Alliance Characters

## Heads of the Alliance

### JFC Fuller

The Lord High Protector of Britain and first Ultimate Executive of the Alliance, JFC Fuller was the iron willed dictator of the British Empire and the Alliance as a whole and more than any other man the core contributor to its character. A general in the British army with years of distinguished service who covered himself in glory in the first world war, Fuller believed that Britain should rule eternal and grew increasingly dissatisfied by Democracy's inability to enact the sort of military reforms he wanted to protect Britain's hegemony. He resented the growing power of the American and Soviet revolutionary states and feared the time that countries like China would grow into their own when the 20th century should have been Britain's after humbling Germany. An encounter with the political societies founded by the likes of Rotha and Arnold Leese convinced him of a new ideology; and he soon founded his "Society for a British Ultimatum", referring to a "general ultimatum to society to either choose our path or choose communism.

Immediately adored by the Daily Mail and the British shopowning small capitalist class, he based his ideal on the ideal of a corporatist balance between the classes managed by the state, the imperialist duty of the British Empire and European civilization to cleanse the world of its ills, the entrusting of power into a few who would embody the will and the passion of a nation just as they would guide and shape it, European unity, and virulent anti-communism and anti-liberalism. Carefully organising his tactics to poach voters from the Tories, the Whigs, and the Labour party, he came to be helped by mysterious figures bearing the symbol of a scorpion and would also come to be approached by the mysterious man known as Geoffrey; both of whom helped organise his party and quickly catapult it to great heights of prominence in the British parliament.

It was not until the British General strike in the confused years following the great post-war revolutionary wave; that he had his chance to seize ultimate power. With the British government in full panic mode as revolutions began to cascade outwards in the aftermath of the revolution, he came together with his friend and French counterpart Phillipe Petain and organised marches by Ultimist parties in the industrial cores of the European countries and called for and received no confidence votes in the current governments. In all cases, the government ended up caving into Ultimist pressure out of fear that the revolution would soon spread to them and Fuller soon was entrusted with absolute power. With the American whites defeated before he could settle into office Fuller now stood as master of the vast resources of the British Empire and would soon be mobilizing it against the global spread of Communism.

He formed the Alliance of Free States, surprising many by bringing in both old enemies as well as old friends by seducing the Germans and Swedes into the fold along with Britain's natural allies such as France and Portugal. The Scandinavians and the Germans may not have agreed too strongly with all the precepts of Ultimism, but they were compliant enough under the threats made by the Ultimist nations and the necessity of Franco-British aid against their leftist revolutions and the rise of Communism that they would heel to Fuller's power as he built up his Alliance.

He engaged in huge programs of rapid industrialization in the colonies and in Europe, leading to famines and many deaths through pollution and overwork that would make him responsible for the deaths of millions across the planet; with some estimates ranging as high as a hundred million perishing; particularly in Africa and Southern Asia where in many dismal factories in places such as Kenya, the Raj, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Egypt-Sudan. If such even slightly bothered Fuller who was obsessed with getting the numbers on the reports of yearly production to rise and fearful of the rapid industrialization of the new Union of American Socialist Republic's allies who were rapidly being brought up to its level of development. By the mid forties most of the Comintern could be said to enjoy almost American living standards, which mortified him. Even having drawn in places like the remaining capitalist South American nations under the integralists as client states and the Spanish Nationalists, his paranoia regarding the communists only grew and his conviction that he had to launch a pre-emptive assault and forever destroy the Communist nations only grew, eventually culminating in the second world war in 1950.

He presided over the enormous war that would lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people from combat, from disease, from famine, and from press ganging civilian populations to slave away in his factories so that he could keep on sending soldiers to fight in his war. His generals would also soon find that Fuller was a heavy handed micromanager with strong opinions on what made a modern army. He continually demanded more and increasingly extravagant superweapons such as superheavy tanks, jet fighters, and the latest helicopters while he tended to be lukewarm at best to attempts to get more out of the Alliance's experimental weapons programs like its SPECTRUM devices. He also proved to be incredibly dismissive of the Alliance's need for more medium and light tanks that did no fit his exacting specifications to counter the ever growing numbers of Comintern vehicles and the Blackwatch that he unleashed upon the world made the jobs of much of the rest of his army much harder with their brutal terror tactics.

