Who Killed Iron Joe? Part 7: Moon When the Cherries are Ripe

From the journal of Fialkov:

When I first came back to the homeworld, I was warned that it wasn’t like I might have been imagining.  The Danab are a proud people, and we have done much to exhibit this in the universe, even though much of it has resulted in near-endless warfare, especially with humans.  I suppose what the warning meant was that I could not expect peace at home, the one place where it might have been expected that Danab might be free to be Danab.


I had been elected to the post of Governor, which for the Danab is a mark of distinction.  There are many leaders, but most of them are lost in the shuffle of martial bureaucracy, so to be one and have authority in a civilian capacity is to acknowledge that you have demonstrated not only superiority over those who share the same rigid discipline, but also the capacity to exert it over those who do not.  This is especially important because the Danab are not the only species to live on the homeworld.


The homeworld, it should be understood, is a melting pot.  It was not here the Danab first sprang up, but rather was a gift of the Tikanni, who first helped us to understand our potential and gave us our destiny in the stars.  There are humans on the homeworld.  Some of us consider humans to be weak, and indeed in comparison they are not only so, but smaller and less cunning, all debilities they do not seem willing to concede, as indeed centuries of indecisive conflict have proven.


I was given a detachment of soldiers I was personally allowed to select from among my most elite and successful forces, a token remnant of earlier days and a prior existence, a barrier against those I would now spend my days amongst, humans, and not just humans, but the truly bullheaded, those who felt they might claim the homeworld as much as their own as ourselves, because they had come here first.  There are many humans here, but they are not dominant, and they have no official claim, as the Danab do.


They call themselves native sons, and many other names besides.  One of the most common appellations for them is the Tuska, perhaps because they have adopted ceremonial headdresses in mockery of the Danab custom helm, and they like to dance in these things, and the most brazen dancer of all is surely Carrie Arosen, too young to truly grasp what she does, lost in the beauty of it, perhaps.  


She has never gone out of her way to announce herself, but her name is known all the same, for she has never failed to make an appearance at these public spectacles, and she always draws attention to herself, in the animated way she moves, some might say gracefully.  If I were feeling generous, I might say artful, but I am seldom amused by the Tuska, and I have posted repeated ordnances to ban at the very least their offending headgear, one a week, or at least once a month, since taking office, which has been half a year now.


I have been struggling with how best to express my frustrations since becoming Governor of Magnumtown, often coming to intense agitation that I have not always been successful in concealing such an embarrassing reaction from public awareness.  I have received a great many suggestions, but most of them were naïve at best, cowardly at worst, and generally ineffective for any critical mind to accept, failed concepts that too many believe in.  I am used to the idea of discipline, but rarely have I been asked to employ it to any useful capacity.  Well, now I have one, and that is to keep a journal, where I might express myself, hopefully to some cumulative benefit.


I fear that this posting will prove a reckoning, not only in my career, but for the Danab in general.  Something decisive appears to be in harbor.