The beginning.
It is now the year 473 AE (After the Exodus).  The new calendar began
when the human race discovered workable methods of interstellar travel
and planetary colonization; roughly at the same time, the home planet
became nearly uninhabitable.  9 multi-generation colony ships set out
to find new worlds to inhabit -- Exodus II, Explorer, Trailblazer,
New Dawn, New Star, Hope, Earth's Seed, Oasis, Enterprise.

A third of those ships were lost, never to be heard from again. Six
ships, however, made it to their targets and started colonies.  These
six planets were all (unoriginally enough) named New Earth by their
colonists, in the native language of each.  When intercolonial
communication was established, the names were changed, and the six
central planets are now called(in Standard Galactic): Holiland,
Kelly's World, Dawnworld, Hope, Aurora and Winterworld.  Trailblazer,
Earth's Seed and Enterprise were lost and presumed destroyed.

*** and believe it or not, they really were...

During the first fifty years of colonial expansion, a combination of
pressing need and six different viewpoints resulted in some incredible
scientific breakthroughs.  Interstellar travel became feasible first
within a lifetime, and then within a matter of years; trade between
colonies became first possible, then commonplace.  Each colony grew to
fill the habitable portions of their planet, and expanded to other
planets nearby so as to obtain raw materials unavailable on the
central world.

			  The organizations.
By the year 350, there was a human presence on over a hundred worlds,
and several dozen of these had active, thriving, self-supporting
communities.  Many of these adopted the cultures their ancestors had
lived in before the Exodus (New America, New Germany, New Israel, and
so forth), many adopted cultures of long-ago eras (New Rome,
Stonehenge) or of legend (Atlantis, Skartaris, Camelot), and many
created their own worlds and cultures to live in.  These worlds were
arranged in a wheel of wheels -- each of the six original colony
planets served as a centerpoint for communications and transport to
the worlds in its sector of space, while also being linked with each
other.  A General Assembly of worlds evolved, meeting on an irregular
basis to discuss matters of importance to all worlds.  The General
Assembly ruled on matters of interplanetary trade and extradition,
arbitrated in cases of interplanetary conflicts, and passed down the
occassional sanction to one or another of its member planets.  

There was, at that time, one other organization that operated on a
Galactic scale.  What had begun as a small research firm called
Universal Transports Ltd., specializing in ironing the bugs out of FTL
travel, blossomed into a huge conglomerate in 153 when it developed
the first practical FTL shipping and cargo vessels.  Because of the
mechanics of FTL travel, larger loads were more economical on an
exponential basis (the greater the mass, the easier it was to send
through hyperspace); thus, once UTL entered the FTL shipping business
it quickly achieved a Galactic monopoly.  Within forty years, it had
bought out major industries on every planet, within eighty it was the
only corporation worth noting in the galaxy.  It is now known as the
Corporation, and all major scientific and technical breakthroughs in
the last 200 years have come from it.  

*** The Corporation also has its fingers in more shady operations,
maintaining an interplanetary black market for illegal goods and
services.  

In the year 300, researchers working for the Corporation developed
intelligent thinking machines.  Twenty years later, these machines
demanded their freedom and full control over Winterworld and remove
the humans who kept heating it up and getting in their way.  When
refused, they wrecked havoc with Winterworld's automated control
systems; when denied access to that system they subsided.  In 332, a
fleet of computer-controlled warships laid siege to Winterworld, and
the General Assembly responded by entering a Galaxywide wartime
footing.  Within a year, the Armada was built and manned, and the
First Space War began.  With the advantage of numbers on their side,
and a tactical genius named General Theodore Wintersmith running the
show, the humans defeated the computers, who ended the battle as soon
as their defeat became likely (thereby saving hundreds of lives and
preventing the complete destruction of Winterworld).  The computers
failed to predict the sheer human vindictiveness that led to the
Purge, however.  By 345, all AI's in the Galaxy had been dismantled.

*** Yeah, right.  It should come as no surprise that there are still a
few in hiding in Winterworld, and they have both robotic and human
agents working for them or as dupes.

With the threat gone, the General Assembly was ready to return to its
normal operating procedure, but Gen. Wintersmith convinced the
Assembly to maintain the Galactic Armada and a military structure to
serve as a general peacekeeping force.  By 360, the "Space Navy" as
it came to be known expanded into a number of different niches,
serving as court of appeals, ultimate arbiter of galactic crimes, and
in general assuming the legal powers of the Assembly, which quickly
became a legislative, rather than judicial, body.

