Cynthia Mattingly, though clearly a very important figure in the war, was a person difficult to reconstruct through data and period records alone. Unlike many of the figures here examined, she kept very few records of her own, particularly in between her arrival in Congo and her activism during the African Resistance. Of key importance was an event that was covered by local news and figures such as Theresa Mwangi but was never described in detail at the time for security purposes. Fortunately, she has since opened up about the event and has here worked together with IHC representatives to reconstruct the sequence of events in full from memory, and Mwangi, Kumar and others present have confirmed its historical veracity. Our thanks to all of them for assistance in this reconstruction and to Rhemarizh for compiling it for us.

Jon Brain, Chief Archivist of the Interstellar Historical Commission

On the morning of the August 12, 2175, Cynthia woke with an uncharacteristic unease. Although she had been far from comfortable ever since coming to Africa, she describes this morning as different from the rest.

"For two days or so up until then, I'd been lonely and worried about my sister. And, you know, I was in a strange place where I didn't really know anyone, so I guess that's understandable. But on the second, I remember being genuinely uneasy. I felt like I was being watched by somebody. I mean, I doubted that anybody was really watching me or something, but I still felt queasy about it, you know? Like, I'd go around corners expecting to find someone on the other side waiting for me."

That morning, the news from Kinshasa's doctors hadn't been good. Olivia Mattingly's condition had worsened again since the morning. Before then, she had slowly started to regain bodily function; doctors had been working around the clock to rehydrate and feed her intravenously as well as giving her antibiotics and antivirals to give her the absolute best chance of recovery. However, she still hadn't recovered from the coma-like sleep that she had been in since she had been found in the black ship. On the morning of the second, though, she started to seem restless once again. When she had been brought in to the hospital, doctors had noted that she muttered in a strange language and tossed and turned in the night. Over the past forty-eight hours, this activity had slowed and in fact ceased, but this morning it began again. Cynthia describes the moment.

"It was like...something was...galvanizing her into motion. Like, I don't think that she was the one moving; some of the ways she was moving didn't make me think she was just restless, you know? Like, she'd be lying there, and then a leg would lift up like she was trying to walk or something. And then of course there was the way she murmured all the time but none of us understood; we tried to translate with three, like, different devices, but it just didn't work."

The doctors agreed that the signs weren't good, but they had never seen a phenomenon like this. All they could do was to keep her body alive and hope that whatever was ailing her could be healed by conventional methods.

Billy Aucaman had left the hospital not long into the morning. He had asked permission of the Congolese policemen supervising their stay to seek out military offices in hopes that he could enlist in some capacity. In his journal, he describes how much he hates to feel useless, and since he might have been the last of his family, he hoped to do some good for the resistance movement that might have been growing at the time. Cynthia had elected to stay with her sister in hopes that a familial connection might help her recovery. However, as time went on, she began to feel an odd pull to leave the hospital.

"When I was at home, and Billy told me about the animal tracks in the woods, it was the same kind of feeling. I really don't know how describe what it felt like, but I just knew that I had to be out in the woods that night. This was the same sort of thing; even though everything in my mind was telling me that I had to stay with Olivia, I just had this urge to go out somewhere. I wasn't even sure exactly where I wanted to go; there was just this pull to go there."

At 10:18 that morning, she obeyed the urge and requested an escort outside of the hospital. She traveled, aimlessly at first, into the downtown of Kinshasa. Eventually, she reached the capital building and entered it. She says she felt that this was the place that she had been drawn to, but once she entered it, she was no longer sure why she had been drawn. She waited in the lower rotunda for several minutes while government officials and visitors from the countryside filtered past.

Eventually, she was approached by Damien Troy, who of course was in town on business. None of the Troy family have been located for comment, since their line of work requires a certain degree of privacy. He greeted her after she had waited in the rotunda for around five minutes.

"I suppose he must have noticed how uncertain and nervous I looked and got it into his head to cheer me up or try and help in some way. He was very nice at least and seemed only interested in putting me at ease."

