Battles Unfought by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Takahashi took up the tale from there – the sensitive data, the extraction mission gone wrong, the hijacking of the station.

He was about finished when a new noise, louder than the competing sirens, blared up. A voice – the Broker’s voice – boomed out.

“Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of the so-called free Union. You vassals, slaves, captives, and coerced member states. I interrupt this broadcast to bring you – the future.”

“What the hell?” Kalandri demanded.

“What is that?” Maggie asked.

“The television,” Kalandri said. “A – weird guy. Not quite real looking. He – he’s on the screen.”

“The Broker,” Ria guessed.

The voice droned on as people talked. The dawning of a new day, a new era. True freedom, freedom from worry, from corruption, from abuse.

“Shut it off,” Takahashi ordered.

Kereli moved a few paces, and tapped a surface that came across only as a black blur to us. A security measure on the admiral’s end, I knew, filtering out any details of his office from a holocall – details that, much like his own console, might contain sensitive data.

Her tapping grew increasingly more agitated. “I can’t. It’s not working.”

At that moment, someone rapped agitatedly on the door. Takahashi glanced up, shouting in a brusque tone, “Enter.”

“Sir,” a boyish voice whose speaker stood out of range of the projection called, “there’s a priority one broadcast on all the screens. It seems – it seems to be Union wide, on every channel. We can’t shut it off.”

Takahashi barked a few questions at the young man, who answered in a timid voice. The gist of this conversation was that the messenger knew nothing at all beyond what he’d already said – that the broadcast seemed to have overrun every public channel, and all the private ones he’d seen too.

I took all of this in while also trying to catch what I could of the Broker’s message. It seemed to be equal parts manifesto and declaration of authority over the Union.

The system, the Broker said, was irretrievably broken – not a free confederation of willing member states, but a corrupt, tyrannical, brutal and coercive force that compelled obedience under the guise of freedom.

Somewhat to my surprise, the Broker did not promise his own version of political freedom. On the contrary, he openly and brazenly declared the Union and all its member states, its kings and elected governments alike, subject to his authority.

Only then, in the freedom of truth, relieved of the worries of political intrigue, warmongering, organic machinations, would people of every race and creed truly find a real freedom.

“The only freedom organics can know: to live their lives without pretense, without the veneer of artificial and impossible political systems. In truth and honor, in simple obedience and the vast rewards it brings.”

It sounded like the sort of thing someone would find left behind after a terrorist attack, I thought. It took me a moment to realize that this wasn’t like a terrorist attack.

It was a terrorist attack. Not the attack of someone who meant to die to make their point, as often was the case, but a terrorist all the same.

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