Chapter 11 - Friends in Low Places

Elijah 6.

Now, this was flying. The initial jump into hyperspace had been thrilling, in part because of how incomprehensibly fast they were traveling, even compared to normal FTL speeds, and partly because of how differently the mechanics of the hyperspace engine worked compared to Imperium ships. Or to the technology of any other species he had heard of, for that matter.

He had always imagined piloting to be done in one of two ways: in a strike craft or a smaller ship, using a flight stick, or in a larger vessel using console-entered updates to change the ship's speed or heading. But this... this was like nothing he had ever conceived of. He was flying with his mind.

The uplink to the ship through the interface helmet was a revelation. He 'felt' the ship around him. The sensors were his eyes and ears; the engines were his beating heart, and the weapons were the might of his arms. They were merged in a way he had never even considered to be possible, and yet a small part of him instinctively knew that this is how it was always meant to be.

Traveling through the cosmos wasn't only meant to be a journey; it was meant to be an experience. And he was experiencing it all. He just sat in the command seat on the bridge of the Atlas, a gentle, happy smile on his face, and his eyes, although open, were barely taking in the room surrounding him. He was the ship, the ship was him, and he was flying. He felt so much bigger, not in respect of the fact that he was, theoretically speaking, now a twenty-four-kilometer-long ship, but because his sensors let his mind reach out for lightyears in every direction at once. He studied the internal properties of a comet, so far away that it would take an average civilian ship thirteen hours at hyperspace to reach. He marveled at the swirling patterns of color and light of a passing nebula, then let his 'eyes' wander over the magnetic waves and radioactive particles as they danced throughout it. He watched a planet for a few minutes as it raced past, studying the primitive, marsupial-like lifeforms on there who may one day grow to be the dominant species of that world and maybe evolve - in tens of thousands of years - to a point where they could join the rest of the galaxy in exploring the cosmos. He watched in awe and in wonder as the Atlas raced through the majesty of space.

It was more beautiful than anything he could ever hope to have imagined before. He was so small; the Atlas was so small; humanity was so small, yet all of them were part of a greater whole. An imperceptibly tiny cog in the mechanism of the enormous pocket watch of the Universe. Tiny, yes, but far from inconsequential.

Mostly, though, he delighted in the tiny vibrations through the hull as they passed the edges of a nearby gravity well or the magnetism of a passing asteroid field, the gentle swaying motion as the massive ship swayed and weaved with gentle precision between stars and flowed on the currents of fading solar winds. It was like being on a sailing ship in Earth's ancient past, feeling the Atlas moving with the waves, rocking in the wind, and traveling with the tides and the currents. Flying, he now knew, was not a mechanical series of commands plotted to get you from A to B but was an organic melding of technology with space and time. He was a bird on the wing, not flying in a straight line just to get somewhere; he was traveling; it was the epitome of the school of thought that said life - or in this case, hyperspace travel - was as much about the journey as it was about the destination.

And Elijah was quickly falling in love with the journey.

"You've got that weird smile on your face again," Laura said from the bridge. He hadn't even noticed her coming in.

"If you could see and feel what I am, I'm pretty sure you would be smiling, too," he chuckled as he reluctantly pulled his mind back to the confines of the room around him. She was smirking teasingly at him from her perch next to one of the wall-lining terminals. As far as he could tell, she still couldn't read any of the information on its screen, but in something akin to a small child, she was more than happy to look at the pictures until she found a way to digest the rest. "Maybe you should give it a try sometime," he added, a playful smirk of his own.

She snorted out a laugh. "Oh yeah, how do you think that would go?"

"Your brain would probably melt out through your eyes," Elijah shrugged. "But you'd get an idea of why I'm smiling." He chuckled at her eye-roll before he glanced around the bridge. It was strange to think that this bridge, along with the rest of the massive ship, had once been a bustling hive of activity, but now it was just the two of them. Wu was off somewhere doing whatever Wu did when he wasn't around.

Laura walked over to join him at the central command module, her intrigue overriding her usual reserve. "I'll stick with my terminals for now," she quipped, "but maybe, one day, I'll take you up on that offer."

Elijah nodded, still coming down from the high of the neural interface. "Take all the time you need," he laughed before he turned back to the main view screen, his eyes taking on a philosophical hue that she still wasn't used to seeing from him.

The Atlas continued on, a silent behemoth cruising through the endless night, guided by sentient thought and propelled by forces that bridged impossibilities. Their journey through the cosmos was underway - it was the start of a new chapter in his life, one that he could feel in his bones - the dance between man and stars, human and machine, the tangible and the ethereal. They were voyagers on the greatest expedition of their lives, making history with every light-year. For the moment, the three of them seemed to be enjoying the moment; even Wu - wherever he was - had a spring in his step and a sparkle behind his eyes as he went about his business. But the time was soon approaching when the joys of this flight would be replaced with the seriousness of the work that had to be done. He returned his attention to the myriad of tasks at hand, the ship humming steadily under his care.

The Yrdian Nebula rested quite happily, as it had done since time immemorial, on the edge of what was now Imperium space. Within it, floating peacefully in the void's gentle embrace, was the Primus and the Mariner fleet that now controlled it. Wu had explained, somewhat briefly, what sorts of things could be garnered from the Mariners in return for their expertise in restarting the Primus's reactor core, and he imagined that Wu would return to the bridge before too long to explain the plan in more detail, they were only three hours away, though, so time was starting to run out.

Laura, for her part, was leaning her elbow against the headrest of her chair and gazing in an almost childlike look of wonder and awe out the main viewscreen. Elijah knew exactly what she was looking at and couldn't blame her for her wide-eyed transfixion. He had never seen anything quite like it either. During normal travel through hyperspace, when looking out the front of the ship, typically showed a tiny pinprick of brilliant white light, and from that single central point, a wave of light and color washed around the exterior of the ship, blinding its occupants to the sights beyond it. A brilliant point of luminescence that blossomed into a blinding radial bloom, obscuring the universe's grandeur to anyone trying to watch it.

Apparently, it would seem, Ancient technology worked on a slightly - vastly - different set of principles. Even though he had downloaded the entire working knowledge of the ship's technological abilities into his head, a veritable library of long-bequeathed knowledge from his forebears - the architects of everything he now controlled - in a way he was supposed to comprehend naturally, it was still hard for him to grasp. The entire database was in the Ancient language, which, in many cases, simply didn't translate. It was a lexicon devoid of anything recognizable as a written word, instead being made up of elaborate, intricate pictorial representations of ideas and concepts beyond human comprehension. So, trying to rationalize it in his mind using human language was simply not possible.

There was no pinprick of light before him; what he was seeing was something altogether different. A swirling vortex of distorted space, it was akin to a cosmic window onto creation's alchemy. What Elijah discerned as a current of shimmering space - he sort of knew - was, in truth, a pulsating maelstrom of space-time itself, a distortion as broad as the Atlas's robust frame. It radiated outwards in waves, distorting the view like heat warping the air above a summer road, then, in a heretical defiance of FTL tradition, it waned into translucence. The curtain of warped space, whether shifting beyond the reach of humanly visible light or truly disappearing, granted them a panoramic vista of the cosmos rushing by. The reason the Atlas traveled so fast was not just a product of its speed but also the fact that it was literally distorting itself around them.

It was pretty heady stuff.

There were still no streaking lines of stars, though. That wasn't how physics worked. But each star seemed to wobble slightly and change position. The light he was seeing from each distant star was the light that had reached his exact position after however long it had taken to travel there--billions upon billions of years in some cases--and it made the whole cosmos seem like a living, breathing, moving entity, roaming past the Atlas more than the Atlas was moving through it.

Most importantly, in that endless vista of silent, nomadic stars was the tiny but rapidly growing speck of light and color ahead of them: the Yridian Nebula.

"We will be arriving soon," Elijah murmured to Laura in a hushed voice, as if speaking normally would banish the beauty of the sights before them and dump them unceremoniously back into normal space.

"Hmm? Oh, right," she blinked and pulled her gaze away from the viewscreen. "I should, um... I don't know. Should I start getting my ship ready?"

"That depends on if you are leaving us, young lady," Wu's aged but still mischievous voice echoed around the bridge as he stepped onto it. Elijah didn't need to turn to know that teasing, knowing smile would be painted onto his lips.

"Wait, what?" Laura's eyebrows tried to look surprised, confused, and concerned all at once... and somehow succeeded.

"I don't know why you look so surprised," Wu shrugged as he walked past the two of them and dropped into the chair previously occupied by Laura. "Do you think I would have given you quarters if you were going to be ejected from the ship after only a few days? I imagine that the Mariners will want permanent representation on the Atlas, especially if they agree to our terms, and I thought - considering your interest in our little ship - that you'd quite like that person to be you."

Laura's face contorted even more. Elijah glanced up at her and smiled to himself before turning his eyes back toward their destination. Laura clearly wasn't a person used to being speechless, and her face now had excitement and trepidation added to the aforementioned shock and confusion. He had to admit, it was a pretty good look on her. Or at least an amusing one.

Elijah listened intently as Master Wu addressed Laura, a slight smile playing on his lips. He could see her conflicted emotions, the excitement and trepidation warring within her.

"So, you're saying I get to stay?" Laura asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

"Indeed, my dear," Wu replied, leaning back in the chair. "The Mariners would be foolish not to insist on one of their people aboard the Atlas; we will agree and insist that it is you. I can think of no one better suited for the task than you."

Elijah turned to face Laura, meeting her gaze. "Your knowledge and experience would be invaluable if we want the negotiations to go well." It was still amazing to him how quickly he shifted into Marshal mode when discussing anything remotely pertaining to strategy. Wu nodded in agreement. "The Mariners possess a wealth of information regarding ancient technology and artifacts. If we are to unlock the full potential of the Atlas, we will need their cooperation."

Elijah felt a sense of anticipation at the prospect of working alongside Laura. Her curiosity and adventurous spirit seemed to have already served her so far. The Atlas had been buried for eons, and she had found it first. That counted for a lot, considering nobody else alive knew it existed.

"But what exactly are you proposing?" Laura asked, her brow furrowed in contemplation. "What kind of 'terms' are we talking about?"

Wu leaned forward, his expression turning more serious. "The Mariners have discovered many relics from the Ancients over the years. Some are no doubt useless, others less so. We will need to see what they have before we can make that decision. But It is highly likely that the Primis will have other ships in its hangar, ships that the Mariners can't use. Taking possession of those would be non-negotiable. The simple fact of the matter is that they cant use any of it, so giving us what we want doesn't actually cost them anything. In exchange for these terms being met, we offer them a way of reactivating the Primis."