"I don't suppose you're the girl from Montana?" he asked first of all.

Cynthia was wary of this greeting at first, since she wasn't sure how many people were supposed to know about her presence. She wasn't entirely sure about Troy either, since he looked "very rough." But he guessed this quickly.

"Don't worry," he said. "My name is Damien Troy. You met my sister a couple of days ago, and she told me about you. Or at least, she said that there was a boy and a blond girl here from Montana with valuable intelligence. I don't even know what you brought, and I don't want to know. I guessed you were her because, well, Kinshasa has a shortage of blonds. So, what's your name?"

Cynthia decided to introduce herself since she had no real reason to mistrust him. Damien Troy offered to give her a tour of the Kinshasa capital building, and she accepted, not having anything better to do at the time.

"I knew that I had to be in that building, but I couldn't tell why, so I was glad to have someone around to distract me from that."

Damien led her on a shortened tour around the Congolese capital. He admitted to her that he didn't know the building very well, but then, that wasn't what he was paid to do at that moment. When asked what he was paid for, his answer was circuitous.

The tour concluded an hour later in the rotunda where it had begun. By coincidence, Theresa Mwangi, Arya Kumar and Ambassador Dumarith had just left one of the main conference rooms. They were accompanied by Gennady Semyonov. Mwangi had recently concluded a meeting with the two men and as they walked they planned for the confrontation with the Hegemony that they feared was imminent. Semyonov had just been briefed on the arrival of Billy and Cynthia and the dissident plans to send the black ship to Yveran. Mwangi noticed Cynthia and greeted her, offering to introduce her to Semyonov.

When Cynthia noticed Semyonov, it was as if everything suddenly fell into place.

"It was really just a moment, but I saw his eyes turn red for just a second. It was like he had contacts on that were red and then took them back off again. So...I didn't know what to do. I just screamed and drew back like he was a snake." At that point, she said, "I knew that it was here...the other Zaha-Katchem."

She explained her reaction as best she could through her fear. Mwangi did her best to understand, but Cynthia was a bit incoherent.

"All the poor dear could say was 'it's here! It's in him!' She was absolutely terrified. After a moment, she could start to explain."

Semyonov's eyes had turned the same color as Zaha-Katchem eyes for that moment. Only she had noticed, though, and so it was a moment before they believed her.

"Semyonov had been acting strangely for the past few weeks, at least in public, but, he didn't have an Interlink, so we were inclined to be a bit less suspicious of him than we probably should have been. And he seemed so reasonable, and poor Cynthia was so distressed," Mwangi recalls.

"I didn't think that they would believe me until the Grushan ambassador Dumarith spoke up and said 'Grushan records of Zakal-Faah indicate that they might have had psychic abilities.'"

If this was true, he went on, it might be possible, if a Zaha-Katchem had a connection to both of them, then they might recognize each other.

Semyonov protested that the matter was absurd. However, the others had started to realize the sense in what Dumarith had suggested. They also recognized the high stakes that this would implicate. If the Terrans or the Zaha-Katchem were informed of the black ship on Yveran, an attack might be imminent.

"We didn't know what to do. So Kumar suggested that we force Semyonov to undergo a brain scan just in case," Mwangi remembers.

"I spoke to some of the doctors treating Olivia Mattingly," says Arya Kumar. "They said that her brain scans had revealed some major irregularities. I reasoned that it might have been an effect of a Zaha-Katchem telepathic intrusion. If it was, then it might show up on Semyonov if she was telling the truth. Better to be safe than to have the entire mission defeated in a single blow."

At this suggestion, Semyonov became agitated and began making threats. At that point he was cornered and he knew it. As it became clearer that the dissident leaders intended to follow through on the suggestion, he became more and more wild and unpredictable. Finally, it was clear that all hope of deception had been lost. He suddenly attacked Cynthia, attempting to throttle her. Over the confusion, a yell erupted from him:

"Shalvool nos ravanoch! Zakal-Faah menoo!"

