Dateline: New Avalon September 1, 3029
On June 1, 3029, all the worlds know that ComStar placed an interdict on House Davion. No messages, no calls, no communication of any sort. No Davion world, no Davion Ambassador, consul, or commander on another planet or in space; nobody owing loyalty to the Federated Suns could place or receive communication. Prayers were chanted; receiver dishes were turned ceremonially away as the precentors conducted shunning rituals. And the silence began.
The interdict has to have had profound effects on the Federated Suns. Has it affected the war, or brought it to an end? Has it caused the expected strained relations with the Lyran Commonwealth? What has been its effect on civilian personnel? Let us take these questions in order.
The war is not over, largely because of the unique structure of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. For the last several years, even before the first Operation Galahad (the one which was pure military exercise, and fooled other Houses into believing that last year's would be also), the AFFS has stressed self-sufficiency. Each Regimental Combat Team (RCT) has been designed and trained to operate independent of headquarters control. Although a message from headquarters takes a week by "Pony Express", as the Davions call the jumpship relay, an RCT is ready at any time to make and carry out military policy on a local level. Though strategy is for the High Command, tactics are largely left to the leaders in the field. This makes for both flexibility and independence. Push mind and body before you call for help was the unofficial motto of Operation Galahad.
The new COC, the Capellan Operations Command is headed by five marshals. Technically the highest officers in Operation Rat, the fourth and fifth invasion waves, these men are in charge of supply, information, and transport. Not policy. Four of these five were set, while the fifth member seems to be filled by a series of able men and women shuttling back and forth from the front to COC headquarters (the location of which is Ultra Top Secret) to New Avalon. If this pattern was useful before the Interdict, think how productive it must be now. Incredibly, the war effort of House Davion seems to continue full steam.
The Federated Suns and their ally the Lyran Commonwealth had practiced a series of Disaster Scenario Policy Formations. The contents of these had been secret until the war began; BattleTechnology has respected that secrecy until now. When one sees an entire city's population begin to carry two day's emergency rations with them, or on Northwind, to carry a water test kit, one knows that prior planning must have been systematic and impressive.
One of them must have been meant to deal with interruption of communications; there is no other way to explain the coordinated way that merchant transactions resumed after the first few weeks of chaos. Steiner forces ceased their offensive against the Draconis Combine, it's true, but only in order to take up previously set positions to guard and consolidate the Terran Corridor which links the two Houses physically. Distressed citizens from the Federated Suns receive a hearty welcome anywhere in the Commonwealth except in the worlds of the Tamar Pact. Even there, official policy gives some relief, though the prevailing attitude holds rumblings of rebellion against the war. It is no secret that the Isle of Skye thinks it would do well as an independent state. The situation is eased by the fact that Lyran merchants everywhere, from the White Hart Truffle Company to the company releasing the popular dramavid On The Run, were selling in quantity to House Davion for its luxury lotteries. Where business goes, friendship follows, states an old Commonwealth proverb.
On the civilian front, the problems came in two varieties. The emotional effects of the Interdict on some of the less technically advanced planets were sorrow and confusion. Their Church and their Prince seemed to them to be at war. On the planet of Des Arc, Precentor Nicholas Frent's inflammatory speeches led to a riot where two hundred and sixty peoplewere murdered. Religious riotson twenty other worlds had less violent affects. House Davion broadcast pleas to everyone to view ComStar's video of the raid on its facility on Sarna which was the cause of the Interdict, and to make up their own minds. Interestingly, on every world which allowed widespread distribution of the film rioting ceased.
Shortages and therefore crimes involving ration books, the so-called "Davion Debt Books", were increasingly common. The emergency network for food distribution soon got underway, with most people most of the time receiving the basic necessities. Still people grumbled and stole - until the Luxury Lotteries got underway. Newspapers published the daily and weekly winners. Nothing was too small to be auctioned - a box of candy, a pound of coffee, an autographed biography of a star. Civilian morale, bolstered by the lotteries, was farther raised when it became apparent that all ships which could be spared from the war and supply fronts had been diverted to the carrying of mail. Literacy has been taught and treasured in the Federated Suns for the last three reigns, but in response to this challenge citizens took it up almost as a hobby. Letterwriting became a popular art again; contests were sponsored by companies as diverse as Melcher Meat and Federated-Boeing. Skilled propaganda encouraged this new fad.
Three months after the Interdict, this seems to be its effect: the Federated Suns is more determined than ever to wage and win the Fourth Succession War.
News from the Front
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