Lee listened to the recruit's entire monologue, all while sipping his cold coffee.
Lee smirked and spoke,
"Hmm, you're a different one. Most of the people who apply here are from the poor, working class who were screwed over by their government; and you, You are a spoiled kid from a rich family?"
All of a sudden Lee spun around and knocked the recruit in the head with the butt of his pistol. The recruit grimaced in pain and fell to the floor with a horrifying thud. Lee stood over him.
"It is hard to believe that one old man from a bar just randomly converted you to a revolutionary. Hell, I've heard stories that are much less bullcrap than that!"
The enraged Coalition Officer picked up a bloodied Koos by the collar, he slowly took out his gun, cocked it and placed it on the recruit's forehead.
"You know, I think your a spy. Spies do not get treated so well around here."
Lee looked straight into the recruit's eyes.
"So, give me one reason why I shouldn't put a bullet into your head right here, right now."
Recipient of the Hispania Memorium, Golden Fourragere, Halo of Valor, Order of the Red Star, and the Hero of the Revolution
"I will answer what I can, Coalition and SCRA history is not exactly mainstream in Kusari. First "ancestors" how I would call them of today's Coalition and descendants of the old Sirius Coalition got to Sirius on board of sleeper ship Hispania.
Coalition goal is to establish socialist government in Sirius. Make people equal as they should be and not measure them by size of their wealth."
"The Sirius Coalition is the Sirian arm of the Coalition of Sol, we were not called the Sirius Coalition when we boarded the ships." He calmly corrected him, but overall the man had gotten it right.
"Moving on, I shall describe a hypothetical situation to test your tactical skills, answer in the best way you can." he told the older man as he began.
"You are piloting an Insurgent Class ship, you encounter a Independant Trader hauling Slaves, he says they are for the Red Hessians but there is no way to be sure, what course of action do you take?" he asked calmly.
"If possible I would try to contact someone from Red Hessians and ask them if this man speaks truth. But I think that wouldn't be really possible. Therefore I would ask the trader to drop those slaves and I would call someone from my comrades to transport them to Omega 52. Here if they wished, they could become part of the Coalition."
He stopped for a moment
"In a situation he would refuse to do so, I would try to rescue those slaves myself."
The crack on the head sent Koos' world reeling. His vision blurred and grew red from the blood that was gushing into his eyes. It felt like an elephant was standing on him, slowly crushing him to death.
As Koos gasped his answer to the commander's accusation blood spat from his mouth, "You really think I'd be here if I had a choice!? *gurgle* If you really think I'm a spy then shoot me! I have nowhere else to go. I can't live in this world anymore. Not with all the F!@#$ hypocrisy!"
Koos couldn't believe the words that were coming (barely) out of his mouth, but deep in his heart he realized he was that was he was saying was true. Life would be unbearable from this point foreward. This was his last chance to be happy. If he wasn't to join the coalition, then he was prepared for death.
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.
Lee still would not let go in spite of listening to Koos' pleas.
"Tell me then, you said you disowned your family, why? What other factors other than the man at the bar led you to believe in the Coalition's cause and made you want to come here to apply? What exactly is the hypocrisy you are talking about?"
The Captains questions flooded the recruit's mind as he was gasping for an answer.
Recipient of the Hispania Memorium, Golden Fourragere, Halo of Valor, Order of the Red Star, and the Hero of the Revolution
Koos was shaking by this point. The ferocity of his recruiters attack and the realization that he was prepared to die for this cause made him feel terrified and proud at the same time. He'd finally found his purpose, a cause that he was truly prepared to die for.
Of course, it could have been the agony he was enduring from the dual assault of the plasma burns he received from his computer terminal mysteriously exploding and the gaping gash in his head.
A singular image flashed in his head. "This girl" he choked, "This girl I saw on my way here". Her face was stuck in his mind: A young girl of about four or five with matted, dirty blonde hair, a little button nose and the biggest, most sorrowful eyes Koos had ever seen. "She was a slave, I think. She was *gag* barely old enough to read and here she was being carted along like she was an animal to be sold. She..must have been headed to one of the pirate bases. How can a system whose very name is "liberty" take people and treat them this way? How can it reduce them to something that isn't worthy of realizing her potential?" The image was from an episode he had had on his way to Baffin across Liberty from Rheinland. A slave ship had docked at a station he had stopped for fuel at in Pennslyvania. "I saw them. All of them, the slaves. I saw them in chains, being carted as though they were subhuman to the ship. As I stood watching the procession, looked at me as I at her. She must have thought I was one of them, one of those who were taking away her future, her happiness, her life."
