The solution to a lot of Norris' headaches!

The following is my attempt to explain away the most glaring
anomalies with the aslan situation  -  I still maintain that
the  whole mess is bloody unbelievable  -  plus an amazingly
simple idea that I'm quite proud of. I might even send it to
GDW if I thought it would amuse them ;-)

                                                HRM
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Message from High Commissioner the Lord Goolanzoon, Sector Admiral, Imperial
Navy  (ret.),  Minister without portfolio of the Archduchy of Deneb,  to His
Grace Archduke Norris of Deneb using the private cypher:



Dear Pruneface,

Well, the "Committee to Review the recent events in the Trojan Reaches with a
view to ascertaining etc. etc."  -  in short, what went wrong and what can we
do about it?   -   has finally completed it's investigation.  No doubt you'll
eventually get a predigested resume of our findings through your tame bureau-
crats, but I thought you'd appreciate a informal overview. (And to be totally
honest, I'm too damn exited to wait for an official reaction).
    First of all,  there's  no doubt that the whole thing was shockingly mis-
managed by the Duke of Tobia and Admiral Torgeson. They seem to've lost their
so-called heads completely.  True, most of the regular units were up coreward
watching the zhos, but the astrographics of the Reach is such that any first-
year  cadet  could've  stopped  the aslan by garrisoning a few key worlds and
forming  a few  fire-fighter squadrons.  These are ihatei,  after all,  using
obsolescent  clan hand-me-downs   -   not much superior to our Reserve forces
(rather the reverse,  if anything).  Hell,  give me a half-decent spy network
and  a  good  courier system and I'd've undertaken to stop them with half the
forces the two fatheads had.
    Instead  Tobia  and  Torgeson  concentrated their forces to guard the few
worlds that were already so well protected  that no sane aslan would dream of
trying  to  muscle  in on them and sat around with their thumbs up their bums
while  our bewhiskered land-grabbing friends grabbed left,  right and center.
And  none  of  the other nobles had the gumption to do anything more than try
and protect their own little patch  (mostly with pitiful results). Personally
I think that the proper cure for what ails the local nobility is a collective
brain-transplant.  If  you  can't  find  enough donors,  a set of cheap paper
substitutes will still be an improvement!
    I know, I know.  We can't really do anything about the nobles   -   but I
can  dream,  can't I?   -   but you ought to sack the top three levels of the
Fleet,  at  least.  There's a few you'd have to kick upstairs and a couple of
exceptions, but mot of the idiots deserve to be cashiered.  That's the result
of the Reach being too far from any real fighting for centuries,  I guess   -
all the fools wind up down here, where they, quote, "can't do any harm",  end
quote. Ha, bloody ha! I've said it myself, may the Guiding Spirit forgive me.
    I  spoke  of  fools,  but  I'm pretty sure that there's also a few knaves
around. That shocking business with Aki - ihatei that far inside the frontier
and 30 parsec from their base, for the luffa Mike!   -   couldn't've happened
without  the conniving of somebody pretty high up.  I have a few of my bright
young  men  looking into it   -   hopefully giving the lardbutts of the local
Naval Intelligence  (hmpf!)  a few well-deserved heart attacks in the process
- -  and when we find the culprits, the bastards are going to breathe vacuum!
    Mind you,  I've often wondered what made the aslan commit that particular
bit of lunacy. Imagine trying to control 10 billion locals with a few hundred
thousands.  They  had a couple of tech levels on the locals,  true,  but as I
always say,  once you can make explosives the rest is just dressing.  Anyway,
young Blackstone-Hawke - remember him?  He was one of Santanocheev's hangers-
on  and wound up in charge of the Gazulin Reserve Fleet after the shake-up  -
Well, he seems to have had a few more brain cells than we gave him credit for
(or  perhaps  being stuck in the boonies for half a decade has wised him up).
The  moment he heard about Aki he put a fleet across the aslani supply lines,
and  the  last  I  heard about it the survivors were at the peace tables with
their tail between their legs.  (Not that far between their legs though. They
have  been  raiding Glisten and a lot of other places for supplies,  and they
still control the Aki system. But I guess you know all this already).
    Anyway, there's no getting around the fact that the dam is well and truly
