The Bishop of Venus has splendid balls: The exposition Prologue

 Hi All,

A prologue to my short story 'The Bishop of Venus has splendid balls'

Prologue 

The Vardassians had conquered 150 systems and 55 different civilisation that had been at a pre-warp level before first contact. The Vardassians strip mined and over exploited every single planet and system they controlled. Realising that their civilisations were doomed unless they struck back, the conquered civilisations began an armed guerrilla resistance, hoping that a war of attrition would force the Vardassians to leave their worlds.

The Vardassians were constantly clashing with the various great powers of the galaxy, the biggest mistake they ever made was to attack a Varg( Martian) aid convoy to Relsiah Prime, one of the many worlds that Vardassia occupied, but was suffering from a variety of epidemics. The  furious Martians, who need little excuse for war anyway, declared war and invoked the Treaty of Woking to wit, brining in the Albion Commonwealth into the war, who having had their New Gloucestershire Asteroid settlement of Leckhampton attacked, killing one hundred thousand people, needed little persuasion to join their ally. Besides which this acted as a prid pro quo for the Martians in return had to pledge to join in the fight aganist the Pholians, which they agreed.

While smarting from these upsets, the Vardassian People’s Democratic Socialist Republic was fighting a huge, long and costly war against the Earth Union which had established colonies within 80 light years of Vardassian territory. The EU had superior technology, but inferior fighting power, summed up by the fact that they had no actual defence forces, only a thing called ‘Peace Fleet’, which was capable of  deploying diplomatic and exploration vessels, which just happened to be equipped with weaponry, but otherwise were known as luxury 'gin palaces' and it was known that these vessels including not only the crew, but their families as well. Even the Vardassians did not send their children into war zones or dangerous situations. The EU only began to prevail because the sheer scale of the technological gap was the equivalent of a professional soldier being given a water pistol and an amateur civilian a rocket with one button to press.

The war came to a quicker conclusion than most analysis expected because, unlike the clueless & military inept  EU, both Mars and Albion did possess supberb professional war machines, which within 5 months were knocking on the doors of the Vardassian home world .

It was at this point that the other great powers, who were not involved in the wars demanded a cease fire and negotiated settlement, due to balance of power concerns. The allied side -feeling honour had been satisfied- agreed and the Vardassians accepted in principle, but quibbled over whether or not that 55 colonies that were in revolt – and being supported by the Anglo-Martian special forces – should be represented. The allies said yes they should, to which the Vardassians said that only their current governments could attend as ‘observers’. As these governments were nothing other than Quisling puppet regimes the allies refused to attend if they were to be allowed.

The impasse was broken by the sudden toppling of the hard-line regime in Vardassia, as the Politburo reasserted control from the Cabal and cult of personality of the current regime. Alongside this, the puppet governments began to collapse one by one. In any resistance it is often the case that it is a handful of the population, it is when the ordinary citizens go out onto the street in a mass movement, do regimes begin to topple. The Vardassians had been forced to relocate the bulk of their forces onto the front lines and the handful of troops and secret police that were left simply could not maintain order. The puppet regimes local forces simply melted away as guards and police joined in the revolution. 

One by one the colonial Prefects handed over the reigns of power to their puppet governments and left them to their fate as they evacuated. These governments began to collapse like a full strike in ten pin bowling, with often once powerful leaders begin shot, hanged or even worse killed to death in terrible ways by angry mobs. Either way their bodies were strung up in gallows and gibbets as statues of the old regimes were toppled.

This cleared the way for a peace conference, which would be undertaken under the auspices of the Galactic 8, the yearly meeting of the heads of government of the great powers, which this year was to be hosted by the Byzantine Empire on their sphere 19. These events rarely actually achieve anything, although they are good for the elite to network and be wined and dined to oblivion. Hopefully this year would be different, but we shall start with the Bishop of Venus Ball, one of the premier events of the conference, like some kind of travelling circus, the Bishop of Venus always has splendid balls....