Elijah nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation. "The Primus is a powerful vessel, or it would be if the reactor core were active. At the moment, though, it's a glorified paperweight. We can change that for them. An alliance between us would be to both of our benefit."

Laura's eyes widened as the implications of their proposal dawned on her. "You're talking about a game-changer," she breathed, her voice tinged with awe. "If the Mariners agree to this, it could shift the balance of power in the entire region. The Mariners, we... we wouldn't need to run and hide anymore. This could be... huge!"

Wu inclined his head. "Precisely. The Imperium has grown complacent, relying on its superior numbers and technology to maintain its grip on the galaxy. With the Atlas and the Mariners working in concert, we may finally have a chance to break their stranglehold and bring true freedom to the people." His eyes sparkled again. "Not to mention a little overdue settling of old scores."

Elijah felt a surge of determination coursing through him. This was their chance to make a difference, to right the wrongs of the Imperium. It had been less than a day since he had learned exactly what those wrongs had been, but the determination burned strongly nonetheless

"So," Wu clapped his hands together as he focused his gaze on the Mariner woman. "Are you in?"

Laura seemed to think for a second before nodding. "Fuck it, let's do it."

Wu laughed. "Oh, I love it when you talk dirty."

********

Bethany. 7

Well, that was a whole pile of festering bullshit.

Those who had never had to navigate the vast and unforgiving vacuum often glossed over the intricacies of space travel, but for Bethany, the skill of piloting was more art than science. Each arrival and departure was an intricate dance, requiring a deft, delicate touch and an intuitive understanding of her vessel. The Long Haul had been her steadfast partner, responding to Bethany's commands as though it were an extension of her very being.

The journey to the Sol system unfolded with seamless precision, showcasing her prowess as the freighter and its three-ship military escort sliced through the cosmos, unhindered by the gravitational pulls and harsh radiation fields that lay in their path. The contract had promised her a substantial bonus if she managed to deliver the cargo early, and the Long Haul didn't disappoint, arriving a full three days before the two-week deadline.

The transition from the dark serenity of space to the bustling activity of the Sol system demanded all of Bethany's attention. She was no stranger to the obligatory inspections that followed each contract completion, especially to the Capital of the Imperium. However, nothing could have prepared her for the excessive scrutiny that her ship was subjected to this time around.

And she blamed Dick - or at least the shattered, frozen, space-drifting remains of him - for all of it.

Captain Smith harbored a reputation for being thorough, not that she had known that before her arrival. But as the commanding officer of the ISS Hendrix swept through the Long Haul's cargo with his heavily armed, guff-looking team, meticulously reviewing every corner of the ship, Bethany could sense a severity that went far beyond anything that could be called standard procedure. His watchful green eyes bore into every crevice, every potential hiding place, even after the logs had confirmed that nobody had been anywhere near the cargo during its transit.

The precious goods had been allowed off the ship and transported to the surface via shuttle, and it hadn't taken long for her computer to tell her that her bank was now flush with the credits of her payment. But that was where the good news ended. While the stasis pods and their unfortunate incumbents were handled delicately by the medical teams, whisked away to receive the care they so direly needed, Bethany faced a different kind of ordeal. She stood, arms crossed, a neutral mask concealing her inner infuriation as the marines dismantled parts of her beloved ship--a violation of her space that felt almost personal. Bulkhead panels were removed, conduits were pulled out into hallways, and scrutinizing eyes peered into the bowels of the ship's innards with such vigor that it felt like a violation.

Through the probing and the questioning, Bethany remained composed. Dick's betrayal had been a shit show of the greatest magnitude, but she was determined not to let it destroy her livelihood or her good name. Every corner of his quarters had been cleared of any incriminating evidence she could find--the aftermath still fresh in her waking thoughts, the echo of her forcefield activating, and the vacuum of space claiming him. It was a good thing she had cleared it, too. The vast majority of the search - or at least the initial parts of it - had been focused entirely on Dick's quarters and had turned the cabin upside down

As the Marines' investigation ransacked her ship, she could only cling to the hope that her thoroughness had matched theirs.

Two days vanished amidst this chaos, each moment stretching on, punctuated by relentless questioning. While Bethany was reassured of her non-suspect status, each repetitive interrogation cast an unspoken doubt over her integrity. With her sanity teetering from exhaustion, she was summoned for what she hoped would be the final time to face Captain Smith's interrogation.

Captain Smith's office aboard the ISS Hendrix resembled the captain himself--practical, no-nonsense, with an undercurrent of steely authority. The walls were uniform gunmetal gray, impervious, and unadorned, save for the standard insignia of the Imperium fleet emblazoned on the wall directly behind the desk - a constant reminder of the military might and order it represented.

The desk itself was a large, sturdy slab of utilitarian design made of metal that echoed the ship's exterior construction; its surface was meticulously organized and clutter-free. Only the essentials were placed on it: a secure holo-terminal for dispatches, a flat panel displaying the ship's vital statistics, and a pair of data pads containing the day's rotating security protocols. The absence of personal effects suggested a man who either held his private life close to his chest or simply didn't have one. She wasn't sure which was more likely.

Directly above the desk, a large viewport looked out into the void of space, a silent and constant companion. It was the one concession to the room that suggested a certain poetry behind the captain's strict demeanor. It afforded a breathtaking view of the starscape that could soothe the steeliest of hearts, assuming the man ever took a moment from his duties to actually look at it.

A series of flat screens arrayed on the remaining walls showed various feeds from around the ship, from the bridge to the engine room to the warren of busy hallways, a visual manifest of the captain's responsibility. Everything that kept the ISS Hendrix operational was at his fingertips, a command away from action.

Two rigid chairs were positioned in front of the desk, their design prioritizing function over comfort, fit for brief meetings and not long-drawn discussions. Overhead, the lighting was bright but not harsh, illuminating the space with a clinical clarity that left no corner in shadows--a metaphor for Captain Smith's own pursuit of truth and discipline within his domain. The core regions were his home, his kingdom to defend, and was the most prestigious of all postings within the Sys-Def fleets. As infuriating as this ordeal had been - all of it balanced on the undercurrent of repeated, seemingly hypocritical assurances about their lack of suspicion of her - she couldn't deny that Captain Smith was a man who knew how to do his job.

"Captain Jenson, please take a seat." He said without looking up from his terminal.

Bethany, her patience long past the point of being called tested, made no move toward the offered chair, her posture stiff, the resolve that had been her armor showing hints of wear as she defiantly stood her ground.

"I want to know what I'm doing here, Captain. You've got your answers. My ship's logs are clear, I've been vetted, and your men have been over every inch of the Long Haul. Inside and out. What more do you need?"

Captain Smith finally turned to face her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his desk, tenting his fingers, and looked at her. His hawkish gaze never wavered. "I want the truth, Miss Jenson. A captain is supposed to know everything that is going on on her ship, and she is responsible for the conduct of her crew. So a first mate mutinying and trying to kill his Captain is not only a rarity, it is a pretty significant red flag. In my experience, they only do that if compelled to do so by someone... or something." He paused, giving weight to his insinuation.

"You think I had a part in this?' The same bullshit that almost got me killed?"

Smith shook his head. "No, but I think you know who did. You've got to understand the position we are in. Dick was your right hand. People need to be assured that this was an isolated incident. Can you assure me of that, Captain Jenson? Can you assure me that whoever compelled Dick to act so out of character won't be a problem again?"

Bethany's green eyes blazed with indignation. Her breathing was steady but cold, hinting at her clamped-down fury. The Captain was very careful with his words, not outright accusing her or anyone else while still leaving it clear that he didn't believe he had the whole story. And that was enough to give her pause. To be fair, the Captain was right, uncannily so. He seemed to have been around the block a few times and spotted the hole in her story immediately. Dick was compelled to attack her, and it was the Merchant's Guild behind it, or at least indirectly through the pressure they put on Freighter captains to meet delivery deadlines. If she was being honest, she hadn't given it anywhere near enough thought as she should have.

"I'm a captain, Smith," she answered slowly. "I'm not a slaver, not a smuggler, and I'm not a Pirate. I've done nothing but my job, and I got blindsided by a man I shouldn't have trusted. That part is on me. But I'm pretty sure it's not a crime. Dick's actions were his own. Do you know the world of shit I will be in if word of this gets out? You know the Guild's position on this as well as I do. I would be blacklisted, I would lose my livelihood. I'd lose everything. For what? A million caps?" Smith would have watched the recorded exchange between her and Dick countless times, so he would know that she knew how much they were worth.

Captain Smith's gaze did not waver, but the faintest nod betrayed his understanding. "I understand your position, Bethany. But you haven't actually answered the question. I want to know who he was working for."

"You have seen the sensor logs. You know exactly everything that I know. I don't know what else to tell you."

"He said he worked for the Guild. You seemed pretty surprised by that."

"Because it's bullshit!" she spat. "If they ran contraband, why would I have a contract expressly forbidding me from carrying anything illegal when making runs for them."

"Well, that's simple: they want to cover their asses in situations like this. We have suspected them of some shady underworld dealings for quite some time."

"Then take it up with them!" Bethany threw her hands into the air. "Investigate them! Waste two days of their time!"

The Captain waited for her to finish. "Listen, I understand your frustrations, Miss Jenson, I really do. But protocol demands..."

Bethany cut him off, her voice a low, determined growl. "No. You listen. This, whatever this fucking circus is, isn't protocol. Whatever standards you have for proof of my innocence have been met, exceeded even. If you had anything to prove that I was involved in any of this, I would already be lined up in front of the firing squad, not standing here trading words with you. You know what I know, you saw the exact fucking moment I learned it. Asking me the same questions in as many different ways as you can will not give you a different answer. There is no "Gotcha" moment here! You aren't going to catch me out! I have answered your questions, you've spoken to my MG contact, he has shown you my paperwork, and I have let your fucking grunts rip my ship apart. Now I want to know on what grounds you are keeping me here!"

A heavy silence fell between them, each of them refusing to be the first to break eye contact. Captain Smith finally leaned back, his fingers ceasing their steeple. "Alright, Captain Jenson. For now, your explanation holds. But keep in mind that Sys-Def may require further assurances down the line. But there is something you need to be aware of." he paused a few moments before taking a breath and seeming to relax. "Those Stasis pods were state of the art, meaning that their intended recipient paid a lot of money for them. You are the Captain who chose to hand them over instead of honoring a contract they thought they had. Don't be surprised if there are consequences to that decision down the road. People like that don't take kindly to being defied. If you find yourself in trouble, run! Contact the nearest Sys-Def force, and haul ass in their direction. I have already made a note in the system giving you priority protection status, but let's be clear here. They will come, and you will need help."

