Admiral Knight, Bering, Battlegroup Harmony, Highly encrypted. Subject: Lights.

[The Syndicate Leagues]

Incoming Transmission

To: Admiral Knight, Bering, Battlegroup Harmony, Highly encrypted transmission.
From: Armin.
Subject: Lights.

---

You have never seen Armin as anything less than stoic, professional, calculating and grave. Sometimes there's the slightest crack that reminds you the man is at least human, although the range of emotions he expresses rotate between gentle, frigid concern to gravitas to purile judgement. As the transmission unfolds, his persona appears to decay increasingly apart. It's enough to make you wonder what the ever increasing conflict has done to the psychology of the Unioners forced under boot after boot for so long a time. How the syndics could have psychologically survived.



I have made this private message, not as a business call, or one of two representatives of our people, but as two friends.

Friends. Perhaps I'm not... worthy... of such. My words break families, to save families. Why should I be a God - why should I?

He composes himself, but it's a struggle. You can't tell which lines are scars or ones of stress. You realise you are only a minute away from watching a member of the Arbeitsdirektorate's external communications staff physically cry their eyes out on camera. It's fascinating, in a perverse way. Perhaps a sick, calculating human would call it that. Or a Nomad.

When I received reports of that libertonian distress beacon, every other representative of the Unioners came to me and advised me to abandon it. Just another trap, they said. Another ruse to destroy us; the embarrassing poor. Those that the houses could not care for – their shame. In their failure to preserve our way of life, they elected instead to destroy us.

It may surprise you, Admiral – I deeply regret that we are dependent upon banditry and smuggling to sustain ourselves. I loathe that we are born to be criminals because the houses provide us with no other option but a lifetime breaking lumps of toxic waste into smaller lumps of toxic waste, in airtight cubes, without any natural light, without any natural hope, forever.

I wanted to help you. I wanted to do something… something good. To be a Unioner is to be born into doom – the certainty that you will fail. It is to be born under the lowest rock. Born to die, immediately, for life is a living death and the end is a blessing.

I saw your two crippled flagships, handful of support craft, desperate airwings, surrounded by all sides by those who would kill you because you were, in that moment, to Liberty what we are to the Rhein – an embarrassment. You dared resist doom, risked the certainty of being swallowed by it, because you stood up for what you thought was right.

You have caused Liberty untold economic damage in your guerrilla war. You have sent your former co-workers home in body-bags. You are weakening a house on the verge of Gallic doom – why? Because you know your cause is right. Everyday, more people want to kill us, than save us.

Let me tell you a story about the hellfire legion.

Seven years ago, a Hellfire Legion AI known only as ‘Grace’ ordained to use Pacifica as a staging ground for the use of several of their amusingly named Arbiter class battleships, comprising a full-size battlegroup compliment equivalent to roughly a third of the Hellfire military as operational at that time, for raids against the Westfalen Battlegroup within Hamburg. We permitted the legion full use of our facilities in hope that the Legion would become something of a close ally - instead, they simply abused the entirety of Pacifica’s capacity for a number of years to repair and service their warships – a biproduct of which is our considerable understanding of Hellfire technology since we always aim to develop an in-depth understanding of anything we seek to manufacture. The Legion had more than enough firepower to destroy the Westfalen – but they didn’t. The Legion, lied. They used us, and when the first Volksrevolution civil war came, they did nothing to protect us. Nor did they stop the Rheinland Liberty conflict from turning Bering into a graveyard.

There are numerous other examples, but I don’t want to lecture you or labour the point. In short, the Hellfire legion would only offer water to a dying man if they could rob him whilst he drank. Despite what you have stated, Knight, it is explicitly clear that the Legion is making every effort to demonstrate how strong and effective it is – we, too, were once dazzled. And then they raped us.

The Legion, the Commonwealth, is a sham. It has a history of genocide that puts our relatively minor crimes to shame. Its military complex is even more unprincipled and debauched than that of the Liberty navy. It lives and breathes conspiracy – conspiracy is part of my day-job and even I am terrified of the Legion.


One year ago, the Legion declared war against us, from a state of total alliance. We, to this day, still have no idea why.

I know why they are flirting with your battlegroup. They seek remind Harmony of the military tradition you have had to dilute to survive. They remind you of lost glory.

They attempted to destroy you during your inception because they saw you as a rival. Now you actually are a rival, they seek to tempt you with poison apples. They will attempt to steal your battleship – the pride of Pacifica, and rape Pacifica once more, just as they have raped Pacifica in the past.
They want your technology, Knight. The technology of the Unioners, the Lane Hackers, both groups they have declared as enemies, both groups whose technical secrets they desire. Not you, not the battlegroup, not your ideals, or your mission, which they will see as a competitor to their own legitimacy. They don’t want you to succeed. They want to put you quietly out of the way so they can strip your crimson ship to the bones and make it the pride of their navy, just as they made Pacifica their prize shipyard all those years ago.


If thought for a moment the technology we have invested into your ship was going to fall into the hands of the hellfire legion, I would order the bomber strike myself, Knight. And then I would take my own life, by my own hand. As would many of the pilots and engineers who have slaved for months to keep your people alive.


You are the last woman in Bering who still gives the Union hope. Don’t compromise your ideals by throwing your lot in with the Hellfire legion. They are the devil, they are hell – they wear their despotism in their name with pride. You are still the liberty navy and you are still noble, knight.

I will always be here if you need me. You may never trust the Union completely - I hope you never do – but you must remain pure in your mission. Don’t lose sight of who you are. Where you’re going.


Some things in Sirius are more important than victory. It is how we win, or lose, that decides if we monsters, or men.

Be brave, Victoria. Never stoop before a liar.

Please. Save who you are.


He silences the communicator's camera before uttering the final line. He doesn't want you to see him vulnerable.


Sirius needs lights.

We need heroes.

Regards,
Armin Jansen.
First contact representative and Diplomat-in-Chief of der Alster Union, Pacifica Base, Bering.

Transmission Ended