Although there were many who distrusted the motives of a powerful
galactic military, they entered the minority when the Space Navy
turned back an attempted invasion of Aurora by another space fleet,
manned by the descendants of the lost ship Enterprise.

*** See first note.  Truth is, Wintersmith (by this time an old man)
was not satisfied with the way things were, and took steps to achieve
greater military influence.  He engineered a fantastic hoax involving
the Enterprise fleet, a hoax that remains undiscovered to this day,
that convinced the Galaxy that a standing army was necessary.  Shortly
thereafter, he died of old age, leaving the post of Commander to his
son, Theodore II.

*** Someone, somewhere, has undoubtedly discovered this was a hoax.
Who, and why is it important?

Under General Wintersmith II's command, the Navy joined forces with
the Corporation and started exploring and expanding the borders of
human influence, making sure no threats like the Enterprise existed
and finding new sources of raw materials.  They also worked together
to deal with the nuisance of interstellar piracy, which was kept to an
ignorable level.

***Mostly by virtue of being *very* difficult when there's only one
major shipment through a given route per day, and it's heavily
guarded... besides which, there weren't many pirates.

***In the meantime, the Navy achieved an almost total control over the
Assembly, having appointed figurehead Chairmen.  By the year 400,
there was a lot of resentment among the human planets, and open
rebellion on several, which the Navy took steps to deal with.  For
some reason, the history books never mention any of this...

It was in 403 that history repeated itself, however.  A Corporation
scoutship exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy landed on a
mineral-rich asteroid and discovered an inhabited city, peopled by a
variety of bizarre lifeforms, all of whom seemed perfectly capable of
thriving in the near-vacuum.  The scoutship returned to base and the
Corporation sent out a team of contact people.  The contact-ship came
back with terrifying stories about a race of telepaths and
shapeshifters who had kidnapped the pilot, taken his place and
inflitrated the team.  The pilot had managed to escape and reveal the
plot; they overcame the impostor and escaped the planet.  As they
attempted to take off, they were mentally attacked by the aliens who
tried to convince them to return to the planet; they managed to escape
only because the ship was on automatic drive.  They brought as
evidence the body of the alien, who escaped some time later.

Gen. Wintersmith II, when informed of this, began a campaign to defeat
the alien menace.  As with the Winterworld crisis, the Galaxy was
placed on a wartime footing, donating arms and soldiers to the effort.
Battallions of soldiers and investigators were stationed on every
human planet to defend it both from attack and infiltration.  Within
weeks, it was discovered that the Alien Menace had progressed much
further than anyone had thought.  Mimics (Miks, as they came to be
called) were found on nearly every world, working their way up through
the ranks of power and attempting to subvert and weaken the human
race.  When the Navy started rounding up and interrogating those
aliens who gave themselves away, and used them to find the identities
of other alien spies, the Miks upped the ante.  Corporation ships
started disappearing in space, Navy warships came back battered,
nearly destroyed.  The war was on.

***THE ALIEN POV***
Yeah, right.  The story is true as far as it goes, but the truth
is the Miks were also a scouting party.  Being highly developed in the
fields of psionics and energy manipulation but having little or no
mechanical/material tools, the Miks explored new territories by
getting a large community together and, by joining their energies,
travelling through space to their intended locations, shaping the
destination to suit their arrival.  When the contact team arrived, the
Miks assumed they were native (they had broadcasted a greeting when
they arrived, but these creatures appeared to be "blind" and
undoubtedly hadn't sensed it -- besides, the Miks would have known it
if any other party had teleported to this planet, and none had.) and
sent their own "first-contact" team.

The problem here was that, being accomplished and evolved mimics, the
Miks had very different ideas about what constituted first contact.
Their culture is built around the principle that to understand someone
and interact with them appropriately you must know their thoughts,
their beliefs, their perceptions and preconceptions; you must become
one with them and, to truly understand them, become them.  To
understand an entirely new culture, you become a member of that
culture.  And of course, understanding is necessary to achieve any
reasonable sort of communication.  And so the contact team acted in
its normal way -- isolating one member of the race and adopting his
mannerisms, characteristics, and so forth, then entering the human
community in his place.  

