Dannika Massacre

When: Roughly eight hundred years before the events of Ch. 05 — A Dictionary — three centuries earlier than the “official” 500-year-old Orb Dannika settlement. Where: Orb Dannika (under a now-erased earlier name). Participants: Aerth/Luna/Mars-born miners of the original settlement; Marquis Guards deployed from Fort Ridiny under direct Marquis orders; three warclass voidships in orbit.

Summary

The first chapter-length in-book example of a Galactic Empire atrocity cover-up, told by The Ertian Surgeon as framing for why he believes the Vasily Incident will be buried too.

The underlying settlement. Orb Dannika was originally colonised centuries before its official record, mostly by hardened miners from Aerth, Luna, and Mars. The camp was violent — “a hotbed of late night murder over cards” — which offended the empire in its “more militaristic phase.” The sitting Marquis deployed Marquis Guards from Fort Ridiny, the “foremost battle college in the empire,” with orders to execute anyone “even mentioning violence, let alone enacting it.”

The uprising. Within a year the miners rose up and slaughtered hundreds of Marquis Guards — “no small feat considering the guards themselves were trained at Fort Ridiny.” The empire responded by sending several thousand more guards, including battle elites, and three warclass voidships into orbit.

The extermination. The second wave of Marquis Guards was also slaughtered. The warclass voidships then washed the entire planet’s surface in a nerve agent. The remaining population was killed. “Not much information remains of the ensuing battle. All that can be said for sure is […] that ended the conflict.”

The cover-up. The empire changed the orb’s name, buried the bodies, and repopulated the planet with “new, willing miners, but archaeologists thrown in to soften the culture. (The promise of extraterr remains is enough to tempt even the least ambitious archaeologists.)” The new settlement dated its own history from the rebrand, and knew nothing of the earlier graves beneath its feet.

The exposure. Five centuries later, construction on another continent unearthed thousands of human skeletons far older than the official founding. Empire voidships impounded the remains and told everyone to go back to work. The archaeologists and miners of Dannika — tied by profession and by marriage — called a planet-wide strike, crucially halting Delphium extraction. The empire stonewalled. The stalemate was only broken when “a budding journalist on some minor orb chanced across an ancient newsfeed article regarding colonisation of a world not called Dannika, but in Dannika’s exact coordinates, not five hundred years ago, but eight hundred.” The empire confessed.

Consequences

• The in-story template for how the empire handles its own embarrassments — what The Ertian Surgeon expects will also happen with the Vasily Incident and The Dictionary: “The empire would cover the Vasily incident up, cover their intentions, cover their asses as always.”
• The continued existence of a standing Marquis Guards institution trained at Fort Ridiny — a data point about the late empire’s internal security apparatus.
• The policy of seeding newly-restored worlds with archaeologists as cultural counterweights to rough labour populations.

Appearances

• Ch. 05 — A Dictionary: Told by The Ertian Surgeon as framing material during the Shienae operating-room scene.

Related

• Orb Dannika, Delphium
• Galactic Human Empire — and its Marquis Guards / Fort Ridiny institutions.
• Vasily Incident — the contemporary event the massacre is being used to frame.

Open questions

• What was the original name of the planet before the rebrand?
• Who was the Marquis who ordered the deployment? (The reign in question is centuries before K. Pasternak’s 2641 A.L.)
• Are there other “rebranded” orbs in the empire with similar histories? If Dannika broke because of a tied miners-and-archaeologists population, how many others are still buried?