Jason studied the reports with growing unease. Word of unauthorized military suppression against protesters on frontier worlds. Secret facilities commandeered for "internal security projects." Suicides and disappearances of officials asking inconvenient questions.
The pattern was ominous but clear - Nyra was rapidly undermining democracy and consolidating personal power. Lakri's trusted agents confirmed Fleet Admiral Zel, former rival to Nyra, had fled with his family overnight to escape arrest over unspecified "disloyalty."
"First dissenters vanish, then even loyal opposition becomes suspect," Jason told Lakri gravely. "This path leads only to tyranny masking as order. Nyra must be made to see reason before it is too late."
But Lakri shook his head sadly. "I fear she is too drunk on power now to accept counsel. Your past friendship blinds you to her unchecked ambition."
Jason refused to accept that. "There must be some way to make her listen and reverse this trend. Perhaps the Congress can force a confidence measure and new elections."
"She will only see that as open provocation and tighten her grip," Lakri said. "But we cannot stand idle while liberties erode daily. I will ready my agents for contingencies."
Jason spent long hours soul-searching for an answer that prevented further escalation. If he recalibrated certain fleet deployments, it might check Nyra's ad hoc authoritarian measures. But these games of veiled power were not his strengths.
When careful diplomacy failed yet again to moderate Nyra's militancy, Jason agreed to Lakri's proposal for coordinated mass protests. Lending his name would signal broader unease and urge peaceful reforms.
But their calls for transparency were met only with riot police and censorship. Legislators who spoke out were jailed as "foreign conspirators." Nonviolent demonstrators disappeared into detainment facilities.
Still Jason cautioned patience, desperate to walk back from the brink. "Oppression feeds only chaos. We must remain a light in darkness." But public anger was reaching fever pitch.
When protest escalated again, Lakri received word that Nyra was moving additional loyalist regiments into the capital against Jason's express orders. She was accelerating consolidation of military power while avoiding impeachment by stalling Congress with procedural tactics.
"This lawlessness cannot stand if we are to remain a democracy," Lakri urged. "You must strip Nyra of command immediately before she entrenches further."
But Jason only stared down silently as chaos swept city streets below. He had feared from the day they met Nyra's hunger for power might corrupt her. Now hisfailure may have doomed the Federation dream to slow death under iron rule. Always tyranny crept back under guises new...
"There will be no coup or exacting authority," Jason decided gravely. "I will dissolve Congress and call immediate emergency elections instead."
Lakri gaped in dismay. "The constitutions grants that power only under imminent invasion, not politics..."
But Jason's expression was resolute. "Then we must have faith justice and conscience still stir in our citizens' hearts, if granted a choice."
Even Lakri's agents wavered at implementing such a drastic step, but Jason commanded as Supreme Admiral, for now. The die was cast, and events must unfold as they willed. He prayed this gamble might halt the march to darkness.
When word came of Jason's stunning announcement, Nyra was reportedly livid, threatening him and Lakri with arrest. But Federalist officers had secured communications and Congress. Democracy's last light still flickered, braving the storm winds of tyranny.
Around Nova Corinth, the stunned citizenry reacted cautiously to their unexpected chance at self-determination again after so many compromises of freedom in the name of security and expansion.
Some whispered Jason had gone too far and risked catastrophic instability. But others flew flags and defiantly celebrated the opportunity for national rebirth after so much corrosion of values under pressure and fear.
In the weeks of debate ahead, Jason implored crowds that thronged his balcony to choose idealism's diffcult path yet again. "In darkness, more ideals, not less, light the way." Their passion rekindled his battered hope.
But Jason knew Nyra's loyalists would stop at nothing to sabotage the vote for their leader. cancelling elections was not in demagogues' nature. Her state media smeared the election as foreign subversion while police disrupted opposition rallies.
After the brutal crackdown on a peaceful student march, Jason realized he could no longer stand by during this illegal repression. He ordered Federalist forces to arrest Nyra and her interior ministry cronies.
"She has betrayed her oaths time and again," Jason told a solemn emergency Congress session. "We must now put law and conscience before the passions of any individual, no matter how powerful."
But if Jason expected his old comrades to support this difficult stand unanimously, he was gravely mistaken. Factions in the Admiralty and Congress had aligned themselves with Nyra's authoritarian bear-the-burden militancy. Jason's naive idealism threatened their status and security bought through liberty's compromise.
The day federal marshals moved on Interior Ministry headquarters, Nyra's loyalist divisions blockaded the city in counter-coup. Jason's desperate broadcast ordering them to stand down went unheeded. Civil war loomed.
Lakri implored Jason to accept a compromise transitional government, fearing bloody chaos otherwise. But Jason refused reward for treason. "We must stand fast, old friend. Right makes might still, in people's hearts if not armies."
On the Capitol steps, surrounded by federalist holdouts, Jason knelt in final prayer as Nyra's forces encircled the besieged district. Here his stand ended today, regardless of consequences. He had failed their future. Forgive him...
But no rending explosions or gunfire shattered the eerie standoff as Jason awaited oblivion. Only shocked cries echoed from somewhere beyond sight. He rose weakly to investigate...
In the streets, Nyra's soldiers lay sprawled unconscious, with Lakri's agents quietly disabling the last pockets of resistance. "You were right about needing fangs to defend ideals sometimes," the spymaster said solemnly. "My network remains at your service, old friend."
Together, Jason and Lakri enacted deep reforms while Nyra stewed impotently under house arrest. By appealing to conscience and the masses' desire for change, democracy prevailed battered but alive. The tree of liberty was refreshed, for now.
But Jason took no joy from Nyra's downfall, only sadness for bright ideals betrayed. Power's temptation lurked within even the best souls. Eternal vigilance was the price of freedom.
Some in the admiralty called for Nyra's head, but Jason refused. Punishing misguided acts never healed deeper divisions. The people would judge her legacy, not mobs. She had chosen darkness, but light endured if kept kindled in love's service. That was the Federation's enduring dream.
With Lakri's help, Jason guided rapid reconciliation and elections, cementing real prosperity built on liberty, not just undisciplined expansion. Freedom untended risked only entropy's advance.
There after, Jason's public appearances drew reverent crowds, eager for absolution after society's failures weighed conscience. But Jason remained only an imperfect servant of ideals greater than frail beings. Their resilient hope despite darkness gave his struggle meaning.
And those hopes would be tested in the epoch ahead, as new threats arose to fill power's abhorred vacuum, and human frailties placed civilization's future perpetually at risk. But come what may in the times beyond, Jason had helped write stubborn freedom's opening verse in starlight. The rest awaited other dreamers in eras far beyond, who dared trust wisdom's guidance and imagined life deserving beyond fear's walls. Perhaps their world might yet see day...
So Jason fade from acclaim and remembrance, a mere kindling spark against oblivion's night; content he kept faith when put to history's test. Now weary, he surrendered posterity's judgment to youth who lived the unwritten tomorrow. For them star sea stretched on without end or charted shoal, and over horizons past sight, hopes remained unfurled... when courage raised its tattered sails boldly again, however oft battered, to fly as if darkness never ruled the waves.