Anti-antithesis

History is written by the victors. This is a phrase I am sure many of you have heard at least once in your life. From the Romans and their depiction of the Saxons and the Egyptians, to Christianity and all of their entire history of absorbing and perverting the cultures of everyone they ever interacted with.

Then there are the more recent examples, from the British Empire doing their best to downplay the actions of the East India Trading Company, to the Allies punishing the Axis Powers after the end of World War Two while taking in the hundreds of scientists who did plenty of horrible things. Finally, there are the modern examples, those of corporations and politicians, buying and controlling the media to spin the actions of their enemies, themselves, and everyone in between to best suit their narrative.

And yet, there is a new movement around, one that tries to tell the actual truth, to let the public know what their leaders are doing and to try to hold them accountable. Samurai backed news outlets like The Purple Truth and Britain's P.A.W. network, make sure that those in power are held accountable for their actions, regardless of how many corporate assassins are sent their way.

-NotACorp Pirate Radio, 2056

Roger

When we were younger, still pretty early in our… deployments, we hit the mother load of entertainment during a job by complete accident. We were tasked with burning a warehouse down and making it look like faulty wiring, something I was very good at.

No idea what was in the warehouse, it never mattered. No, our stroke of luck occurred when one of the walls had a minor collapse, revealing someone's pet project of an entertainment room built into the walls. Cody quickly found a library of old, pre-incursion media, terabytes of shows and movies and anime, all tagged by year, genre, actor. Hell, there was even a tag for a drinking game, the rules of which I was looking forward to using in the next month or so, once things chilled the fuck out for, like, a week.

We watched a lot of old shows together, from High Fantasy to Hard Sci-fi, to stupid lawyer procedurals, even kids shows that had some pretty compelling plots and hit on topics that surprised us when we compared it to the bullshit AI slop pushed out in modern times.

But the one show I always loved to watch was Star Trek. The original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, even the animated series. I watched all of them at least twice, yet the one thing I always took issue with was the artificial gravity on every ship and station.

I could never wrap my head around such a concept. I knew it was a limitation of the technology of the times, in that they couldn't depict actual zero-Gs, but even to this day, with all of the crazy Alien tech on Earth right now, I still thought it was silly.

That was until I was in low Earth Orbit, standing on the bridge of one of our Shuttles, looking at the Earth below us as we rocketed towards the Bestlé satellite. And my feet were still planted firmly on the floor. No magnets, no vacuum mechanism, just many fucking tiny, stable black holes in the base of the shuttle stored in a pocket of folded space with its opening pointed up!

Morrigan was adamant about how safe it was, about how it only had the strength to keep us on the ground and was in no way a threat to the structural stability of the shuttle nor the life support systems. About how, if for some Sands Forsaken reason, the folded space became compromised, the black holes would dissipate harmlessly.

It didn't help. I had to force myself to ignore every sci-fi convention I had ever seen, saying that there were ticking time bombs of death that would spaghetti me the first chance they got. I forced myself to marvel at space, the stars and nebulae I could see out the view screens.

“Hey, Morrigan? Your base on the moon, do you think you could, I don't know, make a retreat for us near it?” I asked.

Morrigan rolled her eyes at me. “Already done, Roger. Even made it look like a cabin resort, with enclosed open air baths and everything.”

I smirked as I rubbed her head, causing her to push into my hand with glee. “Thanks, Blue.”

“Any time.” She replied.

And so we stood there, watching the radar indicator tick down quickly, letting us know when we would reach our target. We had visuals on the satellite from the get go, and I was both amazed at it and appalled by it.

It was a giant hotel tower in space, with large bubble pods orbiting it. The hotel itself was a gaudy thing, made of golds and blacks and statues of golden, naked humans standing like sentinels, with the orbs being an opaque black. The base of the hotel, the side facing Earth, had three main orbital weapons built into it.

Two of them were rather conventional, being the Rods from God delivery system and an ICBM style system. The more interesting weapon was a solar laser array system, utilizing a focusing catalyst to move Earth's atmosphere out of the way in order to deliver pinpoint, high intensity strikes of pure light and heat onto any target below the station.

I could think of a few uses for such a weapon, not to mention the retrofits that Morrigan had proposed to add ground penetrating radar functions. After the artificial gravity lesson I received, I was not going to ask how she could get that to work from space, no matter how much I wanted to ask.

My biggest annoyance at the satellite was the exterior design. I mean, you have free reign to design anything in space, to do some truly crazy architecture, and they make a hotel surrounded by black balls? Yeah, no thanks. Morrigan, Daliah, and I would do better once we had a full structural scan of the station. Blacks, of course, since they help with power generation, but maybe blues?

My thoughts were interrupted as the Shuttle's system alarm blared, alerting us that the station had started to adjust its weapons in our direction.

Babushka cackled in delight as I felt the Shuttle shift. “Show time, Darlings!” She shouted over the comms.

I moved to strap myself into a seat as I pulled up a render of the situation happening outside through the shared network.

We had ten shuttles in formation approaching the target, with six of them empty of people, but full of both medical supplies and food, ready safely extract, roughly, six hundred people and help them as well.