His continued emphasis on terror tactics such as dehousing bombing raids against the Comintern and the attacks he ordered on Japanese shipping towards the Comintern only served to stiffen the resolve of the enemy and would soon add new enemies for the Alliance to deal with. However, his insistence on focusing on economic goals, his support of the new guard of tactics instead of refighting the first world war, his investment into the air force and his surprisingly skillful management of the navy all also helped the Alliance war effort. While many analysts believe that Alliance victory in the second world war was something of a long shot given the difficulty in dealing with America and the slow progress in pushing into Soviet territory, Fuller's contributions towards the outcome of the war are a controversial topic.

However it was unquestionable that by the end of his reign, the military simply did not like him. His purges of officers perceived to be disloyal, his micromanagement, his favoritism of his political cronies over established generals, his personal and summary executions of a number of Generals who disappointed him all served to make him roundly disliked by a large portion of the military brass; and his insistence on having the war be fought to its end made a good many panic as the war began to turn against the Alliance.

In the winter freeze of most offensive operations as both sides took time to prepare for the next set of campaigns, Fuller would find himself assassinated, not by the Communists he always feared but by his own trusted aide who gave him a drink of poisoned tea and a feast of bullets to his body. In an instant, Fuller had died, though his assassin was in turn killed on the spot by Rupert Thornley who would quickly assume control over the Alliance after his death. Leaving a troubling and complicated legacy behind him, not just in the form of Geoffrey and Epsilon who would bring the world to near ruin, but also in a simple legacy of authoritarianism and heavy handed rulership that would continue to plague the Alliance long after his death, Fuller may be dead but his shadow over the world is deep and the number of people who fear his name are many.

### Rupert Thornley

Formerly a British Member of Parliament engaged in foreign and trade affairs, the entrepreneur Rupert Thornley was a prominent supporter of the Allied States since the very beginning of the talks when he was little more than a councilman in his hometown of Leeds and quite fortunately for himself, an investor in the military industrial complex. With the massive amounts of money being sunk into the military industrial complexes of the capitalist world by the governments of werstern Europe and the other members of the fledgling Alliance his stocks exploded in value and his finances soared to incredible heights. Before he was even thirty five he had become richer than he had ever dared hope to be, and was soon wining and dining with the most famous and powerful men and women of the Ultimist world. This massive fortune allowed him to climb the ranks of the Ultimist governmental structure that Fuller had created, using his wealth and influence to get the connections he needed to get to the very highest levels of government.

By the time of the second world war, he was perhaps the richest man in the British Empire and could even be said to have Fuller's ear himself. His stock in the Dutch company Futuretech also gave him great influence and control over the low countries. Some would even say that he was a more powerful man than many heads of government within the Ultimist regime of the first stage of the Alliance, something he was cautious about never overplaying. His deep business ties however, did let him establish close relationships with Romulus and the Nova Roma Syndicate, of whom he considered many of its top CEOs and Romulus himself to be his personal friends. However, Fuller had more interest in financing the strange projects of the assorted research divisions; particularly Epsilon, and in supplying his Black Watch divisions than putting money into "push button boffinry" as he often disparagingly referred to ideas such as Spectrum weaponry and powered armour.

It is often said to be this resentment combined with his natural ambitions that lead to Thornely positioning himself throughout the second world war; even when the Communist International began to push into the territory of the Alliance itself and threatening his assets in the low countries and the low land northern regions of France and Germany; that he began to plot his take over of the Alliance. When the war was finally over with a final series of inconclusive clashes at the Polish-German border following a vicious series of Alliance counterattacks masterminded by von Esling's command staff to retake southern and eastern Germany that convinced the Comintern to accept the Alliance's offer of a conditional peace rather than seek the Alliance's complete capitulation, Thornley clearly had coup elements in place.

