The screen once again showed Aron and he cleared his throat, then calmly continued going through every event that escalated the tensions one by one, each of them bringing the entire world closer to the brink of the war between Eden and the rest of the world.
“You should have realized by now, but I will say it in plain speech. Neither I, nor Eden, nor Esparia, had anything at all to do with any attacks. We have been acting in self-defense and good faith ever since the beginning. The only mistake I made was in taking the first step back.... I should’ve known that when I would take one step back, my enemies would only take two steps forward against me. So I kept stepping back, standing down, and deescalating the entire time until I had to draw a line and say ‘this far, and no further!’
“This far, I will retreat, but I will retreat no more. I drew that line, and this was the result.”
The screen switched and showed Aron’s speech that began the Edenian defense and eventual offensive.
After the recorded speech played out, he remained silent, his head bowed, for a number of minutes. Just when people thought he was done speaking, he murmured a barely-audible “Amen”, and focused his intense gaze on the camera once more.
“In the end, we won the war,” he said in a grave tone. “But there were casualties. Many of them. An incredible number, in fact, especially considering that the war only lasted for seven hours from the time the first shots were fired. Almost eight million soldiers were killed in the offensive.”
The screen behind him displayed the number 7,687,902.
“Hundreds of thousands more were injured.”
Beneath the number of soldiers killed in action, another number appeared: 408,115.
“And, sadly, there were also civilian casualties. Many of them were the brave men and women who volunteered to fight beside their nations’ militaries, but even more of them, sadly, were not. During the fighting, two nuclear weapons were detonated. They had escaped the destruction of all nuclear stockpiles only by virtue of ‘bent spear’ incidents in both India and Pakistan that nobody had yet become aware of.
(Ed note: A “bent spear” incident is a nuclear incident of significant incident caused by or during the transport of nuclear weapons, warheads, components, or other nuclear-related objects that is of strategic interest or importance. An example of one is the time in 2007 when a B-52 accidentally carried live nuclear cruise missiles over the US.)
“The cowardly members of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, had stolen a nuclear warhead from India and Pakistan’s stockpiles, thanks to collaborators and sympathizers embedded deep within those two countries’ governments. When the shooting started and the metal hit the meat, the terrorists were in the process of smuggling the warheads out of the countries, their ultimate destination the United States. But due to a freak coincidence, they were stalled in Faisalabad and Bhepal, where the terrorists made the decision to detonate them in place instead of continuing on as planned.
“Unfortunately, I had no knowledge of the planned attack, as the fog of war is impossible to defend against. So I, in my wrath, ordered a saturation bombardment on the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and the Indian capital, Delhi. Due to that, as well as other minor incidents in the ten countries invaded, there were many civilian casualties. The ones I am responsible for shall forever weigh on my shoulders, and for them, I deeply apologize and swear to do my utmost to compensate the surviving families of those unjustly slain during the war.
“If you were one of those affected, you will be notified by one of my representatives shortly to discuss compensation for your losses. No amount of money or things can ever replace what you have lost, but I cannot resurrect the dead. No one can.”
Aron bowed his head again as the screen behind him displayed another shocking number: 26,196,853.
Another two minutes later, he lifted his gaze and refocused on the camera, then continued, “In addition to Islamabad and Delhi, I also ordered the complete destruction of the remains of Faisalabad and Bhapal. That was done partly out of wrath, but mostly out of compassion. I judged that it would be more compassionate to provide those people a quick end, in order to spare them the lingering, painful deaths that were suffered by the survivors from the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings in 1945 due to the radiation released from the atomic bombs dropped by the United States.
“I have also ordered a full-scale cleanup effort to scrub the radiation from the despicable detonation of nuclear weapons by the ISIS terrorists in those two cities.
“But I cannot, and will not, accept full responsibility for the death toll. The greater burden falls upon the shoulders of your leaders and those controlling them. Their greed and lust for power overcame their rationality, to the point where every single remaining nuclear power ordered a saturation nuclear strike on the Eden-Esparian Archipelago that would have wiped out not one, but two entire countries in the thousands of nuclear fireballs.”
The screen switched to show the launch of a single warhead, then split and showed a second, then a third, then a fourth... ultimately, all twelve-thousand-odd nuclear weapons that were launched were all simultaneously displayed on the screen, creating a photographic mosaic of the leaders of the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel, and France, all standing around a table in a dimly-lit room.
Nova had made it obvious exactly who was responsible for ordering the combined nuclear strike against Eden through a clever usage of the images of nuclear launches.
“If it weren’t for the fact that the Poseidon Navy and Aeolus Air Force had the capability to defend against the launches of more than twelve thousand nuclear weapons, the entire population of two countries would have died, either by being within the initial range of the impacts or due to the painful, lingering effects of radiation. An archipelago that’s roughly the size of the entire Australian continent would have been rendered uninhabitable for centuries to come, thanks to the greedy actions of a few, and the entire world would have risked an even worse nuclear winter.
“It was for that reason that I removed every nuclear weapon held by anyone. Those that held them had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by their own actions that humanity is not yet ready to bear the weighty responsibility of civilization-ending stockpiles of indiscriminate weaponry.”
