Open Letter to Edmund Mahon
10 Jan 2022Lily Flemmon
Prime Minister Edmund Mahon,My father, Silas Flemmon, was an oddity in the Alliance Defense Force. He was a soldier who followed orders with no moral consideration, and delighted in killing, with no thought to whether his victims deserved it. He raised me alone as a single father of an only child, and he tried to make me his perfect soldier boy. He tried to instill in me his worship of blind loyalty and his twisted idea of honor, and with his impeccable charisma, he nearly succeeded. When I was 16 years old, he told me in what he called "our first man-to-man-talk" about the "truth" of war, and how he delighted in the act of killing. At the time, I even agreed with him. But I began to wonder, what else had he kept from me?
It was that spark of curiosity that made me begin to realize what he had done to me, and what he was trying to do to me. I realized that there was so much more to the galaxy than what I'd seen, and I began to realize I was not who he wanted me to be. I didn't dare explore any of this without a chance to escape from under his thumb. But I realized Why I traveled with him on every deployment, why he would lock me in my quarters while he was away.
When I was 19, he gave me my first ship, a Sidewinder. In an act I did not understand at the time, he insisted I fly alone for its maiden voyage. But I took off and boosted out the airlock and fled from him, as far as the fuel tank would take me. And only recently when I learned he was in the squad of commandos that tried to capture Yuri Grom, did I finally realize the ultimate vision he had for me: that I would murder him in cold blood.
I write to you, Prime Minister, to tell you that I am still here because of the founding principles of the Alliance. I would not have been able to become my true self had I not found myself in an encompassing culture of transparency, of honesty, of free choice, and of justice. As you entered into the defense arrangement with Sirius Corp, I feared for the first time that my father would not be the last beast of war to come from within the defenders of this coalition of clarity, and so I write to ask you to make sure no such beasts are made in this necessary decision to protect the citizens of the Alliance.
Do not let the type of monster that robbed my of my childhood, my identity, and nearly my entire life, be created again.
Wishing hope to you and all of the Alliance,
-Commander Lily Flemmon