Confederate City, August 1st, 2362
Jupiter, Lagrange 4
1500 Hours, Station Time
“How do I look, Ember?” a tall, sharply dressed man asked as he adjusted his suit and tie in a long mirror. Security guards flanked the only entrance or exit, a singular doorway opposite where he stood in the darkened dressing room. Salt and pepper undercut hair was slicked back, and his strong face bore a strategic five o’clock shadow.
An auburn haired woman, just as sharply dressed, answered while working on the datapad in her hand. “Quite Presidential, sir.” Notably, she didn’t quite look up to answer the question. Tall and severe, the half rim glasses she wore only completed her air of superiority.
He turned and regarded her with an easy smile, a practiced smile. Not a smile of mirth or happiness, but the practiced smile of a man asking you for your weekly tithe. His face was exactly as sharp as his suit, and not even the ugly scar crossing his milky-white left eye could change how handsome his face was.
Some would say it made him more handsome, rather than less.
“I appreciate that, dear. Then on to business. What does my security chief have to say?”
“He says you should cancel and give the address from a safe room. They’ve already arrested several dissidents in the surrounding area.”
He nodded at this, his smile easing into a smaller, more comfortable thing. “Please, do tell Chief O’Donnel that I have every faith in the ability of he and his people to safeguard not only myself, but the august people of this station.” he said.
“Would you like me to relay that verbatim?” She asked, a dry tone in her voice.
“Hah! Better not, that man has never appreciated a good soundbyte.”
Ember tilted her head, one hand to a small earbud in her left ear. She listened for a moment, before nodding and muttering something under her breath.
“Then, since you insist on this speech, the stage is ready for you, sir.” she said, gesturing with her free hand to the door.
He snapped his lapels into place once more, before striding out, his security smoothly opening the door as he approached. Two suited men standing just outside the doorway led the way, and the two men from inside followed as they strode down a dimly lit hallway. It was a short walk, with just one left turn through the empty halls before they found their destination.
The hall opened onto a bright, artificially lit space. A truly massive open-air amphitheatre, with rows on rows of tiered seating facing the stage they now stood on. Said seating was split down the middle, leaving an open space for the crowd to filter through and find their place. He basked in the view of the massive torus of Confederate City as the assembled citizenry quieted. He took in the upward arc, and the odd view of a city and its greenery disappearing upwards, behind the ceiling of the torus.
His security team fanned out, each finding posts at the edge of the stage. Their sharp eyes scanned the crowd, on the lookout for any more ‘dissident elements’. The president strode toward the lectern in the middle of the stage. As he did, he waved at the crowd and gave a measured, practiced smile.
“My fellow Jovians!” He said, once he was situated behind the lectern with his hands braced firmly on its sides. As he spoke, the crowd finally silenced themselves, the susurrus of quiet chatter falling away.
“My friends, I thank you for being here, both in person and in spirit,” at this he nodded towards one of the surreptitious video cameras placed around the amphitheatre, “For this is a momentous occasion. Today marks the second anniversary of the Ceres Armistice.” He paused here, and looked away and down for a single moment.
“Our people suffered greatly over the Long War. I was born a scant few years after the war had begun. My earliest memories are of the struggles of the early war. I remember the rations, I remember how my family struggled, how every family around us struggled. I swore then, at the tender age of twelve, that I would make things better.” He looked up this time, and he squeezed the sides of the lectern.
“So when I was sixteen, I lied on my enlistment paperwork, and went off to war. I know, I know, it was wrong to do, and kids,” he pointed at the same camera, “don’t lie. But, back in those days no-one was looking that hard at your paperwork, and I knew several other men throughout my service who had done the same thing. That was the most desperate time of the war.” He took a deep breath, affecting a look of deep thought. The crowd leaned forward in their seats, caught on his every word.
“I remember fighting for my life, for my friends' lives, every day. I tested high enough to get into Pilot School, and graduated at the top of my class. Thanks to that, I was at the front-lines of that war. I fought at Mars, I fought at Deimos and Phobos, I fought here at Jupiter, and I was there at Ceres when we finally broke the back of the Federation war-machine and forced the signing of the armistice!” He paused, taking a sip from the bottle of water offered by Ember after his short outburst.
“So I come to you today, to celebrate. I hear the question on your minds already, friends. How can we celebrate? I admit, it has been a long, hard two years. Our vaccine programs were the first thing to come back, hitting peak efficiency a mere six months after the end of the war. Then, we were able to stop food rationing after eight months. The rest has been more difficult. I am loath to admit it, but our Jovian Works program has been slow going. Unemployment in the entire Confederacy has fallen, but it is a slow, difficult thing.”
