The entire Larkinson Clan spontaneously celebrated a holiday of sorts.
It was strange. Plenty of children were being born in the fleet. The entire fleet had gained enough population to turn into a moving city, which presented a host of new problems.
Yet the joy of welcoming new children and raising them in a comfortable environment was worth all of the effort. With a fantastic ship like the Vivacious Wal in the Larkinson fleet, the clan was able to offer a standard and mode of living that emulated life on planets as closely as possible.
The abundance of facilities and the family friendly policies set by the clan administration encouraged a lot of Larkinsons to start new families. More and more couples tied the knot and new babies were being born every passing month.
However, the appearance of one particular baby attracted the attention of every Larkinson.
The founder and current leader of their clan had finally produced an heir!
The happiness and jubilation that surged from the clansmen was unexpectedly great! Although the Larkinson Clan technically wasn’t a monarchy, the behavior exhibited by the rank and file was reminiscent of the reaction of citizens living in a well-liked monarchical state!
Everyone acted as if Ves was their king and sovereign and that it was already set in stone that his children would inherit his leadership position one day!
Some of the more sober, higher-ranking leaders recognized what was happening. Their thoughts on the phenomenon were rather mixed.
On the other hand, Ves effectively built the clan from the ground up. Even if plenty of other competent and talented Larkinsons rose up and excelled in their own duties, no one discounted the pivotal role that their patriarch played in pulling their clan up to the same height as other powerful second-class organizations!
Despite the occasional setbacks and near-ruinous disasters, his success was undeniable. The Larkinson Clan was still heavily reliant on his accomplishments to this day.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, their regard for their patriarch became so strong that they treated him as if he was their king.
The ironic part of all of this was that neither Ves nor the clan administration explicitly pushed this stance. It just spread organically among the clansmen as their own experiences effectively indoctrinated them into putting Ves up a pedestal.
This had many consequences, one of which was celebrating the birth of a specific child even though it seemed irrational to single out a specific baby!
Technically, the daughter of Ves Larkinson and Gloriana Wodin-Larkinson was just an ordinary newborn clan member. The baby girl did not possess any more rights or privileges than any other baby born into the clan.
Yet everyone ȧssumed the child was special. From the extravagant amount of money spent to breed a designer baby to the support of two of the most important people in the clan, there was no doubt that even if the girl was not a princess, she was effectively royalty in the clan of her birth!
This was a good development to those who believed in Ves’ vision and leadership. Friends and loyalists such as General Verle, Venerable Joshua and Calabast each saw more advantages than disadvantages in this development.
“We need strong leadership.”
“We need continuity.”
“We must retain the status quo.”
There were other Larkinsons that held the opposite view. There weren’t many of them, but people like Venerable Jannzi, Chief Minister Novilon Purnesse and other concerned Larkinsons became profoundly worried at the current direction of the clan.
“Our clansmen deserve a voice.”
“How can we stop the abuses of our patriarch?”
“Will our clan continue to descend until it turns into Ves’ personal kingdom?”
These people strongly maintained the ideal that the Larkinson Clan was not solely the property of its founder. Though the patriarch had indeed gone above and beyond to turn it into a thriving family organization, the interests of all of the other people that make up the population should be met as well!
In truth, the division that was just starting to emerge was not unique in the clan. Since humanity ascended to the stars, questions of rights, ownership and power continued to plague the colonists that settled on different planets.
These conflicts usually resulted in two different outcomes.
When the sponsors, funders, owners or entrepreneurs that organized and led the colonization effort won the power struggle, they usually set up kingdoms and empires that solidified their power.
One of the defining traits of these feudalistic states was that the right to rule was intricately bound to inheritance. Bloodline and parentage were the principal factors that determined whether someone held authority.
Such states tended to concentrate much of their wealth and power to the ruling class. The major downside to this was that commoners who worked harder or possessed more talent often did not earn the status and rewards that they deserved.
When the masses of a colonized planet successfully wrenched power away from the original founders, they formed republics where leaders were either voted into office or decided through other means.
The central ȧssumption of these kinds of states was that no one should possess a greater right to rule than others. Just because the parents were rich, smart or powerful didn’t mean that their children automatically got to be in charge!
In theory, the most competent leaders who earned the greatest public support held office.
In practice, it rarely worked this way.
Different people had different definitions of what constituted a good leader.
Sometimes the people were so misled that they no longer had the ability to discern what was actually good.
Competing factions pushed different visions and sometimes came to blows because of their disagreements.
While all of this was happening, plenty of self-serving grifters wormed their way into the political structure. They either harvested donations while pretending to do something useful or misused public resources to fulfill their own private interests!
