Sovereign Nation connection to Alliance shooting on Terra Nova

Adele Cattaneo - Exodus Sentinel

SCOTT - An Alliance naval engineer was arrested yesterday after opening fire on a peaceful demonstration in the capital city of Terra Nova. Serviceman Second Class Eileen Niota, 23, killed at least 4 people and wounded 15 others before Alliance marines arrived at the scene to subdue her. Niota was part of the 2nd Construction Battalion, charged with the reconstruction of Class-1 colonies in the Exodus Cluster.

Exact identities of the casualties are still tied up in Alliance bureaucracy, though witnesses claim a toddler and his mother among the deceased. Nine of the victims are in critical condition at Robert Scott Memorial. The attack comes less than three months after the Alliance has officially instituted martial law over the cluster.

The attack has only served to strengthen colonial secessionist groups despite an official Alliance condemnation of the massacre. According to Alliance press, Niota - a Milan, EU native - had several documents on her omnitool relating to the “Sovereign Nation” terrorist cult, including instructions on how to spot “dangerous” individuals, and the locations of several safe-houses and caches on the planet itself.

The intragalactic, interspecies group, lead by Lucien Bradford, is inspired by the philosophies of the Reapers, most importantly that the “chaos of organic life” must become ordered at any cost.

Colonial groups, however, are claiming that the orders to fire came from the Alliance themselves, and that the alleged ties to the cult are fabricated.

Colonial Director-General Rear Admiral Eswara has expressed outrage over the attack, and the Director of Exodus Cluster, Admiral Yang Sheng-ji, is expected to put extra measures in place for civilian protection during protests, though many are skeptical of how much ‘protection’ an Alliance marine can offer against their own.

There's always going to be a fringe element prone to irrational doctrine in the universe. Look at Cerberus, for example. What started as military operation within the Alliance grew to be a terrorist organization with a near cult-like obsession towards "humanity over all," despite the fact the methods they used to reach their goal ended up doing more damage to their own cause than anything else. They aligned with forces beyond their understanding out of a misguided attempt to do... whatever it is they wanted to do. At some point, someone decided that the best road to superiority was to destroy everything. Not exactly the most rational decision, but millions of individuals willingly followed it.

You can't argue with people like this. They're zealots to their cause and see everything else as anathema, as a tumor that must be removed so their vision of perfection can endure.

Twenty posts in, and so far exactly one individual- one- among you pack of bloody sycophants has even bothered to acknowledge the slightest culpability or oversight on the part of the Alliance in this matter. Far be it for any of you to admit that a serious gap exists in the system of background checks being conducted on Alliance personnel- but of course I have forgotten that this is the same crack administration that allowed Cerberus to fester unchecked within its ranks for so long, till at last we had to bring in fucking turians to take care of the problem for us.

Instead you are falling over each other to castigate these secessionists, to preemptively lay the blame on them and play down all association with this man of yours- like the driver who has fallen asleep at the wheel denouncing the pedestrian he ran over for having crossed the road in front of him. ! Not since my departure from the civil service have I seen such masterful ass-covering. Humanity will sleep easy tonight in the knowledge we have men of such moral courage at the helm.

You are surprised by this ass covering Gong? It's standard operating procedure for the Alliance.

I'm surprised the PRC STILL EXISTS. Here I was thinking you were absorbed into the Alliance during the war. Further surprise is your piss-all attitude about the largest and most powerful government on your resident planet. Jingoism will get you nowhere.

Some races of men find it easier than others to bend their knee to a foreign occupier- plain to see which you belong to, whore.

And how ever did I forget that we now count former criminals among the ranks of the Alliance? There is so much about this new regime to commend it to us all!


Standard procedure for every government, to be fair- but especially damning from one that prided itself on its purported freedoms and openness before the war (and still does, if we are to take its inane backers at face value.)

Yes, because .. one nation..versus the combined military might of a space-worthy government with armadas. You can make your honor-ific 'Oh, I'll not kneel to the oppressors!' when they're the one that's your only major trade partner. It's also worthy of note you resort down to name calling in the first go. Remarkable, calling me a whore. I'm a married woman! Monogamy and all that business.
I'm most certainly not a whore. An Ex-Criminal, I'll give you that. I'm doing my best to make my life count for something again, as opposed to being so completely vapid and empty of character that I'll bicker and bitch about the government on a fringe extranet forum. I'm not going to be dragged down by a tiny man in an archaic belief system, no matter how many names you call me.

Thanks for your time, sweetie. ~<3

There are several Reaper-cults, such as the Children of Order that have been operating at the fringes of the Confederation, albeit, none of them have garnered the same amount of attention as this "Sovereign Nation".

Also, I find this situation with the Alliance colonies to be rather strange. One would think with the devastation the war had brought, and the enormous challenges of post-war reconstruction, it should push the human colonies towards greater unity rather than political separation.

You act as if this would be a particularly novel or frightening prospect for us.

Two centuries ago it took nothing less than the combined might of the eight most advanced industrial powers on the planet to impose their collective will upon us, at a time when we were at our weakest and most degenerate.

Fifty years later we fought the entire world to a standstill on the Korean peninsula while we were still a backward agrarian state devastated by two decades of continuous war.

