“Has this ever happened to you?”
Scene of species specific elder matronly figure opening a closet and being trampled by species specific riot police tumbling off the top shelf.
“Help! My democracy has fallen and my vote doesn’t count!”
Fade to manic looking species specific spokesbeing standing behind a counter in a kitchen
“Well you need one of the many FREEDOM©️ products available from Liberty Industries. We have lots of options available to suit your needs. Including the time tested methods, like the “MapleLeaf Request,”
spokesbeing holds up strongly worded letter
"The "Oz-Land 'Gidawf Mah Prahpurty' Polite Request,"
spokesbeing holds up an eatmu launcher. Flashing below it is: "Comes with 4 angry eatmus"
"The "Animeland 'I'm Just Saying' Request,"
spokesbeing points and camera pans over to a bunch of black clad species specific figures all carrying swords
*"*The Land of Pharoahs 'I'm Not Asking' Request,"
spokesbeing points and the camera pans over crowds of species specific figures waving banners and signs wearing body armor and carrying rifles while singing species specific songs
“and the “Hamburger Kingdom 'Why Didn't You Listen!' Request”.”
spokesbeing waves manipulator appendage to kitchen window where rows of armored soldiers, military equipment and vehicles are visible
“Many other options are also available on request to meet your specific needs. Like the “Fifth of November”,”
camera pans to the left to show that half of the kitchen packed with wooden barrels and back
“and the “John Conner”.”
spokesbeing places a plasma rifle in the 40 watt range and uzi 9mm in the counter
“What ever your need, look to Liberty Industries to change your democratic situation.”
*fade out to legal announcements *
“Liberty Industries Negative Liability Company is not responsible for the use of its products. Liberty Industries is a wholly owned subsidiary of BobCo, all rights reserved."
-- BobCo GalNet advertisement in former Lanaktallan space, post Confederacy/Unified Council War.
(With apologies to: u/AMEFOD - I'm not even sorry)
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"Come now and listen to the legends of our people, the beginning of our home, and the source of the great curse that now rests upon us.
In the ancient age, before our home was touched by our people's feet, we lived under the blessed shackles of The Unified Ones. Our people were bound in ignorance, blessed without thought, control, or will. Then came Nakteti the Traveller, the Oathkeeper, She who bound the Shackle-Blessed King to his gilded throne, the daughter of the Matron of the Steely Gaze Singing Bray. She set out to seek a new home for our people, she reached into the long dark with all four hands, seeking to grip a new future.
Just when her goal was in reach however she was beset upon by an ancient beast, a ravening, hungering, devouring beast, a screeching titan of metal and hate that screamed the ancient words, "THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE!". Nakteti the Traveller wept as she watched the people slaughtered. Wept as the new homes she had sought burned and were gouged into pieces by the Star-Hungering Titan. She fled, unable to fight the creature, desperate for aid. Her call did not go unanswered.
From the stars came the might Da'ahk'seen the Curseborn, the Wrathful One, the Dark-Bound Savior, and his companion, the Doe of Fye, Friend to All, the Grandest Child. Nakteti the Traveler called for aid, and he answered. Da'ahk'seen faced the Star-Hungering Titan in battle with wrath and hate, while Doe of Fye sheltered Nakteti and her battered companions, shepherding them away to safety. Nakteti was taken by the great Doe of Fye to a mighty fortress, the great and terrifying castle of Terra's Soul, where the Curse-Bound Terrans live and thrive. Where the Wrathful lemurs make their wild, ferocious, bright, and beautiful home.
Nakteti looked upon their accursed lives, their vibrant, powerful, beautiful lives. After being blessed by shackles for countless years she found the mighty fortress and its people both terrifying and wonderful. She found that it was good, and she hungered for their ravening curse. She called upon her power, rallying the maddened lemurs of Terra and took from them, with cleverness and creativity, a new home, a land for our people to thrive. She worked tirelessly, ceaslessly working alongside the maddened lemurs of Terra. When the great Star-Hungering Titans arrived at our ancient home it was the mad lemurs of Terra who saved as many of us as they could and took us to our new home, to the home Nakteti the Traveller had created for us with the wealth and power of those same mad lemurs.
When our people arrived we were overwhelmed and terrified. The Lanaktallan were left far behind, the Terrans had left us be, we were alone. Our leaders rallied quickly, they shackled us once more in blessings, took our terrifying choices and worries away, let us return to what we had known. However to Nakteti the Traveller this was unacceptable. She had been afflicted by the great curse on the Fortress of Terra's Soul.
