Incoming Press Report, Zero Light Years Away (Jahellios System Comm Network, FEG Controlled).

New Krakow Colonial Genderarmerie is now on high alert. Heavy anti-government protests and riots had intensified over the days in four of New Krakow’s major ocean cities. Local socialist agitators declared a “general strike”. Artowisz City, New Gdyzow City, Ardansk City, and Pozbin City had been affected by these “possibly” DSA-instigated “insurrections”. Citizens in these cities are urged to remain at their homes and avoid confrontation with local security forces. Report any and all possible seditious activities. Remain calm and vigilant.

- Rubenfolt Post

+++

+++ Jonathan Jones +++

Jahellios System

New Krakow

Artowisz City

“Juliett, just close those curtains,” I told her, as I kept scrolling through my laptop. She had been watching the commotion outside of the hotel. “There’s no point watching that. That’s just going to bear down on you.”

“They’re sending tear gas at the protesters,” Juliett said. “It’s a true wonder how you humans can be so callous to your own kind. I get that they’re violent, but, as far as I can say, they have a right to do that.”

I scrolled down at a website that listed every report around New Krakow. I had been searching for anything, anything that would at least help us in our search. But so far, everything had been about the ongoing “general strike”. I scrolled down at one of the news articles, which was about how “forty-three protestors” were wounded or dead due to security forces panicking and firing at the crowd.

“You can’t do anything about it, that’s just the way everything is. Quite frankly, we’re lucky we’re out of the crossfire. I’ll just find solace in that. All we should focus on is finishing this mission before all of this comes to a head. I’m not interested in being here, whether New Krakow turns into a temporary police state or a communistic dictatorship.”

“I don’t think the FEG would let themselves lose one of their worlds like that though,” Juliett said. “Quite frankly, I think they’re just delaying their response instead of dispersing them now for nebulous reasons.”

“Of course they are, let them run rampant, ravage everything, hell, maybe even start a violent rebellion, and voila, they have a justification to come in with a pacification army, and once again make a Sector-wide purge against anyone suspected of being ‘with them’. But that ain’t our business.”

Juliett sighed, before closing the curtains. She walked out of the living room, taking her white coat with her. “Where are you going?” I asked, and she turned to me.

“I’ll go search myself,” she answered, and I nodded, returning back to whatever I was doing on my laptop as she left. Quite frankly, my head still felt like crap after what I did yesterday with Harold. And even Harold was dead asleep. What was that about us being able to leave while alcohol-induced? Yeah, bullcrap.

“Good morning Louise,” I said, noticing her shadow in the kitchen as she took a carton of milk from the fridge. She walked out of the kitchen, bowl in hand, including the milk, and the box of cereals we bought last night. I didn’t really mind her, as she sat on the other side of the table, preparing her own breakfast.

“You drunkards,” she said first. “You reek of alcohol.”

“Apologies for that, Lady Fleur. My base commoner instincts merely took control of me. I feel nothing but shame that I could be so low in front of my betters.” I smirked at her to further taunt her, but she didn’t seem to take the bait, merely sighing at me condescendingly before returning to her cereal.

“I need to school that Harold partner of yours one day.” She said as she ate. “Even you could be infected by his addictions.”

“How’d you even know that I don’t drink?”

“Juliett,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Oh, yeah…of course. Well, last night was just a bit different, you see.” I sighed. “Apologies for that, our dumbassery probably slowed down your search.”

“Don’t. I needed that sleep time either way,” she said. “I don’t think I was in any further condition to resume the search if I pushed all the way last night. Nor if I barely get any sleep and wake up early. I was…tired.”

“Well, everyone gets tired. Don’t put yourself down for that.”

“Still, I can’t be too slow,” she said with determination. “I’ll find him, Jonathan. I’ll find him, I’ll even shout that to the world. Hell, this planet could burn for all I care, but I’m going to find him.”

“I know that,” I smiled. “We all know that. Quite frankly, even Harold was impressed by your sheer drive to that goal. So impressed he was, that he would probably soon warn you to slow down before you kill yourself. Even I share the same opinion.”

“Why does that matter?” She asked. “If my brother isn’t alive, there’s no point of me living on. I’d rather die on the mission than live on without my only family left alive. I refuse that fate.”

“I do wonder what’s your brother like. You know, all I know is his name, André. Nothing else.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She fell silent, looking down at the bowl in front of her. “André de la Fleur, younger than me by just two years, is a kind boy. I know that he always cared for me, and for others, and he always seemed humble. Too humble to a fault. Gah! Just thinking of it irks me, especially how insecure he is of himself. He always hides at the house, as if sunlight scares him. It’s bad for his health! And he spends most of his time playing nothing but games!”

“Whoah, gee, you went on a tangent there huh,” I laughed. “You do know him well.”

“Of course I do. He’s one of my only true allies in this screwed-up world, and I can’t believe he’s a hopeless guy. Still…I would never leave him alone. I would not stop till I found him, and he’s safe from all these…vagrants.”