Once Fuller's favourite aide, a young intelligence officer named Jane assassinated him and started babbling nonsense about a Scorpion Cult, Thornley had her shot by his own hand and then had his supporters and anti-Fullerite elements sweep him into power and purge any Fullerite diehards and those who had at any point showed that they were both too unfriendly and not useful enough to be allowed to remain in power, or alive often enough. With the support of Bingham he would ascend to absolute power and be sworn in as the new Ultimate Executive of the Alliance and Lord High Protector of the British Empire as well as CEO of Futuretech. Though the terms of the peace signed with the Communist International would signify some retreats in certain theaters, it did get his foot in the door of China and it had been a valuable case study to prepare for the next war. The master of billions, he would uphold the finest aspects of Fuller's legacy while abolishing its most sinister remainders.

Unknown to all but a select few however, Thornley is not quite the man he says he is. While it is true that he did all of those things during the interwar period, he did them in another timeline; one where the Alliance was fully defeated in the second world war and was only prevented from being subsumed into the communist international by the machinations of Geoffrey who wished to rebuild the Alliance to serve as a smokescreen for his own plans for world domination. Though Geoffrey was defeated, the Alliance was on the verge of collapse and the Communist International was all too happy to force the issue as the Alliance imploded from within as its colonial empires withered away and the markets of capital shrunk further every day with another country being subsumed by leftist revolution. With a general strike threatening to finish the job, Bingham and Lydia Winters activated a final desperate project to save the Alliance, a time machine.

With the machine he planned to set about on a mission to rewrite the timeline to allow the Alliance to be victorious over the hated American and Russian communists, hoping to change the balance of power by starting with targeted assassinations against two people he believed responsible for the Allies' continual defeats. Einstein, the brilliant communist scientist who had invented the first time machine to secretly eliminate Adolf Hitler and thus create this timeline to prevent them from destroying the Jewish people and then again to help avert Geoffrey's psychic dominator disaster, had helped create many brilliant machines of war for the Communist International that Thornley believed made them invincible. Geoffrey, the great traitor had doomed the world with his psychic science and cost the Alliance vast resources to try and stop the first incarnation of the Epsilon army. While his assassination of Einstein was a success, reducing the man to cosmic dust at a physics conference in 1927 before the American revolution to Lydia Winter's horror, his attempt to get rid of Geoffrey was much less so. Geoffrey's remaining initiates had seized a prototype replica of the time machine used to bring about Geoffrey's defeat in the third world war and used it to save Geoffrey from his defeat and also embarked on a mission to eliminate Einstein.

In that meeting, Geoffrey erased Thornley's memories of the cerebremor and as the two were forced back into the new timeline they had created they both got to work in phase two of their plans for the new timeline. Thornley had put in a secondary system into his own time machine, letting him travel a bit farther back into the "present" of the new timeline than Bingham and Lydia would; not long before the start of the second world war. Eliminating this timeline's counterpart of himself, Thornley made some adjustments to the Alliance war plan to ensure that instead of a total defeat and occupation of the Alliance, the Alliance and Comintern would fight to a standstill and thus give him unlimited room to implement his new vision and win the third world war the "right" way once he had taken over as supreme leader. Assisting him in this task were refugees from his home timeline he was secretly transporting to serve as his new Black Watch; a cadre of individuals who were absolutely loyal to himself. He also manipulated history to change the dispositions of certain countries to empower the Alliance.

However, Epsilon was aware of the location of his time machine and made sure to erase the memories of Epsilon that each of the new refugees had, allowing for Geoffrey to enact his own plans in secrecy. Nevertheless, Thornley had his own secret army of fanatic loyalists who had him to thank for freedom from aging, a chance to live like kings in a new timeline where their benefactor was in a position to grant them every favor they wanted, and a new home away from the downfall of the alliance in their world. With this technology, he hoped to close the gap in technical finesse with the Communists; though to his displeasure, Einstein's removal from the timeline had minimal effects on the technological advancement of the Communists' international militaries. Still, he felt that whereas the third world war of his timeline was largely focused on North America by necessity due to issues of resources; this one would be able to strike at the Communist International all across the world.

