The Rouse of Abernathy

(from Firgal Upfellin's Songs of Stars and Glory, Volume VI)

     The Goluan Confederacy is slow to trust.
     Their enslavement at the hands of the Tolear Mongerers, that empire’s destruction and their renewed enslavement at the hands of its conquerors has played a major part. Their betrayal by their major allies in the Fourth Great Struggle and the calving of its territories that followed are factors as well. There are far too many reasons to go into depth on the subject, but suffice it to say, while the Goleans themselves are a noble and gracious people, their race has a long memory, and remains reserved when it comes to alliances and negotiations.
     Of course, there is an exception to every rule. The Goluan Confederacy has only once in recent history approached a race with a proposal of alliance, one that has since grown into a fierce and lasting friendship. The deeds and triumphs of the Golua and Terrans go hand in hand, laying the foundation for the Greater Galactic League and the age of peace that we enjoy today.
     As to what inspired the unprecedented proposal, we must look back six hundred years to the Goluan’s desperate war with the Plektara, and an act of valor that pierced their infamous reticence: the work of Staff Sergeant James Richard Abernathy at the Battle of the Chaff.

     Better beings than myself have gone in depth on the background and details of the Battle of the Chaff (see- Londahar’s The Reaping Fury, Gol’pool’s The Blood-Soaked Field), but I will do my best to provide a brief overview.
     In the thirty-eighth cycle of the war, while the main fronts in Fourth and Seventh Sector held on bitterly against overwhelming Plektaran assault, legendary commander Rock-Felled Gol’nar discovered a weakness in the Plektaran’s defensive line, in Fifth Sector. Knowing full well that swift decisive action would be the key to victory, he assembled the greatest force he could muster to strike at the weakened defenses, that his greater fleets could break through and flank the Plektaran offensive.
     The cornerstone of his strategy rested upon seizing the Battery of Genehon VII. Captured by the Plektara early in the war, great swathes of the once fertile planet had been converted into artillery platforms. Any ship of the line that might hope to cross into Plektaran territory would be subjected to the combined fire of four million long-drive plasma cannons at any one time. To admit the fleet’s safe passage, the guns of Genehon would have to be silenced.
     Gol’nar’s armies landed by dropship on the planet’s surface, and marched on the central artillery command base on the far side. At dawn, they met the hastily assembled armies of the Plektara defense on a wide plain of celadon grain, at the Battle of the Chaff.
     The Goluan were outnumbered, and exhausted from their long march. But as the Plektaran weaponry battered at their shield emplacements, their commanders began to Rouse.

     The Goluan race places great importance on poetry and oration in their culture, compounded by their natural psychic abilities. In war, Goluan officers are trained to deliver Rouses to raise morale before a battle. Their lengthy battle speeches are layered with subtle telepathic undertones that can mold cowering recruits into hardened, zealous warriors. It is no understatement to say that the Rouse is the greatest military strength of the Goluan.
     To properly Rouse is as much an art as it is a science. It requires charisma, force of personality, a fundamental insight into the minds of the audience. Rousing has been described as the binding of individual egos into one unwavering will, but there is no agreement as to how exactly it is accomplished. There are as many styles of Rousing as there are speakers. Analogy and metaphor are commonplace, and many quote and incorporate famous Rouses of legend to bolster their own.
     The Rouses of Genehon VII are memorized by Goluan children in every school across their domain. Each general stood before their army and Roused for more than an hour. Thrice-Swept Gol’koon of the Falling Leaves lectured on the moral imperative of their mission and the role of violent action in a peaceful society. Blinded Gol’tennan of Ocean Foam led a call-and-return Rouse, drawing on no less than three famous epic Rouses of his family line to cement his soldier’s will. Low-Feinted Gol’kanar of the West Sunrise played a Foltoon with his tentacles and recited a poem tying the Plektara to the darkness at the end of the world in Goluan myth. Tied in implicitly to each Rouse was a telepathic impulse, the sure knowledge that the battle fought that day would decide the fate of the Goluan race.
     To say that these Rouses were successful would be an insult to the majesty of the art. When the shields dropped, the Goluan armies charged on the Plektara with a fury not seen since the earliest recorded battles of Golua. When their guns ran dry, they drew their golden phrith-blades and redoubled their assault. When their blades chipped and shattered, they cast them aside and met the Plektara with their bare hands. Fist met pincer, mandible locked against tentacle, and on the fields of Genehon, in the shadow of the great gun batteries, their insect foes learned what it was to fear.
     Such is the power of the Goluan Rouse.