Bethany blinked. That sounded... almost concerned for her safety. "I... I'm not sure what to say to that, Sir."

"You don't need to say anything; you just need to be aware. You are a freighter captain who turned down a substantial payout to hand cargo over to the authorities; there aren't many people like you out there. I wouldn't be doing my job if I left you to the wolves."

"I... appreciate that, Captain... I think."

The Captain, still not smiling, stood from his chair and turned slightly to face his entire body towards hers. "Bethany Jenson, I am formally clearing you of any involvement in the smuggling of human contraband into the Sol System. Our emergency com frequency has been uploaded into your communications system should any third party try to accost you for your actions in this matter. On behalf of the Imperium and the Core-Worlds System Defence force, I would like to thank you for your cooperation and apologize for any delay this investigation may have caused you. You and your ship, the Long Haul, are free to go." He finished by handing over the pad he had been looking at when she had arrived; a report that cleared her of any wrongdoing.

"Thank you, Captain."

"Now, I believe you have been looking forward to purchasing a new ship. I wish you happy shopping and safe travels."

Bethany couldn't help but let a smile cross her face. A shopping spree was just what she needed.

********

Jim. 3

His finger hovered over the button that would send his message out into the Galaxy. It hadn't been a long recording, but after reviewing it close to a dozen times, he felt that it encompassed all of the key information and the facts of the situation that had led them to this point. But he decided to give it one more watch, just to be sure.

He hit play again, and the recording came to life. "My name is James Edwards; I work at the Morus I mining facility on the edge of the strial arm. Like everyone who lives and works here, we have spent most of our lives in the dark, mining the raw materials that the Imperium needs for everything from starship construction to home appliances. There are men, women, and children here. There are veterans, rehabilitated convicts, priests, doctors, and families. Some of our children have never seen the sun. We are loyal to the emperor and to the Imperium; we pay our taxes, we do honest, hard work... and we are being murdered by the company we work for for the crime of asking that we be provided enough oxygen to be able to breathe. We need your help... before they kill us all.

"This mine is run by the Aquila mining consortium. They are required by Imperium law to provide safe working conditions. They haven't. The air filtration systems are nowhere near strong enough to filter out the dust and chemicals in the air, and that is if they work at all. If they break down - something that happens at least once a week - we are blamed for sabotaging them, and credits are taken from our pay to cover the cost of repairs. They will take 200,000 credits from us and then send down a part that may cost 5000. That part is always second-hand and often worn out long before it ever reaches us. Then, when it breaks, they start the process all over again. Our safety equipment, even something as common as mining helmets and lighting, stopped being fit for purpose months ago. We have already lost so many people to these conditions. My wife was one of them.

"We were married for ten years, I..." he choked back a quiet sob. The memories of her final days were still raw. "I... loved her more than I will ever be able to put into words, and then I watched her die. It was the dust. It caked her lungs and scarred the tissue until she couldn't breathe. She slowly suffocated to death. The company wouldn't even send down pain relief for her. She died in agony, and she is far from the only one.

"This is a job; it's work, but we are prisoners here. We're not allowed to leave, and we aren't allowed to send personal messages home. Our pay is withheld until the end of our contracts, but our contracts keep getting extended by years at a time whether we refuse or not." He took a deep, ragged breath. "There were over five thousand of us here a year ago. Now, between the illnesses, the accidents, and now... this, there's a little more than two thousand of us left. We literally being worked to death."

The door behind him on the screen opened, and Abigail skipped in, led my the foreman, Mike. Her beaming face meeting his as her daughter was reunited with her father after only a few hours. Even watching it again, seeing her look so happy put a loving smile on his face. She was still sitting on his lap, playing on her holopad, but she looked up in time to see herself on the screen. She smiled and pointed, looking up at him with those gorgeous brown eyes.

"Yes, Cookie, that's you. My pretty girl."

She beamed a little wider and rested her head against his chest, once again turning her attention to her game as Jim turned his back to his recording.

"This is my daughter, Abigail," his recorded self started to speak again as she clambered up onto his lap, and Mike, chuckling, stepped back out into the main cavern and closed the door behind him. "She is seven and has never spoken a word. The doctors say it is from prolonged exposure to contaminated air and oxygen levels too low for human habitation. A form of developmental hypoxia. It has stopped her brain from developing properly. The mental age she is now... is unlikely to ever change. The mining company did this to her; they did it to a lot of the children here. They dropped the oxygen content down to the absolute bare minimum, so it would save on operating costs. She is five years old, and she has never been allowed to see the sun or breathe clean air. We are human beings, but we are being treated worse than slaves. We are cattle, and all the company cares about is the bottom line. We came here to work, to contribute, to be part of the machine that keeps our society running. We came to build new lives and start new families. We were never promised wealth, but we were promised to be treated fairly. Those promises have been broken. I don't think they ever intended to keep them. If they can do this to us, loyal citizens of the Imperium, then they can do it to you... they will do it to you. All we did was stop working to let the dust settle; we couldn't breathe. We begged them to install new oxygen scrubbers and air purifiers, but they refused. When we stopped, they bombarded us from orbit. They collapsed one of the mine shafts. They killed two hundred people: men, women, fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands, and wives, all of them. They were people, and all we asked for was breathable air to do the work they were keeping us here to do. They are murdering us!"

Screen Jim took a breath and sighed, looking down at Abigail again and stroking his fingers through her hair.

"We need your help. People need to know what is happening here; someone needs to come to dig us out of here and rescue us from the company. The Imperium needs to be told what is going on and how their people are being killed. The mining companies need to be held to account for the deaths they have caused and the deaths they will continue to cause if they are not stopped. Morus I is only one mining station; Aquila has dozens, and if conditions are this bad here, they can't be any better at the others. We need the Imperium to know what these companies are doing to their people. We... we need help. Please." There was another sigh, a moment taken to settle himself and let the anger inside him calm a little before he spoke again. "There will be repercussions for us sending this message, and it won't be long before it comes. So, I am going to keep the recording going after I send this message so you can see for yourselves who we are dealing with. Please, hurry. This is Jim Edwards from Morus I, signing off."

It was about the tenth time he had watched it. It struck the right balance between making his people seem sympathetic without being angry and heaping the blame onto the shoulders of the mining company, even though that's where it belonged. He had been looking for ways to make it better, but now he was satisfied that this was as good as it was going to get. He reached out, his finger hovering over the icon that would send the transmission out into space while recording the consequences of those actions to go along with it.

With a deep breath, he pressed the button.

The response came just as quickly as he expected it to, almost the exact length of time it took someone to watch the recording. The voice of the overseer - the man responsible for maintaining productivity levels in this particular mine from his gilded palace in the sky, a decommissioned Imperium destroyer - warbled into the room.

The voice was laughing. "Jesus fucking Christ, are you people honestly that stupid?" he cackled. The overseer didn't have a name. Well, he probably did, but Jim didn't know it; the megalomaniacal prick always insisted on being referred to by his title. "Pleading to the Emperor for help? Loyal citizens of the Imperium? Inciting a worker's rebellion? You have no idea what is going on!"

"Then why don't you inform me."

"You are property! You aren't even slaves; at least slaves have legal status; you are less than that. The Emperor himself signed you over; we bought you; you are things. We can kill every single fucking one of you rodents on a whim, and the Emperor wouldn't only congratulate us on getting rid of malcontents, he would send us more! The moment you crossed the border into the spiral arm, you belonged to us! All of you! We paid for full autonomy here, including total ownership of the labor workforce, and the Emperor himself gave us liscense to do whatever the fuck we want, as long as the goods keep flowing. And if your little plea gets a response, there are regiments of private militias - also supplied by your beloved Imperium - to fucking slaughter them all!" He was still laughing. "Playing on your daughter's condition and your inferior genes to get attention, you really are pathetic! I'm going to enjoy killing you! But you should be grateful, you will be reunited with your vermin wife before the end of the day!... open fire!"

The line went dead. Jim's eyes bulged wide. He frantically checked the terminal, praying to whatever gods he could think of that the recording had gotten all of that.

It had. The overseer's words were being broadcast to the entire spiral arm.

It was only then that everything hit home. He jumped to his feet, hoisting the startled Abigail into his arms as he ran to the door. "TAKE COV..."

He didn't get to finish his yelled warning before the first explosion went off. The whole mine shook violently, throwing him back into the room, and a rain of dust and debris started falling from the cavern's roof. Screams of terrified people flooded his hearing as he cradled Abigail to his chest and tried to pull himself back to his feet. There was only about a hundred meters of rock between the cavern roof and the impacts of the massive seismic warheads detonating above it, far too much to dig through but nowhere near enough to absorb the force of each explosion. The mine groaned and trembled as rocks started to fall loose.

The crowd of people in the main cavern, where Abigail had been resting only a few minutes before, were scattered, running blindly in any direction to find a place where they felt they would be safe. But there was nowhere safer than where he was now. Structurally hardened against cave-ins - obviously to protect the equipment rather than the people - the comms room was the strongest part of the complex, and Jim could see Mike frantically trying to herd as many people as he could toward the room.

The first large-scale collapse landed right on top of him. Mike, his friend, his foreman, his confidant, and his biggest supporter, didn't even get a chance to look up before his body burst like an overripened grape under the thousands of tons of rocks that landed on his head, all that was left of him, when the dust settled, was a broken, twisted leg sticking out from beneath the pile. Bloody and mangled, it had snapped in more than one place and was bent at a hideously unnatural angle... the expect result of it being suddenly introduced to a few thousand tons of extra weight.

He wasn't the only one. A dozen people had heeded his advice and were running toward the communications room when the rocks landed on them. The dust took a few moments to clear enough for him to see that the collapse had killed all of them.

More screams, more frantic running, more earth-trembling explosions, more collapsing rocks the size of a hover-truck, more death, and more chaos. Groups of people, dozens of them in some cases, were flattened to pulp under the onslaught of the collapsing roof. The people who had listened to Mike but had been missed by the rocks turned around and ran in the opposite direction, away from the comparative safety of the comms room, only to be crushed by more falling rocks and more collapses.

One of the tunnels off to the right of the cavern, one that led to the section of the mine that had collapsed a few days earlier, was the recipient of streams of fleeing people... until there was another blast, another bone-rattling tremor, a brief chorus of screams, and a massive dust cloud spewed out of the tunnel's entrance.

