Paragons

As a child, Nicholas Danvers had always had a fascination with fantasy.

It wasn't an unheard of fascination, but it wasn't exactly common either. Stories of knights, grails, and maidens with virtue true, those belonged to Old Earth. A planet 60,000 light years away, which hadn't had knights and maidens and all that nonsense for a thousand years when the prison ships set out into space. He was Umojan. Umojans were a forward looking people. Umojans had a culture and identity all of their own, separate from Tarsonis and Moria, and sure as hell separate from any culture from mankind's homeworld. That remained true with the rise of the Dominion, and it still remained true when Earth came blundering into the Koprulu sector, bringing its fascist pigs with it. If the people of Earth remembered stories of knights and orcs, they didn't show it. The Umojan Protectorate may have escaped the worst depredations of the UED, but word travelled among the stars. It was the people of the Dominion who might have suffered the most, but still, human suffering was human suffering.

And that was to say nothing of the zerg and protoss. The former was a species that slaughtered millions in its rampages. The latter was a species who, at best, wanted nothing to do with the people of Umoja, in spite of how many times the Protectorate tried to establish diplomatic relations with them. A species that, at its worst, was as savage as the zerg. The zerg might consume worlds, but the protoss could burn them to cinders. And remembering the last war, the End War, as some called it…Danvers had seen what protoss could do. He'd seen protoss and zerg fight side by side, sometimes against the force that wanted them dead, sometimes for it.

Umoja was enlightened, its people said. Eight years of "enlightenment" had taught them the truth that it was a cold, uncaring universe, and all the good intentions in the world were even more useless than knights charging into battle against monsters, gods, or even men in power armour. That the Umojan Marine Corps wore bright and shiny power armour had nothing to do with that, thank you very much. Like, if Nick Danvers, bright eyed and bushy tailed, wanted to enlist like a knight of old, so be it, but no skin off their back when the chickens came home to roost.

Which they had, he reflected, as the company marched through the streets of Undasid – the capital city (actually the only city) of the fringe colony of Athenay. Athenay had been a Dominion world. Before that, it had been an independent world, before Emperor Arcturus Mengsk had decided it needed the "protection" of the Dominion. Athenay had experienced four years of "protection" under the rule of that despot, and had never needed any of it. Now, seven years after the emperor's untimely death (or not timely enough, depending on who you asked), Athenay was getting protection of another kind. Umojan protection. True and just protection. It would join the worlds of the Umojan Protectorate, and be subject to all the boons that Umojan society could offer. It would, under a new flag, see a glorious future.

After the parade of course. Because occupation never happened without a parade. It had been the case on Earth. It had been the case on Korhal. It had been the case on dozens of worlds. What he was doing now, Danvers reflected, was no different from what others had done before him. So when the people lined the streets, as men, women, and children, looked up to their new masters, as he saw the anger, fear, and hurt in their eyes from behind his visor…he managed to tell himself that it meant nothing. That he was just a cog in the machine. That he was still a knight in shining armour.

He managed to tell himself that for six hours until Sergeant Waitara murmured "this is wrong, y'know."

The bar's name was "The Sanctuary." Odd name, he figured, but it didn't matter. Credits were a universal currency, so among all the changes Athenay would be experiencing, that at least would remain constant.

"You scan me lieutenant?"

"I scan you." He took a sip of the beer – it tasted terrible. "And you're entitled to think that."

"Am I entitled to say that?"

"We're off duty. You're free to say whatever you want."

"Okay, fine," she said. She took a sip of her own beer before putting it down on the table they were both seated at. "This is wrong. What the Protectorate's doing is wrong. We're doing to the Dominion what they tried to do to us for years. We've become everything that the Protectorate was founded to stand against. The Confederacy's gone, Emperor Arcturus is gone, we've got someone on the throne who's half Umojan by blood, and we're…we're fekking it up." She took another sip of her beer.

"You done?" Danvers asked.

She put the beer down, glaring at him.

"Because the way I see it, what goes around comes around. I mean, Dominion screws up at Adena. It pisses off the Daelaam. Kel-Morians are making land grabs, so if we want to stay in the game, we-"

"Boscrap," she snapped. "Absolute boscrap."

"Excuse me?"

"I know you sir. Mister knight in shining armour, wants to fight the good fight and all that. You know it's wrong. I know it's wrong. People here sure as hell know it's wrong." She leant forward. "I get it. You're a CO. You need to toe the line. But if our excuse is that we're just doing what others are, what's to stop us from being like the zerg? Or, heck, the UED?"

Danvers couldn't help but smirk at the notion that the UED was worse than the zerg. Still, all things considered, maybe it was a comparison that was warranted. The zerg had been reasonably quiet over the past few years, the Defenders of Man incident notwithstanding. There were rumours that a broodmother was challenging the overqueen for dominance, but if so, they could fight it out and wipe themselves out as far as he was concerned.

But the UED was still out there. And unless things had changed on Earth in the last decade or so, he couldn't expect the fascists to sit things out. The UPL had brought all of Earth under its control in less than two years. It stood to reason that the fekkheads back on mankind's homeworld couldn't abide three independent nations remaining independent.

"What do you want me to do sergeant?" he asked. "Lodge a complaint? You're free to do that yourself."

"I know I'm free to do that. I also know it'll count for jack point shit if I lodge a protest at planetary occupation."

"Liberation, sergeant. Use the correct terminology."

"Fekk the terminology. It's wrong. I know it is. And with someone who's got enough fantasy books on his digi-tome to sink a battlecruiser, you should know it's wrong as well."

Danvers snorted.

"What?"

"Fantasy," he murmured. "Knights. Orcs. Demons." He leant forward, meeting the sergeant's gaze. "You know what fantasy has told taught me sergeant? It's that we're not like the people in the books. We're not knights. We're not saints. I'd call us sinners, but that requires me believing in some higher power, and I sure as hell can't do that anymore."

"Then what are we?"

"Terrans," he said. "Dirty. Rough. Uncouth. We're the detritus of Earth, put smack dab in the presence of two ugly alien races, and we're expected to stay alive and somehow create a better society than our forebears." He sighed, finishing the rest of his beer in a single swig. "Ain't happening sergeant. All we can do is just go along for the ride." He got to his feet. "I'm turning in."

He began walking off. He couldn't gauge the thoughts of his fellow marines, but-

"That's boscrap sir."

"But he could imagine that at least some of them thought the same as Waitara.

"Just wanted to let you know that."

He hoped they did.

He had to hope that there was some semblance of the old ideals of the Protectorate in its people.

That the Protectorate was still worth fighting for.

A/N

So, looking at where the lore has gone since Legacy of the Void, is it just me, or are the Umojan Protectorate and Dominion kind of exchanging places? Like, while the Dominion's become more democratic under Valerian, almost every piece of lore detailing the UP post-LotV has indicated that they're becoming expansionistic.

Anyway, drabbled this up.