By K. Kaze Fox
History of the universe, part 1
“Because we needed to colonize new systems, we had to create an intellectual labor force. We could not risk humans for colonization and terraforming planets lightyears from earth, and so the morphs were created to fill the gap.” ~Victoria Jules Raedon, last president of the United Nations
“Just because they were created in a laboratory does not mean that morphs have no rights. They are living, sentient creatures, just like humans, and thus should not be slaves. Risk has always been a part of human history.” ~President Christopher Jose Gonzalez, fourth president of Sol
It is impossible to have a history of our star system and our government without first discussing the history and where we come from. While there are thousands of years of human history that should be covered, this text is only covering the history that lead to the formation of Whisper. Not long after humans discovered the ability to cross from slower than light space into faster than light space, or what we often call “hyperspace”, they found that there are many worlds out there that can be relatively easily terraformed into environmental systems that can support humans. The only problem is that terraforming, even with new nanotechnology to rebuild the environment extremely quickly, it takes twenty years for a planet to go from a rock in space to something ready for humans. And beyond that, terraforming, especially in the first fifteen years, is extremely dangerous for anyone on the planet, as the planet has a significant amount of volcanic activity, followed by serious storms and hurricanes.
Thus humans determined that an organic workforce was required, and created the first morphs. Only an organic brain could handle the complex decisions needed in terraforming, and artificial intelligence was just unable to make certain leaps in logic. Morphs filled this gap, being a created slave labor force that was completely disposable. And the initial morphs created many of the first colony worlds, starting with a few moons around Jupiter then being launched into space once they were proven. Not long after this, the humans found other reasons to use morphs, the most common of which was as either general labor or as sex slaves.
This trade went on for nearly five hundred years while the morphs learned and grew and expanded, both by taking over critical infrastructure of the humans, even being used in many of the human militaries as disposable troops. And that’s where we finally got a chance to escape. The escape started when we changed a launch target to a trinary star system that our genetically altered systems could handle but humans couldn’t easily, and we started colonizing the system, whispers of it spreading from group of slaves to group of slaves.
The Morph Revolution
Some say that the war started on Terra, but that’s not quite true. In a sense, the war was declared in the Sol legislature when they passed the law officially emancipating the morphs. However, it took forty years of legal challenges and lawsuits before the law was finally able to be appropriately enforced. That said, the first blood was on a little known station orbiting Earth.
The station was known as “Kracken” and wasn’t well known outside of a few Sol corporations that were still practicing the slave trade. The station was listed as a “recreation station”; however, their “licensed escorts” were thinly veiled morph-slaves. They also offered “training services” to people who had errant slaves. Thus, when it was raided by Sol’s Space Police, the station personnel attempted to destroy evidence by throwing many of their slaves and some genetic material used for creating them out an airlock. Only one slave survived, and even that was touch and go. That act was probably the absolute worst thing that they could have done, as the slave that survived was Kaze Desmoulins.
Most people probably recognize that name, but they would recognize her face even more. The poor gray fox who was spaced by the slavers had her face plastered on every television, holovision, news feed, and even private blogs. Within days of the raid, Desmoulins became the most well-known morph in the galaxy. She was directly created because her master wanted a toy that he could break. And break he did. When she was created, the geneticists that designed her gave her very high intelligence, tactical and strategic ability, and a very strong will. When she was rescued by the space police, she was taken into medical and they were able to keep her alive to get her to another station where an advanced medical center performed extensive surgeries, making her almost as much machine as living morph.
The problem for the slavers is that they gave the resistance a mind that could just about out-think the best military planners in Sol. It took a year for Desmoulins to be able to leave the hospital, and during that time she read every military book and text she could get her paws on. The last four months, she started direction much of the assaults and war efforts from her hospital bed, and was finally able to leave the hospital and take the units first hand. Her charisma allowed her to secure permission from the Sol government to operate strike units and make military assaults on individuals, businesses, and compounds in the Sol boundaries that the morphs could show probable cause were aiding, supporting, or participating in the slave trade. And they did regularly, sometimes with local law enforcement, sometimes on their own.
