THE MIRANDA WAR

or

The True Cause of the War for Independence and How the Truth Came Out (From The Underground History of the ‘Verse)

When the Union of Allied Planets parliament set into motion the Miranda Project (approximately twenty-five years before the recovered Pax intel was uploaded to the Cortex), the long-term goal was to “seed” the independent planets/moons on the rim with “ambassador” worlds that would showcase the best features of Alliance civilization. The rim would also be economically stimulated by the resulting close-by, high-value trade agreements.

It was hoped that by both sterling example and more favorable trade the independent worlds would be drawn over the course of a few generations into closer alignment with the governing philosophy of the richer, more peaceful, better-regulated Alliance planets.

In actual fact, this unification goal had been a mission statement of the Alliance since the earliest days of colonization, when it was discovered upon the arrival of the colonization fleet from Earth that the terraforming of the system had been haphazardly executed.

Terraforming of the system’s satellites was done via robot probes sent decades in advance of the arrival of the colony ships. The automatic terraforming installations adjusted the atmosphere and soil of every satellite that had the best potential for habitation without regard for the economic consequences of higher import/export costs to those planets and moons farther from the core worlds.

Simply-put, the rim planets were doomed to relative poverty because distance from the Core would factor powerfully into the prosperity of any local economy. (Naturally, most colonists opted for the inner planets to avoid this and the resulting concentration of population only accelerated the wealth disparity.)

The robot probes could hardly have taken into consideration the long-term political consequences of this New Great Diaspora of the formerly very congested human race. But any first year political science major could have predicted the rapid emergence of numerous localized fiefdoms on each half-starved rim satellite. The rim peoples were perpetually at risk of either languishing in desperation under what was in ancient times characterized as “third world” status or of moldering away into isolated hunter-gatherer tribes.

The Miranda Project, therefore, was but the first salvo in an ambitious yet entirely peaceful program meant to weaken the grasp of local warlords and fortify the frontier economies of the neighboring rim worlds. If Miranda proved successful similar projects already in the planning and development stages would be green-lit.

Even as the terraforming of Miranda was underway the marketing of the brave new world began. Enormous incentives were provided for technical and industrial professionals to relocate there, including lifetime tax exemptions and abnegation of all debts owed. In short, the offer was for a fresh start on a showcase world. A million families were relocated at enormous Core government expense to Miranda as soon as the infrastructure of the first thirty cities was ready to receive them.

As the colonists settled in Miranda entered the final stages of terraforming. To ensure that the new “ambassador” colony would always be on its best behavior for rim visitors, the experimental G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate aerosol tranquilizer was added to the atmosphere as a finishing-up footnote to the terraforming schedule.

Nearly thirty million people subsequently laid down and died, robbed of all motivation. This fact was immediately knowable because for some time communications with the fledgling world remained open, if unresponsive.

Months later, reports of vicious attacks on rim towns and small trading vessels in the Burnham Quadrant indicated that a small percentage of the Miranda population had been made frenzied by an apparent allergic reaction that permanently altered their brain chemistry – although this possibility was vigorously denied in scientific circles. (This probable origin of the Reavers was finally confirmed over a decade later by the Pax broadwave.)

The perished Miranda colony was a potential political and economic disaster, and the decision to release the Paxilon agent into the planet’s atmosphere bordered on a war crime. Within a few weeks of the tragedy scientists and engineers were dispatched quietly to Miranda to determine what went wrong, but they were never heard from again. No one else was ever sent, for Miranda and everything associated with that planet began to disappear into the bureaucratic black hole of government secrecy.

In private parliamentary hearings the scientific community closed ranks to protect the careers and publications that vetted the Paxilon aerosol. The investigating committee, facing a very short deadline, had no choice but to offer up a whitewash of a report that concluded that some sort of local operator error must have been responsible. In the end the report was kept from the public anyhow. (Sidenote: the Pax aerosol has been quietly removed from use, and was never used by the military during the War for Independence, although it retains its official status as a nonlethal riot dispersant. You may draw your own conclusions.)

Relations between the Alliance and the independent rim worlds deteriorated sharply over the following months. With the peaceful plan to seed the rim with high-tech Alliance worlds forever classified, the fall-back plan was diplomacy, which could find no purchase on the loose soil of the rim. The Alliance wanted to “rescue” the rim peoples and what motley collection of two-bit despots could draw cheer from such intentions?