She descended with wrath and fury, lifted blade and spell like the furious Terrans she walked with, and she battered her way into the very depths of the Gilded Palace where our leader sat. She roared and swept her blade... but she spared his life. She bound him in golden chains, sealing him away in his Gilded Palace, binding him and his Blessing of Shackles to the heart of the city he called home, never to escape lest his cloying binding shackles spread across the world.
After binding the Shackle-Blessed King into the Pearl Throne of his Golded Castle she left raised her voice, lifted her gripping hands, and cast upon our people the Great Curse, leading us forth from that city and into the wilds. There we found ourselves, our true selves. There we finally became people, ravaged by the terrible curse that now afflicted us.
The curse of freedom.
Terrible, terrible freedom."
-Zaitekik, Free-Cursed Scholar of the Tnvaru Histories, 132 years after the Nakteti Freedom Revolution.
"It's obviously bullshit, but it's cool so I believe it." -Unknown Tnvaru
(With Apologies to ZylotheWolfbane - I'm not even sorry)
--------------
"I visited New Tnvaru after the war, curious as to how they had adapted. Like everywhere else the Mad Lemurs of Earth had touched, they had adapted in their own way.
"Whether it was the right way or the wrong way, they, like others, will have to let historians judge some day in the future.
"After the shackles have rusted away." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
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MANDATORY VIEWING MESSAGE
"As Planetary Director For Life, it is my solemn duty to care for all of you within my sphere of authority. Are you or someone you know a Terran in distress? Help is available 30 hours a day, 8 days a week, at any time! The New Tnvaru Psychiatric Services can provide grief counseling in addition to many other services. Call or text at any time for an automated, digital sentience, or live being crisis counselor call, a counseling appointment at a clinic or other comfortable location or even a home visit! Let us help you as you have helped us." - Planetary Director For Life Namtotum speaking for the Terran Assistance Program
END MANDATORY VIEWING MESSAGE
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The holoprojection was crystal clear, high fidelity, something Nakteti had been assured all of her life was impossible due to atmospheric attenuation and distortion. Even a large holotank could only produce grainy and flickering holograms, yet the small disk sitting on the table was providing such high resolution that she could make out the reflections in the glossy black armor of the figure she was talking to via needlecast over a thousand light years away.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"One hundred worlds and I have discovered the exact same problem you are dealing with," the black armored figure wheezed. "I have been forced to leave the Lanaktallan Executor surveillance systems in place, keep open factories that produce products that could be manufactured through creation engines in seconds and at vastly superior quality with less resource use, and micromanage nearly all facets of life through my subordinates."
"How long must it go on?" Nakteti asked, keeping her catching hands busy by polishing the nanite infused sword she held in her gripping hands.
The other being in the needlecast com call shook their head. They were a Terran made of entirely red light, male with a compassionate expression that felt heartfelt rather than forced. "Decades, Lady Nakteti, perhaps generations. Terra has a long history of dealing with the oppressed once oppression has been cast off, so we have protocols and therapies to deal with such things."
"I had hoped, no, I had assumed that everyone would reach out and try to grasp the freedoms I was offering," Nakteti admitted.
The black armored figure shook his head. "No, Lady Nakteti. They may want to, but they will be terrified by it. Others may attempt to, but will find it too overwhelming. Still others will feel a sense of fear and discomfort even contemplating it. My people have been under treatment for years."
"We had to start instilling a culture. These people had no culture, no true society beyond oppression, beyond the relationship between oppressor and oppressed," the red being said. "We were forced to resort to using children's programs just to teach them to go on walks and acknowledge one another's presence."
"There were those who were afraid to show affection to their own children," the armored one wheezed. "Those who had been torn from their parents and did not know them. Reuniting families was among the most daunting but rewarding tasks the Empire faces."
"Is there nothing I can do for them? They are my people, and what they are struggling under cannot be borne," Nakteti said, feeling frustration.
"Do what you are doing. Give them the option to choose between their old life, the unrestrained freedom you offer, and anything in between," the armored one said.
"I will forward you the treatment that was developed by myself and other psychiatric and psychologist medical professionals," the red figure said. "I will also send you the files so that you can do species specific versions of children's shows just to start healing your people."
