Believe me, I'm as surprised to have this story talking to me again as you are. This scene is brought to you by another project, in a completely different fandom, that I'd intended to work on instead, and by the question of just where the Knights of the Inner Sphere came from, anyway...
OUTREACH, FEDERATED COMMONWEALTH
AUGUST 15, 3050
“You wished to speak to me, Captain-General?” Vera asked. She could afford to delay her departure long enough to talk to one of the most powerful men in the Inner Sphere.
Given the wars he’d been part of creating and perpetuating, she wouldn’t usually have been inclined to waste sympathy on the man, but the haggard, haunted look in his eyes and lined, grim-set face reminded her far too much of…
She shied away from the thought, and as she did, those inner demons made him come straight to grips with the mission that had brought him to speak with her.
“For most of my life, I have believed in the mission of Comstar,” he said. “To heal the wounds left by the Succession Wars, to preserve the glory and knowledge of the Star League - and to ensure that no would-be tyrant, no mere conqueror, gained power over the Inner Sphere before the time to truly rebuild had arrived. Even after I became Captain-General, I felt that in many ways to be my true mission in life.”
Vera blinked.
“You were not aware that I had been a member of the Order, earlier in my life?” he asked, seeing her expression.
She shook her head. “I was not,” she admitted.
“And yet, it is true. I was not the most likely member of the succession to the post of Captain General, and so was free to spend my younger years in study... “ His gaze went abstracted for a long moment. “Many things changed, afterwards.”
He shook his head, like a horse dislodging a fly. “But enough to say, one thing that has not changed is that the goal is, has always been, the ultimate benefit of civilization and its inhabitants. When the factionalism and conflicts of the Successor States finally burned out, Comstar would - as is its purpose - be in place to rebuild.”
An upraised hand stopped Vera from speaking. “You are about to question how Polcenigo serves that goal. I… find that I can only answer that it does not. Your own society, whatever else I might decry about it, proves that the fundamental assumption on which Comstar’s course to this date has rested, that technology and civilization cannot survive in conditions of ongoing conflict, is false.
“Which means that, far from shortening the course of the inevitable, and limiting the deaths caused by it, Comstar has instead become the very agent of that which it was formed to fight. And that is why I have asked to meet with you; so that I can tell you about Operation Holy Shroud…”
