Starship Armstrong - Season 3

Part 16 - Mitzner's Card Game (III) (Takahashi's Story)

"How did you ever become Dr. Kang's assistant, McAfree?" asked Takahashi.

"I was an undergraduate student at Mars Academy when he was claiming to teach there. He took notice of... some work I had done and offered to mentor me," said McAfree, rearranging her new cards in her hand.

"... towards becoming a member of his secret evil galaxy-controlling cabal. The Foundation within the Foundation," finished Wagner.

"That's unproven," said McAfree, not looking up from her cards.

"No I like this theory. I want to hear this," said Takahashi.

"Let's not. How about?" asked McAfree, finally putting her cards face down on her lap.

Wagner looked over at McAfree.

"If McAfree doesn't want me to elaborate out of respect to her I won't."

No one was more suprised by this than McAfree.

"Really?" she exclaimed aloud.

"It wouldn't be right," said Wagner, with a shrug.

"Oh come on," said Takahashi, "it can count as your story!"

"Why don't you tell a story then?" snapped McAfree "Trying to be the big storymistress and haven't even told a story yet."

"Fine," said Takahashi, "I will tell the story of the day I decided to join the Huxley Foundation. Then I will badger Ensign Wagner into telling me all your secrets."

"No ranks," said Mitzner.

-Takahashi's Story-

This was when I was 12-years-old, during the really bad years of the Reunification Wars. They called it the Third Battle of Jupiter, I guess. It didn't feel much like a battle to us. Just a bunch of lights in the sky at night and then every so often one of our arcologies would get slagged from orbit.

A few million dead each time that happened. A centuries-old culture just wiped off the map in an instant.

All we could do was try to get on, to try to ignore the existential terror of knowing our home and everything we every knew could be atomized from space and the people making that decision would never see our faces.

The Jovian arcologies were all incredibly interdependent at that point, despite the design intentions, so there were supply issues with everything. Everything was rationed. You could never get enough food, you could never get enough anything. If I was lucky I'd get one meal a day, maybe unflavored yeastcakes or algea soup.

Law and order was a distant dream. You couldn't go out anywhere, really. It was a massive undertaking to even go out to find food. There was outright banditry in the streets.

So Titan, or Jupiter, or whatever they were fighting over changes hands about a dozen times as far as the people in space are concerned. I could tell you who controlled it when. I just wanted all of them to die.

Then the Foundation took over. I suppose that was part of their big push, the Fifth Battle of the Solar System but who cares what names they give to any of this. The only reason I know this is when the Foundation won is because they sent people down planetside.

They did airdrops of food, water, medicine. They sent engineering teams down too, and they traded food and other supplies to anyone who helped them build some basic surface-to-orbit defences so we could at least make an attempt to defend ourselves. When people came to attack our arcologies from space we could shoot back at them,

They repaired some of the infrastructure too, nothing too elaborate but it was really important to us. They started to rebuild what the others were content to destroy.

Everyone else just cared about the planet. The Huxley Foundation, at least, cared about the people on the planet. If I could have wished all the belligerents disappeared I still would have but that's when I knew I wanted the Foundation to win.