Axton poked the fire with a long, thin piece of metal, which shifted the burning branches a bit and caused the flames to rise up a bit higher. It was dark now, and the stars hung overhead like a bunch of mostly stationary fireflies high above his head.
He would have enjoyed this peace and quiet, if not for the fact that it was neither peaceful nor quiet.
“Ohh, man, you have no idea what just happened!”
Another voice came on over the radio, and Axton shut his eyes and stopped himself from retorting. He had heard this before, and from about ten different people by now, all of whom gave him the exact same message.
But he held himself back from snapping and pretended like he had not heard what was to come roughly ten or so times already.
“Do tell. Just what is going on up there?”
“Well, first the station lost power save for a few subsystems, and we were all floating for a few moments, right? Then, well, a bunch of rich guys got pissy once the station restored its full power and phoned the nearest branch of the United Galactic nations security peoples.”
Axton already knew what the next line would be, but in the spirit of making the people working for Daxter happy, he played along.
“Aren’t they universally useless, and doesn’t the UGN exist merely as an embarrassing sideshow that has little to no actual power due to how the nations just don’t give a damn what it says?”
“Yeah! Yeah!” replied the overly happy person on the other end. “So, they basically said something like they wouldn’t lift a finger, so the rich guys called their home nations!”
“And they were none too happy that a bunch of rich people nearly died due to gross incompetence?” Axton replied, going off the script that he had created over the course of at least ten previous, near-identical conversations.
“Yep! So, just recently they all met in the UGN and, guess what?”
Although he already knew what had transpired in the usually useless institution, Axton played dumb for the sake of maintaining good relations.
“I find myself unable to imagine anything worthwhile happening there. Especially on such short notice.”
“Yeah, me too, but they actually had a machine review the footage from, like, around a dozen different Battle Royale games, including the one you are currently in, and they found something that was both amazing and deeply disturbing.”
“Could that be the fact that primitive sapient beings were here and were being hunted for sport?” Axton asked, partially breaking his normal spiel.
“Oh, so you know already…”
Axton now felt a little bad for preempting the thing that the other person wanted to say. Well, he felt a little bad about it, but given that he had heard it enough times to count on both of his hands, he wasn’t too upset by the obvious dejection he could hear over the radio.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
That said, he didn’t like his allies moping, so he threw the other guy a bone.
“So, given that, what happened next? I can’t even begin to imagine the response from all the nations that thought that Humanity was alone in the Galaxy, only to have it revealed that not only that they weren’t, but also that other sapient species were being hunted for fun.”
This perked the other person up considerably, which Axton could practically hear happen despite their contact with him being over a radio.
“Oh, oh, yeah, that’s right! They were all royally pissed off!”
“For differing reasons, of course.” Axton added before nearly cursing himself for preempting the fragile person on the other end of this long-distance call.
“Oooooh, yeah. Andromeda was pissed because they could have had exotic new slaves, while the Union of Syndicated Stellar Regions was pissed because, and I quote ‘Greedy Capitalist Pig-Dogs were tormenting fresh proletarians who knew nothing of the greater threat that they were facing, which no doubt has driven them deeper into the great opiate of the Bourgeois masses’.”
Axton snorted a muffled laugh. That line never got any less hilarious, even after he had heard it at least ten times prior.
“The United Sectors Alliance was angry that they were essentially being treated as mere animals, and that they hadn’t been allowed to grow and mature naturally.”
“And likely because this system borders their territory, which could have let them be the first nation to discover sapient, non-Human life, right?”
“Yeah,” said the guy on the other side. “That was another reason they were furious.”
“And the Entente Universalis? The Revelry?” Axton asked, already knowing the answer.
“The Revelry isn’t acknowledged by the UGN or its member nations, but Daxter said that they were already aware of these people, and many, many others, but stayed quiet because it brought them more profits. As for the EU, though…”
Axton already knew what their reasons for being angry were, and they were just as infantile as the ones held by the USSR, the Andromedan Empire, and The Revelry, as well as the actual reason why the USA was peeved.
“Well, they were just angry because they weren’t able to colonize the, and I quote, ‘Backwards savages, who desperately needed a good, noble Lord from the EU to guide them into proper civility’.”
“Of course.” Axton said with a slight nod. “And we both know that the real reason why the USA really was angry about this, right?”
“Highly valuable rare minerals and materials that could be sold for a high profit and used to further the economy?” asked the faceless person on the radio.
“That is what I feel is highly likely.” Axton said with a slight nod to one side. “But that may just be my opinion, and they may actually mean what they say, though I honestly doubt that anyone in this galaxy is so virtuous and selfless.”
“To say nothing of a massive nation like theirs.” Added the random man on the radio.
“Yep.” Axton replied curtly.
“Well, we can’t all be perfect, flawless, truly good people like you Outworlders, right?”
At this, Axton laughed. That retort did break the cycle of repetition that had given him his script.
“Perfection is a road, not a goal, and it is a road without end. Besides, we’ve seen my arch-nemesis Donovan and his ilk side with the Empire, so morality is hardly something my kind can claim sole ownership of.”
The rustling of the nearby foliage snapped Axton to attention, and the picked up and aimed a light machine gun at the place the noise came from.
“Reach for the sky and come out slowly.” He growled. “I’m not going to welcome anyone to sneak up on me.”
“But what about a long-time friend?” asked a voice from the undergrowth.
“Fuck, man!” Axton grumbled as he put down the gun. “Don’t scare me like that!”
With the gun no longer leveled at him, Thomas emerged from the darkness and into0 the dim light.
“Man, have we got some stories to tell each other…” Thomas said as he took a seat by the fire.
And he was right, and they had all night to tell them.