This is where most histories begin that deal with the War for Independence. The accepted historical viewpoint even today is that the Alliance was resolute about Unification and their continually rebuffed diplomatic efforts led ultimately to war. In classrooms it is still taught that it was a war nobly waged for the freedom and self-determination of the rim peoples, who were misled by their leaders and fought ferociously against their own best interests. While this may have been true to some extent, there are sociological studies of the pre-war years that paint a different picture: that most people on the rim felt quite self-determining and thought of the Alliance as a slowly-closing fist of bureaucratic oppression that would bring an end to their proud and individualistic way of life.

The bloody War for Independence was fought in space and upon the surface of many worlds, and lasted for four long years. The Alliance brought the Independents to terms not long after the Battle of Serenity Valley, but the surviving warlords soon learned that they could with a bit of stealth and bribery resume their rough stewardship under the not very watchful eyes of the underfunded Alliance outposts. Ironically, the grand goal of Unification had been fatally undermined by years of highly negative recruitment propaganda. The rim peoples had been devolved by the mainstream Core newsfeeds to the level of barbarian, and so the central planets generally were no longer interested in seeing their taxes used to elevate a bunch of ungrateful savages.

River Tam

During the early years of the War the Alliance in association with Blue Sun chose to resurrect the mind control experiments of the ancient Cold War era. Young people of genius IQ were enticed from their normal course of study and subjected to surgical techniques that would short-circuit their moral compass and achieve the fastest possible reflex response.

The Alliance was attempting to invent a better soldier, despite their already overwhelmingly superior budget and technology. Declassified documents show that the experiments continued well beyond the War years. Funding appears to have persisted post-Unification because of the political connections of Dr. Mathias, the head of the institute.

Fifteen year old prodigy River Tam was recruited approximately five years after the end of the War. Young River was discovered to possess a very high intuitive response (i.e., psychic) factor and so became the star of the program, wheeled out before key members of parliament by Dr. Mathias whenever he needed to showcase his requests for continued defense funding.

Unexpectedly, River was freed while undergoing one of her frequent brain surgeries by her brother, Dr. Simon Tam, who had used his personal fortune to discover her whereabouts and arrange a daring rescue. The siblings departed their homeworld of Osiris immediately afterward, hoping to escape to a safe haven somewhere on the rim. Their first port of call outward would be the planet Persephone.

Not long after River’s escape one or more of the Alliance intelligence services must have awakened to the fact that some of those “key members of parliament” were intimately aware of the details of the now “cosmic top secret” Miranda debacle.

Malcolm Reynolds

Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds of the 57th Overlanders was a prisoner of war for only a few short months following his capture at the end of the brutal seven week siege of Serenity Valley. He was released after armistice to his home planet of Shadow. Malcolm, embittered by the War, tried to settle down but after his mother died the family ranch was sold and most of the proceeds were used to purchase an old firefly class transport ship in need of repair. Reynolds named his recommissioned ship Serenity.

Captain Reynolds was to enjoy modest success over the next few years, which is something of a minor miracle since he’d started with no interplanetary business experience and no offworld connections. Records do show that five separate smuggling charges were brought against Serenity in the early days, but obviously none were onerous enough to ground Reynolds for good. And no doubt much credit for his business survival lies with the fact that his crew was overqualified for the pay and opportunities that typically come the way of an interplanetary gypsy microfreighter.

But by the end of his first two years in space (coincidentally mere days after River Tam’s escape) Captain Reynolds’ luck was running thin. Serenity was on Persephone bringing its sole cargo to a shady broker known locally only as Badger. For some reason the deal fell apart. Probably the cargo was smuggled or in some other way illegal, for no attempt was made by Captain Reynolds to find another buyer on Persephone. The docking records show that Serenity departed the planet that very day and the ship’s hasty departure no doubt made her a very attractive prospect for two young fugitives.

Captain Reynolds was forced by his diminished fortunes and the failed business deal to take on a few passengers eager for various destinations on the rim. Among the passengers were indeed Dr. Simon Tam and River. Simon would for the next nine months serve as the medic aboard Serenity, keeping his sister always on the move and out of Alliance clutches.

