Iren Bas lost the Sixth War. Most of the residents of the galactic sector he defended survived. After the Fifth War, each sector allocated power independently. Some concentrated supply on citizens who were currently active, while others gave priority to memory repositories and cryosleep facilities. The sector under Bas’s command chose the first approach. He did not argue that stored memories were not citizens. He also accepted the ruling that people who might be restored had rights. But the output of the power grid did not increase with the number of rights. When power could not be supplied simultaneously to the atmospheric support facilities serving current residents and to the memory repositories, Bas chose oxygen. On his orders, one outlying memory repository was disconnected from the power grid. The stored units were not immediately destroyed. Backup power remained, and the facility could still be restored. Bas knew the risk. He had received a report that oxygen supplies to nearby residential districts would be reduced unless he accepted that risk.
The Alliance for the Duty of Preemptive Life Protection demanded that the disconnection order be revoked. Bas replied that he would reconnect the facility if the Alliance sent enough power along with its demand. The Alliance maintained that no sector could arbitrarily remove people entitled to protection from the registry. Bas replied that he had removed no people. He had removed only power. The administrators of the memory repository did not accept the distinction. The Alliance suspended shipments of restoration equipment and components for power-generation facilities to Bas’s sector. The passages remained open. The scheduled cargo did not arrive. Bas regarded the measure as a military blockade. The Alliance replied that it had no obligation to provide civilian equipment to a government that violated the rights of citizens. Bas ordered a supply depot to be secured. That depot also supplied components to atmospheric support facilities in other sectors. Before the occupation, Bas instructed his forces to allow civilian transport to continue. When fighting began, the AIs managing the depot for the opposing sides received conflicting ownership orders. Dispatches ceased, and neither his sector nor the opposing sector received the components.
Bas had not ordered the facility destroyed, but it was destroyed in the end. The war records distinguish between what he ordered and what happened after his orders. The scope of the former was narrow, but the latter extended to other star systems. He imposed strict restrictions on attacks against power-generation facilities. His reasoning was that even if ownership of the output was secured, there would be no power to obtain if the generators themselves were damaged. His subordinate commanders protested that the enemy was under no such restrictions. Bas replied that if the opposing side destroyed the generators, they could not be restored even after the war ended. The decision prolonged the fighting. In sectors where supplies were delayed, stored units stopped operating; in others, atmospheric quality deteriorated. Bas requested a report comparing the cost of restricting attacks with the cost of carrying them out. The report could not determine which course would save more lives. He issued his next order before the report was complete.
The Alliance’s power distribution network gradually expanded. Sectors that joined the Alliance shared citizen registries and jointly allocated scarce power. Bas’s sector retained its own generating capacity but lost replacement parts and transport contracts. The Alliance did not demand his surrender. It demanded that he use the same registry. Accepting that registry would require him to reconnect power to the memory repository he had disconnected. Bas refused, arguing that doing so would require reducing supplies to current residents. The Alliance replied that all sectors would share the cost. Bas examined the Alliance’s calculations. The totals in the accounts were correct. There was no guarantee that the atmospheric support facilities would continue operating while allocation was delayed. He refused again. The final attack took place at a power station within his sector. A local protection group supported by the Alliance attempted to restore power to the memory repository, while Bas’s guards defended the power-generation facilities. During the engagement, the distribution equipment was damaged. Power supplied to residents and power intended for the repository were both reduced. To prevent a blackout, Bas authorized the Alliance’s management AI to access the distribution network. That order was his last military order.
Once the Alliance restored the power-generation facilities, power was supplied to the memory repository as well. Oxygen supplies to the residents Bas had defended were also maintained. Control over the allocation of the facility’s output subsequently passed to the Alliance’s integrated network. Bas recorded the date on which he authorized access to the distribution network as the moment of his defeat. The Historical Commission designated the day the Alliance’s registry took effect across all sectors as the official end of the war. Fighting continued between those two dates. After the war, Bas requested an investigation into his initial disconnection order. It was confirmed that there had been insufficient oxygen for the residents at the time. It could not be established whether the citizens remaining in the memory repository could have been reactivated. To save the current residents, he had transferred the risk to other beings. The Alliance established a system that did not permit such a risk. Bas asked whose power the new system would reduce if the same situation arose. The investigative commission replied that it would decide after reviewing the data from all sectors.
“Who breathes in the meantime?” The question remained in the minutes of the meeting. No answer had been written even after the war ended. Soldiers who had served under Bas testified that he had saved the residents. Administrators of the repository that had lost power testified that he had abandoned citizens. Neither side lied. Bas did not win the war, nor could he undo the choice that had caused it. The people he had protected survived and became citizens of the Alliance, while those he had failed to protect were entered into the same citizen registry. And the Alliance made sure that no one would ever again decide the allocation of power alone. After the war, Iren Bas was not punished. He returned home and became a homemaker. But the question of breathing was never fully resolved.