Jim couldn't watch, but he couldn't look away. He just held the terrified Abigail in his arms and kept her face pointing away from the carnage. Her young eyes didn't need to see what his older ones couldn't comprehend. She was screaming, too; her heartbreaking sobs wracked through her trembling body as she clung to the only known source of safety she had ever known. Her mind was just too young to understand what was happening, and she didn't have the mental capacity to articulate her fears; all she could do was scream and sob as her world, quite literally, came crashing down around her.

As the cacophony of destruction enveloped them, Jim felt the weight of his daughter's life pressing firmly against his chest. Every stone that fell, every thunderous shudder that rippled through the earth, every deafening clang of rock hitting the reinforced metal cage that propped up this room felt like a direct threat to her fragile being. In the dense cloud of dust, his lungs struggled for air, each breath a labored gasp amidst the powdery suffocation. His eyes stung and watered, but he forced them open, frantically searching through the chaos for any semblance of hope or escape.

Abigail, unable to comprehend the scale of the calamity unfolding around them, seemed to recede further into herself with each passing second. Her father's arms were the only reality she recognized--the only island in a sea of madness. Her plaintive wails melded with the piteous cries of miners turned to trapped animals, seeking refuge where none existed.

Jim's gaze locked briefly with another miner's, a young man that he only vaguely recognized, but one a lot closer to Abigail's age than his own, eyes wide with stark terror. No words were exchanged--none were needed; he started running toward the comms room. He didn't make it either, and the blood from his crushed body sprayed like an artistic streak across the glass of the reinforced window. In that fleeting glance, Jim read the same dreadful realization that he felt in his own heart: the protective confines to which Mike had directed them now entombed him in a grave of vanishing safety.

The fear was like a physical thing. Like a spirit with a vice-like grip on his heart, he could feel its cold fingers clasping around it; he could almost feel its cold breath on the back of his neck. The reaper was stalking the disintegrating halls of his home, and it was coming for him.

It was coming for his daughter.

With trembling hands, Jim adjusted Abigail's position, ensuring that her head was buried against his shoulder, her ears muffled by his thick, dust-coated jacket, with his arms covering her eyes as best he could on the off chance she opened them. He wished he could shield her mind in the same way, protect her from the lasting scars this horror would undoubtedly imprint on her. But at the same time, he knew - deep within the depths of his logical mind - that she wouldn't live long enough for those scars ever to manifest.

Suddenly, a sharp crack pierced the air, louder than the preceding crashes, a sound of something fundamental giving way. A collective breath was drawn in by those still conscious, a last gasp as a section of the mine that had been struggling under the strain finally succumbed to the calamity. A monstrous, deathly groan seemed to echo out of every rock, every surface, and from every tunnel. The floor beneath them lurched, and Jim was thrown forward, his arms tightening instinctively around Abigail to shield her from the fall. He twisted himself, but they landed hard against the uneven ground, his body absorbing the shock. The wind was knocked out of his lungs, and the dust-filled air caked his lungs as it rushed back in to fill the void.

His mind flicked back to Grace, her last words...

Take care of our baby. Don't let her suffer in this place. I love you both.

He had failed; he had failed all of them. The maelstrom of deafening noises got louder and more rapid. The individual crashes gave way to a symphony of pure noise as the entire roof of the mine finally fell in as one. The braces holding up the reinforced ceiling creaked in complaint as a staggering, incomprehensible amount of weight was forced onto its roof...

But it held... for now

In the pitch-black darkness that followed, only the light from the somehow still-active terminals illuminated the blackness. The screams - what few of them were left - descended into whimpers and then, terrifyingly, to silence. Whether it was the cessation of the explosives or the mine claiming its victory over the voiceless, Jim couldn't tell. All he knew was that the silence was more foreboding than any rumbles of more detonations. The only sound left was the frantic, panicked, hyperventilating breaths of his terrified daughter.

He finally pulled himself off the floor. Sitting himself up with his legs stretched out and his back to one of the room walls, pulling Abigail back into his chest. The terminals were still in front of him, still recording the calamity around them. He wanted to speak; he wanted to tell the people what had happened, that everyone - thousands of people - were dead or dying because of that fucking company and their sadistic, evil overseer, but he was numb. His mind was simply incapable of doing anything other than just holding his sobbing daughter.

The apple of his eyes

His last link to his lost love

His girl... The best thing that had ever happened to him.

She needed him. She needed him to get his shit together.

"Shhh, Cookie," he whispered. "We're okay. We're okay." They weren't okay; they were not even close to okay. They were trapped; there was no way out, and even if there was, where would they go? There was no air on the surface. In fact, he imagined that the only thing maintaining the atmosphere in that room - now that the rest of the mine was basically gone - was the mountain of rock entombing it. He had no idea how much air they had left, but he knew it wasn't much, and that was assuming the wall braces didn't buckle and drop that mountain onto their heads. But Abigail didn't need to know that; all she needed to know was that Daddy was there, that he was holding her, and that he was never going to let her go. His arms, now aching with the effort of their ceaseless protective embrace, seemed to be the only thing standing between Abigail and the abyss. "You're okay, Cookie," He kept whispering. "You're being such a brave girl."

He looked around the room, looking for anything that would give them the slightest chance of surviving, the smallest glimmer of hope, all the while whispering soft reassurances to his little girl. But there was nothing. They were going to die.

Strangely, the clarity of that thought came as something of a relief to him--at least enough to calm his hammering heart and banish that panic from his chest.

He sighed heavily, relaxed against the wall, and closed his eyes. He would be with his daughter to the end; that was how it was supposed to be. If she had to die, then there was no way he would let her do it alone. It was the closest he could come to keeping his promise to Grace.

Grace.

I'm so sorry, Grace.

Memories wandered through his mind: the smile in her eyes on their first date, their first kiss, how beautiful she looked as she approached the bottom of the aisle on their wedding day, how she glowed as she grew their precious daughter within her, how proud and in love she had been when their baby was born, how amazing a mother she had become, how she sang to their slumbering girl...

His smile grew. He hadn't thought about that ancient Earth song in a long time. He wiped away the dust from his face and looked down at Abigail, releasing his grip on her and letting her stinging, red eyes look back up at him... and he started to sing to her

You are my Sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are grey

You'll never know, dear

How much I love you

So please don't take, my sunshine, away

Abigail listened to him, her eyes relaxing a little as the tension in her body seemed to melt away. She remembered, she actually remembered.

The other day, dear,

While you were sleeping...

The loud, clanging snap of the braces giving way and the deafening roar of falling rocks were the last things he heard as the roof suddenly collapsed onto him. Abigail was still in his arms, and that smile was forever on her lips.

He had never heard her voice, and now nobody would.

********

Stevo. 24

Stevo's jaw hung open as the final moments of Jim Edwards played on the screen before him. The man, holding his little girl until the last possible moment, had become the voice of the Morus fallen; he had been the spark that lit the inferno of rebellion. The overseer had been wrong about the Spiral Arm's chances and, apparently, had paid for his callousness with his life.

"It took six years for that message to reach the nearest ansible relay," Crow said solemnly as the screen went dark. "Jim didn't know that the comms system on the mine was the first thing hit, but the mining company didn't know that Jim had already thought of that and sent the recording out as a general transmission, impossible to block. Once it reached the first comms beacon, it was broadcast to every colony, mine, outpost, starbase, and population center in the entire spiral arm. But the signal took all that time to get there."

Stevo sat there in stunned silence, his mind struggling to process the ghastly tableau that had just unfolded before his eyes. In the dim light of the room, his normally unflappable demeanor gave way to a creeping pallor, the blood draining from his face as he bore witness to the final, harrowing moments of a father and his child. His throat felt tight, constricted by the wrenching emotion that the recording elicited.

The rugged, ironclad exterior that Stevo had cultivated as a battle-hardened Marine seemed to crumble if just for an instant, revealing the raw vulnerability beneath. The images of Jim cradling Abigail, of his desperate, futile efforts to protect her from the calamitous events befalling them, struck a chord deep within Stevo's own heart. He knew that helplessness; he recognized that desperation; he had felt it on the beach when watching his men being killed around them. But he'd had a way out; there had been hope for him, he was able to fight, and if he were to fall, he would have gone down with honor. Jim had been forced to sit there and wait for the end to come, his only concern being the comfort of the angelic-looking Abigail

But it was more than that. He thought of the miners, individuals like Jim with families and stories of their own, who had settled for the promise of honest work, only to be shackled into a life of servitude and eventual death beneath the surface of Morus I. A sense of sorrow and fury intertwined in a tight knot of abject rage in his gut. Here was unmistakable evidence of the atrocities that had spurred a rebellion, the voice posthumously urging action from beyond the grave. He was starting to understand exactly what had driven men like General Crow to incite a burning, bloody rebellion.

There was something about the man's eyes. It was more than an urging; it was more than a tale of heroic parenting; it was as if the torch had somehow been passed on. Like Stevo, personally, had been selected to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again, that not a single parent more would ever need to comfort their child in their final moments before their brutal murder at the hands of a deplorable government. Jim's voice, whether he meant it to be or not, was a call to arms that had Stevo wanting to single-handedly storm the Imperial Palace to dispatch justice for the countless fallen. It wasn't just a plea for help; it was a rallying cry for justice in the face of barbaric tyranny, and, as it had done to every other soul who had borne witness, it filled him with a terrible resolve.

Stevo was going to kill people in that man's name, in his daughter's name, and yet, he doubted that Jim was anything near a man who would have taken pride in that.

Yet, there the fact remained.

"During those six years," Crow went on, "Aquila Mining played the whole incident off as a tragic accident. Their official story was that they paid their workers based on the amount of materials they extracted from the ground, with hefty bonuses for beating their targets. They said that the workers, eager to chase those payouts, had opened new, unauthorized mine shafts, which, in turn, weakened the whole structure. They even made a big spectacle of placing "supervisors" in their other complexes to make sure that this never happened again. Of course, now we know that those were armed guards, but at the time, people bought the story."

"Then Jim's message arrived," Stevo guessed, following the story so far.

Crow nodded. "There were mass protests, riots on the streets, and workers all put down their tools in an almost universal strike. It wasn't just Jim's message, that was just the proof. There had been rumors for years, little whispers about what was really going on, why there was no Imperium presence in the area, but nobody could have imagined what the thrust really was. We have been sold by the Imperium, an unknowing slave labor force. It didn't take long for the corporations to double down on that overseer's threat. The private militias were deployed to quell the riots and re-enforce order."

"What happened," Stevo asked, feeling that knot of anger building inside him.

