Pelenor City
Nakajima Corporate Headquarters

The new acting CEO of Nakajima Transstellar Noburo Sato sat at a much diminished table. An entirely new board and corporate officers had been chosen to save the company.

Sato had arrived at the meeting as the director of Nakajima Shipyards. His distance from anything even remotely untoward in the recent hostilities had propelled him to the CEO’s chair; now one of the hottest seats in the Alliance.

Sato asked the new Chief Financial Officer Naomi Moto, “Moto-san, what is our financial condition?”

Moto said, “The answer to that is chaos. It will be weeks before we know how much inventory was plundered by the deserters. Our stock and assets off world were frozen when our former leaders seceded from the Alliance. Whether we get that back or not we won’t know until the courts rule. Another positive is that all of our facilities are intact and our reserves of precious metals are quite extensive. While we are at the mercy of Alliance authorities, we are not so badly hurt.”

Sato asked, “What do we know about the Governor-General assigned to Pelenor?”

Lucas Williams, an impossibly young man for the position of Director of Corporate Security and Intelligence answered, “Admiral Samuel Stewart is a highly regarded career naval officer. He is from the province of Oregon in the North American Federation. He served on the Board of Inquiry that actually triggered the war. He has gained a great deal of notoriety in the Alliance press for his successful actions during the war and is, by all accounts, a man of great integrity. He is also known to be almost aggressively apolitical. Our analysts believe that he will be more of a Lincoln than a Grant.”

Sato asked, “I’m sorry but I missed the reference.”

Williams said, “We are in almost exactly the same position as the Confederacy after the American Civil War in the 19^th Century. President Lincoln’s stated policy toward the Reconstruction of the Southern States was with malice towards none and charity for all. Unfortunately Lincoln was assassinated before his plans could be implemented and the Reconstruction of the South was mired in corruption and opportunism that marred the legacies of Lincoln’s successors and crippled the Southern states for decades.”

“I think we got lucky with the appointment of Stewart. He is honest and his appointment is a good indication that the Alliance is more interested in reconciliation than vengeance.”