DBC: Face the Commonwealth (With your host, Karl Kaumann!)
"Tonight on Face to the Commonwealth" we have a special guest, a divisive figure, one of the Youngest serving nobles in the realm, owner of one of the largest corporate entities in Lyran Space, and in our Coventry studios this evening, Duchess Elizabeth Ngo, of Kowloon!" He turned to his guest. "Hello, Your Grace, and welcome to our forum. I understand your trip here was a bit rough."
Elizabeth was clad in a black skirted-suit with what has become her characteristic white blouse, her hair is worn long and straight, held in place by a hair-clip. "thank you for having me here, Karl, and yeah, it was a little rough, as I told your producer, travel's a little more difficult for me due to a pretty severe case of Transit Disorientation Syndrome, or TDS, I had to make most of the trip unconscious, so it's still Wednesday for me." she adjusts her glasses.
"You took over a world that was on the list of 'basket case' planets, and turned it around in only four years, yet you're not even old enough to have graduated high school. How did you accomplish so much, in so short a time, at your age?"
"It's amazing what you can accomplish with the right people, Karl. I didn't do anything but say 'yes' to the right people, at the right time, the elected government that's under my supervision. The People, and the Assembly, the Courts, the Coast Guard and Militia? they're the real heroes, everything we've accomplished is on them, everything that fails? That's my responsibility-it comes with the title and the honors." she beams innocently.
"you say that like you're not a hands-on ruler, yet we've got plenty of evidence that you are exactly that. Care to comment?"
"I didn't say I wasn't, but all the progress couldn't have happened without the wonderful support system my people provide, Karl." she says seriously, "you can shout orders all day long, but if people decide not to execute those orders, you're just very loud."
"As loud as a gunshot?" Karl asked smugly.
"Two gunshots, Karl. I shot two men, both for acts of Treason against the Commonwealth." she's deadly serious now, "I couldn't and wouldn't burden someone else with looking into their eyes and deliberately ending their lives, it wouldn't be right and it wouldn't be fair-you should never ask someone else to do what you, yourself are unwilling to do. A leader who pawns off the hard actions or prefers not to make hard calls, ends up hurting the very people that grant his or her their moral authority."
"You're not wearing an academy ring, as an emancipated minor, what is your preferred service?"
"Isn't it obivous?" she asked. "I suffer from TDS, that means I'm never going to be able to command a jump-capable ship, but my Coast Guard is one of the more active Naval forces in the Commonwealth. Your research assistant already knows my application has been rejected by every military school in the Commonwealth, you already know, therefore, what my ASVAB score is, and you're burning to ask me why. so ask directly."
"Why aren't you joining the Military, where did you get your exemption?"
she steels herself visibly. "Karl, you're forty seven years old, you are, right now, seven years older than I will be if I live my maximum projected lifespan...It's out, everyone else knows, you already know. I have Cholmann's Syndrome. It affects one out of every five million people in the Inner sphere, rough estimates, and it's one of four chronic illnesses that modern medical science can not find a cure or treatment for. You have grand-children on the way, if I had children right now, I would never live to see grand-children. I have only my work as Duchess, and a very limited span of time to carry it out before my replacement has to take over. In practical terms, I'm living dog years. and like the proverbial dog, when time comes, someone will have to put me out of my misery..." she gives the cameras a softer look, "And it is an automatic bar to enlistment in every nation in the Inner Sphere."
"you seem so...normal..."
"The syndrome is degenerative, Karl, by the time I'm twenty-five, I'll need large doses of powerful antiseizure medications and medical grade narcotics to be...normal, able to function. as the disease progresses, the dosages and compounds will get higher and more potent, until nothing dulls the pain or stops the seizures, at which point, I will be in constant agony and unable even to go into shock. I expect, based on the progression, that I won't be able to function as Duchess by the time I'm thirty five. That's my 'limit' the time frame I need to fulfill to make sure my people are able to protect themselves and handle their business so that they don't end up in the mess they were in when I took over." she crosses her legs, trying (and failing) to look at ease, "it works like this, I have an expiration date, I know this, I know that I have to be decisive, if I want to accomplish anything, because I know, without a doubt, what awaits me on the end of my path, and how short that path really is."
"And the Archon knows?"
"Of course she does." Elizabeth said, "She has known for as long as I have. Part of the reason I've had a hand free enough to do what must be done is that she knows-I'm going to die horribly, and young. we have an understanding, when I'm wrong, she steps in, but when I'm right, she doesn't tend to permit interference."
"I can't imagine living with that." Karl said, "How do you?"
Elizabeth shrugged, "I do, because I must. I work sixteen to twenty hours a day, I read constantly, I ask questions and focus on my duty. The syndrome has existed for at least eight hundred years that we know of, and nobody has even found a means for sufferers to face that final stage of the disease with dignity, or in comfort. I know this, I've lived with it, the knowledge is part of me. In a sense, I know the price I'm going to pay. My greatest challenge is to make it worth the price I'm going to pay, and that's measured in the legacy I know I will leave behind. I use my condition as a self-motivator, not as a barrier to action. I can't afford self-pity, or public shame to keep me from doing what must be done."
