The Mech Touch

The governance of the Red Collective was an extremely sensitive issue.

It essentially decided who got to run an organization that was bound to become extremely powerful in the future.

Every councilor already possessed a good understanding on the governance of the Red Two.

The Red Fleet operated almost the same as the Common Fleet Alliance, which was a highly integrated military alliance.

The CFA originally formed due to the gathering of lots of different warfleets that had grown upset at the tyranny of leaders-gone-mad during the Age of Conquest.

Despite the clear threat posed by letting unaccountable leaders at the top make all of the decisions, the CFA and subsequently the RF never really got rid of this leadership structure.

The fleeters still stuck to their military hierarchy and expected a high degree of compliance from subordinates to leaders.

The Admiralty was in charge of all forms of central decision-making, and the most senior admirals pretty much ruled their own fleets as if they were semi-private fiefs.

Though the fleeters still gave their admirals a dangerous amount of power, it worked because their leaders essentially kept each other in check.

Though Ves found contrarians such as Fleet Admiral Amelie Jameson extremely annoying, she actually played an essential role in the RF's ecosystem. It would have been much worse if the admirals agreed with each other and colluded with each other too much, because that would deprive the RF from an essential form of accountability.

In short, the Red Admiralty might hold all of the power in the RF, but the individual admirals all had to compete against each other to secure more benefits and resources for their individual fleets. This ensured that no single admiral would be able to abuse his power without fear of reprisal.

The Red Association was set up a bit differently.

The MTA it descended from contrasted sharply from the militaristic CFA by giving voice to civilians, at least in theory. The Galactic Mech Council used to function as a unicameral parliament where the representatives of powerful states sat in the same chamber as god pilots and Star Designers, where they collectively submitted and voted on various bills every once in a while.

Due to the crisis generated by the Great Severing, the mechers stuck in the Red Ocean somehow managed to phase out the Galactic Mech Council and strip the few galactic mech councilors of their office in record time.

The Red Association quickly turned into a hybrid between a military junta and a technocracy.

Basically, the god pilots and the Star Designers held ultimate power and authority over how the RA should be run. Any member of the mech community who was powerful and smart enough earned a seat at the highest table of the Association.

While these drastic changes certainly caused the RA to run a lot smoother and more efficiently, which was very important in times of war, it also disenfranchised the masses!

The elimination of galactic mech councilors removed an admittedly flawed but noble attempt to connect the leadership of the Red Association with the population they reigned over.

In the past, the MTA could at least claim with a straight face that it 'represented' the needs of the common folk.

Now, the RA had cast off this illusion entirely, giving ordinary people no channel to effect change on human civilization at the highest level!

This was one of the driving reasons why public support for the formation of the Red Collective turned out to be so high. People did not want to be ruled over by two distant and aloof groups that weren't accountable to them in the slightest!

The Red Collective gave them all hope that they would not only regain the channel that they once lost, but gain a much greater say than they had ever enjoyed in the past!

It was for this reason that the debate on the structure and allocation of voting rights in the Lower Council did not produce too much controversy.

None of the councilors were stupid enough to stand in the way of overwhelming public sentiment. The demand for a chamber filled with representatives of all human states and population groups was so great that anyone who opposed this measure could easily be turned into a target to the masses!

Of course, the formation of a Lower Council that largely answered to the space peasants still received a bit of pushback.

There were councilors who favored greater centralization that wanted to reduce the power of the Lower Council. The more the Red Collective had to answer to the chaotic, ignorant and divided masses, the less efficient it would become!

Ves was well aware of this. In fact, he deliberately settled for this approach because of this reason.

It was not in his best interest for the Red Collective to become too centralized, proactive, efficient and well-run. The greater the internal mess, the less time and energy it had to spare on its duties!

The debate on the Lower Council slowly wound down. The foremost councilors such as Ves and Astrid Jameson refrained from commenting as they were all saving their powder for the much more important discussion that would take place right afterwards.

In the end, Ves straightforwardly gave his stamp of approval on the tentative compromise solution decided by the councilors from the first-rate states and the so-called lesser states.

The seats in the Lower Council would be apportioned to the states based on a mathematical formula that put different weights on GDP per capita, education level, population size and other factors.

All that mattered was that neither the first-raters nor the space peasants objected too strongly to the final result.

"Alright." Ves said after he dealt with the decision-making surrounding the Lower Council. "It is time for us to discuss the composition and distribution of voting rights of the Upper Council. The reason why this chamber exists is to give a voice to its major contributors. This includes the Red Association, the Red Fleet, the first-rate superstates and other major organizations. It should also include all of the sects that are governed by the RC and pay their taxes to it. The latter is important. The Collective should not become unaccountable by the very same groups it is supposed to supervise."