Twenty years after that even the two great superpowers, with all their atomic weapons, found they could no longer threaten or bend us to their whim: we simply dug shelters into the earth with shovels and our bare hands.

Last year, we survived the Reapers.

You can bring the whole galaxy in arms if you wish- it won't be enough to affect the course of historic inevitability in the slightest.


I've even less worries there- the world has always needed China more than China has needed the rest of the world. Remember, it was you people who came to our shores with your gunboats begging for trade, not the other way around.


It's the conspicuous lack of bitching and bickering about the lapses in SATAE policy that has me worried- and I hail from a society where blind obedience and deference to authority has been traditionally considered a virtue.


...and how well did following TIM turn out for you?

All that and it slices bread!

Son of a bitch. I just don't understand these people. How could they possibly revere those machines for what they did to us? It doesn't make sense. It goes against everything organics should stand for.

At least we know that, wherever Servicemen Niota is going, she won't be leaving for a long, long time. Unfortunately, there are still more of them out there. Let's hope she can give us the answers we need.

The issue, of course, is that the colonies were not defended by their government during the war, not properly, are giving disproportionately towards the reconstruction of earth, and have to deal with the government working with and pardoning many of those who took advantage of them as pirates and profiteers, pre-war.

Many of the colonials feel...betrayed, and this most certainly isn't helping.

I'll treat the facile inability to form a coherent response as victory, then.


Pirates and profiteers are far from the worse the Alliance has pardoned- does anyone wonder why the legitimacy of the Hackett dictatorship, staffed with as many crooks as it is, is under such fierce contention?


Looking at the whitewash going on in here, one can hardly blame them. The brushing off of so many of their grievances and the passive-aggressive intimations and threats of the use of force to keep them in line if necessary from SATAE's representatives here must work marvels at endearing the transitional government to those over whom they rule.

Understandable, however, what these colonists favoring secession I think fail to realize is that they have nowhere near the population or infrastructure base compared to the more established colonies of the other Council races and the old Hegemony. Do they honestly believe they will be able to sustain themselves without the support of their homeworld for long?

A few could, like Eden Prime and Terra Nova, but you're right, most of our colonies couldn't possibly prosper on their own.

If we want to see a full recovery, we need the colonies. This process is not nearly as fast as these people want it to be. They don't realize that it will only grind to a halt if they lose their patience and give up. We have to keep moving forward.

How do you not realise what you just said? You just admitted that if one nation had a problem with anything the Alliance tries to do, the Alliance would respond with force... and you're okay with that? This is not what the Alliance was formed to do. The Alliance was meant to represent humanity, and by extension each nation that could contribute independently, to the greater galaxy. It was not meant to dictate to them, and counter any disagreement with military force. The Alliance was never meant to be Earth's, humanity's government, and I simply don't have the faith that they know what to do with their newfound power.

Now, I understand that Earth is fucked. I awake to that fact every time I look out the window each morning. I also understand that most nations are no longer in a fit state to govern and support themselves. I get why the Alliance needs her colonies more than ever, and I know for a fact that Terra Nova simply does not have the human resources to restart itself without the Alliance.

But I am not fine with that. I won't be, until I know for sure it's temporary.

I'm just quoting that for brevity's sake and so I don't have to reread your idiocy.

Now. What the fuck are you one about?

Firstly. We didn't bring the turians in to destroy Cerberus. It was an Alliance fleet that took their main base and decapitated their leadership. Unless you mean Veratix station, and if you do, I will be over here laughing. That was a joint effort between the SAN/SAMC, the heirarchy and Terminus factions-and it was the Alliance fleet that took the most casualties in order to screen the rest of the force and allow them to advance.

Secondly, as for your blatant nationalism and declarations of China's superiority to the Alliance I have one reply: hahahahahahaha.

You examples are irrelevant. The Systems Alliance is not a nation. It is humanity as a whole and it does not need you. In fact at this moment in time, China is a drain on its resources.

Thirdly: criminals in Hackett's administration. Some were pardoned and absorbed into the military during the War. Desperate times called for desperate methods. but don't mistake necessity with trust. Those who make the decisions are not those people but men and women who have years in the Alliance military so (most of them) could earn their brass.

Finally: pardons. Moral superiority is great, but you know what's better? Not being extinct.

The Alliance was a fleet without an industrial base or population. Therefore we made certain concessions to Terminus powers in orer to be supplied. It was necessary for the survival of the human species. Who do you think is responsible for convincing the other species to mount the offensive that ended the war? Who was the voice for occupied Earth?

There are some things, that in normal circumstances would make me very concerned. I don't like that my nation's ability to self-govern has been taken away. But while I'm a patriot, I also believe in humanity as a whole. And what SATAE is doing is necessary. It is also improving living conditions on Earth-it's destroying inequalities and chaos that has existed for centuries.

Utopia by any means huh? Makes me glad I'm not an alliance citizen anymore.

Let's try a little exercise here Snow, just you and I.

You make a mature argument that isn't a ridiculous, hyperbolic, strawman.

And I won't call you a colossal idiot who has no idea what they're talking about.

Ready?

Okay, you go first.

Pretty much the same thing in the citadel garrison. A couple of non violent protests outside the Tower, no Sovereign Nation but I get a feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Whatever Swagman, don't mean shit to me.