Damien Troy pried Semyonov off of Cynthia and threw him to the ground. He was arrested by Congolese authorities and taken to secure holding in an undisclosed location for further questioning.

After the arrest of Gennady Semyonov, the Kinshasa riots began. When Semyonov came to Kinshasa, many of his supporters followed him there from all over the world, especially Europe and parts of America and Japan. Rumors spread far more quickly than the truth could be made known by the dissident leadership of the Congolese government. The story quickly spread that he had been assassinated by the Congolese government. The violence began in the city center with mobs of people attempting to raid the capital. Congolese military were forced to disperse the crowds with non-lethal weapons. Over a dozen people on both sides of the conflict were killed in the first twenty minutes of violence. When the capital building became too heavily fortified for Semyonov's followers to make a dent without losing their critical mass, the violence spread through Kinshasa's downtown. By this time, local news had picked up on the violence and broadcast it across town and on internet sites. Kinshasan counter-rioters organized in certain districts to defend against the incoming violence. By 1:15, rioters had spread to civilian areas and met resistance from the local population. Over a hundred people were injured in this widespread violence, and ten were killed. The Congolese military was mobilized in full force throughout the city. By 2:00, the rioters were widespread and the military was able to round them up without exorbitant difficulty. Violence continued until nightfall, when the last of the rioters were rounded up by military and police and sent to makeshift POW camps outside the city that were left over from the Sub-Saharan Wars of 2088.

In the confusion of the riots, no organized search was made for the Zaha-Katchem infiltrator thought to have taken control of Gennady Semyonov. It is thought that it escaped the violence in a shuttlecraft similar to the one recovered by Billy Aucaman and Cynthia Mattingly.

Novan Intelligence Dispatch: 08/12/2175 1245 EST

MARKED URGENT:

Earth Operational District 3-Novan Intelligence Command: Terran and Zaha-Katchem intelligence know about Operation RED OCTOBER. Yveran base at high risk. Gennady Semyonov compromised; unsure how long. End Dispatch.

Speech Delivered by Yan An-Sing: 08/12/2175: Tiananmen Square, Beijing: Translated by Zhou Hanshen-Yao

Ladies and Gentlemen. In response to the unprecedented violence that has broken out due to dissident agitators in Kinshasa, Congo, it is my obligation to instate martial law procedures in Congo and, if necessary, its ally states within the African Union. I have ordered the Terran military to occupy Kinshasa and several neighboring regions. I have requested the cooperation of the Congolese, Ghanan, Ugandan, Rwandan, Cameroonian, and Nigerian governments in the detaining of so-called dissident leadership. Order in the Terran Hegemony will be maintained, especially in this time of war. Those responsible will be brought to justice. That will be all.

Official Transcript: Federation News Update-Yveran: 08/03/2175 0810 Yveran Standard Time

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) Welcome back to Federation News, I'm Lazhmarizh. We're covering war efforts across the Grushan Federation, and today, we're going to one of the most important strategic positions in the entire Federation, the border colony of Yvar. The Yveran system is less than six hours jump to Sol, the Terran home system, and seven hours from the Novan Alliance. In addition, Yveran is within jump range of Alpha Ceti, Gleveran, Rizheran and several other strategic systems on both sides. Any Terran invasion of the Federation would have to go through Yveran. With all of this strategic importance, how is the population of Yvar responding to the war with Earth? We turn now to Gomarizh who reports now from Holara Station in orbit of Yvar.

GOMARIZH: (translated) Although many in the Federation view Yvar as an untamed frontier world, more for tourism than for settlements, Yvar has in the past twenty years seen one of the fastest planetary economic and population booms in Federation history. A big part of that expansion was due to interplanetary trade with the Terran Hegemony and, when independence was established two hundred years ago, the Novan Alliance. Before the war, the Holara Station was a bustling center of commerce, an easy place for sellers from Earth and Nova as well as colonies in the Hegemony and the Federation to set up shop. Those who didn't use the station ran goods through it on their way to the surface in cities such as Jefith and Ulith. Since the war though, Terran merchants have returned to their homes and the stream of Novan goods has dried up. Many Novans have been stranded here since the invasion of their home, and with Terran, Novan and Federation fleets still active, it doesn't look like they'll be heading home before the war lets up.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) How is industry on Yvar changed since the declaration of war?

