Kenonautical Auxiliary Force / KAF

[WIP]

From an interview with Eric Friel on the founding of the Kenonautical Auxiliary Force [2876] :

I’ll start at the beginning. I warn you it’s a long story so you’ll have to bear with me.

I was born in a small town near New Austin on Terra. Growing up, I benefited from a tight-knit group of friends. There was Mark, Anthony, Sean, Harris, Steve, Jason, Richard, and myself. We had the fortune of being born early enough to witness the influx of hope following the end of the Messer Era and the resolution of the Xi’an conflict but late enough not to remember the horrors that came before. Our entire generation was defined its high expectations. We saw the universe as a source of endless wonder and opportunity. Terra was far enough removed from the Vanduul menace that our only knowledge of them came from highly biased infographics put out by the recruiting branch of the UEE Military. As such, we saw the Vanduul as unintelligent and weak.

All of this led to our unanimous belief that no life could be better than that of a UEE Marine Corps pilot. And so, the day Harris turned 18, we all made our way down to the recruiting office and enlisted. Through our dedication and more than our fair share of luck, we made it, all of us. When we walked across that stage to receive our wings, our heads brushing the stars—we thought that we had life in the bag, that from that day forward we would be living the dream. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“[Richard’s] death was the first tragedy in a campaign that would eventually claim the lives of Anthony and Harris and leave the rest of us deeply scarred.”

The Corps didn’t waste any time deploying us to border world outposts and not long after we had settled in, Richard went out on a patrol and didn’t come back. His death was the first tragedy in a campaign that would eventually claim the lives of Anthony and Harris and leave the rest of us deeply scarred. It wasn’t the Vanduul or our skill as pilots that dismantled our careers but our optimism and the resulting sense of betrayal.

After retiring from the service, we reunited on Terra to pay our respects to Harris, Jason, and Richard whose funerals we had been unable to attend. It was there that we formed what—despite what some of the more inspired KAF members might tell you—was basically a support group. We agreed to meet in private once a month and talk about what had happened in the service.

Sean never even made it to the first meeting. He sent us a message saying he was moving on and didn’t want to discuss it. Years later I found out that he was married briefly before joining up with a PMC and heading back to the front. The official report said he was killed in the line of duty but I have it on good authority that he didn’t die in combat.

The rest of us managed to work through enough of our angst to move on with our lives. However, in the years that followed, despite having families to attend to, none of us ever missed a meeting.

A heart attack took Steve without warning. That sort of thing just isn’t supposed to happen these days but Stevie hadn’t ever gotten over his distrust of doctors after seeing Harris die on the table. In his will he left the journal he had kept during our time in the service to his fourteen year old son, Connor. I don’t think Steve intended for him to be reading that s*** so young but his wife was in a bad way for a while and never having gotten the full story of what things were like back then, didn’t think better of giving it to the boy.

“Connor read that journal like a Banu reads an instruction manual”

Connor read that journal like a Banu reads an instruction manual and, already looking for someone to blame, placed it squarely on the shoulders of the UEE. He got it into his head that he was going to attend our meetings in his father’s stead where, surely we were laying out our plans to overthrow the UEE. We let him come thinking he might be able to benefit from the perspective we had gained through years of reflection. Over time, he did outgrow his plans of insurrection but he never gave up his conviction that the UEE was a poor excuse for a “protector of humanity”.

Connor went off to college in Davien and we didn’t hear from him while he was away. During this time Mark and I began to focus less on the past and more on the present. Because of this, it was quite a jarring experience when Connor showed up unannounced to one of our meetings a year before he was supposed to graduate with a group of no fewer than six other students.

He told us that he had decided that someone needed to hold the UEE accountable and that that someone was going to be me and Mark. Well, I had had about enough of this his crap but Mark still had a soft spot for the boy and in all honesty I was a little curious about where this all was headed so we agreed to play along. And when Connor asked us to talk about our experiences in the Marines, we did. And when he asked us to teach them everything we knew about UEE military procedure concerning colony defense and Vanduul intimidation, we did. And when he told us that we were going to leave our families behind to follow him out to the border worlds and defend the colonists from the Vanduul threat like the UEE never could, we told him to take his cult and get the hell out.

