Ernest Van Smoot

General Ernest Van Smoot, often known as the Butcher of Atuar Sadiares, was the Tanari Confederation's National Security Advisor during the presidency of Silver Eachan.

Personality
Van Smoot was a man dedicated to warfare, utterly focused on his mission objectives and disinterested in any collateral damage that might result. While he generally shared their far-right, militaristic and racist beliefs, he was more pragmatic than most Allmanites, being willing to respect subordinates who were Shifters or who had more left-leaning political views if he believed them to be good soldiers who tried to serve the Tanari Confederation well.

History
During the Tanari War, Ernest Van Smoot was one of Edward Allman's top generals. In this capacity, he generally advocated softer policies on Shifters than was the norm for Allmanites, as while he still held the race in disdain, he nevertheless saw them as valuable soldiers.

As the war progressed, the Tanari Confederation gradually became convinced that the Terugan-owned Atuar Sadiares station was being used by the Malchiorians to smuggle weapons to be used against them. Van Smoot was sent to put an end to this alleged threat, and did so by attacking the station by surprise and sending in troops to take it sector by sector. This resulted in the massacre of thousands of civilians, which earned Van Smoot a reputation as 'The Butcher of Atuar Sadiares'.

After the war, Van Smoot was presumably pardoned by the newly-elected President Eachan, along with many other Allman-era war criminals, and by 7 AR he had been named National Security Advisor to the President. At some point during this period, he also set up several secret bank accounts in the Arcadian Federation and several other alien territories in order to hide some ill-gotten gains, something that would come back to bite him later.

A month before the events of Resurgence, he was kidnapped by Richard Branley and Vladimir Terrón's cell of Shifter Radicals, who had him replaced with a spy as part of a plot to destabilise the Tanari government by revealing embarrassing state secrets. Van Smoot was kept locked up in the derelict resort Richard's organisation used as a base for over a month, until he was joined by the mercenaries Ashton Carney, Amanda Warren and Pes, who had been broken out of prison as part of the same plot. While Ashton, whose friends Amy and Nikolai Mikurin had lived on Atuar Sadiares and were presumed dead following the massacre, was reluctant, Van Smoot and the mercenaries ended up joining forces to escape their captors. This ended with them being pinned down by gunfire in the lobby of the resort's hotel, and Van Smoot suggested starting a fire to cover their escape through the underground parking lot. Between this and the timely arrival of Aster and several other heavies from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, they were able to escape. Ashton and the MRF paramilitaries took turns mocking Van Smoot.

Aster soon returned Van Smoot to Eachan's employ, uncovering the Radical spy who had replaced him in the process, and demanded to know everything the President knew about Blackout in exchange for her silence on the whole affair. While the affair was particularly embarrassing for Van Smoot, it seemingly didn't damage his career at all, and Eachan soon named him his running mate, replacing the previous Vice President Peter North, in an attempt to appeal to voters who were nostalgic for the days of Allman.

When William Douglas Reed became Eachan's campaign manager, he and Van Smoot soon found they didn't like each other at all, Van Smoot seeing Reed as a 'dickless wonder' obsessed with opinion polls and uninterested in the practical results of his proposed policies. When Reed encouraged Eachan to promise regular background checks on Shifters serving in the military, as well as banning them from certain professions or buying weapons and cracking down on alleged 'political' hiring of them, Van Smoot argued this announcement, even if not implemented, would still heavily damage morale in the military at a critical time, but was overruled by Eachan. In turn, when Peter North leaked a report to Neil Donovan stating that Eachan's administration was considering reintroducing conscription, implementing restrictions on movement between colonies, and placing economic sanctions on colonies that introduced regulations on certain industries, Reed tried to blame Van Smoot for the leak.

When Sefer Yetzirah launched an offensive against the Free Systems Alliance following the destruction of the Narayanastra, Van Smoot began touring the frontline as part of his campaign. During this tour, he visited the warship David Galo, and was present on the bridge when it engaged and destroyed a Semovente-class battlecruiser. The captain of the Galo, Anna Luxon, was very annoyed by Van Smoot's presence, seeing him as a politician trying to take credit for her and her crew's victory. After Sylen Kurze tried to assassinate Eachan on Sefer's orders, and Reed took advantage of the power vacuum to launch a coup with the assistance of Kinsler and Blair Morrison, Van Smoot cut his tour short and returned to Tanari Prime on board his customised corvette, the Raptor One. Upon realising that a trap had been set for him and that Reed was accusing him of being the one who was staging a coup, he summoned a fighter squadron to engage Reed's forces over Lyndon City. However, the battle caused a great deal of collateral damage, and Van Smoot was blamed for most of it, instantly lending credibility to Reed's allegations. Van Smoot tried to fight on regardless, only for Shae Eachan, who had been presumed dead in the wake of Kurze's assassination attempt, to reveal that he and many other Eachan Administration officials had taken bribes in exchange for aiding particular corporations, and had stashed some of the resulting assets away in jurisdictions that were now part of the New Order, and for Timothy Morgan Veidt to arrive in orbit of Tanari Prime with his fleet and endorse Reed's coup. Knowing the Raptor One could not take on Veidt's entire fleet, Van Smoot fled the scene, but pledged that he would return.

Van Smoot then rendezvoused with the David Galo, whose captain had shown openness to discussing setting up a resistance movement with him. However, when he arrived, Anna Luxon suddenly cut their conversation short, and then revealed that she had not arrived alone, but with a fleet of other renegade Tanari ships in tow. She then began broadcasting a speech to the entire galaxy, proclaiming the creation of the Free Tanari Army, a force which, she claimed, would stand against both the New Order and the new 'National Continuance Front' that had taken over Tanari Prime and seek to restore democracy to the Confederation. While Van Smoot was at first equal parts stunned and pleased by this development, Luxon then proceeded to explain that, while the FTA opposed the new regime, it had no intention of restoring the previous one either. After denouncing the collateral damage Van Smoot's forces had caused during the Battle of Lyndon City and listing a litany of the Eachan Administration's failures and misdeeds, she proclaimed that, in light of there being no legitimate government to restore, the Tanari Confederation and the Confederate Armed Forces no longer existed, and that all those claiming to be their inheritors would be considered 'pirates at best, and traitors at worst' by the FTA until a democratic government genuinely representing the Tanari people was recreated. To underline her point, the Galo suddenly opened fire on the Raptor One, destroying the ship's bridge and publicly executing the confused Van Smoot.