Errant Hope
When the orders first came down, they were greeted with incredulity. Many of the officers and enlisted men crewing the Respublica's warships had families on Codexia - and they were simply to wait and see if the Commos would burn all they cared about to a cinder? Desperate times required action! As the crisis developed, a few ugly incidents of unrest were reported and put under control. Other personnel expressed the view that, perhaps, surrender was preferable to the death of millions, if not billions. After all, who would indict the Respublica for reneging on a capitulation made under this sort of duress? They, too, were silenced. In the end, the government's instructions were carried out to the letter. Space was let the Commonwealth make the first move, and wait they did. The AFC flotilla, naturally, did not make it easy for them.
Unity City was the first to be hit. Kinetic weapons were used to flatten a number of fixed structures. Among them was the Chamber of Commerce and the Ministry of Defence. Though the casualties reported were few in number, the psychological shock was severe. The Respublican government was stretched thin, as millions of people fled the major cities, making for the open countryside and small settlements that were less likely to be subjected to bombardment. Law and order were tested to the limits as individuals and small groups took advantage of the difficult situation. Robbery, murder and rapine shot up, as the normally stringent Marianite authorities were forced to carefully allocate the resources available to them. When rioters attacked the Central Complex of the Marianite Authority, however, harsh measures were imposed, in order to keep the peace. Within a week, ten thousand 'irrevocably immoral individuals' (the so called Tri-is) were executed and strung up in public spaces.
The General Staff of the Respublica, in the meantime, gnashed its teeth. The Commos seemed determined to escalate the situation very slowly, indeed, imposing a gradual sort of 'punishing pressure' on the recalcitrant Marianites for refusing to give in to their ultimatum. The bombing of Unity City was followed by the systematic annihilation of every major Land and Space force facility on the planet. But there was still no general bombardment. Instead, Codexia was being pulverized in small, easy steps. The death toll climbed to thirty thousand within two weeks. And still the massed Space forces waited, just outside of the Commo occupied zone around the homeworld. Obviously, the earlier muttering over the best way to approach the crisis could only grow, under these circumstances. Soon, it was at a fever pitch. In several cases, outright mutiny was only prevented by the quick thinking and moral fortitude of the flag officers attendant. Would-be-villains were quickly shown the methods by which the Respublica dealt with traitors to the cause.
The penny finally dropped in mid-August. The Commos, nearly completely out of consumables (there was no truce in place while this situation developed; almost the entirety of the Commo invasion force was either destroyed or chased out of Respublican space, in the interim) instituted a deadline for general bombardment. As the week slowly passed, they increased the intensity of their targeted bombardments. Even if the crisis could be resolved without any further bloodshed, Codexia would require decades of redevelopment. It was of scant comfort to the huddled masses that the highest tiers of government were safely sheltered almost nine hundred meters underground, in the biggest and most elaborate hardened complex ever devised by mankind. As the deadline approached perilously close, the iron discipline of the Marianites did not waver. It was to be the Commos that would blink first.
At 1730 hours on 16 August 357AU, Commandant General Giovanni Price of the AFC broadcast a surrender message on all bands from the Ascot Vale, his flagship. It outlined that the Commonwealth government had instructed its invading forces to inflict defeat upon their Marianite brothers to guarantee the future security of the Commo state - but not at the expense of their humanity or the occurrence of what would be an infamous act of genocide. Finally recognising that the Marianites would not surrender under threat of annihilation, the Commonwealth was forced to acknowledge its own defeat. Space forces thereafter cautiously advanced against the spent Commo flotilla. True enough to their word, they kept their guns and electronic suites silent, as they were overtaken by the Respublican vessels. The ships in orbit around Codexia were swiftly captured by Marianite rapid ingress teams, which reported no resistance from their weak and malnourished crews. In several instances, a form of frontier justice was evidenced by the immediate executions of a number of the highest ranking Commonwealth officers present. These ad hoc war crimes tribunals were halted immediately, though punishment for the offending individuals seemed half-hearted, at best. A hundred thousand dead on Codexia could be directly attributed to the lengthy bombardment campaign and its indirect effects. It was all that Marianite authorities could do, simply preventing the large-scale slaughter of the prisoners of war from the flotilla.
The outstanding issue, however, was clear enough.
What now?
Do you... re-absorb the Commonwealth forcefully and wholly? Those animals can hardly complain, after what they just put us through. Now that we have broken their resolve, let us break their spirit, too. Only then can we reforge it anew, in the Marianite form. We must expunge their sickness. Liquidate their leadership, their intellectual elite and anyone else who could resist what our faith demands we make of them. Let us be swift, thorough and merciless. Our people demand justice. Maria demands piety.
OR
Do you... re-absorb the Commonwealth, but rule with a light touch? They have been our enemy for decades, but they were our brothers for millennia. These misguided fools must be made to understand the error of their ways. Let us not show how cruel we can be. Instead, let us show them that which they do not expect at all: mercy. Marianism is strong enough to spread and flower amongst them without imposition. We will defeat the idea of the Commonwealth by proving its basic tenets wrong.