His new alliance would restore some of the liberties of pre-Fuller society. Other parties were starting to be allowed again, albeit in considerably more limited than normal fashion. In theory Fuller's autocratic style of government was being replaced by a return to parliamentaryism. The tripartite corporatist structure was loosened to be kinder to smaller companies and enterprises, and many forms of labor rights were being restored to lessen the threat of leftist agitation. Extrajudicial killings were officially stopped and worker safety and environmental standards were being put in place to reduce the staggering death tolls of the forced industrialization schemes that had killed tens of millions of people under Fuller's programs, and the rampant anti-semitism and racism of the Fuller era alliance was formally abolished, with apologies and reparations for those who had suffered under Fuller being put in place.

However, Thornley was just as conquest hungry and anti-communist as his predecessor. He dreamed of a world wide Alliance with Britain as its eternal head. Throughout the entirety of his reign, the Alliance was either at war or was preparing for war. A vast war machine was being readied, and he would see the world engulfed in flames. Not unreasonably justifying his attacks on the Communist International as preempting any aggression on their part when the spy plane shoot down incident escalated fatally, he presided over a war effort that stretched across every continent and ocean of the world. However he underestimated the power and competence of his enemies and overstretched his forces significantly, something worsened when the Solar Empire and its allies in the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere launched their attack on the Alliance's territories. Worse still was Epsilon's unforeseen betrayal as Geoffrey and his inner circle saw a chance to bring the world the unity of thought and the ascension of body that they had so long dreamed of.

Epsilon's devastating betrayal seemed to strike a chord within Thornley, as he grew increasingly paranoid throughout the war. Soon enough, like Fuller before him he launched his own purges and witch hunts. If Epsilon could launch such a massive betrayal without him ever being the wiser to it, there had to be traitors elsewhere. Such a vast army raised against him had to have an equally vast network throughout the Alliance. And soon enough this paranoia would come to consume even the highest ranking officials in the Alliance. At the battle of Iceland he planted evidence that Bingham was behind an attempted assassination via Helicopter Gunship of him, leading to Bingham and Manning's forces fighting after only just repelling an attempted Comintern landing and leaving the garrison weakened against a follow up assault by Epsilon that was only forced back at massive cost. After the exit of the Sphere and Epsilon from the war, Thornley hoped to finish the war once and for all with the freed up forces for the final showdown.

As the Alliance once again was facing the threat of a massive International offensive to drive it out of Europe entirely, Manning; who had been touring the war torn areas of most of the world in his service had enough and reached out to anti-Thornleyist elements in the governments and militaries of the Alliance who were desperate for peace after twelve years of devastating total war in just twenty two years. With some help from Davidova and Fuller and French general Lisette; Manning confronted Thornley in Liverpool in a tremendous clash of arms that leveled much of the city. However, Thornely managed to escape onto a massive fusion powered rocket into the depths of space, from which none have ever managed to re-establish contact with him. What his thoughts are, presuming he still lives, on Manning's new liberal policies are unknown, though certainly there are significant elements in Alliance society who felt that Thornley had the right idea and wish for his return.

### Alexander Manning

Born in 1957 in the city of Bentley, Alberta, Alex Manning, nephew of Alberta premier Ernest Manning, joined the Imperial British military as a clerk in 1975 during the the third Tuareg War, and received further training as a radio operator, logistics technician and map specialist during his early career. His attention to detail and initiative saw him attached to the staff of General Jean Victor Allard when they shipped to the Sahara to try and shore up the Allied presence there, gaining a broad range of rear echelon skills and quickly solidifying a reputation as General Allard's most reliable aide. He first caught the attention of his superiors during Operation "Jaques Noir" to regain control of the southern Algerian oil fields. His CO was then killed by a stolen V-2 launcher guided via electric rage finder smashing into their command post. With most of the command staff incapacitated, Manning managed to keep the forces under Allard's command organised through the use of lower tech signals throughout the next two days of fighting while the unit was cut off; allowing them to hold a position near the river banks for two weeks against superior forces.

