to ACCEL. The General’s Staff wished to distance themselves from the entire affair, even as Politburo officials aligned with the Redemptionist movement raised relentless pressure to continue the operations of . Meanwhile, CISC continued to fume over what they saw as a violation of “their” territory. Hopes for the department were not high. Its only inheritance from the Military Out-Sol Command were critically demoralized crews, a series of disjointed, ad-hoc arrangements between mutually antagonistic government departments, and the accumulated resultant damage to the infrastructure of Out-Sol operations and the FTL fleet itself from neglect and unenthusiastic care. Meanwhile, it would have to

The first Secretary of would prove to be more than up to the challenge. Against all expectations, SSOO hit the ground running.

The primary subdivisions of the SSOO are the Strategic Superluminal Operations Directorate and the Strategic Superluminal Forces. The Directorate is the bureaucratic muscle behind the SSOO, organizing resources and personnel. The Strategic Superluminal Forces are considered

One of the great successes of the SSOO has been building rapport and co-operation with the Fourth Polish Republic and negotiating contractual engagements with the Ceres Corporation. One of the first priorities of the early SSOO was poaching the atrophied foreign ministry of much of its staff. In certain respects, many analysts call the SSOO the de jure foreign ministry. The Directorate has aggressively organized joint programs and with the UES’s newfound ally.

On an amusing note, most of the sub departments of the SSOO have popular nicknames. For example, the Strategic Superluminal Operations Directorate staff are often affectionately referred to as “Stupid SODS” and the Strategic Superluminal Forces are likewise often called “Strategic Science Fiction”.

The University of Akenake

“There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.”
- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, “Address to the Faculty”

From the very first days of its settlement the pre-UES Makemake was always a highly scientifically literate population. The University of Akenake was universally considered a top-flight institution of science, and its loss to the rest of the Sol System under the current circumstances is much mourned by research and academia everywhere. Despite laboring under CISC security sweeps and red tape, the ineffectiveness of the sidelined Mandatory government, and the information cordon it continues to be the forefront of theoretical research in the Solar System. It is fiercely proud of being the intellectual birthplace of “Macro-Spatial Displacement” theory, among many other seminal theorems and experiments.

The University was a nerve center of resistance against the Mandatory Governments imposed by the UES, making it a prime target of CISC scrutiny.

The University has always been a target of CISC’s scrutiny. is a hotbed of intellectual counter-current to Renaissance philosophy and a nerve center of resistance against UES. the University became a critical threat when the secrets of “Macro-Spatial Displacement” were leaked to the rest of the Solar System. As such

Security for the FTL Propulsion Labratories was taken off CISC’s hands by the upstart new Office of Strategic Superluminal Operations, such that SSOO and the University are practically joined at the hip. Many graduates go directly into the SSOO in various capacities which does little to assuage CISC’s antagonism towards the SSOO.

Statistics

Population:
Minor State (+1 National Advantages): 32 pts

National Advantages: [Rank 1 (+1)] (-1 pts)
National Disadvantages: [Rank 3] (+3 pts)
Infrastructure: [Rank 3] (-3 pts)
Growth Potential: [Rank 0] (0 pts)
Military Size: [Rank 3] (-3 pts)
Military Support: [Rank 3] (-3 pts)
Military Quality: [Rank 3] (-5 pts)
Superweapons: [Rank 1] (1 pts)
Espionage: [Rank 4] (-6 pts)
General Advancement: [Rank 1] (-4pts)
FTL Drives: [Rank 3] (-6 pts)
Outsystem Territory: [Rank 2] (-3 pts)

Statistics:
Infrastructure: 90 Pts
Upkeep: 416/675 Military Support

Advantages: (2)
Nazi Superscience
Superior Sensors

Disadvantages: (3)
Pariah State
Social Contract Dispute
The Scourge of Space

Starting Fleet

Battlegroup Makemake, the Ericide

2x Battlecruisers (24 pts)
1x Fleet Carrier (15 pts)
1x Supercarrier (25 pts)
6x Heavy Cruisers (30 pts)
8x Light Cruiser (16 pts)
3x Light Carrier (15 pts)
7x Destroyer Squadrons (21 pts)
6x Corvette Squadrons (6 pts)

4x Naval Infantry Brigades (4 pts)

Tactical Superweapon (24)
Colonel-General Mary Elizabeth Victoria of the House of Windsor
+ Fast Thinker
+ Something to Prove

CISC

5x Internal Troops Brigades (5 pts)
36x Citizen Security (12 pts)

Tactical Superweapon
The Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Beggar (24)
“This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable byproduct of all virtuous endeavor.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr, “Moral Man and Immoral Society”
+ Quantum-Entangled Facedancer Puppet Machines
+ aringa ora, Living Faces (Expert Systems)

The Strategic Superluminal Operations Office

1x System Control Ship (35 pts)
10x Heavy Jumpship (80 pts)
6x Light Jumpship (18 pts)
6x Scouts (6 pts)
6x Fuelling Stations (30 pts)

Strategic Superweapon (100)
Wrona Special Operations Ship
+ Class IV FTL Drive
+ Dirac Dive System