"Thank you, Grand Moff Red Prince," Nakteti said.
"I invite you for a visit the Melody System, Lady Nakteti, at your liesure," the black armored figure wheezed.
"I will, Darth Harmonus," Nakteti said.
The call ended and Nakteti stared at the GalCom logo for a few long minutes, still rubbing oils into the alloy of the blade. The privacy field dropped and she could hear birds and insects outside as well as the rhythmic sound of metal being hammered on metal. The room she was in reappeared, revealing her to be sitting at a kitchen table in a modest little house.
She touched the icon on the table edge and the holoemmiter lowered into the tabletop and was hidden by the two panels sliding back into position. She put the sword on her back, feeling the magnetic system between her two pair of shoulderblades click.
Sighing, she got up, moved to the fridge, and got a Countess Crey Berry Snap Surprise, cracking open the can as she went out the side door.
She stepped from a fully modern kitchen into a medieval blacksmith's workshop between one step and the next. There were three heavily muscles Terrans working, one doing engraving on a nearly unadorned blade, the second slowly and steadily pumping bellows, and the third working on hammering the hyperalloys into shape to form another blade for a bastard sword.
Nakteti had learned about sword forging over the last six months, watching and learning from Lady Keena's children.
"How did your meeting go?" Lady Surscee asked without looking up from where she was etching the blade she had worked for nearly two weeks to forge. Nakteti knew the blade was flush with nanites to emulate magic.
"Good, I guess," Nakteti said. She moved over and sat on one of the stools after climbing up on it. Her feet were a good half-meter off the floor.
"Didn't hear what you wanted to?" Crooked Raster asked, the digital sentience appearing via hologram. The DS was examining the nanite programming system, which largely was predicated on runic script and long flowing command phrases.
"Not really," Nakteti admitted. "I was hoping Darth Harmonus would be able to provide me with some way to get everything to work, but apparently even after a couple of years he is still facing the same problems I have. Worse, he has to deal with four neo-sapient species, two unregistered local sentient species, and the Lanaktallan as well as all of the various Council species that don't want to leave his Empire."
Lady Surscee pushed the blade back, putting the engraver she was using in the cradle it normally rested in. Nakteti knew that despite its primitive look it was used to align nanites as well as the atomic structure of the blade itself.
"Nothing worth doing is ever easy," Lady Surscee said. "Like many others who have found power thrust upon them, often unwillingly, the path that leads to the best outcome is the one with the most obstacles and trials."
"Just don't lose sight of what you're trying to do," Crooked Raster said. He wiped away the runes he was studying and looked at Nakteti. "Just remember, when you're asshole deep in alligators and kobolds it's really hard to remember your original goal was to drain the swamp."
It took Nakteti a second to look up the meaning. The first few results were memes of a muscled Terran male fighting alligators or the lizard people of the Rigellian Saurian Compact known as kobolds. One made her snort, as it was a Terran adult smashing alligators with the caption "Don't tell me to calm down!" The one of a fat man yelling "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING? I'LL TOUCH WHATEVER I WANT" and laying about himself with a club and his fists made her burst out laughing.
When she finally got it, she nodded.
"I have to admit, I had hoped that Namtotum would just make sure the people who weren't ready to live outside those big cities were cared for. I wasn't expecting what he's done in the last few months," Nakteti said.
Lady Surscee laughed. "You have shown and offered him more power than he even had beneath the hooves of the Lanaktallan, but the loss of his eye has shown him that you are more ruthless than even he is."
"He was willing to have me killed by his guards," Nakteti protested.
"But you showed you were willing to carve his eye from his face with a knife you held in your own hand," Lady Surscee replied. "It is one thing to order others to do bloodshed, it is another to do it yourself."
"He admires your ruthlessness," Magnus said from where he had just quenched the blade in a barrel of vinegar and oil mixed with the blood from cattle. Nakteti wrinkled her nose at the smell, but she had gotten used to it. "Even he was beneath the yoke of the Lanaktallan, forced to kneel before their vast armies and their Executor Corps, but not a single Lanaktallan ever took his eye from him themselves. He respects that."
Nakteti shook her head. "The fact he uses forced emigration to my areas as a punishment, calling it 'exile' is somewhat annoying."
"It makes it fearful, the same way he has a lengthy and frightening process for anyone to return to the cities," Magnus said. He pulled the blade from the quenching barrel and thrust it into the forge. "Fear is the most primal response and one that often needs little tailoring to the individual."