"They miscalculated," he half shrugged. "The private militias had been hired to protect company assets, but all of the civilian aspects of a colony, including the police and the defense forces, were all manned by the people, and they were on our side. I was one of them. A colonel in the 3rd Colonial guards' regiment, stationed on Cerberus." He had a faraway look in his eye as he recounted the history of the rebellion. "It was brutal. We were outgunned in every conceivable metric, but there were more of us, and we knew the terrain. We lost so many people, good men and women, all of them. While we were fighting to push the Militia out of the cities, the people on the stations and the crews manning the ships all rose up, too, and seized control of the defense grid. They started diverting supplies of food and advanced weaponry to us rather than the contractors and the tide slowly turned. I'm not proud of it, but we didn't leave a single one of them alive. They had butchered tens of thousands of civilians in their attempt to reassert their hold over us, so we returned the favor. That overseer was put inside an atmospheric suit and jettisoned into space, then left there to slowly suffocate."

Stevo nodded, "Good. I'm not going to mince words, General, but I would have done worse."

"I was just a kid when this was all happening," Silvia said from beside him, "but I remember the fighting. I remember my mom being scared and telling us we had to get out of the city. She..." She lifted a hand up to wipe a tear that started to run down her cheek. "She was shot, trying to protect me. She used her body to shield me when the Militia opened fire on our refugee caravan."

Stevo rested his hand on hers beneath the table where it couldn't be seen by the General and gave it a soft squeeze. "How long ago was this?"

"Next month will be the fifteenth anniversary of the day Jim's message was received." Crow answered, a croak in his voice as he looked at Silvia. Stevo missed that shared, sorrowful glance, though, his mind was grappling with this new information.

"Fifteen years?!?" he gasped. "Fifteen?!? The Imperium told us that this rebellion was less than a year old! And how come Jim's message never left the spiral arm?"

"It will, eventually," Crow shrugged. "In another four or five hundred years, it will reach the anisble relay on the Imperium side of the border. But the reason why it didn't spread that far back then is simple. The spiral arm was considered a foreign region, meaning only one Ansible relay connected it to the rest of the Imperium, and that relay was heavily monitored. When Jim's message got there, they just deleted it. It never got as far as the rest of the Empire, and being in a technically, albeit secretly, different nation, nobody received news of it to be reported, as if that would have happened anyway."

Suddenly, the gravity of Jim's final moments merged with the truth of a rebellion decades in the making, reframing Stevo's perspective entirely. Crow's revelations painted a much darker picture of the Imperium than the one he had once served so faithfully. His loyalty to the institution had been unshakeable, crafted, and hardened through years of service and battle, yet now it stood on perilous ground, its very foundation progressively chipping away with every new piece of information he was privy to. Until now, this final proverbial straw that made his whole perception of them crumble to dust. Until that moment, he had never imagined that things were this bad. In his mind, they had sacrificed his brothers during the battle on the beach in order to escalate a war against a rebellion they saw as an existential threat. There had been no question in Stevo's mind that this was exactly how the Imperium saw the rebels; they had just kept the whole thing quiet.

The truth, it would seem, was much, much worse than anything Stevo could have imagined. They weren't fighting a rebellion; they had caused it through acts of pure savagery and indifference to their own people. Then called them traitors and criminals when, all along, it had been the Emperor and his lackeys who were the criminals, they were the traitors against their own people. But a different realization was starting to make him sick to his stomach.

He could pinpoint the exact moment on the beach when the thought occurred to him that they had been betrayed, but before that, right up to that very instant, he had fallen for all of it, he had bought into the propaganda, he had well and truly gorged himself on the fountain of kool-aid.

And it made him feel deeply ashamed.

He looked back up at the empty, lifeless screen and remembered Jim's words. It wasn't just a simple tale of rebellion. It had transcended into a story of purpose--a narrative of people against an oppressive and seemingly omnipotent force that silently squashed their spirits. But Jim Edwards, a common man with a personal tragedy, had ignited the flame of resistance which refused to be extinguished despite the efforts of those with power.

"What they didn't realize," Crow continued, "was that the moment such a message is out there, the hope it carries doesn't simply dissipate; it lingers in the hearts and minds of the people. It becomes a legacy, a cause for which many are willing to fight and, if needed, die for. Jim wasn't the first to die, neither was his daughter, and they certainly weren't the last, but his message carried proof, more than that, one of the last things he did was to make sure that the people had proof. Something the consortiums couldn't spin or deny. He gave us our cause."

Stevo felt a tightening in his chest, his fists clenching involuntarily. He understood what Crow meant. Once ignited, the flame of rebellion would only grow, fueled by each act of tyranny and each whisper of defiance. It was the sort of thing that could turn a straightforward soldier like himself into a revolutionary, the sort of thing that could take a tragedy and turn it into a rallying cry for an entire sector. Jim had unknowingly created a martyr of himself, and Abigail, a symbol for every lost soul crying out for justice.

"And that's the story the Imperium doesn't want to tell. It isn't the tale they want bouncing around the holo-networks. So they keep it suppressed, they keep people in the dark, fearing what would happen if the truth emerged elsewhere." Crow's voice held a quiet intensity that echoed through the small room.

Stevo's path, once so clear and defined, had been obscured. As a man of action, he had been forced to confront a system built on lies and manipulation. He had been part of an establishment that silenced voices like Jim's, and now here he was, bearing witness to the result of that very suppression.

"This fight," Stevo mumbled, "it's just starting, isn't it?"

Crow smiled grimly. "No, Captain. This fight began the moment they started treating people as expendable assets. The only difference now is that we're hitting back hard, and we're not going to stop until we get justice or die trying."

And with that, a new purpose crystallized within Stevo. He wasn't just a Marine anymore; he was a part of something greater, a catalyst for change in a spiral arm that cried out for it and in an Empire that knew nothing of it. Jim Edwards' message didn't just signal the injustice on Morus I; it was the beacon that rallied the downtrodden to rise. And though generations of resistance fighters might come and go, the voice of Jim Edwards, now etched into the spirit of the resistance, would outlive them all, continuing to inspire long after the silent spaces of the spiral arm swallowed the sound of his plea.

"So, to answer your question, Captain," Crow sat solemnly behind his desk, "that is what started the rebellion; that is why we fight,"

"What do you need me to do?" Stevo put that resolve into steadfast words as he looked up to meet the General's eyes.

"I need you both to report to medical," he said with a respectful nod. "The sooner we can install those neural ports, the sooner we can get started on growing our armies."

"Yessir," he glanced at Silvia, who turned her hand over and squeezed his, as he had done to her a little while earlier. "We will head down there immediately."

"Thank you, Son," The General sighed in relief. "You have no idea how big a gift this is for the rebellion."

"It's an honor, Sir." Stevo stood, offered a salute, which the General reciprocated, and then strode out of the office with Silvia close behind him.

********

Bethany. 8

Bethany rubbed her hands together in unbridled anticipation.

She stood in the docking bay of the Earth space dock, excitedly surveying her newest purchase. A brand new, state-of-the-art freighter, much bigger than her former ship, the Long Haul.

Bethany couldn't contain her glee as she ran her hands along the sleek, metallic hull. The ship gleamed under the bright lights, its design a testament to the latest advancements in interstellar cargo hauling. She had poured a substantial portion of her recent windfall into this vessel, and the investment was already paying off in the form of pure, unadulterated joy.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" a voice said from behind her.

Bethany turned to see Elizabeth, her liaison with the New Earth Engineering company, a subsidiary of the Merchant's Guild that specialized in the construction of cargo-hauling space vessels.

"That she is," Bethany replied, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "I've been waiting my whole life for a ship like this. It's going to be a game-changer for my business."

Elizabeth stepped closer, admiring the ship alongside her. "I can see why you're so thrilled. This is one impressive piece of machinery, certainly one of our best models."

Bethany nodded in agreement. That was a massive understatement, but she was already mentally planning the upgrades and modifications she would make to maximize the ship's capabilities. With this kind of ship under her command, she would be able to take on even the most challenging cargo contract.

Her latest acquisition, the culmination of her dreams, and no shortage of extortion of the Merchant's Guild for the recent 'misdeeds,' towered above her, a colossal emblem of human engineering and interstellar prowess. The freighter's streamlined body stretched out, cutting a sharp silhouette against the abyssal backdrop of space visible through the Earth space dock's transparent dome.

She admired the articulated design, which allowed the ship to compress for atmospheric entry. Unlike the Long Haul, this ship had wings--actual wings--that could fold seamlessly against its hull. This innovative feature not only reduced drag during atmospheric flight but--thanks to them being lined by banks of retro thrusters, allowed for incredibly intricate adjustments to its course and positioning whichalso provided spatial efficiency when docked at space stations with limited room for maneuver;crucial for busy trading ports teeming with innumerable vessels.

The hull's material was an alloy unknown to the commercial market just a decade ago. It was composed of lightweight metals and composite ceramics developed through years of research and space testing. This revolutionary mix maintained structural integrity even under the stress of superluminal travel and hostile environments while also enabling the ship to carry a far heavier payload than she'd been able to before now. Less weight meant less mass, and less mass meant a faster, more maneuverable ship.

Sensor arrays and communication domes speckled the ship's exterior like jeweled studs, each one flush with the body to maintain the ship's aerodynamic grace. These were the eyes and ears of the ship, providing Bethany with an unparalleled level of awareness about the ship's surroundings, whether weaving through asteroid fields or negotiating the turbulent space storms of uncharted systems. They weren't only aesthetically pleasing, though; they were an enormous upgrade to the systems carried by the Long Haul. With the ability to detect ships, stellar masses, and course obstacles at ranges approaching a lightyear, they were almost four times the power of her old ones and could go a long way to keeping her out of trouble, especially with war on the horizon.

The cargo hold itself was modular, a feature that manifested the height of adaptability in freighter ship design. Its multiple segmented compartments could be adjusted in size or detached completely, allowing for the transport of a diverse assortment of goods varying in volume and nature--from bulk raw minerals to delicate medical equipment. The design was practically useful, too. It allowed her to atmospherically control each segment individually. The long haul had a single bay, meaning that if she was hauling a cargo that needed to be kept under certain conditions, no other cargo could be carried unless they were able to withstand them, and considering there were a lot of cargos that needed that level of additional considerations during transport, she had often found herself with a hold barely a quarter full, thanks to a contract that stipulated that haul be kept at a certain temperature when no other available cargo could be. Well, no more. Now, she could carry her freight in any one of eight cargo bays, each at least as big as the Long Haul's and two of them significantly bigger. She did a bit of quick mental arithmetic. She had landed at Port Collins with her cargo bay full of sixteen tons of processed Silicon, but that had been about the limit - in terms of weight and volume - of what the Long Haul was capable of carrying. This ship, with its massively reduced hull weight and much more powerful engines, could have carried twenty times that amount. She's made 2.6 million credits from that run, the same trip made in this ship could have netted her almost fifty. She whistled to herself. She was starting to think of credits in numbers she had never dreamed of before.