So she’s an overprotective type of a sister. Well, duh. I looked back at how she literally sliced that guy in half out of rage, or how she would almost always brutally kill them out of hatred because she thought they had him as a captive. Crap, I think that crosses the line of overprotective though.

“Well, as I’ve said,” I closed my laptop. “I assure you, you’ll find him. We’ll make sure of that. There’s no way you’re going to be escaping this planet without him in tow.”

I’m not letting another family be torn apart. I vowed to myself. And lose that twenty-eight thousand SCs! There’s just no way that I’m losing that. I worked for it damn it! And while she stared at me, thinking I was being passionate about it and all that, in reality, I was on the verge of tears more because of the damned money that I could lose if we failed. I mean, it was that, right? Obviously.

+++

Jonathan Jones

Well, wasn’t that unfortunate?

Louise walked to me, disappointed at the lack of answers. She had just asked a local clothing store owner if he had seen the same man in the picture that he held. Naturally, the answer was no, I could tell it by how she left the counter.

“Well?”

“Still nothing,” she said, sighing to herself. “Let’s just…go. We need to keep going.”

“Course we do.” I walked beside her, all while Harold and his men awaited us on the side of a lane. From far away, they looked more like a bunch of college boys who wore something extra edgy. Harold gave me a nod as we both passed him.

“What’s the situation?” I asked, as his face hardened. He merely pointed at the turn of the lane, and I took a peek. Oh, so that’s where the commotion was coming from. On the road on the other side, I could clearly see protestors being chased with batons and shields, as teargas canisters went off haphazardly. Many of them were even running in our direction, but the police didn’t seem to be interested in chasing them here.

“We can’t go there. Unless you like being picked off,” Harold said, and I nodded. “District Five is practically a warzone. You can almost hear the faint gunfire from here.”

“They’re shooting protestors now?” I asked, and he laughed.

“And who told you the protestors aren’t?” He pointed at a discreet gathering on the other side of the road from us. It was a bunch of men with masks, and a red armband, preparing Molotovs and other explosives. Many of them even held rifles in their hands. Three of them detached and disappeared from a lane. I sighed, so that was why Harold and his men were taking a low profile here.

“Well, I guess we’re really going to have to speed this up, beyond our limits. It’s only a matter of time before the FEG brings the hammer down on this planet.” We almost all ducked collectively, as a few shots went off a few blocks away from us. It was sporadic, and it must have been below ten shots, and it went silent rather quickly.

Harold sighed at it, pulling out a pack of cigars from his pocket. He lit it up, before smoking with it. “You know, I talked to one of their leaders.”

“The who? The socialists?”

“Yeah. I talked to them. Surprisingly easy. They’re asking everyone on the streets to ‘unite for the cause of the workers’ left and right. You can quite literally just find an organizing desk of these buffoons, show some enthusiasm to the ‘worker’s cause’ and voila, their leader would be trying to draw you into their movement.”

“So, what did you ask?”

“I asked if he knew anything about what happened to House Fleur,” he chuckled. “As usual, he opened it up with the classic red distaste of everything aristocratic. ‘They’re pigs, they should lined up on the walls, they’re evil, they’re all fat monsters’, the classic ones. But what I did get was that there’s rumors that the Duke is dead, and so were his two children.”

I looked at Louise. Upon hearing it, her lips curled up into mocking laughter. “Ahaha, well, I guess I’m dead then. I hope they find my body one day.”

“Quite frankly, I expected that they would have known that for sure, considering that many criminal organizations here probably have connections to the local parties,” Harold nodded, remembering how we would occasionally collaborate with Loran’s anti-royalist parties. “But it seems that this bunch really is an unofficial penal unit that has no connection left with the locals.”

“Which means asking around is pointless,” Louise said.

“Quite astute. These guys are going to be too secretive. As for asking around if someone did see your brother, maybe, but, again…damn it, it’s not going to be very likely.” I reassessed our situation. Damn it, we were really running out of time, but we still found zero leads. It had already been two weeks of frantic searches, yet there was still nothing.

Nil.

Zero.

Sure we found out some clues about the identities of the group targeting House Fleur, and we did find out that they still haven’t caught her brother (which is old intel at this point), but we had nothing else. Truly, this is harder than I thought. Quite frankly, were we even sure that we knew if he was alive or not? That was a question I didn’t want to confront, as that would be too difficult to deal with. I mean, that would mean that this entire mission fell apart.

Hah…why do I always have to deal with captured or potentially captured people and rescue them? Wasn’t it supposed to be reversed for outlaws like me? I guess that’s what happens when you’re with good people, like Juliett.

I sighed, as Harold spoke. “Heads up, Juliett gave us a ping.”

“What’d she say?” I asked as Harold scrolled through his datapad. “Intel?”

“Yes. She said she found a mention of André de la Fleur in the ‘departing’ surface ships registry at District Three.” I looked back at the map of Artowisz City using my datapad. District Three… held a port. No, not docks for spacefaring ships, but for seafaring ships. I felt my heart sink.

“Well…ladies and gentlemen, it appears that we’re going to have to venture to the high seas,” they all looked at me. “Now, the only question is, how are we going to find a ship to sail?”