All That is Required For Evil to Triumph…

[DeJaVu]

Citizen Soldiers Alive and Well on Mankova

[4 March 3071; FWNN] The news is full of reports of grand, world- changing battles, of knights in BattleMechs and evil armies of hellish invaders. But the chances are, however, that if you’ve never seen a ’Mech up close or traveled off-world, you don’t really understand what happens. Even holovid footage feels unreal, since we see similar things in entertainment HV almost every day.
In Dunstan Province on Mankova in the outworlds of the Free Worlds League, there are perhaps six BattleMechs. There hasn’t been a FWL ’Mech garrison on-planet since the Second Succession War. It’s a quiet province, mostly agricultural. It’s a sparsely-populated province. Entirely forgettable to those used to thinking in light-year scales. They even grow their own criminals.
Darcy Gables ran what passed for organized crime in Dunstan Province for a decade, squeezing farmers and agribusinesses for protection money and the like. In November of last year, a group of rancher got together and decided they needed to do something about it. They didn’t call the federal authorities. They didn’t hire a crack mercenary regiment. They just dealt with it.
First they sent a representative to Gables’ organization in Farwell City. They asked him to leave. Gables killed the representative and burned his ranch and threatened the other ranchers. So they killed him. About fifty of them got together, stormed his headquarters, and killed anyone who stood against them. Four ranchers were killed, and nineteen wounded. When the Farwell City police responded, they were met by a delegation of rancher with weapons stacked, waiting to be arrested. Last week all arrested were acquitted by the Dunstan Provice Justice after a short trial. When asked what their defense had been, the ranchers’ spokesman only quoted Edmund Burke:
“All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”