Manning was quickly rotated away from the front lines and was part of the first class of Command School, a new program intended to create specialised strategic advisers in the face of the rapidly changing nature of modern war, with the program being fathered by Gunther von Esling who managed to convince Fuller of the merits of the program in the midst of the second world war. One of the youngest and least experienced, Manning nevertheless made a name for himself and upon his graduation with honors in 1977 spent the rest of the war as an advisor and field supervisor for various generals. Following the successful (if incompletely so) war, he was deemd to have done his duty well enough to personally be awarded a medal by Rupert himself in 1979 for his excellent command skills displayedduring the Azjer offensive. However, he was often used as a scapegoat for Alliance setbacks in the Niger Front, a theater he never served in ("That's my bloody point, the man's never where he needs to be!" in the words of Bingham), and so would be shuffled off quietly.

Upon the end of the war, Manning left the Allied military in pursuit of higher education, obtaining a Masters degree in Finance from McGill University in 1982 and working for the Finance Ministry of the Kingdom of Canada. As war loomed over the world again he helped to organise the colony of Canada's economy for a war footing, however as the Alliance military built up rapidly, he was given notice that he was to take positions at Liverpool, a position that he felt was essentially a means of keeping him in a quiet theater so he wouldn't draw glory away from promotion hungry commanders. Knowing better than to refuse a directive from Peacemaker command, he arrived in Liverpool and whiled away his time drilling his garrison, ensuring the strength of their logistical chain, building up his bases, and getting to know the culture of the mother country.

His training produced many fine regiments of peacekeepers, but his work went unsung for years as Thornley amassed everything he felt was needed to wage war. Even when war was declared he remained at his desk, doing little of value until he got to bear witness to the Solar Empire's attack on the important port in tandem with strike forces from a number of their allies. Organising a defence against the attacking Japanese and their allies, he protected the historic city from annihilation and repulsed the attempted landing; forcing the Axis armada to pull back for the time being and winning him the adoration of the masses as a war hero. This act gained the attention of Alliance High Command as Eva McKenna recommended him to the notice of Thornley and Bingham themselves, with Thornley wishing to congratulate him with the highest honour of the Alliance while Queen-Empress Elizabeth presented him with the Victoria Cross. Such patronage also allowed the matter of Manning's marriage to Eva; a woman some fifteen years his junior and also his communications officer to also be swept under the rug.

Bingham remembered Manning quite well and his distaste for him hadn't lessened, seeing him as an upstart who just got lucky, but both Eva and Rupert assured Manning that this was simply Bingham generally being his cranky old self. Bingham said that if he wants to be a media darling he should take it up with Kelly; who soon intruded on the conversation as if she knew her name was being mentioned. Manning took more of a liking to Weaver and after being congratulated on his recent successes; he was tasked with dealing with hot spots all over the world, and was instrumental in fighting Epsilon's betrayal when the psychic dominators revealed themselves in areas as secure as London. Working tirelessly against all manner of enemies, he was easily one of the Alliance's greatest generals, a fact that made Bingham intensely jealous of him.

A believer in the power of logistics to win battles, Manning's forces were always meticulously well equipped and supplied and he went out of his way to engender personal loyalty in his soldiers and sub-commanders; befriending most of his fellow generals. During a battle with Communist forces in Crete; he was approached by Thornley with evidence that Bingham was behind a recent assassination attempt on him and put his former superior officer on ice via cyro-copter. Intrumental to the planning of both the battles of Tokyo and the assault on Kemp land that helped bring the war with Epsilon and the Empire to a close, Lydia Winters explained some disturbing information to Manning, which when combined with Manning's enormous popularity lead Thornley to believe he too was planning to betray him.