"What would you do for a cure, though?"
"I'm not sure i would believe in it, first off, I would have to have proof it even existed. There have been lots of 'cures' offered over the last eight hundred years, my uncle Truk, he was offered treatment at NAIS, but it didn't work. He died insane, and in agony, at thirty nine years old, in a hospital where they kept him alive, screaming until his vocal cords ruptured and he drowned in his own blood. I've made arrangements, when I get to that point, there is a bullet waiting to carry me home, I won't make the people tasked to care for me, endure watching that. it wouldn't be right. Can we talk about the Warship now?"
Karl looked ill until the camera was on him, then he fumbles and says, "yes! Your 'Coast Guard' forces captured a Potemkin Class cruiser from Clan forces! I understand this isn't even the first one!"
"I have great people, Karl. My people do the best job, and it wasn't 'captured', it was recovered, the SLS Belleau Wood was stolen property of the Taxpayers of the Star League, among which, includes every taxpayer in the Lyran Commonwealth. It had been stolen over two hundred and fifty years ago, and we recovered and repossessed it. I understand it is on the way to be refit at an AFFC shipyard, and will be recommissioned back into service."
"Much the way the SLS Iowa was given by those same 'great people' to the Draconis Combine?"
"The laws are pretty clear sir, per maritime law and regulations, when property is recovered it goes to the nearest available legal owner, except in cases where ownership is disputed, and then, that's Magistrate's business. There was never a statute of limitations on SLDF property or equipment. Perhaps after the Archon gets the rest of the House Lords to meet in Council again, and they select a First Lord, they can revise the laws, but until they do?" she shrugs, "Gotta do the right thing, and the right thing, is following the law, it can be interpreted, but I wasn't there to make that interpretation, and Captain Vu Dao was instrumental in both operations, I'm hardly going to discipline one of my best officers for doing their duty!"
"but what about their duty to the Commonwealth?"
"Let me ask you, Karl, do you like being at peace with the Draconis Combine? do you like not having to worry that they're going to attack us?" she asked.
"of course!"
"There's your answer, and it was good enough for both the Archon, and her foreign husband." Liz stated. "We have one enemy, sure, that may change in the future, but our enemy, the people occupying OUR worlds, the people who stole from OUR people, and then turned what they stole against us? that's the Clans, the descendants of Kerensky's gang of deserting oathbreakers, the people who, by abandoning their Duty and Oaths, plunged all of our civilization into three centuries of fire and blood. The people who invaded us, bit forty percent out of the Lyran Commonwealth, devoured the Free Rassalhague Republic-an ally of ours? They are still there. They must be opposed, and the Draconis Combine opposes them, and that's all that matters in the now. In the future, when the Clans have been driven from Lyran soil, well, we can be ready for that future, but by then, I would hope, the governments of this, our inner sphere, our Star League, will have come together in sanity, put aside old feuds...and listend to the wisdom Katrina Steiner offered when she made her pact with Hanse Davion. The Federated Commonwealth is a beginning, uniting against the Clans is a continuation. I may never live to see it, but you will, and your children will-there must be a future!"
"You are very emphatic, what drives this emphasis? what motivates you so?" Karl asked.
"I'm dying. but I study, I read everything I can lay my hands on, and what I've learned from Professors, fellow politicians, leaders, soldiers...we as a race have forgotten so many things over the last three centuries we don't have names for all we've lost. we are on the way out of a dark age, we need to keep going, or we, as a species, are doomed. subsistence isn't enough. People, like your viewers, they deserve to do more than merely survive and subsist, and for that, we need to break the cycle of ignorance and loss."
"there are those in the Estates General who wished to charge you, and your Lieutenants, with treason over the Iowa incident." Karl brought it up again, "there was no guarantee-there is no guarantee that turning over the ship will buy teh peace you claim."
"What would you wish, if a Draconis Combine force captured that Potemkin in Lyran space?" she asked, "What would you deem respectful, honorable, honest, if they did what my people did, here in Lyran space? took a warship, mostly intact and certainly repairable, over, say, Coventry, or Tharkad? would you think it right that they took it home to Dieron, or Luthien, rather than giving it to the Archon?"
he was stunned.
"Trust, Karl. By treating them with respect, with honor, with TRUST, our boys and girls earned some of that back from them, elevated all of us, all Lyrans, just a tiny bit, because we did not attempt what those critics would have had my people doing." she taps her fingers on the desk in emphasis, "You get trust by extending it. You gain respect by showing respect. this is why those qualities are values, why they must be earned, why the loss is so devastating, and why they are so easy to lose. It's easy to be generous, when you have nothing at risk. It is easy to be dishonest when the other person can't fight back. but to be of any value, you must be consistent when it is not Convenient, when you have to extend trust, when it is risky, or when you don't stand to gain something material by doing so."