All of these outcomes happened in every corner of human space. There was so much dysfunction in human space that the galactic community never settled the debate on whether republicanism or monarchism was the better model of a state.
A fierce scowl appeared on her face. “Do these idiots even know who they are idolizing?! This is the same guy that has flung our clan into battles where we have lost half of our mech pilots not once, but several times!”
It boggled her mind how a couple of joyous and celebratory events such as the Miracle Couple’s marriage or the birth of their first child could make so many clansmen forget about the tragedies they suffered.
Jannzi never doubted that Ves could be brilliant sometimes. His successes were undeniable, but the way he disregarded the human cost he incurred was galling. The Larkinson Clan could be so much more than a vehicle of his personal ambitions if the clansmen just woke up to the truth!
“I just need… to open all of their eyes.” She whispered to herself and she raised her fist.
She gazed up at her renewed personal mech. The Shield of Samar, now transformed into a powerful masterwork expert mech, beckoned to her like an old lover and trusty partner.
It did not escape the fact that she owed much of her own success to the current patriarch as well. It was practically a dream for any expert pilot to receive a powerful expert mech, and a masterwork at that, but Ves had managed to do the impossible as a Journeyman once again.
She did not feel entangled over the issue. To her, developing mechs and leading the clan were entirely separate matters. One could be good in one area and detestable in another area.
“Ves should just stick to what he is best at and leave the running of the clan to other Larkinsons!”
The reactions of all of the Larkinsons around her made her realize the urgency of her mission. Too many people in the clan were oblivious to the dangers of putting all of their trust in their current leader.
“If the father is already a disaster, what of his children?” Jannzi asked.
She feared the child that had just been born even more than her parents. At least Ves grew up in simpler times as part of the original Larkinson Family. No matter how depraved he turned out later on, he still possessed a shred of decency and honor in his heart.
As for his daughter, Jannzi was not as optimistic. The humility and restraint of the old family was replaced by greed and ambition. All of the bad habits might pass on from father to child, especially when they were both so powerful and privileged.
In case her fears about the daughter came true one day, Jannzi needed to be ready to shield the innocent from the damage inflicted by the future tyrant.
“I’m going to need your help. Shield of Samar.” She softly asked her mech. “Let’s see what we can do now that you’ve finished your transformation.”
Soon, she suited up and hopped into the ċȯċkpit of her mech. What stood out from her was how everything had changed, yet remained familiar as well. The entire interior of the ċȯċkpit had been upgraded, but the layout and the structure still resembled the old one in many important ways.
“You’re good to go, Venerable Jannzi.” Ketis told her over the communication channel. “We don’t know what to expect from your first activation, but just in case, we will be towing your expert mech out into space first before you can interface with it for the first time. Please remain patient.”
“Understood.
Both Ves and Gloriana had become so besotted with their new baby girl that they were completely unavailable to supervise the initial testing sessions of the new Shield of Samar.
It did not matter too much. Ketis and Juliet could undertake this responsibility just as well. Both of them had already tapped into the telemetry of the Shield of Samar so that they could pay careful attention to its performance.
While the Design Department already came up with a certain estimation of the Shield of Samar’s performance, all of the modeling and simulation results only applied to a normal expert mech.
No one was able to guess how much better a masterwork version of the finished Bulwark Project performed.
If the Amaranto was a good indication, then Venerable Jannzi ought to be able to exert a disproportionate amount of power compared to other expert pilots!
When the large and heavy mech was finally towed into a zone of space that was surrounded by a large and active interference field, Ketis finally allowed Jannzi to activate her new expert mech.
Just seconds after the initial systems warmed up, the entire Shield of Samar blazed to life in a strong and exuberant fashion!
The entire Shield of Samar glowed in welcoming blue as it spontaneously resonated with its only partner. Despite the complete overhaul of the entire mech frame, the identity of the mech still remained the same. Not a single sign of incompatibility or unfamiliarity emerged during the entire interfacing process!
To Venerable Jannzi, it was like coming home after a long day of work. The only difference was that her abode changed from a single house into a sprawling mansion!
The new Shield of Samar was so much greater that Jannzi felt as if she could properly propagate her power for the first time since she advanced to expert pilot!
“This… this is what I have sought for all these years!”
Not only that, but her Shield of Samar also gained several powerful new enhancements that enabled her to exert her willpower more easily in specific ways!
Her eyes opened up as she and her expert mech eagerly activated one of the new functions.
“My mech is as heavy as a planet! My will is as dense as a black hole! Gravity Well!”
In an instant, the masterwork expert mech generated a strong attraction around its frame that already began to pull in some of the closer bots!