"This is the system that I hate. Things like that, the barbarisms that we force on each other are all symptoms of a great evil that has plauged humanity since time immemorial. That evil is property. For all of history, the world can be equated to two classes. The haves and the have-nots, the bourgeois and the proletariat, the men and the women, the rich and the poor. The former trample the latter, but in a way that the latter do no realize. Everywhere humankind is in chains. The rich take everything from the worker and give back only what he needs to survive in order to replicate his slavery. He is always paid less than his work is worth because this empowers the rich. The great tragedy is that capitalism and property don't make the poor want to be free. It doesn't make them want to help their fellow man or add to the advancement of mankind. It makes the worst off want to become the best off. It makes the poor want to impose their will on the poorer. It makes the weak want to become the strong so that they can do a little oppressing of their own. What kind of a life is that? Even if you achieve success you aren't truly happy. You aren't truly free. You're only replicating oppression forcing barbaric acts on fellow humans."
Another event came to mind. It was when he was bumming through Rhienland with no purpose, no desires, and no friends. He had gotten lost in a Nebula in Dresden. His ship had taken quite a beating from radiation when he stumbled upon a gigantic asteroid base. Portraying himself as a disgruntled field hand, he was allowed entry to Vogtland base.
"I was once on Vogtland base after I had begun my conversion. I saw the same thing there. The Hessians only want to supplant the Rheinlandish government with their own. Sure some small injustices might be fixed with such a coup, but nothing will really change! Their goals are noble, but not far reaching enough. Workers, the bulk of mankind and the only true, noble people will be better off, but the slave chain of capitalism will still corrupt that land. The establishment of a moral society through immoral means is impossible. This is why I am convinced that the Coalition is the only organization that has all of sirius at heart. It is the only truly moral group in the sector.
The last few hours had let the gravity of his intellectual development sink in. The fundamental principles of Koos' life were becoming irrelevant to his newfound perspective. Soon irrelevance had turned into illegitimacy and illegitimacy into deepest injustice. Everywhere he had gone, the basic analysis afforded to him by the random stranger he had met in the bar and the writings that Koos had received from him served to explain the situation well. Everywhere Koos went, he saw those who worked being trampled on by the boots of the rich.
"The hypocrisy, sir, is that democracy and capitalism says that they are giving you freedom. Freedom to vote, to work, to choose for yourself. But nothing ever changes. That whore democracy blinds men. They think they have the chance to change things, to lessen their burden by electing leaders. This isn't true power. The regime itself is exploitative and poisonous. Democracy gives the people the illusion that things are always getting better, when they are just as enslaved as ever. The next guy, he's the one that will release us and make us rich. No, the one after that. No we were wrong, here's the one. It goes on and on. Capitalism is no better. The worker is perpetually alienated from his labor because he doesn't have ownership of himself. The master owns his entire livelihood."
The strain of this speech had drained Koos, who was quickly beginning to feel the loss of blood. He was sure he had lost feeling in his right arm and his head was even cloudier than it had been before. The white hot iron of pain that was unrelenting in it's assault on his head did much to keep him awake and aware. By fixating on it he found he could keep himself lucid.
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.
Lee looked at the recruit for a good 10 seconds, slowly holstered his pistol, and released a bloodied Koos.
"You, soldier, go get us some towels." Lee ordered one of the guards.
"Sit" Lee ordered the recruit. Koos painfully took his seat while Lee sat down in his chair directly in front of him.
The soldier came in with a fresh clean towel. Lee tossed the towel to Koos.
"Wipe yourself off, you're bleeding" Lee stated with absolutely no emotion. He then continued,
"So you say that we are a nation with morals, yet many people say we brutally kill rampantly for no reason at all. Tell me, why do people think such things?"
Recipient of the Hispania Memorium, Golden Fourragere, Halo of Valor, Order of the Red Star, and the Hero of the Revolution
Koos fell back into his chair, weakened. Wiping the blood from his face took about all the strength he could muster, but the removed strain of supporting himself brought him back to coherence.
"Because capitalism is the most invasive mechanism of control ever devised. People are so completely brainwashed that they are incapable of realizing that everywhere they live they are enslaved. The rich have comfortable lives and the power to keep the system the way it is. They are essentially bribed into stopping the advance of progress.
The mistake people make who criticize the coalition is that it's not true people the coalition neutralizes in it's quest to right the wrongs in society. The soldiers, police, meddlesome citizens, they aren't true people in the truest sense of the word. They don't have full control of their faculties. They don't have real freedom. They are obsessed with shiny pieces of metal and paper and with oppressing their fellow man in the most intrinsic way possible. In that they are more cruel than any arbitrary "wrong" that the coalition does with it's righteous goals of equality for all. The alienation of labor and the reduction of all life and "liberty" to property makes people into beasts and thus there is no moral problem with any action the coalition takes against the old system.
The pure, innate morality of the communist revolution justifies all."
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.
![[Image: coalitionsig22.png]](http://imageshack.us/a/img571/6792/coalitionsig22.png)
