The Mech Touch

6905  The Terran Gambit

Ves almost couldn't believe what he heard.

The Terrans and the Rubarthans actually plotted to declare independence!

The unified civilization of red humanity was hardly perfect, but Ves did not think it was bad either.

The mechers and fleeters in the Red Ocean had mellowed out a lot more. The founding of the Red Collective should have eased the contradictions between the different human groups and provided a stronger bridge for cooperation.

The creation of Human High Command served as another bridge for cooperation. The brightest military strategists and planners put down all of their factional squabbles and came together in order to formulate a single orderly strategy to defend their race against the threat of alien aggression.

Many people assumed that the first-rate colonial superstates would interpret the latest moves as a form of reconciliation. Even if the measures were mostly temporary, the goodwill extended by the Red Two should have buried any ambition to secede from unified red humanity.

It turned out that Ves was too naive.

His blind spot prevented him from recognizing the shady undercurrents.

He spent way too much with the Survivalists, who tended to think in absolute rational terms. They tended to take logic to an extreme, to the point of disregarding almost any form of love and sentimentality.

The Terrans at the very least did not think that way. Ves had spent enough time in Terran space to understand that these folk clung to their heritage and traditions like invisible suits of armor.

If this turned out to be the case, then a possibility existed where the proud Terrans made a decision that fulfilled their long-held dreams of gaining independence!