Beneath the behemoth's exterior, the engine hummed with the promise of a power that Bethany had never had at her fingertips. The latest hyperdrive propulsion system sat poised to catapult the ship across vast interstellar distances; designs that, until recently, were slated for military use only and, in many cases, were still equipped on older models of Imperium warships. Unlike former models, which required cumbersome and lengthy calculations for accurate jumps, this engine worked in tandem with an incredibly advanced Nav-com. It was so advanced it could plot a course in real-time with a near-perfect success rate, mitigating the risks of collisions with other ships or leaving her half-buried inside a wandering comet. That part was less important to her; she liked to do the flying herself, as she always had done, and this new state-of-the-art system was unlikely to change that. But it was good to know that she could plot a course from her wrist-mounted computer interface and the ship was capable of doing the heavy lifting for her.

In fact, most of the ship's systems were automated, and even the routine maintenance that all freighter captains were proficient in could be put off - thanks to a host of systems redundancies allowing the bypass of worn or damaged parts of them - and the ship could be repaired in port. New Earth Engineering had outposts at almost every commercial starport, and thanks to the eye-watering amount of credits she's spent on it, she had access to a decade's worth of free, limitless service and maintenance personnel wherever she made landfall. She could land and hop off her ship to conduct her business, having already informed the ground crew of any work that needed to be done, and they would carry it out before she got back to the ship. It would absolutely remove the need for any more Dicks in her life.

The man, not the appendage. She quite liked the appendage.

The bridge was her new sanctuary, and as Bethany stepped onto it, she was embraced by the familiar cocoon of controls and displays. She immediately fell in love with it. Yet everything here was upgraded and more responsive. Haptic interfaces floated in the air, ready to react to her slightest hand movements. The captain's chair, a masterpiece of ergonomics - and one that rivaled, if not beat, the one on the Long Haul - awaited her command, promising comfort even on the longest of voyages. This was a true bridge, as opposed to the cockpit of her former ship. It had a command chair and everything, with enough stations to support a crew of four people, although she doubted she would ever need them. Her new ship was more than capable of being operated by a single person, and after her recent experiences with mutiny, smuggling, and ejecting people into space after being shot at, she was in no rush to find a replacement for her now-dead, former first mate.

Crew accommodations had also been given due consideration. The living quarters were more akin to luxury suites than the Spartan bunks she was used to. Each room was equipped with personalized life support systems, adjustable gravity settings, and even holographic windows simulating any desired view, a touch of Earth or Capricorn, no matter where in the cosmos her crew might find themselves. More than that, those windows were, essentially, holo-feeds, meaning they could function as computer interfaces or comms terminals when not making the interior look pretty.

It had been a long, long time since she had bought the Long Haul, and that ship had been showing its age even when she acquired it. The only thing she ever really disliked about her old workhorse was its woefully inadequate defensive grid. Bumping into marauding pirates was not a regular occurrence in Imperium space - the sys-def fleets saw to that - but they still happened. She had heard the horror stories, and she had lost friends along the way, thanks to Pirate boarding actions. Okay, maybe not friends, but people she had known in passing.

As technology had advanced over the forty-odd years since the Long Haul's construction, so had the defense systems of cargo freighters. Non-lethal deterrents lined the freighter's exterior, capable of fending off pirate ships or rogue drones with a combination of electromagnetic pulses and defense shields were a nice idea. But Bethany wholeheartedly agreed with standard military doctrine. Pirates were to be slaughtered on sight. So, as part of her purchase order, she had done away with any of that non-lethal nonsense and opted for a full package of potent, deadly defensive weaponry. It was a necessity for a captain like Bethany, who knew space was not just vast but often fraught with danger.

Retractable turret ports dotted the hull at various strategic points, each containing large caliber, pulsed ion cannons capable of posing a threat to anything up to an Imperium Destroyer. Pirates rarely had anything more powerful than that, but what they had in abundance were strike craft and boarding shuttles. To combat these was a potent, 360 by 360-degree point defense laser grid. It was capable of reducing fighters and shuttles alike to burning fields of debris in seconds, no matter which direction they attacked from. More importantly, the ship's vastly superior, independently shielded power core was more than capable of handling all of these weapons, plus all of the other ship's systems, simultaneously and with ease.

Yeah, she was grinning.

Against the gentle hum and murmured hubub of the space dock, Elizabeth smilingly watched Bethany's rapturous inspection. "The New Earth Engineering corporation spared no expense. Our designers factored in the latest trends in pirate activity, market demands for cargo variety, and feedback from veteran captains like yourself when laying down this class of freighter."

Bethany's eyes sparkled with a reflection of the freighter's hull. "She's a beauty," she nodded.

She walked towards the rear of the ship, where the cavernous cargo bay sat open, the ramp leading into it like a welcoming maw ready to swallow cargo containers whole. Reinforced energy barriers shimmered faintly at the edge of the bay, a safety feature preventing the accidental loss of cargo while allowing easy transfer from the docking bay into the ship's storage. That was another thing, the ship could be loaded and unloaded on three sides, meaning no more fucking around on landing to make sure the ship was orientated correctly. That messed with her landing scores.

Elizabeth beamed with pride. "Your crew will be able to monitor every square inch of the storage via the cargo management system. It integrates full life support and stasis capabilities in case you're tasked with transporting live specimens or perishable wares that require exact environmental conditions."

Bethany didn't bother correcting Elizabeth about the lack of crew. She knew this was the after-sales pitch, and Elizabeth seemed to genuinely enjoy this part of her work, so Bethany saw no need to interrupt her. "Is there an integrated smuggler's hold?" She asked once the rep had finished talking.

"Err, no. I'm sorry, did you want one?"

"God no," Bethany laughed but didn't elaborate on the joke.

The new owner of this astonishingly beautiful ship stepped back, taking a moment to imprint the image of her new vessel into her memory. This ship was not just a vehicle; it was her future, a tangible declaration of her ambition and capability. With a nod of satisfaction and the resurgence of her excitement, she turned to Elizabeth.

"Let's discuss the final handover. I can't wait to see what she can do in open space."

Her voice barely concealed her enthusiasm. This was not just a new chapter in her life as a freighter captain but a bold stride into a future where she was not just an observer in the galactic market but a formidable influencer, a master of her own fate in the endless dance of supply and demand among the stars. With this ship, Bethany Jenson was not just captain; she was a force to be reckoned with, a name that would echo in the metallic halls of trader's sanctums and guild halls across the Imperium. This was her moment, a testament to her years of hard work and dedication to her craft. She was ready to take on the galaxy, one cargo run at a time.

"I think there is only one more thing to ask before we get to the paperwork, then," Elizabeth smiled. "The lady needs a name."

Bethany couldn't tell you where the idea came from; it just hit her as she stood in the space dock, looking up at her new pride and joy. "Horizon Blue," she said quietly. "Her name is Horizon Blue."

********

Laura. 10

Laura's pulse raced with the thrill of pioneering the unknown as The Atlas raced toward the outskirts of the Yrdian nebula, its gaseous wisps undulating like a celestial ballet of iridescent clouds under the stare of distant stars. The nebula itself, a magnificent tapestry woven from the universe's palette, stretched out before them in hues of deep purples, dusty oranges, and shimmering greens. It was a view that called to explorers and scientists alike--a wonder of natural space phenomenon that teased the mind with both its beauty and its secrets.

It also hid the mightiest of prizes. The Primis and her guard of the entire Mariner home fleet, was hidden within its silent embrace.

Standing on the bridge nestling into the console, Laura observed as Elijah, with a calm but focused demeanor, engaged the helm. His eyes flicked back and forth under the interface helmet as his deft touches finally dropped the enormous Atlas out of hyperspace and engaged the sunlight engines, powering toward their final destination.

She had suggested dropping out of hyperspace alongside the Mariner fleet. She wanted to see the look on the faces of her friends, family, and superiors when the sister-ship of the Primis scared the shit out of them. A ship of any description suddenly appearing in the middle of their fleet would cause no shortage of alarm on the best of days, but a ship on the sheer scale of the Atlas would make a lot of her friends wish they'd worn thier brown pants. A chuckle had passed between her and Elijah at the thought, along with a shared glance to Master Wu, who had simply lifted an eyebrow in amusement.

In fairness, Elijah had made the right call. The position and layout of the home fleet was a fluid concept, with ships patrolling the rest of the nebula and others repositioning themselves. Even a single miscalculation or an accident of unfortunate timing could obliterate one of her brethren's ships against the Atlas's mighty hull.

Her mission, which had started under a shroud of hopeful skepticism, had taken turns she could never have foreseen. Laura herself had not anticipated the full extent of the treasures she would awaken and the alliances that would unfold. Those thirty-odd vaults that had been plundered before, yielding little more than curiosities and locked enigmas, paled in comparison to the reality that she had facilitated the awakening of an Ancient starship--and, with it, its respected and oddly compelling crew.

Elijah switched the ships to its sunlight engines, and their incalculable power started driving them forward into the clouds of vibrant color. A smile settled onto his face as the comms system came to life, with dozens of hails coming from the patrolling ships closest to them. Laura couldn't see them, nor could she read the console displaying the sensor readings, but Elijah could clearly see them all, hails and ships alike. For now, he chose to give them only the briefest response, telling them they were here at the invitation of Lycander - the commander in chief of the Mariner fleet, and they were free to escort him to the Primis if they so chose... assuming they could keep up... which they had no hope at all of doing.

Laura couldn't help but imagine the incredulous expressions on the faces of her superiors when she detailed the outcome of her exploration. She had personally managed something that had never been even conceived of before now.

Elijah and Guardian Wu were now clear on what their discussions with the Mariners would involve. Laura, after hearing their terms, couldn't imagine a reality in which their terms were not enthusiastically accepted, and she would doubtlessly be spending the foreseeable future on this marvel of a ship. Just the thought of that sent a thrill of excitement down her spine.

The implication of the discoveries and this newfound rapport was profound. It wasn't just about new technology or military might--it was about unity, understanding, and the vast potential of cooperation. The Mariners were once resigned to scouring through leftovers of the past while wandering the vast expanses of unclaimed space - hunted and hated in equal measure - but they were now on the cusp of a partnership that could redefine their very existence.

