For those I left behind - the memoirs of Colonel Jason Myers

[Jansen]

With the beginning of the Colonial Republics interest in expanding, a Colonial force was sent out to the desolate Omicron Lost system, I was one of the pilots that volunteered for this mission, which meant that I had to leave the Valkyries 41st Battlegroup behind. Most of the work we did down there were boring escort jobs for the 51st Battlegroups research teams. But we also had quite a few dangerous encounters with the alien entities the Sirians call Nomads, we sadly lost many good people to these things. Down there we learned quite a few things about the dangers that lurk in the unknown edges of space.


The operation in Lost was, even though we had losses, a success, other operations in the Kansas and Coronado systems followed, but I did not take part in those. I never considered myself to be much of an explorer or researcher, I was born to be a soldier, born to defend the Republic. Upon our return to Tau 44 in the year 817, I was assigned to the 88th Battlegroup, to the Carrier Nemesis. I always admired Admiral Wingates, he was one of the most skilled tacticians the Republic ever had. He also had a different approach to solve the problems we had with the Maltese, instead of merely freeing the slaves he decided to destroy every Cardamine shipment we could detect, damaging their economy in ways we would never have imagined. This way of dealing with the Outcasts soon had been utilized within all parts of the Colonial fleet. Due to the fact that we damaged their economy badly the Outcasts did no longer consider us as a small nuisance that could be ignored and only had to be fought when necessary, they now saw us as the danger we were and attempted to destroy the Republic. We had another full scale war on our hands. Fortunately the war with Bretonia came to an end after the situation between them and Kusari escalated in the Taus, even though we were not at war anymore, the Colonials never forgot the Bretonian betrayal that took so many of our brave soldiers lives. The war with the Maltese was bloody, our only advantage, if you can even call it this way, was their limited reproduction capability, every life lost on their side was one that could only hardly be replaced. While we, due to the governments slave-friendly policy had highly motivated pilots that could be exchanged rather easily. This might sound harsh, but that’s the way I always saw it and I guess that’s the way the Military leaders saw it as well, sooner or later we would bring the Maltese close to their extinction, this was a fact nobody could ignore.


Within the year 817 the government had undergone radical changes, the Quorum had been considered to be too slow to act effectively, so all power was now given to the new Presidential position, even though not everyone liked the idea to have one person holding all the power, I had always been in favor of this structure, it simply was the most efficient way to deal with all important matters in a short time. The President had to be elected every year and had the same amount of power the Colonial Admiralty had, in order to prevent an abuse of power, this way most of the critical voices within the nation could be silenced and agreed to this change, but a limited number of people, mostly soldiers with close ties to the Quorum left the Republic and formed the Colonial Freedom Front, which soon began to fight against the regular forces, the Colonial news also accused them for various terroristic attacks of that time, I guess nobody will ever find out if they were behind those. Back then we had orders to terminate each member of this group without mercy, we didn’t question these orders and the Colonial Freedom Front had been taken care of within 3 months.

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