broken.  Apointing blame is all very well   -   it's rapidly becoming the fa-
vourite  sport  of the local nitwits   -   but the real problem is what to do
about  it.  Curiously enough according to my tame sociologists the problem is
more the locals than the aslans.  You remember the old diplomatic joke?  "You
give  us  what  we  want  or we beat the hell out of you and take it anyway"?
Well, apart from at Aki and a few other places, the aslans seems to have come
up  with a variant:  "You sell us what we want or we beat the hell out of you
and buy it anyway"! Most of them prefer to buy rather than take  -  they just
don't  take  no for an answer!  Nor would there normally be any problems with
getting  them to swear fealthy to the Imperium.  Well,  that's not altogether
true;  some of the clans are quite anti-Imperium.  But we'd have the strength
to deal with them if we could get along with the rest.
    That  would  seem to solve most of the problem,  wouldn't it?  If they're
willing to pay for what they take and to become loyal citizens, then we real-
ly should be able to work out something, right?  Alas, the locals have become
thoroughly paranoid about them and in many cases refuse to share their worlds
with  them.  They  organize their own militias and try to push the aslans off
their planets. And you know what happens when you push an aslan  -  he pushes
right back!  If something isn't done, the descendents of both sides are going
to be sniping at each others 200 years from now.
    Fortunately  we have been able to come up with a solution!  That's right,
we have an answer,  and it's so simple that you're going to kick yourself for
not thinking of it yourself.  I did when my aide earned the fastest promotion
in history with just one sentence.  Think about it. What are our two greatest
problems  today?  One is that we have all these young aslans swarming up from
rimwards, eager for land and willing to fight for it, and we can't stop them,
because most of our ships are up corewards trying to keep the damn Vargr from
devastating  more  planets  than they already have.  The other is keeping the
damn Vargr from devastating more planets than they already have, and we can't
do  that  because  a lot of our strength is tied up trying to keep the aslani
from getting to cosy with our real estate to the rim.
    I really wish I could see your face now,  Pruney.  As my aide said:  "Why
don't we get our two problems to fight each other?" Corewards and in Corridor
there  are  scores  of planets whose populations have been decimated;  untold
acres of prime land whose legitimate owners and their heirs are dead and gone.
We  can  hire all the ihatei we can get and pay them off with that land!  And
you can bet your bottom credit that the survivors are not going to regard the
aslans as interlopers. They'll be saviours!
    Furthermore, once we have a credible offer to make, we'll be able to play
the aslan clans off against each others. You know how fragile aslan alliances
are,  Frankly I'm amazed that the present one has held so long as it has, and
it  has only done so because they could get more out of cooperating with each
other than with us.  The land the aslans can get down here rimwards is mostly
second choice.  Give them an offer of prime land and they're not going to let
the  Vargr  stand  in  the  way.  And we'll be able to favour the friendliest
clans, leaving us in a position to make the unfriendly ones toe the line.
    With the extra strength the aslan can supply  (not to metion the ships we
will be able to spare from the rim)  we should be able to clear the Domain of
Vargr.  Hell,  we  may  even be in a position to clear Corridor,  although my
aslan  experts  doubt  it.  They say that the present massive burst of ihatei
will  taper  off in a year or so,  and that it will be a long time before the
pressure builds up to the pre-Revolution level. For one thing, the ihatei has
mostly  leap-frogged over all the neutral worlds we kept between them and us,
and  it will be some time before they've "filled in the cracks".  Still,  who
knows? Perhaps enough of them will prefer Corridor to filling in cracks.
    What  I  suggest is that we keep this plan secret and try to surprise the
Vargr.  The most pressing problem is Aki and the rest of Glisten. If you will
send me a warrant,  I'll take over the negotiations and get the ball rolling.
I've  already put my staff on to planning the logistics which,  I admit,  are
going to be a headache. But worth it, I'd say!

Cheerio,
Goggles.

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Any comments?


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]