GOMARIZH: (translated) Several industries are feeling manpower shortages right now because of the rapid army expansion that Governor Agmarith has enacted in response to the threat of Terran invasion. A lot of local businesses are also starting to suffer since the cutoff of Terran civilian traffic; the last Terran merchants jumped back to Earth just a few hours ago. Hunting communities have started bringing larger catches into the cities to stockpile in the event of an invasion; one industry that has profited is the meat preservers. Novans have also begun stockpiling plant food supplies, which is for humans an essential dietary component. It seems that...wait, hold on a moment, I'm receiving a call...it's from the crew monitoring our observation satellite above the Southern continent. It sounds as if...the black ship has entered the Yveran system and is closing on Yvar.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) The black ship is there?

GOMARIZH: (translated) Yes, we have confirmation, the ship matches the profile of the Zaha-Katchem warship. We don't have a clear image on the visual spectrum at the moment, but according to our sensors, it matches the ship seen in orbit above Earth and in combat in Proxima. The military is responding to its presence now.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) Can you describe what the ship is doing, Gomarizh?

GOMARIZH: (translated) The black ship is approaching at high speed from the approximate direction of the Novan Alliance. It appears to be on a direct course to Yvar and is most likely approaching on momentum alone. No weapon systems seem to have been activated so far. It sounds as if Yvar defense grids are coming operational, and the planetary command center is preparing to launch tactical warheads. Lazh, these warheads have so far proven ineffective against this ship, so it isn't likely that...hold on, we're receiving a broadcast from the planetary government telling everybody to seek sheltered areas in the event of bombardment from orbit. Civilians aboard the station are being advised to disembark and prepare to jump out of Yveran into the nearest Federation controlled system. I'm being told now that...yes, the YCC has launched tactical warheads at the black ship, time to intercept one minute. The black ship is approaching at constant velocity and appears to be ignoring the warheads. The jump gate is charging as we speak and a few civilian ships in orbit are preparing to make the jump to Rizheran. In fact, the ship actually appears to be accelerating on a direct course towards the civilian vessels. I don't know if they'll be able to jump out in time.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated)What sort of ships are there?

GOMARIZH: (translated) Almost a dozen ships are waiting for jump, most of them fuel tankers from offworld and supply ships under Gramek Corp. charters. One is an old population transport that has been in service with the FGED since early expansion projects began. One or two small private starships are also waiting for jump, and a couple shuttles are coming from the surface and Holara Station. Lazh, it's unlikely that the small ships will be able to withstand the gravimetric sheer forces from high warp, but they are willing to take the risk it seems; a lot of people around the Federation have heard about the devastation caused by this ship in the battle at Nova, and no one wants to risk a repeat of what happened there.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) What is the YCC advising for civilians to do?

GOMARIZH: (translated) Lazh, at the moment, there just isn't much that civilians can do except for get into bombardment shelters and pray for the best. The YCC is advising everybody to get into secure shelters just in case; nobody knows exactly what the Zaha-Katchem bombardment capabilities are, but if they are anything like their combat capabilities in space, they are likely to be formidable. I'm being told now that we are now able to show a visual of the black ship as it makes its approach to the Yvar colony. That will be displayed on the screen as we speak. As you can see, it is making its approach at high speeds and the missiles from the YCC are inbound but have not intercepted yet and...oh my.

LAZHMARIZH: (translated) Gomarizh, can you tell us what that red light was?

GOMARIZH: (translated) I'm not sure, but...it seems to be targeted at the jump gate. It seems to be a continuous beam, and...it appears to have cut through the gate's outer hull. There's a lot of damage already, and it's getting worse. It looks like the habitat ring has been breached