In a final battle at Liverpool just days after he was finished with leading the attack on Kemp Land, Manning's troops; with the aid of Davidova, ousted Thornley from power after Thornley declared Manning a traitor to the Alliance in a ferocious battle that ripped the city apart. Presenting the documents to clear his name, Manning was virtually unanimously selected to be the new Ultimate Executive of the Alliance to his own surprise. Feeling it would be irresponsible to turn the offer down, he accepted and presided over the negotiations at warsaw a few days later that brought an end to the third world war. Instigating the reforms he had in his heart of hearts, always believed were necessary for the Alliance he became very popular with a great many people are very hated by a number of others.

For most of the Alliance, he has lifted the iron vise that has gripped Western Europe and its sphere of the world for nearly forty years and brought back the fresh air of freedom and improved the standard of living for the common man. For his enemies, he's introduced weakness and made compromises with enemies the Alliance should have crushed. Insisting that by 1995; the war could no longer be won by the Alliance as it barely saw off a fresh and massive wave of Communist counter attacks that once again plunged into the Alliance while mounting Chrono-raids were targeting its rear installations may placate most, but there will be many who insist it could have been won had he stayed the course. He's had ACIN root around internally to try and find who his enemies in the Alliance are, and once again his mind is turning to plans for how to deal with them.

A student of politics as well as war, Manning has thus far focused his time on reform, attempting, with some difficulty, to eliminate the corruption and nepotism that dominates the Alliance government unchecked due to the war and the system of patronage, technocratic bureaucracy, and favouratism that Thornley and Fuller used to grease the wheels and lack of concern paid by previous rulers. Something that has added to his list of enemies as he roots out established but corrupt officials in his anti-corruption campaigns who often have powerful friends. A fact that doesn't seem to be helping him sleep much better at night, often being found having fallen asleep in his own office. It's been joked that between his children and his job it's unlikely he actually gets any sleep and subsists entirely on caffeine pills to remain functional. Fortunately for him, Manning has the unswavering loyalty of the Peacemaker corps, ACIN, and the Alliance Rear Echelons, as well as the gratitude of various regional commands as he seeks to maintain and expand bridges with them. The British people are also quite fond of him, and the Queen-Empress Elizabeth has presented him with some additional Victoria crosses for his service; along with a host of medals from the other countries of the Alliance.

In his fourth year in office as the next millennium approaches, Manning is currently preparing to stand for his first ever election. He is a widely loved reformist, but faces criticism from all sides; left, right, centre, authoritarian and libertarian. He has support from an equally broad coalition, and his opposition is also heavily divided. Some oppose him out of a belief that a military man such as himself has no business being political leader. Others from a belief that he is a weak compromiser with the enemy. Others that he isn't going far enough. And some have raised quibbles about his relationship with Eva which they see as inappropriate, not just for the age gap but also for her having served as a nude pin-up model for Maxim magazine before her military career. He is however, confident that he has the upcoming 2000 election in the bag, and has a large celebration of the New Year planned.

## Military High Command

Born British, Bingham was the current supreme commander of the Allied military forces. It is often thought he wouldn't have reached his current position if he did not have his unique foresight. For Robert Bingham always had a talent in predicting his opponent’s moves, and he exploited it by ordering his most capable commanders to places he predicted would be attacked. It was this foresight that allowed him to rise to the top of Alliance military command after distinguishing himself throughout the second world over the course of his command of the British fifth army group. Both in the offensive and defensive stages of the war, his forces were able to hold their own and win a number of victories for the Alliance. However, others also accused him to taking credit duly deserved to his subordinates due to his habit of emphasizing his role in victories such as Kharkov as the work of his own talents and skills.

However to accuse him of incompetence would be tremendously misguided at best. Bingham was always described as being as smart as a whip with a great appreciation for the capabilities of armoured warfare and artillery. Whenever he had to directly command a battle himself, he proved to be a broadly competent and able opponent for any of his adversaries with contingency plans a plenty for most any eventuality. With his extensive plans and detailed contingencies, it was rare for him to meet eventualities he hadn't had at least some preparation for. This allowed him to win a number of victories, such as the battle of Kharkov where he managed to push through against an enemy that outnumbered him two to one, or his operation to defend Rio di Janerio and save Therese from both Epsilon and Guardian forces looking to assassinate her.