The first mission that Desmoulins led on her own had another famous face involved. Roland Milev accompanied her on a raid of a corporate compound, having somehow found himself in her squad as they performed the roundup. Milev was impressed with her leadership on the raid and how she kept on going even after getting two plasma rounds in her chest that he worked to be on every raid she was personally commanding. Between the two of them, they had the most successful raids and assaults of the war, though Desmoulins herself spent nearly as much time in the hospital as she did in combat.
Milev earned an impressive record on his own, quickly becoming her second-in-command. It was very rare to see Desmoulins in an action and not see Milev by her side. Toward the end of the war, when the corporations tried to claim that Whisper was their property, Desmoulins lead a taskforce to take out the corporation’s mercenaries and their headquarters. The taskforce that Desmoulins lead consisted of two Whisper carriers, seven Sol destroyers, and a Centauri carrier, up against a frontier station with advanced weapons systems, and twenty mercenary dreadnaughts with a full company of destroyers. Desmoulins was commanding the taskforce, and Milev was captaining the Razor’s Edge carrier. The final tally of the battle was Desmoulins strategy and tactics brought four destroyers and the Centauri carrier home with significant damage. Both Whisper carriers were destroyed, about a third of their non-fighter compliment resued by the remaining ships. Desmoulins probably should have died again, but she lived by pure luck. Only a thousand of the mercenaries survived the engagement, rescued by the remaining ships from the alliance.
This last battle earned Milev the title of the Demon Captain, as his last act on the Razor’s Edge was to pilot the ship into the center of the mercenary fleet before he took off in a fighter, laying a trail of fire behind him, blazing out before the Razor’s Edge became a small star that wiped out the entire fleet in its self-destruct throws. Desmoulins became the Angel of Death, as she seemed to be completely indestructible and always seemed to leave a trail of bodies in her wake.
And finally the Whisper is heard
At the end of the war, Sol, Centauri, and several other smaller star systems all signed a formal declaration of recognition which gave Whisper its official interplanetary recognition as an independent star system. A caucus was held to form the Whisper government rather than having a military rule. The first run of votes had a staggering landslide wanting a monarchy headed by Desmoulins. When this was brought to her attention, she was quoted in a press conference as saying, “Though I fought a war to guarantee the freedoms of my brothers and sisters, I am no hero. I was doing what I thought needed to be done, and I was in a position to do it. I am a soldier, I am not qualified to be a head of state. I desperately beg the citizens of the Whisper System to please reassess this decision and find a different head of state.”
The secondary caucus resulted in a form of council. The executive branch is led by a council of three heads of state who can pass or veto resolutions on a simple majority. The legislative branch is composed of a population based house of representatives and a geographically based house of the senate. The judicial system is an adversarial jury system, where a judge presides over the case to rule on evidence and procedure, and the prosecutor and defense argue their case before a jury.
The two largest cities in Whisper are Freedom City, located in the Capital Province, and Independence Station, the main orbital platform. Freedom City is the capital of the Whisper System, with a population of about 3.4 million morphs (and about a hundred-thousand humans). Independence Station has a permanent population of about two million morphs and fifty thousand humans.
Whisper’s military is comprised of a self-defense force, which is combined space navy and marines. The military is headed by the Council, through the Minister of Defense Julianne Riverfang, a cat-morph. Under her is High Admiral Kaze Desmoulins, who accepted her commission after the war. At her side is her mate, High Admiral Kris Barbosa. It is not clear exactly what Kris does for the SDF, as most of her records are classified. There is also High Admiral Theodor Bloodbeak, a raven-morph, is the head of the SDF Marines. It is reported that Admiral Desmoulins and Admiral Barbosa tend to do most of their business through holographic conferences and hyperspace links.
Copyright © 2013-2015 by K. Kaze Fox. Used with permission.