Finally, Elijah turned his eyes to her. "The welcome wagon has arrived," he smiled, then nodded to the center of the bridge. A few seconds later, the holographic image of Lycander flickered into existence.

"Commander," Laura grinned, pulling herself to her feet.

Lycander smiled, turning to face his fellow Mariner and offered her a respectful nod. "Cyfarchion y daith anfeidraidd arnat ti, young one." he said.

"The greetings of the infinite journey upon you," in the old tongue.

Laura's smile brightened. It was good to hear her own language again, or at least a dialect forgotten by all of humanity, save for a few wizened old members of her people.

"May I present Elijah, Marshal of the Ancients," she gestured toward the still-sitting Elijah and then to his old mentor. "And this is Master Wu. They are the crew and custodians of the Atlas."

"Gentlemen, it is a profound honor to meet you," Lycander offered them a much deeper bow. " I cannot begin to tell you the excitement your presence has caused in our people."

"Thank you, Commander," Elijah nodded, "The honor is ours. We shall be arriving at your location in a few minutes. I think we have a lot to discuss. Would you prefer us to travel to your ship, or would you prefer to come aboard the Atlas?"

"If it's not too much of an inconvenience, my delegation and I would like to come to you. All of us have been custodians of the Primis for the last forty years, trying to learn from its many secrets. So, to see her sister-ship in its fully operational glory... it's too good of an opportunity to pass up."

Elijah's smile grew a little wider, and he nodded. "I thought that would be your answer. The forward docking hatch on the port side will be ready for you, Commander; we will be with you very shortly."

With another excited smile, Lycander bowed again, slashed a grateful, respectful glance to Laura and his image flickered out of existence.

It was about an hour later that Laura found herself waiting outside the same hatch through which she had entered the Atlas a little over a week ago. She had requested to be the one to greet the Mariner delegation at their point of entry, and Wu had shown her how to get to the Marshal's board room from there, including which transporter button to push to get her where she needed to go. Through the window of the hatch, she was watching a small Mariner ship slowly maneuvering into position outside. The ship was of a moderate size, maybe a large frigate class or a small destroyer. It was certainly bigger than the Seren. But she was starting to think of scale in terms of a thing's comparison to the Atlas - it had become almost automatic - and compared to this ship, it was tiny.

The vastness of space had a way of challenging one's convictions and the presumed certainties of power and might. Laura's time aboard The Atlas had reshaped not only her understanding of what was possible technologically but had also thrown her previously held military evaluations into stark relief.

She had grown up amidst the prowess of the Mariner home fleet, learning of its intricacies, its strengths, and how its presence alone warranted a grudging respect from neighboring powers. It was a formidable thing, a collection of interstellar vessels knitted together by engineering savvy and survival instinct, standing as a protective guardian over the people it served and, more recently, over the derelict husk of another ancient leviathan. In her eyes and the eyes of her fellow Mariners, it was an unsinkable bastion, a force that spelled defiance and determination. It may not have had the numbers for it to be a force of authority, but it was certainly powerful enough to be a force of safety during their endless nomadic voyage.

But her perspective had altered dramatically when The Atlas, under Elijah's guidance, met Hillman's fleet--a formidable array of ships in their own right--in the skies above Xnios. With an almost effortless display of technological superiority, The Atlas had dispatched the enemy with such decisive authority that it made Laura reconsider the very benchmarks of power she had known.

The ship was a titan, a behemoth of space that moved with a grace belying its size while projecting a might that seemed borrowed from the fabled deities of ancient legend. Its weapons were unlike anything she had seen: precise yet overwhelmingly destructive, capable of tearing through the toughest of hulls as if they were made of nothing more than tissue paper and optimism. And she had only seen a single shot from the least powerful of the Atlas's weapon roster. Shielding that could clearly shrug off laser fire and missile strikes with uncaring ease, turning what would be catastrophic hits against the Mariner fleet into little more than annoyances.

Elijah had shown restraint, - remarkable restraint, now that she thought about it - using the bare minimum force required to neutralize the threat. However, the power at his disposal was clear--and it was terrifying. The fact that the Ancient Marshal could single-handedly control such a force was both an awe-inspiring and a daunting revelation.

Laura considered The Atlas in a new light--not just as a ship but as a symbol of a lost age's pinnacle of combat engineering. It was evident now that the home fleet she had revered might be considered little more than antiquated relics were it to stand against this juggernaut. The Atlas, under the banner of the Ancients, was a silent assertion that the age-old maxim of 'there is always a bigger fish' held true even amongst the stars.

Still, it wasn't the latent capability for destruction that caused the paradigm shift in her military assessment alone--it was the realization of what that meant for the future. The Atlas didn't just represent an increase in combat odds; it symbolized a shift in strategic and diplomatic power. A single ship that could handily best an entire fleet could dictate terms in ways never before imagined. It was a game-changer in the theater of galactic politics.

Laura felt a blend of fear and exhilaration at the prospect. The Mariner's doctrine had always been shaped around the principles of resilience and self-sufficiency during their wanders, yet now she found herself the facilitator and vanguard of an unlikely alliance with a force that could redefine their very stature in the cosmos.

The realization was humbling and empowering in equal measure. What negotiations and relations could be built or strengthened with this newfound ally by her side? There was a momentum to this thought, a hopeful trajectory that could shape the future for all Mariners in ways they had never dared dream.

For Laura, standing aboard The Atlas and contemplating its vast corridors and potent armaments, while she watched the extending docking collar from the Mariner ship join the two vessels, the idea of martial strength had evolved. It was no longer just a matter of firepower, defense systems, and raw numbers but the power of mystery, history, and the tangible might a legend reborn could yield. Unfortunately for all but a handful of people alive, they had no idea what this legend was capable of. But she was becoming increasingly convinced that they were soon going to find out.

And she was right at the center of it. With every excited inhalation, she could feel history being made. She bounced on the balls of her feet, trying to keep the anticipation from fracturing her calm and professional facade. There would be time for gushing later, but for now, as the Mariner delegation stepped through the airlock and crossed the tether, she had to present a professional demeanor in her role as ambassador between the two parties.

She hit the button to open the outer hatch, a smile briefly crossing her lips at the memory of her frantic hammering of it when she had been locked inside the Atlas, and the door slid upwards into a hidden recess in the hull. "Ladies, Gentlemen," she smiled and bowed to her venerated peers, the entire command council of the Home Fleet. "Welcome to the Atlas."

********

Histories and Lore

If there is a single point that could call itself the heart of the rebellion, it can only be the Planet Cerberus, it was a planet of contradictions. In another reality, the promise of this world would have had it labeled as a Category one planet, meaning that minimal terraforming would have been needed to bring it up to the same level of comfort and habitability as the other gems of the Imperium. Unfortunately, it wasn't colonized by the Imperium, but by power and credit hungry corporations more concerned with their bottom line than the comfort of their denizens. It was an expanse of desolation that belied the potential it held beneath its dusty crust. This world, for all its arid conditions and harsh environs, was the unlikely cradle of an insurrection that had taken root in the hearts of those defiant enough to challenge the seemingly inexorable might of the Imperium.

To any observer from another time, Cerberus would seem an improbable echo of Earth's own past--a planet that evoked imagery from the westerns of the mid-twentieth century, a frontier as unforgiving as it was unchanging. The vast plains were a sea of rust and ochre, rolling hills, and mesas rising like the sun-baked bones of some ancient sleeping monster from its depths.

The soil was a tapestry of reddish-brown, every grain saturated with the color of dried blood mixed with terracotta. It billowed in great clouds when passing winds disturbed its age-old rest.. One could imagine the pioneers of bygone eras feeling a sense of kinship with this desolate expanse, for here too was a land of opportunity, of challenge, and raw, untapped potential. Instead, it became the tapestry on which pure defiance was played out against an almost total desolation.

Yet even this barren soil held secrets, cradling a treasure more precious than any gem--water. This most vital of resources was ensconced within the planet's bowels, locked away in caverns so vast and profound they made Earth's oceans seem like mere puddles by comparison. It was water in its purest form, untouched by pollutants, unsullied by the passage of time, a reservoir of life preserved from the very origins of the planet.

The drilling plants that towered over the landscape were monuments to human ingenuity, the titans among titans on this desolate world. Each was a structural behemoth, built to plunder the depths for the elixir of life, their pipes and drills plunging through strata upon strata in search of hidden waters. Their operation was ceaseless, the rhythm of extraction echoing like the heartbeat of Cerberus itself.

Giant rigs, powered by the latest in energy-efficient technology, punctuated the plains, their lights piercing the dusty haze that seemed to perpetually hang in the air. The scale of these installations was immense, stretching towards the horizon, their frames crisscrossed with walkways and ladders, mirroring the iron derricks of ancient oil fields back on Earth, yet dwarfing them to the point of insignificance.

The people of Cerberus were artisans of survival. Each drop of water drawn from the depths was a measured victory against the arid apocalypse on the surface. Great pipelines sprawled out like the roots of a mighty tree, from each drilling station to the scattered settlements, oases of life in a desert of dust, where greenery was cultivated within small farming cooperatives and where livestock thrived under the careful husbandry of the rebels. The entire planet was, in theory, a perfect aspirant to become the bread bowl of the Spiral arm. The earth itself was incredibly fertile, its air perfectly breathable, and its sunlight perfectly suited to grow vast, endless seas of any kind of edible crop or to graze gargantuan herds of livestock, if only for the lack of one vital component- Water. It had never rained on Cerberus. There were no ancient dried-up seas; there was no moisture in the air; all of it was trapped in those enormous caverns beneath the surface.

There had, of course, always been plans to use that almost limitless source of water to irrigate vast tracts of land, but those plans were little more than lip service to the corporations who had been in power before the rebellion, and they came a distant second to survival to the people commanding the rebellion now. But, for those with the ingenuity, the creativity, and the imagination to dream, it was not hard to picture Cerberus as a paradise amongst the stars.

Water distribution was not merely a utility here; it was a rite, a symbol of hope. It fostered fields of crops in those small, meticulously tended farmsteads, sustaining the life that the rebellion fought so fiercely to defend. The inhabitants were a hardy breed, driven by a determination as indomitable as the land they called home. To them, Cerberus was more than just a planet; it was an embodiment of their struggle, their resolve. The very essence of the rebellion was baked into each sun-scorched stone and every grain of dust that the wind carried across its lonely expanse.