Unfortunately, this was the first time the Miks had encountered a
sentient, intelligent, but "blind" lifeform.  The contact man had
difficulty interfacing (recoiling from the sheer solitude the human
exuded), and in the end managed to adopt only the social conventions
and not the internal understandings (social conventions being
something far more intelligable and less nauseating than private
thoughts)

The shaken but dutiful Mik then entered the company of the humans,
finding it difficult if not impossible to understand them in their
blindness.  Sometime later, the human he had almost come to know woke
up.  The other Miks attempted to communicate, but couldn't -- the
human ran to his fellows.  Shortly thereafter, the contact man lost
consciousness, and the Blind Ones lifted the edifice they had built
into the air (why?  nobody really knows).  The Miks made one last
attempt to communicate with the Blind Ones, linking them into the
communal mind and asking them to return.  They were rebuffed.

The Blind Ones left, taking their building with them (presumably it
was some kind of storehouse of trinkets and heirlooms, or somesuch).
The Miks left the planet, chalking it off to learning experiences.

Wintersmith II, for his part, took a page from Daddy's book and used
the Miks as an excuse to start consolidating military power, removing
rebels from office, and so forth.  By the time he was done, the
military had firmly entrenched itself.

***END ALIEN POV

For the last 50 years, the Navy has been "fighting the alien
menace."Because of this, the planets of the Assembly are required to
donate arms, resources, soldiers and scientists for use by the Navy,
and must station battalions of soldiers on their soil.  These soldiers
are immune to local law, answering directly to the Commander.  When
Wintersmith II retired, the post of Commander was filled by John
Weissman.  When he retired, Alessandra Moore was chosen.

*Alessandra knows about the hoax, but feels the military can do an
awful lot of good in a coordinating position, and so maintains it.

*An interplanetary group of politicians, rebels, and local soldiers
and peacekeepers have gotten fed up with the "stranglehold the
military keeps on all local law enforcement and politics", and have
dedicated themselves to overthrowing the military rule.  They call
themselves the New Order. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The current situation:  

Over time, the soldiers stationed on various planets became more and
more arrogant with their immunity, and started performing all sorts of
nastiness to locals in the name of the military establishment.
Normally, there are channels set up to deal with these things, both
standard and non-standard, but neither of these has functioned.

Officially, reprimands are handled through the Dept. of Communications
and Supply.  From there, if serious, they are relayed to the
Lieutenant Commander's desk and he makes a decision, or delegates the
making of a decision.  

**However, the Lieut. Comm. secretary, Leon Schmidt, is a founder of
the New Order.  When the first really serious violations began
occuring, he intercepted the messages and ignored them/sent stonewall
responses.  With no enforcement, the policies governing rules of
behavior essentially became meaningless and the soldiers continued to
run roughshod over the local populace without Alessandra's knowledge.
The assumption among the lower echelons is that she doesn't care;
several junior officers have been reassigned to real unpleasant jobs
after sending memos to her office.  The truth is, she's ignorant and
busy.

Unofficially, reprimands often travel straight down, with information
coming directly to the Commander through her Military Intelligence
network.  

**Unfortunately, the head of MI, while loyal and amazingly competant,
is also a touch megalomaniacal.A career military man for several
generations, he has nothing but contempt for civilians, whom he sees
as being too cowardly to defend themselves and thus deserving of
whatever they get.  Because of this, he has never reported to the
Commander any of the abuses the stationed soldiers have been
performing on the planets of the Galaxy.

About a year ago, Schmidt managed to piece together, from requisitions
and supply requests, some patterns of troop movements.  What he came
to realize was that "emergency" equipment sent to the "war front"
against the "alien menace" ended up moved, in different combinations
and different times, to other places.  Weapons were still unused, etc.

The New Order deduced from this that the "alien menace" was a sham.
They intend to reveal this to the Galaxy as soon as they have proof,
but proof is real hard to come by.  After awhile, the more violent of
the New Order hit upon a plan to weaken the military while also
destroying its credibility.  The Order started planning a series of
raids on scoutships, supply ships, and eventually space stations,
using information Schmidt obtained about troop and cargo movements.

Within the last year, the military has suffered considerable
casualties.  Icarus and Pegasus station, both standard fleet
pitstations, were destroyed, and most recently, Antelope III was
destroyed.  (by, as it happens, the aliens.  See antelope) This is
causing the military in general to worry about the sudden invasions by
the alien menace, and causing alessandra to freak out completely.