While Dr. Tam was a gifted Core surgeon and extremely overqualified for his new position, the same, curiously, could be said about the rest of Serenity’s crew. Of particular note were Jayne Cobb, the infamous Hero of Canton; master pilot Hoban “Wash” Washburne, who was married to Reynolds’ first mate, Zoe, herself a decorated Independent; and Serenity’s mechanic was a rare techno-intuitive named Kaywinnit Lee Frye.

The Alliance intelligence services set into motion a sweeping effort to recover River Tam using the military and police forces and even freelance bounty hunters – and Blue Sun was allowed to send its own team of agents in pursuit of the Tams backed by full federal authority.

Blue Sun must have known the stakes were high, for the Pax tranquilizing agent was conceived in a Blue Sun lab. The terraforming machines which were by now falling to ruin like everything else on Miranda were also of their manufacture. Blue Sun was also the primary defense contractor for the Alliance during the War, and was probably highly involved in the experimental research program from which River had been rescued.

After months of searching in vain, the Blue Sun agents were summoned to the planet Ariel, specifically to St. Lucy’s Hospital in Ariel City, where Simon and River Tam had apparently been apprehended by the local police acting on an anonymous tip. Even though it was considered extremely unlikely that the Tams would ever return to a central planet, no lead could be ignored.

Serenity was indeed docked in Ariel City at that time so that the licensed Companion who rented one of the shuttles could undergo her required yearly medical exam. Reynolds’ ship was fortunate enough to depart Ariel City just ahead of a city-wide lockdown of spacegoing vessels in the aftermath of a daring robbery of St. Lucy’s valuable medical stores.

Whether Serenity, the Tams, and the theft of St. Lucy’s medicines were connected is unknown, but the Blue Sun agents apparently thought so for they departed Ariel after a short investigation. The agents had been able to determine in short order that the Tams were not aboard any of the grounded ships, and of the handful of vessels that had avoided landlock only Serenity virtually never visited the Core. But the hapless agents were lost in space and once again the trail grew cold.

The Operative

The intelligence forces of the Alliance were reluctant to send an Operative in pursuit of the Tams considering the terrible nature of the Miranda tragedy. Not that an Operative couldn’t keep a secret of this magnitude, for Operatives dealt routinely with the most sensitive of information. Nor did they believe that the job of locating the Tams would prove too difficult. Quite the contrary.

No, the fear was that when the Operative did inevitably catch up with the Tams the risk of exposure to the Miranda intel was unacceptably high. While all Operatives are exceptional mental and physical specimens, it is their unswerving dedication that defines them. Learning of the Pax holocaust and the true origin of the Reavers would compromise the loyalty of an agent entrusted with nearly limitless power.

Nonetheless, after nine months of fruitless search by conventional means the risk was finally considered acceptable. No longer, however, were the Tams merely to be apprehended. The Operative was to effect their destruction without hesitation, and as soon as possible.

The Operative first visited the mind alteration “academy” where River had been interred. Unfortunately, Dr. Mathias died shortly after the Operative arrived. Nonetheless, the Operative was able to discover in the late doctor’s files a method for flushing River into the open, using her own genius against her.

Fragments of complex mathematical equations were added subliminally to the most eye-catching advertisements on the Cortex. Should River see them her subconscious would be forced into high gear by these puzzles, and any fragmentary associations left over from her incomplete training at the institute would be worked through as well. Her latent combat skills would snap suddenly into focus, without the normal restraint of conscience. She would likely erupt, and with a little luck she would do so in a public place where the seeded advertisements would be most difficult to avoid.

We can extrapolate from this that the Operative had not been told about Miranda or he would never have taken such a terrible risk. The odds were very high that whatever state secrets River Tam’s subconscious held would also be brought to the fore. The Operative must have been confident that River would either not understand the context of the secrets she carried or she wouldn’t care much about dry affairs of state even if she did; it was his first error of judgement in the case, and it would by no means be his last.

The public place turned out to be The Maidenhead, a noisy, disreputable bar in the heart of the city of Atoll on the planet Beaumonde, owned and operated by the twin Rample brothers, Fanty and Mingo. Reynolds was either negotiating or concluding a job with the Brothers Rample when River Tam went into action and within seconds rendered nearly everyone in the establishment either unconscious or seriously injured. Security cameras of course captured the details and transmitted them immediately to the Operative.