He saw someone in the crowd move, someone clad in long, baggy clothes. His security guards moved, slowly, trying not to spook the crowd. He continued, ignoring the suspicious individual. If one looked closely enough, one might spot a smirk on his face for a single moment.
“But I do not come to you today to simply recite the same grim struggles you are all so very familiar with! I come to you today to tell you about the bright future ahead of us, to tell you-”
The suspicious figure stood suddenly, a dark metal thing in their hands. A pistol. It roared suddenly, causing the people next to him to cringe and scream away. His security team moved, but too slowly. They tackled the individual, subduing him with ease, but...
The sharply dressed man stumbled against the lectern, barely supporting himself. Blood seeped from a ragged hole in his side, maybe the size of a small coin. His guards rushed to him, but his assistant made it first.
“Mr. President! Call a medevac, do it now!” She shouted, first at the struggling president, then at the security guard next to her. The large, bald man nodded, a hand already at his ear.
But the president batted her hand away. Strength seemed to surge through him as he suddenly found his feet. He raised himself back up, and planted his feet, and fixed his now awestruck crowd with a singular glance.
They all remained seated, panic seeming to vanish at the sight of their leader.
“This is just another sign of our long struggle! A desperate act by a desperate resistance, by cowardly rebels pushed to the limit of their ability!” He cried, a strength in his voice despite the blood soaking his suit.
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“If this is not enough to stop me, then it cannot be enough to stop our glorious Confederacy! So I promise you, we will restore our lost colonies! We will restore our interests in the asteroid belt! And we will finally take back what is rightfully ours, what the Federation could never truly take care of!” He spotted a glint of light in the distance, barely visible against the soft lighting set into the ceiling of the torus.
“I give you the weapon that will take back Earth! I give you! The Einherjar!”
As he spoke, the glint of light resolved itself into a machine, a Frame, flying towards his amphitheatre at high speed. It landed behind him, hard enough that it shook the floor and sent several people tumbling onto their rear ends.
As it stood, revealing its massive, sixteen meters of height, its glistening black and gold armor, curved and angled to resemble a man in armor, with trim evoking a primitive, Norse image. Its visor flashed red and the crowd lost its mind, cheering loudly enough to shake the windows three blocks away.
As they screamed and shouted and cheered, the President was finally whisked away in a medevac chopper.
---
“Well, I think that went well, don’t you Ember?” said the President from his hospital bed, several hours later. He was exceptionally lucky, the doctors had said. The would-be assassin had used a small caliber pistol, and the shot had passed straight through him, missing his kidney by a scant few millimeters. Doctors had been hovering and fussing till just a few minutes ago, but he had finally managed to banish them.
The older man somehow managed to still look stately, even missing his shirt and with his entire abdomen wrapped in bandages.
“I would say it went rather poorly, sir.” said Ember, from where she sat at his bedside. She sounded every inch the detached personal assistant, but a slight waver in her voice betrayed her remaining shock. They were accompanied only by the whir of air conditioning. The President had a single IV drip leading into his arm, fluids meant to help his body replenish the lost blood.
One of his doctors had insisted on a blood transfusion, but he had refused. They were still in the middle of a blood shortage, he said, and he had a fairly rare blood type anyways. If he could do without, he would. They had relented under his steely, single eyed gaze.
“Ah,” he said, “But despite my injury, I stood and finished my speech. The people eat that kind of thing up.”
There was something strange in his voice, a kind self assuredness. Ember cocked her head, and said, “Sir, do you mean…?” He smiled at her then, and winked.
“The people will be told it was a single rebel, desperately enacting an assassination attempt in light of the crackdown they experienced earlier this very day. Of course, said assassin will be nowhere to be found. Our justice system is quite swift, afterall. No need to burden the people with all the grisly details.”
Ember swallowed. “So you allowed this to happen?”
“Of course-” he started, only to be interrupted.
“Sir! Vice Admiral Rankin is here, and he insists on seeing you!” interrupted one of the guards who had been standing watch outside. Ember jumped in her skin, having not heard the door gently glide open.
“Rankin? You better have a good reason to be here. I’ve just been shot, you know.” said the President, his tone back to its normal, practiced jovial tone. A man, several years older than the president, walked in, flanked by two more security guards. He was clad in a typical Confederate Navy service uniform, and his pale face bore the lines of a long, stressful service history. A regulation buzzcut completed the man’s look as the consummate career military man.