However, much like with Thornley there's quite a bit more to him than first meets the eye. In his native timeline, he was Thornley's commanding officer and the overseer of his time travel project after defending it from Comintern offensives into the decaying Alliance. While the project was an unqualified success, Bingham was irritated to find that in this new reality he would be calling Thornley his superior. Such rankled at him deeply, as he always remembered when Thornley was under his command and when he was nothing more than a jumped up aging CEO playing soldier. By all rights, he should be the new Ultimate Executivie. But he kept his discontentment with the current situation to himself and focused on his new job in the alliance armed forces. With the total defeat of the Alliance experienced in his timeline averted, he found himself emerging to a world where the Communist International was reeling from the blows of the Alliance on all fronts. However, things fell apart swiftly from there.

Not only did the traitor Geoffrey once again rear his bald head in this new timeline, but the Empire of Japan had turned out to not be a friend in this timeline, but instead a deadly enemy. Before he knew it, some man he had never heard of named Yoshiro was demanding that all bow before him and the Solar Empire's divine destiny to rule all under heaven. Even worse, Imperial ships had slipped through Alliance naval patrols via the arctic route and were launching an all out assault on Liverpool and Gibraltar and the enemy was landing on Britain itself. Despite his flabbergasting shock that Japan and its vast, world spanning co-prosperity sphere were capable of such attacks across the world and had such clearly advanced technology and that Epsilon had managed to hide one of the world's largest armies from the world for this long, he settled into the task of defeating the three enemies of the Alliance with the same skill he always did.

However, his resentment of Thornely opened up the path to accuse him of treason and conspiring to have Rupert assassinated and during a defense of Iceland from the American and Soviet fleets, he was met with Manning's forces opening fire on him as soon as Thornley presented the "evidence". However, Bingham was a charming man who was well loved by the troops, and so would not be able to be taken in by the simple arrest warrant that Manning and his co-commander Helmut von Gotha had hoped would convince him to quietly come to a military tribunal to either prove his innocence or damn him. Neither was he in the mood to listen to Manning's pleas to at least defend himself in a court of law, calling Thornley a traitor and Manning a toady. Just as Thornley had hoped for, the two's forces would fight and then kill each other in the cold, but with many of Bingham's best troops in other theaters and his forces having taken the brunt of the beating by the initial attempted Comintern landing, he was overcome and was killed in battle when his Kaiser command tank was destroyed by air strikes launched from the carrier *Valiance*.

Manning ordered that his old commanding officer be given a military funeral with full military honours despite the charges laid against him and had Bingham's troops exonerated by whatever means he could, and clearly was unhappy about ordering his death. While a posthumous kangaroo court ordered by Thornley had Bingham convicted of high treason and ordered inquisitorial purges of his relatives and friends in the government and armed forces, even during the war many still had high respects for him, with the other combatant factions sending their condolences for the "loss of a supremely skilled master of war" in the words of Imperial Commander Shinzo Nagama. Though Thornley himself felt it had to be some sort of jab at him for ordering his elimination. After Thornley essentially abdicated into the depths of space, Manning immediately ordered an independent commission into Bingham's guilt that found him innocent and issues a formal apology and reparations to his family and those he served under. Many a statue of Thornley has since been replaced by memorials to Bingham, and while many outside the Alliance remember him as a mastermind of war and death, others remember him as simply "The Marshal".

## Scientists

The slightly improbable career as a top Allied military officer started for Ms. Lydia Winters when she took a job as a receptionist for CERN, which had just been granted the Nobel Prize for its research into particle technology. Born as a middle-class child in southern England, Lydia Winters and her family had moved around Europe for ten years, resulting in her being able to speak six languages more or less fluently, before settling in with her husband in Switzerland where she went through her higher education, studying information technology at the Zurich University. Her father was a general interested in military tactics and her husband was going through officer training himself, which she would absorb unconsciously during family dinner discussions.

