Like and yet unlike so many wars before it, this conflict, neither large nor glorious, was fought on a myriad of battlefields, where reasons were often lost, and morals obscured. The constraints of civilization had been removed, freeing men, both good and evil, to commune once more with their darker nature. That was all. And that was more than enough. There was but a single unifying link among the sprawl of planets and peoples caught up, involved, willingly or not, in this unraveling: all those who transgressed were filled with the desire to take, at the expense and death of others, and those who were transgressed upon, fought with all they had not to yield up the pebbles of home, seeds of family, and grains of meaning they had found. And whether right or wrong, wise, brave or foolish, they bled. Part, the First The breast of woman is the very temple of Nature Transporting the mind and body of Man To other places, Other times, where beings struggled In endless rhythm with the forces that seek to drag us back to earth. Mystical, beautiful, oh Woman You are the crown of creation: The pure and holy vessel of new life. Oh, glory of this world Keep me forever young! ---unnamed Irish poet The Irish planet-colony of New Belfast was rich and fertile. The air was infinitely breathable and sustaining, the vegetation lush, with roots that went deep into the ground. It was a land and sea that men could be proud to die for, a place where family could mean something, and women grow old without feeling lost. To watch a young maid walk here among the fields, to see the depths in her eyes that reflected the melancholy of her soul, and hear the Gaelic accent touch lightly on the stones of moss-covered walls, was to know that God gave love to Man. Life flowed in its every vein, and the minor modes of Baroque ballads seemed to form a living chain to many pasts. It was also a place coveted by the French Elite, who knew all that the Irish knew of love and land and harvest, but knew it better, and therefore contrived to take from these coarse, uncultured folk what could more fruitfully be employed by themselves. And so a siege was laid, in which the Free French took no part, and even loudly decried. But due to a peculiar Dual Constitution enacted late in the twenty-first century---at which time the French, desiring to show their independence, frank difference, and superiority to the rest of the world, had created a political structure wholly new and untried---their approval was not needed for a military venture utilizing French Elite forces.