"The Guardians of Order respectfully disagrees with your opinion." Lieutenant-Commander Astrid Jameson predictably spoke up. "Cultivation is a weapon. It is dangerous in the hands of anyone who wields sufficient power over it. Those that have become adept at it will gain advantages that are difficult and expensive to match by those who have not delved into cultivation. Giving their sects a seat in the Upper Council will cause these powerful cultivators to become even more unassailable than before. It will become harder to control and punish them when they wield both significant personal power and political power. If the sects become too powerful one day, they may eventually dominate the Upper Council, and by extension the entire Red Collective. Do you not see how this could cause the RC to betray its mission to supervise the sects and instead enable all of their selfish desires?"

Astrid most certainly voiced valid doubts and concerns at the proposal.

To be fair, skewing more power towards the sects was exactly what Ves wanted. Not only would it empower the Coalition of Faiths, but it would also make the Red Collective less governable than before!

Naturally, his opponents knew exactly what Ves tried to achieve, and did their best to oppose his initiative.

Ves did not want the obstinate Guardians of Order to have their way, so he needed to gain a broader base of support.

The Coalition of Faiths was already fully on board, but there were other tentative factions that might take its side.

"The Terran Alliance believes it is highly appropriate to open the Upper Council to the parties that contribute a large part of its funding, personnel and material requirements." The Terran councilor spoke.

"The Rubarthan Pact is also in favor of allowing the sects to occupy seats in the Upper Council." The Rubarthan councilor said. "It may be prudent to set a quota and only allow the larger and more substantial sects into the Upper Council, but other than that we must let them participate in order to keep them compliant."

It was not a surprise that the Terrans and the Rubarthans supported the initiative as well. The two pretty much formed their own factions in the Red Collective, but they also maintained a strong connection to the Coalition of Faiths.

As far as the first-rate colonial superstates were concerned, sects were yet another way for them to exercise their power. Their populations were substantial, and a proportion of them were bound to become cultivators.

The more levers of power the Terrans and the Rubarthans controlled, the more they were able to prevent their adversaries from becoming in charge again!

Even if most of the leaders of the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact privately turned up their noses towards sects, they were not above taking advantage of the situation to change the status quo in human civilization.

"The League of Minor States is also in favor of allowing sects to assume seats in the Upper Council." The spokesperson of this faction said. "We have no other way to attain representation in the Upper Council unless we are involved in sects. We will not allow our voice to remain unheard in this important chamber."

Just as its name suggested, the League of Minor States was the tentative faction that the second-rate states and especially third-rate states had formed to represent their collective will.

It had only been formed very recently, so nothing about it was certain. It still remained questionable whether so many second-rate and third-rate states could stomach each other long enough to remain united.

As far as Ves knew, the league was currently held up by the common desire to not get bullied by the bigger players. The faction did not possess a strong leader who put forward a bold vision and managed to win over most of the states, so it was anything but cohesive at the moment.

While the factions representing various states clearly sided with the Coalition of Faiths, the Guardians of Order were not entirely alone either.

"The Red Fleet opposes the inclusion of sects in the Upper Council." A different councilor from the RF voiced. "Sects are sources of danger and instability. If they gain seats in the Upper Council, then they will seek to impede and undermine the RC's central mandate of controlling cultivators at every turn. Sects must always always remain under the control of our Collective. It is not as if cultivators are lacking representation. They should still retain their citizenship of various states, which are most assuredly represented by the Lower Council."

Master Vayro Goldstein of the Survivalist Faction also voiced a similar opinion. "The Red Association also opposes the proposal to give sects the right to appoint senators to the Upper Council. I concur with the opinion of my fleeter colleague that the members of sects should already enjoy sufficient representation through their states. I will also add that sects should not be seen as groups of constituents who we must serve. Instead, they should be seen as paramilitary organizations that serve the needs of the Red Collective and red humanity as a whole. They should be treated as the armies of cultivator attack dogs that are raised to fight our enemies and help us win the war."

"Attack dogs?! Is that how you see our citizens whose only fault is to learn how to better themselves through meditation and learning how to harness the power of E-energy?! The disdain and elitism espoused by your Red Association towards us 'space peasants' should not belong in the Red Collective! We have taken part in the Interim Leadership Council with the hope that we can be different from the old elites. We will not allow the Red Two to turn our beautiful Collective into their mirror image!"

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