It was on this frontier world, in the depths of its inhospitable surface, that the rebellion had found its stronghold. Beneath the shadow of towers of steel and sweat, they forged their narrative, writing a new chapter of freedom with the wealth of water drawn from the ground that held it. Cerberus was a testament to their perseverance, a fortress built upon a wealth of water, each drop as sacred as the cause for which they were prepared to lay down their lives.

It wasn't only the place the rebellion now called home, it was the site of some of their most cataclysmic struggles. The ground may have looked the color of blood on terracotta, but there was no shortage of actual blood mixed with those wandering sands.

The Battle for Cerberus was not a single engagement but a series of ruthless confrontations that spanned the dusty plains and stark crevices of the dry world. It started as a trickle of discontent that swelled into a deluge of defiance against the Imperium's stranglehold. But it was the deployment of the Consortium's private militias that marked the true beginning of the battle.

The capital city of Cerberus was a place aptly named Hades when it was laid down more than two centuries ago. It was the largest population center on the planet, albeit not by much, and was the home of the main starport for the planet. It also became the epicenter of the population's backlash with news of what really happened on Morus I reached the planet.

The city itself is a patchwork of small, squat, square buildings, stained that same reddish brown from the blowing clouds of dust no matter what color they had been when they were constructed, but it is enormous, home to several million citizens in total, and ringed by an almost equally massive industrial zone capable of taking the unprocessed ores from the Spiral Arms multitude of mining planets, processing them, and converting them to any variety of manufactured goods, which are then sent back to the Imperium for sale.

When the news of the fate of the Morus I miners reached the city, there was a universal public outcry, which very quickly turned to rage when the allegations made by Jim Edwards' recording proved to be not only true, but enforceable. A work stoppage was quickly announced, with every single facility in that massive industrial zone grinding to a stuttering halt. On the entire planet, the only industries that kept working were the water drilling fields and the farms. Everyone else simly set down their tools and marched out onto the streets.

It was then that the Militias arrived.

It would be unfair and demonstrably untrue to say that Cerberus was the only rebel colony to face the military onslaught by the consortiums, but it certainly saw the largest engagements and saw the worst of atrocities.

The first of those came on the very first day. The corporations had broadcast an edict over the holonet, and announced it through loudspeakers into all public spaces. This edict banned mass gatherings, ordered the populus back to work, and put a curfew into effect. All of them were ignored by the angry mobs demonstrating in the streets. But even this couldn't have hinted at what came next.

The now infamous Talon Brigade - a mercenary outfit led by one Brigadier Charles Mountbatten - no relation to the Earth Mountbatten family, he just wanted to sound important - landed in the main central square of Hades city and immediately opened fire on the civilian population. There were no attempts to order the crowds to disperse; there were no warning shots; the Talon Brigade simply stepped off their dropships, raised their weapons, and fired into a crowd of more than 100,000 people.

More than 38,000 of them were killed. Men, women, and children. Gunned down in a callous act of pure barbarism that shocked the people of the Spiral Arm as much as Jim Edwards' message.

The local defense forces and the arms police units had been riding a line between supporting the people around them while still trying to maintain the corporation's law. It was an impossible position for them, but the atrocities carried out on that day made the decision for them. They declared open revolt against consortium rule and went to war.

It is something of a contradiction in the war that almost every battle fought against the militias was a resounding victory for the rebels. The brutality of the conflict, however, came from the fact that every blow struck by the rebellion was answered with another atrocity against the civilian population. The battlecry of the Militias was that for every soldier killed by criminals, ten civilians would be killed in revenge.

There were a lot of dead militia soldiers.

Banished from the major cities, ad taking refuge in smaller towns and backwater hamlets, the rebels were forced to conduct a long and costly insurgency and guerilla campaign that ambushed traveling company forces, or attacked isolated garrisons with lightning fast, deadly raids before melting back into the red wastes.

The first notable instance of this was the Skirmish at Dry Gulch Pass. A contingent of rebel fighters, led by a certain Lieutenant Cornelius Crow, ambushed a supply convoy passing through the narrow, cliff-lined pass. Mines buried in the dust and sharpshooters hidden in the ridges turned the pass into a kill zone. The convoy was carrying vital water extraction equipment to a company-controlled water drilling site--an asset too valuable for the Imperium to lose and too tempting for the rebels to ignore. The consortiums had seized control of every water production facility on the planet and were using that resource to starve out the rebel fighters. Crow's forces hit hard and fast, making off with the equipment and delivering the first sting of rebellion. It was enough to set up their own secret drilling operation from which the entire rebellion was kept hydrated

The response from the enemy was swift and lethal, the flattening of five city blocks in the center of Hades from orbit, the residents still inside. Soon after, the war escalated with the Siege of Red Mesa Outpost. Situated atop a flat-topped hill, Red Mesa was a Company garrison that commanded a view of the surrounding territory, including several key water pipelines. After a prolonged siege that saw both sides suffer heavy casualties and endure a relentless, days-long sandstorm, the rebels launched a daring night assault that breached the outpost's defenses. Victory at Red Mesa galvanized the rebellion, sending a clear signal that the rebels were a force capable of more than hit-and-run tactics.

Fourteen thousands men were rounded up on the streets of Hades and publicly executed by firing squad after that battle.

The Assault on Borealis Extraction Facility was perhaps the turning point in the Cerberus conflicts but it was more than just a tactical victory. The water extractor was manned and guarded by the now infamous and loathed Talon Brigade. One of the largest water extraction centers on the planet, Borealis was heavily fortified and considered impregnable. But the rebels, commanded by the now Captain Crow, deployed their newly acquired equipment from the Dry Gulch ambush, and used the drilling equipment to bore beneath the base to infiltrate and sabotage the facility's defenses. The fighting was intense and protracted, with rebels navigating through tunnels and trenches under the blaze of the Imperium's plasma bombardment. Once inside the perimeter of the defences, the fighting devolved into a merciless, hand-to-hand melee with no quarter given on either side. It must be noted here that the rebel losses were significantly higher than the Talon Brigade's but the day was still carried by the rebellion.

Every single enemy soldier was killed, with the exception of Brigadier Mountbatten. He was captured, stripped naked, and - with the sandstorm still howling around the facility - he was tied to the outer walls and left there to have the skin slowly scoured from his body by the merciless, uncaring dust. Rumor has it that his remains are still there, tied to that wall, as a reminder and a warning to anyone who considers tyranny to be a viable option.

The facility's eventual fall deprived the Imperium of one of its primary sources of water, striking a critical blow to their control over the planet.

It would, however, be a gross injustice to the people of Cerberus to suggest that only the fighters of the former defense forces played a part in the actual fighting. The state of war was universal, everyone played a part, and on a planet of almost twenty-four million people, there was not a single case of collaboration with the enemy. When the company bombardments buried their neighbors in the smoldering ruins of their homes, when the bodies of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were ordered to be left in the street after their executions, they told the fighters in no uncertain terms "we can take it, Keep fighting! We need justice" as they literally dug their children out of the burning wreckages of their homes.

Civilians stole supplies and secreted them to the rebels, they gathered intelligence, they made bombs and planted them along roads used by company forces, and risked their lives to make sure they detonated when the best targets were passing. They learned to shoot and become expert urban snipers, turning entire sections of huge cities into areas simply too dangerous for company forces to enter. They volunteered to refill the ranks of the rebel fallen in numbers so enormously high that the defense forces had no hope of being able to train, equip, and feed them all. More Company casualties have been attributed to civilian acts of warfare than from the entire efforts of the organized military.

Most importantly, just after the battle at the Borealis Extraction Facility, the civilian workers on Fort Ironholm, the massive space station in orbit above Cerberus, seixed control of its operation, claiming it for the rebellion. Not only did this wrestle control of the Spiral Arm's defensive grid out of the hands of the corporations and into rebel control - thereby immediately ceasing resupply runs to enemy ground forces - they also captured the local leadership of the companies and the militias they had hired. Of course, the big bosses were tucked safely away back in Imperium space, but the local leadership, including the overseer of the Morus mine, were good enough prizes for the people. Each of them was summarily executed by being jettisoned into space in an atmospheric suit and left there until their oxygen ran out. Plenty of time, they said, to let them ponder the consequences of their actions.

There were, of course, too many battles over the three-year campaign to list them all, but the culmination of the battles for Cerberus came at Verdant Valley--a misnomer for a desolate stretch of land that held the Corporation's last major stronghold and powerbase on the planet. Surrounded by tall mesas that harbored rebel snipers and demolition teams, the Imperium's forces were pincered in a vice of rebel strategic prowess. It was a grand, desperate last stand where the air was thick with dust and lasers, echoing the sounds of combat that would decide the planet's fate. In a dramatic end, the rebels, weary of the losses they had taken over the course of the conflict, pulled back to a safe distance and detonated the charges they had buried in the surrounding cliff faces. In a fate poetically similar to the final moments of Jim Edwards' life, the base was buried under millions of tons of rock, dust, and death.

In the aftermath of these battles, the rebels proclaimed their victory on Cerberus before fanning out to render aid to every battled colony in the Spiral Arm. On at least two separate occasions, company fleets tried to fight their way through the awesome power of the defensive grid they had constructed, only to be destroyed with the loss of all hands. The rebels were utterly without mercy in their hunt for freedom, justice, and vengeance. Each engagement had been a testament to their tenacity, a demonstration of their resourcefulness, and an illustration of the depth of their commitment to their cause. The dust of Cerberus bore witness to their sacrifices and echoed the thunder of their guns long after the last shot had been fired, serving as a hallowed testament to the price of their hard-won freedom.

Despite the war still raging on, the civilians of Cerberus can live in some measure of comparative safety and security. The mines still operate--albeit with vastly superior working conditions--and the ore still flows to Cerberus, but not an insignificant portion of it is dedicated to constructing materials needed for the war effort. Still, on a calm day, it is possible to walk through the City of Hades without ever knowing the horrors that once took place here.

In the city's central square, however, once stood a large, obelisk-looking rock, some forty meters tall. It was a remnant of the first colonization efforts, a marker used to plot the location of the new city. But in the aftermath of the campaign, a group of artisans got together and started to chisel away at it. Now, standing proudly in the central square is a thirty-meter-tall statue of Jim Edwards, sitting in his chair as he had been during that recording, smiling down at his beaming daughter, who in turn gazes adoringly, happily and trustingly up at her father. That smile forever on her lips.

Carved into its base, etched eternally in stone, and surrounded by religiously tended gardens is a simple yet profound inscription.

"You were our voice. We shall be her's."