Taking an interest in the company's research, she studied solar technology on her spare time, and listened in to the company scientists' meetings. In 1996, when they were discussing the efficiency problems of the fusion cells that were making downward scaling difficult, Lydia made an off-hand suggestion of making improved usage of magnetically assisted spectrum and iron curtain technology in producing the fusion reaction. After being questioned about the details of her idea and her general knowledge of the matter, which was later discovered to surpass that of even some of the scientists, Lydia was quickly offered a place in the team working on fusion technology. Such eventually lead to her branching into more esoteric physics, such as the study of rare and exotic particles and the flow of spacetime; including the vaunted Chronospheres of the Comintern. Initially driven out of interest in the Comintern's artificial black hole technology, this lead to her in another timeline; being involved with a time travel project meant to save a dying alliance.

The year was 2009 and the Alliance of Free States was nearing its end. Only a desperate act could save it from the final victory of the Proleteriat. And that desperate act would be done with her research and Thornley and Bingham's blessings despite her fervent protests. She watched as Thornley assassinated Albert Einstein and returned to find a world utterly transformed by Thornley's doing. A new record of life was given for her and her family to easily slip into the new timeline. She would keep her old name, but she had to adapt to a time long before she was even born; her aging cut off from the proper timestream by her cosmic transgression. But for a time she managed, agelessness was a good perk and she enjoyed being at the top of the Alliance's scientific world. But it ate at her conscience for years. Though Einstein was a committed socialist he was also an icon of the scientific world whose body of work inspired much of her own fusion research; and as she warned her superiors killing one man can only do so much.

And true enough, the Comintern's technological research pace was largely unabated and if anything was even more accelerated by the less restrictive laws of physics in this timeline. Part of an effect she measured that the more often and the more drastically a timeline is rewritten by chronosphere technology the less its laws of physics will forbid or restrict. Though a few changes were made; such as Oppenheimer looking into black hole technology instead of nuclear fission and indeed both sides lacking fissile technology, the balance of power had not shifted in the way that Thornley had hoped. But even worse was that Thornley was a paranoiac and an egomaniac who was terrifyingly willing to have nearly anyone killed or pursue any path if it furthered his power.

Though she was initially at ease with his launching of the third world war; having expected that he'd try to succeed where Fuller, and in her timeline Jack Stuart; had failed. What began to set her off however was how Thornley manoeuvred Bingham to his death. Though much of the Alliance was fooled, she did not buy that Bingham had so clumsily attempted a coup against him for a second and began to fear for her life. Though removed from Bingham and Thornley's rivalry and power struggle she was all too aware of how quickly he could turn on her if given half the chance. Though he was ingratiated at first thanks to her help with devising the vacuum imploder devices, Thornley was fickle and cunning and so she decided to reach out to Manning.

Though Manning was sceptical of the totality of what he was told, he accepted that Thornley was beginning to become increasingly dangerous to the Alliance and the world, and the doubt that he had over the circumstances of Bingham's death intensified. But after informing Manning that Thornley was getting reinforcements from her old timeline in the form of his new Blackwatch, Lydia disappeared from the world and was never found again. Manning has spent significant resources in trying to locate her and any of her family or relatives. But even the long arm of ACIN has proven to be incapable of finding the former Executive of Science and Technology. And this concerns Manning deeply.

Here whereabouts are now the stuff of endless conspiracy theories and pop-histories. Investigators have made careers off of trying to find her and virtually anyone who's anyone in the historical, political, or scientific communities have offered their own hypotheses as to where she could have gone. A reward has been put out for anyone who can help ACIN re-establish contact with her, and Manning has begun to fear that she may have been killed or captured by Thornley's remaining agents on the world. Part of him wonders why he is putting so much effort into finding her, perhaps driven by his own quest for answers to some very existential questions about the world that he lives in to this day. Whatever the case, it seems unlikely that she will surface again anytime soon.