Did we expect there to be six hundred people that need to be saved? Yes, but also no. Outsider and Bahamut had estimated six hundred as the upper end of civilians that might be held hostage here, considering how massive the satellite was.

“Getting a message from the target.” Babushka announced. “Putting it though.”

[Approaching unauthorized craft, you are nearing the edge of Bestlé extra-terrestrial territory. State your affiliation and intent, then shut down your engines and await boarding craft for inspection, detainment, and impounding.]

I chortled in amusement, rolling my eyes at the obvious legal bullshit. “You know what? Sure.” I said, smirking hard. “Babushka, please broadcast my next message on all bands listening in.”

I saw a green light pop up on my augs, indicating I was, indeed, broadcasting to everyone. I cleared my throat. “Good evening, Satellite BEST. My name is Cody Optics, CEO of Real Dreams Limited out of The Independent City State of New Phoenix. Two weeks ago, you and yours declared war on not only the Corporate Council of New Phoenix, but also the New Phoenix branch of The Family. This is a follow up on that declaration, both as a legal Tête-à-tête in response, as well as to denounce your controlling entity with proof of breaking the Corporate War Doctrine.”

And so, for the next ten minutes, I prattle on with corporate legal jargon, transmitting what tenuous proof we had gathered to the world, while also slapping the shit out of Bestlé's face.

“-And so, per the previously stated by-laws, we are here to lay claim to your station. Please disarm all active weapons and prepare to be boarded.” I finished, feeling really good, like the after glow of a great round of sex.

Babushka clapped sarcastically at me. “Wow. And you didn't reverse that at all?”

“Not a word of it.” I responded. “Now, get ready for evasive maneuvers and prepare to attack, focusing on their external weapons platforms first. No way they actually back down.”

As if to prove my point, our sensors indicated that they were powering up some laser defense or something, I truly could not care now, as I was still riding high on that speech. Did I expect Bestlé to concede because of it? Fuck no, I wasn't naive enough to think that. No, it was to prevent other Multinationals from taking offense at our actions once we won. Some stupid legal theater that was mandatory for these types of corporate actions. I remember hearing these speeches constantly after we performed our espionage, with the winners using them as justification for the horrible occupations they performed after.

I mean, not that we were going to do much better, to be honest. The trial thing Mrs.Vance proposed was brilliant, and we would do whatever we could to support them as well as help the victims, but for the corporate lackeys? We were the Demon Kings and Queens, descending upon their fertile and prosperous lands to rape and pillage them for everything they owned.

I felt the artificial gravity shut off as Babushka began her insane piloting maneuvers to dodge missiles, bullets, and explosive drones, with the lasers doing nothing against the armor and cooling systems Morrigan developed.

It took all of fifteen minutes for the exterior defenses to be disabled, and an additional thirty to deal with the stupid orbs and their drone fleets. We couldn't blow the orbs up, however, as they were actually private housing for the twelve controlling shareholders.

Babushka would take two shuttles to board and clear each orb with swarms, Buddy, and Opal, who had joined us, saying there was no way she would miss out on something this fun. Yerlette had private tutoring today and could not join us, while Alice had her own work that prevented her from leaving New Phoenix for the next week.

As we docked onto the BEST space station, another thing we would need to change later, I made my way to the rear dock, seeing the nanite swarms wake up and surround both myself and Leman.

As the doors opened up, dozens of guns opened fire upon us, hitting the hardlight shields from the Defense Swarms as Leman and his wolves charged forward, ripping and tearing into both the human and robotic forces that were determined to prevent us from entering the station.

I saw Leman and his pack tear through reinforced armor like they were made of paper, eat bullets larger than my thumb as if they were packing peanuts, and heard the on site commander scream at his people to hold the line, to repel the unlawful invaders or their rations and pay would be docked.

I simply chuckled at their futile attempts to do any meaningful damage to Leman. I did mark their weapons for retrieval, as they were unmistakably Protector tech, not even reverse engineered tech. I'm sure Morrigan would enjoy taking them apart, as they seemed to be made differently than the things Synaptic made.

I checked on the other shuttles, which had docked on different parts of the station, and saw that Jill was having fun with a few Ravens and Outsider, dancing through the blockade she encountered, while Rogal was doing his best to cover for Cody, who was doing his best to hack into the station, but it seemed as though he was struggling. His leg was doing that twitch it did when he was frustrated, indicating that they didn't skimp on the cyber defenses here, at least.

I decided to walk with a leisurely pace into the concourse, stepping into the spacious, surprisingly tastefully decorated hall. Lots of huge, actual glass windows, small plants and flower beds, and the faint smell of vanilla under the heavy scent of gunpowder.

As I stepped over the bodies of the soldiers and ruined bots, the smell of lubricant and blood and gunpowder mixing into a noxious, intoxicating aroma, I hummed a little ditty, a very old song, nearly seventy years old, in fact, to myself. It was something I was very fond of, one that I always sang to myself when working. It was a promise, a hope, and a conviction.

“Take me home~ Country Roads~ To the Place~ I belong~”

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