"Darren Lane, you have ten seconds to get in here before Rassid finishes his coffee." Kirov called out to the lobby. She sighed as the entire ship moved, jarring her to a normal sitting position.
"Dammit Vorchevsky, I was comfortable!" Sasha shouted his way before resuming her laid-back appearance. "And heel Rassid, don't go rabid dog just yet tovarich."
Kirov waited for the new recruit to blunder into her office, and wondered what Rassid would do with that cup of coffee if he felt angered. She had never worked with him before, but she heard the stories.
Darren bit back a reply, not something easily accomplished for him, and scurried across the room to the office nearly tripping as the ship shifted suddenly under his feet. Altogether undignified and certainly fitting with the phrase 'blunder into her office'. He managed to get there with a few seconds to spare so at the very least that had to count for something right?
Then again. Probably not.
What a great start you're off to. He thought sarcastically to himself.
"Good, good. I hate it when I am forced to wait. Now, before Rassid decides to demonstrate exactly why no one pisses him off, tell me exactly who you are, and do not give me your life's story in it's full. Give me a summary, and if I hear you pause, I suspect you are a spy. You don't want us thinking you are a spy now, do you? Need I tell you what happend to the last spy who came in?"
Darren had a feeling like he could guess what happened to the last spy. He cleared his throat before beginning.
"Okay, short version: My name is Darren Lane, I'm twenty-three, I never lived in one place for very long, just kind of drifted around with my old man."
You're rambling. That voice at the back of his mind told him.
"My old man settled down when I was eighteen, became a mechanic on New London. I kept wandering because I was young and foolish. I met up with some other people my age and we all wandered together as young fools will. We went our seperate ways a couple years back after a disagreement."
That's an understatement. The voice commented.
"Not long after my old man died. The circumstances surrounding his death made me decide to take another look at the universe and how I viewed it and that's when I realized I couldn't live in my ignorant teenage fantasy world anymore. So I grew up and set out to do something productive with my life. And that's the short version." He finished.
Short version was too long. The voice told him again. Sometimes he really wished he could tell his mind to shut up.
"Touching. Truly heartwarming. Now why have you decided that joining the Coalition will lead you to a more productive life? We are not a high school; We are a fleet. We fight, we kill. Eight out of ten people who walk through that door have had their brains splattered across the walls, have had their bodies thrown unceremoniously from the airlock. Tell me, what makes you willing to fight, wanting to fight, and brought to fighting? What makes you one of the two to walk away from here? This is not a fantasy world you can dream up while falling asleep in class, you can bet your ass on it." she said. "What motivates you, in short, to fight under the red flag of the Coalition?"
Darren took a moment to ponder the question and form his thoughts into a coherent answer. Finally with a deep breath he began.
"My father, I mentioned he was a mechanic, well he wasn't a mechanic in the pretty part of New London. He was a mechanic in the bad part. Every week he had to pay out protection money to the various local gangs, the corrupt cops, he even had to pay off the sanitation workers to pick up the damn garbage. There was no justice, just greed."
He paused for a moment trying to decide how best to formulate the next part of his answer.
"I just don't see how a society that inspires that level of greed in people can be viewed as something good. It's just every man for himself and to hell with the common good. But the Coalition is different. Here the attitude is that we're all in the boat together. Here there's justice, the rich can't just exploit the poor until they're all powerful. And that... I think that's worth fighting for, worth living for, and worth dying for if need be."
"I see you have a small pinprick of intelligence, to say the least." Sasha said. "But, while anyone can come in and tell me their story, not all understand the Coalition. Besides the 'in the same boat' part, what do you know of the Coalition?"
Rassid listened, all the while staring straight into the recruits eyes - unmoving, unflinching. Each calm breath was the only sign that the hulking military man was anything but a statue.
He took a sip from his coffee when the recruit began to divulge his sob story. People who usually came to the Coalition had one. It gave them some manner of justification for wanting to fight and kill people, all for a cause they were not born into. It makes the killing easier, which is just the biggest lie anyone can tell themselves. Killing only becomes easy when you stop caring about human life.
Calmly, still keeping eye contact, he set down his coffee cup, and reached on to the table. Kirov's Zenith 10mm automatic. He took the weapon into his hands, pulled back the slide to check if it was loaded - it was, with a chambered round. The action of the slide was clean, but he felt some grit in the motion - his teeth clenched - obviously someone was spending too much time adjusting her bra then cleaning her firearm.
He let the slide snap back into place with a loud piercing clack. With a click, he disengaged the safety. Real soldiers always know...the only real safety is the mind. With that, he set the weapon back on the table, and continued staring down the recruit.
Was Rassid unnerving? Yes. Had he lost all train of thought the second the man picked up a weapon? Most assuredly. Was it even more unnerving that the man wouldn't stop looking him in the eye? He cut off that train of thought. He needed to refocus. Now certainly was not the time to stop paying attention.
"My knowledge of the Coalition is sadly lacking." He said turning his attention away from Rassid and back towards the Commissar. "What I've been able to gather is that the Coalition is a growing nation founded on the principles of Marxist philosophy and stands in opposition of the four houses who are more inclined towards capitalism. Beyond that the only concrete information I've been able to gather is that there are no records of the Coalition attacking civilians except in self defence making the accusation that they are terrorists flimsy at best. I'm afraid that's all I was able to determine for sure. Everything else is little more than rumours and theories."
She looked at the boy and frowned slightly. Hm.
"You are partially correct. We did start on a Marxist base, like all Communism does. But we are not Marxist, but neither are we pure socalist."
She puts her boots down and yanks her sidearm from Rassid. "Down boy." She resumes looking at Darren. "Tell me. Where does the power of a true Revolution come from? A Hint: The answer is not the one Zedong or Stalin used."
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