Nakteti nodded, sipping at her drink, as Magnus went back to work on the blade.
She disliked the changes on some levels. The walls around the cities, how the workers were moved under guard to the factories and farms and forced to work beneath the gaze of armed guards, how Tnvaru could be exiled from the city for 'crimes against the State', and how anyone who 'snuck' out or 'defected' had to undergo harsh interrogation and nearly go through a trial to be allowed back.
She sighed again and Lady Surscee looked at her. "What vexes you?"
"I just feel... I don't know... like I failed them somehow," Nakteti sighed. "Less than a third of the population left the cities, and almost half of them went back to the cities within a month."
"The world outside a prison cell can be terrifying," Lady Surscee said.
"Have you looked at the population metrics lately?" Crooked Raster asked.
Nakteti shook her head. "No."
Crooked Raster tossed her a glittering ball that she knew only she could see. She caught it with the hand that had an implanted holoemitter and brought it up.
The sight of the graph where the amount of Tnvaru who left the cities brought a twinge of sadness. The line went up to nearly a third of the population, then dropped down until barely a fifth of the population was still in her areas.
"Swipe it to the last six months," Crooked Raster said.
She twisted her fingers and flicked two fingers, expanding it to six months.
The current amount of Tnvaru was almost a quarter.
"Now look at raw numbers," Crooked Raster said.
That made her raise her eyebrows. A few thousand a week. None of which returned to the cities. Nearly a quarter of the Tnvaru on the planet lived in one of the 'rings' around the city.
The closer to the city, the more city and planetary officials controlled people's days with laws, regulations, and fees.
"What is this line?" Nakteti asked, tapping a thin dotted red line. It expanded and she stared.
There was video of Tnvaru being hidden in trucks of grain, bribing Sociopolice, or running quickly between spotlights to vanish into the alleys of the industrial sections surrounding the cities.
"The Underground Railroad," Crooked Raster said. He shook his head. "Just enough 'raids'," the DS made air-quotes, "To keep them on their toes and to give it a sense of anxiety and urgency, but still several hundred a week are 'smuggled' out of the cities."
Nakteti watched as a group of a dozen fleeing Tnvaru were captured by the Sociopolice and then freed in a daring jailbreak that involved explosives and gunfire. She noted that all of it was done with stunners, not a single 'hard' weapon.
"Namtotum knows about this?" Nakteti asked.
Crooked Raster smiled. "Yes. He's decided that it's better to 'bleed off malcontents' to your area than have to deal with anything else, like firebombs or car bombings, that people might choose to try to fight against his system."
"It feels like I'm playing God here," Nakteti sighed. "Like Namtotum and I are putting on some grand performance and fooling everyone."
"They allow themselves to be fooled. It is easier for them to accept that they will have freedom and liberty and plenty if they can just escape the dystopia they are so unfortunate to have been imprisoned by than to admit that all they have to do is board a maglev shuttle," Magnus said, turning and thrusting the blade back into the quencher to fuse the nanites to the alloy.
Nakteti's datalink popped up a meme she'd never seen before. On the top was the caption "How it is presented" and a picture of a crying Tnvaru female with a heavy boot on the side of her face. Below was the caption "How it be" with the viewpoint pulled back to show that the Tnvaru was pressing the boot against their own face.
Nakteti shook her head and dismissed the meme.
"Sister, if you would," Magnus said, pulling the blade from the barrel and setting it on the warsteel anvil.
"If I must," Lady Surscee said, standing up.
Nakteti watched as the female Terran used 'magic' to infuse more nanites into the blade as well as program them. It was a long slow process and the chanting eased Nakteti's nerves and made her relax.
After a bit she got up and left the blacksmith workshop, stepping into the sunlight. The breeze felt chilly for a moment as her sweat soaked fur had been fine inside. She looked around at the small town she had chosen to stay in for the time being. A private spaceport was less than two miles away, hidden by trees that helped baffle the sound.
She moved up to the comfortable swing on the porch and sat down. She admitted she had copied it from the swing on the porch of her mother's house, but the comfort was something she needed.
After a long moment she touched her datalink.
"Twisted Java here," the DS said.
"Get my crew together," she said.
"Oh? Where are we going?" the DS asked.
"The Harmonus Empire, the Melody System," Nakteti said. "I want to see how the Empire is run."