Now that the Operative knew that Captain Reynolds was sheltering the Tams he started devising a plan to bring Serenity and her crew into port. Tiny freighters like Serenity commonly neglected to file a flight plan and were therefore nearly untrackable, so the Operative had to bring the ship to ground. Serenity’s licensed Companion, Inara Serra, had quit the ship not long before to serve as headmistress of a new training house out on the rim. The Operative went there as fast as his commandeered warship could take him.

Inara Serra must have understood the danger to the Tams, yet she still agreed to send a broadwave to Captain Reynolds asking for his help. What leverage the Operative employed to make her do this is not precisely known, but considering her vulnerable negotiating position as headmistress it isn’t hard to imagine an effective blackmail scenario involving her young students. Also, because she’d flown aboard Serenity with the Tams, Serra was probably considered a security risk and was herself in grave danger of being imprisoned or disappeared.

Inara Serra’s diary was given a place of honor in the Library of the Companions after her untimely death from Addison’s Disease, a condition exacerbated by her stressful life aboard Serenity and the sporadic availability of hydrocortisone on the impoverished frontier. Serra’s diary gives us the details of the Operative’s second error in the case, but we can only speculate about his reasons.

When Captain Reynolds landed his shuttle at the training house the Operative, in direct violation of his standing orders, did not send his warship to destroy Serenity. Instead, the Operative tried to negotiate with Reynolds to gain an audience with River Tam. Once again, albeit on a vastly smaller scale, Alliance and Browncoat negotiations deteriorated into violence. Oddly, reinforcements were not summoned and Reynolds and Serra were together able to outfight the Operative and escape to Serenity and the safety of interplanetary space.

Was the kill on sight order against a teenaged girl – a girl the Operative knew from his own investigation to be innocent of any wrongdoing – enough by itself to shake his loyalty? Was he forced to consider that the kill order might have been issued for the express purpose of shielding him from information that might undermine his loyalty? Or was he merely after the names of those in whom she might have confided? Whatever it was that had made him withhold his warship and his troops, the Tams were out of his reach and more likely than ever to remain so.

And on the heels of the second error comes the Operative’s third and arguably biggest mistake. Knowing that small freighters like Serenity lived always on the edge of bankruptcy, the Operative decided to commandeer and deploy more military resources to eradicate the fragile web of business associates with whom Reynolds had built up a reputation. Those poor settlements that had on occasion provided a free berth for Serenity were also targeted, exterminated to the last child. It was a monstrous plan made all the more repugnant because it appears to have been unnecessary. The all-powerful Operative could have sent troops to occupy the settlements and could have interred any number of business associates for as long as necessary. Was the Operative attempting to make Reynolds furious, make him attack? If so he would be, as we shall see later, more than successful.

Reynolds was already low on funds and now had nowhere to hide nor a cargo, nor could he risk docking where he could replenish Serenity’s fuel cells with what cash he had left. There was only one place left to go, quite unsuspected by the Operative, and Reynolds’ rekindled desire for Browncoat-style vengeance made him more than willing to go there.

Miranda

The information River carried about the Miranda disaster, known by now to the entire crew, might save them if they could only find and upload some corroborating evidence to the Cortex. Of course, even if they survived the Reaver gantlet and were successful in their quest, they might still be hunted down by the Alliance forces for revenge, or on charges of espionage, or because someone somewhere forgot to fill out the necessary paperwork. But at least they would have struck the Alliance a major blow and gone down fighting.

Inara Serra’s diary provides us with the details of their trip to Miranda, of how they decorated Serenity with the bodies of friends slain by the Operative’s forces at the Haven mining colony in order to ease through the belt of Reaver ships blockading Miranda; of finding the colonists dead at their workstations, mummified by delicately balanced ventilation; and finally of discovering the holo made by the doomed Dr. Caron that verified the origin of the Reavers.

Mr. Universe

The Operative had been closing in on Serenity, hot on her trail after investigating the loss of the warship sent to destroy the Haven mining colony, but he lost her again after she blended into the Reaver blockade. Having no other plan, the Operative took his warship to the nearby moon of the reclusive billionaire known to most of the ‘verse by his hacker name, Mr. Universe. If Reynolds decided to broadwave what River knew, which was a logical countermove, Mr. Universe was on the short list of computer geniuses who could get the information past the safeguards that were now in place. And Reynolds didn’t have the fuel to reach anyone else.