“I apologize for the interruption, Mr. President, but I felt this should be brought to your attention ASAP.” Rankin spoke, his back rigid as he did so. The president held his hand out, a silent invitation to continue.
“This morning at 0500 hours we recovered a damaged message drone from the C.N.S. Lancelot. They were on deployment-”
“I remember, they were deployed to Ananke, right?” the President interrupted him. By the minute tense in the man's jaw, one could assume he did not appreciate this, though the respectful tone of his voice betrayed nothing of the sort.
“Yes sir. Lancelot was deployed to investigate the claims of intel report A-4290. Are you familiar?”
The President simply nodded in response, allowing Rankin to continue. “Then you should know, they found what they were looking for.” Rankin pulled a small dataslate from his uniform pocket, really little more than a small hologram projector. He pressed a button on the small display, throwing up a large, somewhat translucent holo-screen between him and the President.
Displayed on it was a repeating video clip, clearly taken from a camera mounted aboard a vessel. It was a bit grainy and out of focus, but the President sat up in his bed, his focus entirely on the image.
A red, white, and gold machine hung serenely in space, appearing to look away in the distance. A rifle was held in its hand, but it looked for all the world like a shieldmaiden of old, but much larger and mechanized. It suddenly erupted into motion, effortlessly outmaneuvering confederate Frame’s that appeared slow and clunky next to the sheer grace on display.
“Unfortunately the Lancelot appears to have been lost with all hands. A rescue effort was dispatched, but we don’t expect them to find much more than rubble. “
“Is there anything else, Admiral?” The president asked, somewhat distracted. His gaze was still fixed on the machine in the looping video, his eye stuck to its graceful form. Ember, sitting beside him, studied the video as well, but with somewhat more reservation.
“Yes sir.” Rankin said, while pressing another key on his holoremote. “The message probe also contained these images, of a vessel that had engaged the Lancelot at her mission zone,” the looping video cut out, leaving four images of the same vessel, from slightly different angles. The simplistic rectangular body, side-body weapon mounts, and triangular engine arrangement marked it as a Lamia-class frigate from the Long War. The clear patch jobs done to keep it running were more than a little obvious. Still, the President mused to himself, it did manage to go toe-toe with a modern vessel for a short while.
“After some digging, we positively ID'd this vessel as the C.S.S. Speak Softly, registered to one Alexandria Valentina, and formerly registered to one Bridgette Lanoya. Intel is combing Jovian space for any reports of a vessel matching this description.”
The President sat up further, and his eye met the Admiral’s. “Thank you, Admiral. Notify me as soon as you find them. Furthermore,” His eyes narrowed as he thought, “Put Sergeant Kim in charge of the Frame team. Something tells me you’ll need his more unorthodox approach.”
“Yes sir.” said the Admiral, though the tense in his jaw muscles had returned. “Now if-”
“Leave me, please.” said the President, closing his eyes.
“Sir?” Said the Admiral. Ember quirked her eyebrow up at this as well.
“I am truly sorry, but the events of today have taken more out of me than I thought at first. I need my rest.”
“...Yes sir, Mr. President.” muttered the Admiral as he vacated the room, followed by the guards who had brought him here.
Ember strode the doorway herself, but paused for a moment. “Rest well, Mr. Wednesday.” she said, striking the lights as she left the room. Wednesday was plunged into darkness.
He opened his eyes. In the dark, something strange became apparent. His left eye, a blind milky white, glowed an eldritch white. Barely visiblle even in this darkness, it nonetheless seemed to pierce space itself as he gazed into what seemed to be the middle distance.
“You’ve made your return then, Freyja?” he said, though he was alone now. He sighed, and leaned back against his pillows.
“Our war was never truly over,” He narrowed his eyes as he murmured, still staring into the middle distance. He spoke low, low enough to not alert the guards that were still posted outside.
He pulled a small communicator from his pants pocket, and keyed the single button on it. A voice issued forth, strong and self-assured.
“Sir.” it said, simply.
“Please ensure that Farbauti is ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. Freyja has resurfaced.”
“It will be done, sir.” The line clicked, dead
For a long time, he simply stared into the distance, his brow furrowed. “Now I can finally end what you began, and take back what is mine.” he said, softly.
Then, the light passed from his blind eye, and he collapsed backwards against his pillows, with only the steady rise and fall of his chest to signal that he was alive.