     But these Rouses, legendary as they are, are themselves overshadowed. Another speech was given at the Battle of the Chaff, one whose mystery caused the Goluans to question everything they knew about the art. An enigma delivered by an alien: the Rouse of Abernathy.

     Staff-Sergeant Abernathy and his men had been saved three weeks prior to the battle by the Goluans. The Terrans were not a significant military power at the time, but traded extensively with the Bathwan, a Goluan ally, and provided troops to protect their shipments. Abernathy’s commanding officer was escorting such a cargo ship when a warp-drive malfunction dropped his ship into the middle of enemy territory.
     The Terrans held out for two months on a barren moon against Plektaran attack, cut off from any hope of rescue. When his captain died, Abernathy took command of the remaining troops and continued to dig in. Only the miraculous arrival of a Goluan attack fleet spared the Terrans from a bloody, drawn-out last stand.
     Upon rescue, Abernathy attached himself to the offensive in gratitude. There was some doubt as to what a small force of such an untested race could hope to accomplish, but in the end, Rock-felled Gol’nar decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

     Abernathy was described as a reserved man, hardened by combat but not inclined towards conversation. His low rank, inexperience with command, and the period of intense fighting he had seen led to a casual familiarity among his soldiers, and an air of irreverence that the Goluan commanders found unsettling. His men obeyed him without question; still, these qualities are ill-suited for a Rouser, and when it came time before battle was met, most doubted he would speak at all.
     So eager were the Goluans to document their Rouses by video drone and microphone that none were spared for Abernathy’s speech. The hubris of it still stings them to this day.

     He used no amplifiers to address his troops. There is no record of what was spoken. But we know that his Rouse took less than a minute. And we know that when battle commenced, the Terran company fought as fiercely and bravely as any Goluan elite force, spearheading a charge into the Plektara main bunker, breaking the back of the enemy’s defense and, arguably, turning the tide of the war itself.
     They used no rules of warfare recognized by the Goluan Confederacy, killed three times their number, and sustained eighty-five percent casualties by the action’s end.

     It was not until Genehon’s Battery was finally silenced and the last pockets of Plektaran resistance subdued that the Goluans realized the magnitude of Abernathy’s accomplishment. Rouses are, as a rule, widely varied, and can accomplish proper group-mind by uncountable approaches. But no Rouse worth mentioning has ever taken less than half an hour to complete. Goluan shields are specifically designed to last long enough for a proper Rouse to be done. And yet this Terran Roused his men with no Goluan training and no apparent psychic ability, in a tiny fraction of the time. There are no Rouses less than a minute long. Abernathy Roused regardless.
     This is the great mystery of the Chaff. To the Goluans, discovering the secret of the Terrans was not a military pursuit, although their military would be revolutionized by it. It was not an artistic pursuit, although their arts would flourish and blossom from it. To a race so centered on the art of address, unveiling this mystery was a spiritual pursuit. It spurred a race scarred by betrayal to place their faith in an alien race, by the words of a single Terran soldier.

     We may never know what was said. Abernathy himself died less than an hour into the battle, shot over a dozen times by Plektaran fire. Such was the strength of his Rouse that his men fought on, their resolve even stronger than before. When Rock-felled Gol’nar himself asked one of the surviving Terrans what Abernathy had said, her weary reply only strengthened the mystery:
     “What he had to.”

     Private Kallick tugged her rifle tighter to her chest and looked up at the shield emplacement, a wall of blue light over thirty meters tall. Rainbow light washed across it as the bugs did their best to knock it out with lasers and plasma and whatever they could throw.
     The ragged Terran company was almost swallowed up by the Goluan forces on either side. At the head of each battalion or so, a Goluan officer was floating on suspensors, giving them a speech or something. On the left, the officer was shouting something, and his men all shouted back. On the right, their officer was playing… a harp, or something? She was still a long way from fluent in the language, but they seemed to be getting pretty riled up.
     Well, it seemed like a good time for the Terrans to get their own speech. She craned to catch a glimpse of the sarge.

     He appeared to be eating a sandwich.

     Abernathy paused, suddenly aware of the expectant eyes upon him. He turned and looked up at the Goluan generals, deep into their intricate rhetoric, and turned back towards the soldiers under his charge.
     He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Bad guys,” he said, mumbling through peanut butter, and swallowed.
     He shrugged.

     “Fuck’em up.”