Mr. Universe’s little moon had been terraformed by an early probe that had inconveniently ignored the million amp ion flux tube connecting the moon to the gas giant it orbited. The radiation levels at the surface were hellish, colonization was unthinkable, and the artificial earthlike environment quickly became entropic. But for an eccentric recluse of truly cosmic proportions, it was heaven.

Mr. Universe was of course able to take possession of the moon for a song. It cost him far more to construct a shielded complex that preserved a few thousand acres. The entire facility was automated, right down to his expensive custom lovebot, Lenore.

Captain Reynolds contacted Mr. Universe well in advance of Serenity’s arrival, a grave error at first glance. If Reynolds’ broadwave was intercepted – and the odds of this were high – the Operative would move quickly to block. Perhaps Reynolds was counting on just that, for didn’t he still have a personal score to settle?

A case can be made that by this point neither Captain Reynolds nor the Operative were any longer in their right minds. In Reynolds’ case, he’d lost many people important to him, including his close friend and advisor Shepherd Darrial Book, a former crewmember who was killed during the attack on Haven.

The Operative was quite possibly doing battle with his conscience at least as much as with Reynolds. He’d become a monster in the service of the Alliance Parliament. What if his sacrifice for the greater good was based on a lie? What if he was, in fact, just a monster?

In support of this line of reasoning, let’s consider the extremes to which these men were driven. Even though the Operative’s personal warship was more than sufficient to blast Serenity from the sky, he summoned every Alliance warship in the quadrant to Mr. Universe’s little moon. Serenity would be turned into an expanding cloud of plasma, and hopefully his nagging doubts would die with River Tam.

As for Reynolds, he took his ship back out among the Reavers and deliberately provoked them. A handful of Reaver ships would have been enough to settle with the Operative, but Serenity hit an unwelcome jackpot. Fifty Reaver ships fell into pursuit behind them, a horror fleet possessing more than enough ferocity and firepower to sweep aside the Operative’s warship and lay waste to Mr. Universe’s little moon. (If Reynolds had a plan to deal with the Reavers afterward, he never confided the details to anyone.)

The Showdown

The fleets crashed together in a low orbit firestorm, canceling each other out. Serenity, maneuvering wildly, managed to pass through the conflagration and approach the surface before being hit by an EMP. Mortally wounded, Reynolds’ ship was torn apart as it crashed its way inside Mr. Universe’s main hanger, a Reaver vessel in close pursuit. Wash, the brilliant pilot who’d brought them alive to the surface, was slain by a Reaver weapon after bringing the battered ship to a full stop. The remaining crew quit the ship to take up a last stand in the main corridor leading to the control center.

Reynolds continued on with the precious Miranda holo to find Mr. Universe dead, his control room smashed. Lenore, the lovebot, was the only hardware still functioning. For Reynolds it must have been Serenity Valley all over again. He had literally nothing left but to return to his crew and share their final fate. And then Lenore spoke in Mr. Universe’s voice, telling him where to find the backup transmitter.

The Operative’s warship was lost along with all regular personnel, blown apart in tidy sections to fall burning into the lower atmosphere. The Operative reached the surface in an escape pod. There could be no safety in the open while the battle raged above, so he must have hurried to the protection of the main hanger where he was no doubt shocked to find the remains of Serenity.

The Operative probably observed the pitched battle taking place between Serenity’s crew and the larger force of Reavers. Reynolds’ crew was low on ammunition and all but River Tam and Inara Serra had suffered grievous wounds. It was only a matter of time. But for the Operative there was no time to waste, for Malcolm Reynolds was not among them.

Captain Reynolds and the Operative were to clash again mere yards from the backup transmitter. Reynolds took the worst of it, outmatched as he was by the superbly trained Operative. But wars are generally won by the side possessing the greatest conviction, and so Reynolds prevailed and the truth about Miranda was successfully delivered to the Cortex.

Atonement

Some of the surviving Alliance vessels were too damaged to limp across space to a dockyard. The Operative brought a mobile military repair station to the moon to patch them up. Afterward, this mobile facility was made available to Captain Reynolds so that he and his crew could resurrect Serenity and return to their lives.

If the Operative had plans to use his unlimited authority to make amends for his previous crimes, he was soon disappointed. All of the hundred or so Operatives who had righteously and unquestioningly wielded the full might of the Alliance were retired from service. The Parliament, post-Miranda, could no longer trust them.

Written by: Donald K. King Berkeley, CA