This story might have ended shortly after that last meeting with the massacre of Connor and his followers in Vanduul space but before they had completed their journey—and you might not believe me when I tell you this, I didn’t until they showed me the autopsy report—Connor, like his father before him, suffered a fatal heart attack. [editor’s note: I did track down a death certificate and an article in a medical journal on a Connor Schafer who died of a heart attack in 2836 when he was 19] Now, I wasn’t there to witness the events directly following Connor’s death but years later I had James give me the run down and—oh crap I haven’t introduced him yet have I?

“[James] was the closest thing to a leader that flock of sheep had.”

Some people like to pretend that the founders of the KAF were formed from the salt of god’s tears but it really was just a bunch of half-wits trying to make the best of a bad situation. James would never refer to himself as a natural born leader, but with Connor gone, he was the closest thing to a leader that flock of sheep had. One thing James had going for him, though, is that he could spot a need. This ability of his was what drew him to Connor in the first place.

James was born into a wealthy family of a**holes—I mean diplomats. When he was young, his parents planned for him to follow in their footsteps and so he spent many of his early years traveling from system to system with his folks, watching them do a lot of talking about a lot of things. Politics being politics, many of the systems that they visited were those dealing with Vanduul raiders and James got to witness first hand the double standard that is UEE defense spending. He watched with his own eyes as the UEE moved mountains to protect citizen assets while colonist pleas were heard only after a tragedy if at all. Dropping out of college to join up with Connor was his final act of rebellion against his parents.

James might have skipped following Connor altogether but I think that he associated leadership with his parents and after spending so much time distancing himself from them, he had trouble taking up the title. In the end, watching Connor might have done some good for him because, despite how out of touch with reality Connor was, the boy could herd some sheep.

Now, I’ve spoken pretty harshly of these kids so far but in truth they weren’t necessarily the simpletons that I made them out to be. They were—to a certain degree—victims of Connor’s force of personality and now, free of his influence, they slowly began to realize just how foolish Connor—and by extension, they themselves—had been. In this way Connor’s funeral wasn’t just a lesson in vulnerability and mortality but a time for everyone who was close to him to chew over just how much influence he had wielded. Just after the service, James announced that the following day he would hold what he promised would be the final meeting of Connor’s group.

“Everyone was ready to put an end to this chapter of their lives”

I arrived at the meeting spot early. James was already there, sitting on a stool at the front of the room flipping through some papers. As I entered, he motioned for me to sit down and then returned to his papers. More people filed in and were seated in silence. Everyone was ready to put an end to this chapter of their lives and return to their school or their family and forget any of it ever happened. Once everyone had settled in, James looked up from his papers and scanned the room. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t with Connor’s blind determination, it was with a cool and indisputable confidence.

Give me a second, I’ve got it around here somewhere. [Mr. Friel gets up to search the drawers in his office and returns a moment later with a worn slip of paper.] Here we are. This is actually the original page that he composed it on. I’ve got it on MobiGlass too but James liked to work things out on paper and I think it’s special this way.

Connor taught us that revolutions are based on the strength of ideas, not on numbers. I have an idea, not of revolution but of hope. We have all witnessed the failures of the UEE. But the true victims are not those the UEE fails to save, but those for whom it doesn’t even try. This is where we will stand. We are all members of the fortunate few who were born into stability and it is our responsibility to look out for those who were not given the same chances.

We are the protectors of the free people. We fight for those whose lives the UEE believes aren’t worth fighting for. We are the Kenonautical Auxiliary Force and I expect to see you all here tomorrow morning for our first meeting.

And with that, he walked out of the room leaving us in shocked silence to ponder what was to come.