A message has been received: “Update about the investment”. Opening it and… wishing it would be never opened.
The Subject was fake, it didn’t tell about any update. It had just a holo-message with a text to read before playing it. The sender was anonymous as usual; he told about “recent successes” of the operations caused by the initial investment but as mentioned before, there was no datas or statistics but a recorded transmission preceded by a text:
Kiseda Tjkufd was born on YC105-02-05, on a colony of Floseswin II. His family consumed everything to make it eat and study, causing the premature decease of the father on YC112 and the disability of the mother the next year. Friends and further relatives helped the family to survive and this costed even to them. A petition to sustain the colony has been launched but the continous administration changes started from the CEMWPA signing, 2 years ago - when the kid was 5 years old - made the stability of the communications impossible. At 8 years old, the colony continued its suffer with various power shortages, supplies cut and militia incursions. Schools were turned in barracks to train the colonists to defend themselves, children included. Kiseda grew up almost as a child-soldier but something human remained in him, also, it continued to prevail at the point to evolve ambitions like being an artist, a witness of the horrors of the war. He wanted to be somebody to be remembered.
These descriptions are worrying; when there’s something positive in the middle of the disaster, you already know it won’t end well. Any poetry or prose, especially if you read many of them thanks to the experience as writer judge, are usually written to tell a fiction or likely, but when you have a dossier on your hands, you know it’s real, and reality is absolutely different than what you can read in any fiction written by anyone. Already knowing how the story will end, levels of adrenaline start to rise.
On YC124, various administrations coordinated at least to reduce the criminal levels of the planet which they were increased due to the chaos caused by the war. What changed was the way to apply the law: some innocent gets condemned, some other was executed; just a bit of fear to make the petty thief give up and the order was restored. Kiseda started to take notes about that, every controversy, every unjust case, every act against the colony. His mother died after 4 years of physical, but especially psychological sufferings, people started to go in isolation, not having anything to share for survival anymore and the economical flux of the colony was on the edge of the collapse. An humanitarian evacuation was planned and it had to be done on YC123; the escalation of the war in that sector delayed the operations of more than one year.
You know the consequences, you know what’s going on, you know what will this lead. But the story continues to enphasise and waste time, but that’s right what it want. Many people will be bored at this point and would close the message, but curiosity is the worst instinct of a living being and you don’t know if ending here now or continuing would calm the levels of adrenaline. There were various details they’ve been censored. In a nutshell, a good number of friends and acquaintances of the mentioned subject started to die one by one for any kind of incident; one of them died without anyone else noticed that, the smell helped the rescue operations, those they were. Other disasters here and there but some good news was around there. Some “expedition” managed to collect some profit to pay a trip for another stable planet. They just needed some shuttle and some pilot brave enough to get in the mess of the system.
Evacuation operations were almost ready and someone managed to escape hoping to get what needed to save the people. Kiseda wanted to be evacuated too, but the older, the women and the youngs were the priority, and he was “no more young” for just 2 years, the same time he was waiting for the evacuation. Its turn would be arrived in another year, if everything was going right. His house was now full of poetries, books, arts and journals. When he was called, it was the YC125-12-29, the same day where bombs has fallen.
Crap.
A third administration appeared from nowhere and aggressively took control of the system. Everything was cut off, the evacuation transports were blown up and the colony was directly attacked. They weren’t typical pirates, they were subjects who were testing their mass-destruction weapons and they did on the more vulnerable zones, far from any kind of authority. Kiseda’s house was indirectly hit by an orbital cannon and the colony ceased to exist in a matter of minutes.
The following content shows what’s left.
The video played: ruins of what probably was the colony at the sunset described the horrible situation it escalated in just one day after 20 years of “decent” situation - if we want to compare. The camera was fixed somewhere, in a third arm or on the shoulder of whoever was keeping recording, probably that named guy. The camera turned around showing just destruction but it focused to a specific building and a specific area of what was a bedroom; paper and ripped books were around the floor, unrecognizable anymore. The cameraman started to collect those debris, not knowing where to put them, then the scene moves on what was a kitchen or something. A bag was emptied and started to fill with foods, drinks, leaving all that personal affects of whoever was the owner before; the scene interrupted and resumed while walking on a road. Time shown some half-an-hour passed and no sign of living being was found. The camera lowered then stood up; some other individual was found but the discussions were inaudible. Another half-an-hour get “skipped” by the record.
When the camera returned to record, it was filming an orbiting ship, no emblems, no recognizations. Some individuals started to go to panic and others tried to calm them. When another similar ship was shown, leading Mordu’s legion flag, the first ship started to fire and a battle in the sky escalated. Debris and the same ruins of the local area started to fly, hitting some person, separating and blocking groups from possible escape points; the camera showed people who run away and disappear from the raised dust. There was even no time to scream that dropsuits from both sides were deployed. The camera stops.
One hour of pure chaos was skipped from the camera. No more shoots, no more explosion; but they were still there, waiting for the next move and whoever was recording, was literally in the middle, hiding on a collapsed bathroom of what was a house on the periphery of the colony. Since hesitating equals to an headshot and there was no exception for this one, the camera was picked immediately and used as visor from safe positions as some steps were heard; now it showed a squad of minimum three mercenaries (probably) getting close to the position… and they noticed the camera. Multiple shoots followed, the cameraman started to run in a random destination untill the shoots ended, then a sudden turn and another shoot followed.
The camera immediately felt down and a scream was heard. A human body without any dropsuit or weapon was shown while multiple armored legs started to surround and frisk him; a mix of blood and tears where visible on the upper part of the corpse. Then some of those armored legs left the scene while just one of them stayed still. According to what you can hear, he was handling his rifle. A distorted voice, typical of those dropsuits, was heard; the tone made it think he’d questioned something, maybe a “who are you?”, “what are you doing here?” or also a simple “are you ready to die?”. Another voice followed, more human so it’s the cameraman, who he didn’t know even if was heavy breathing or cry anymore: “I am nobody-”; a shot followed and everything got silenced. Then, the mercenary went annoyed, nervous; the distorted voice resumed in what could be a curse or something else and kicked the corpse and then the camera. The latter got picked up by the last character of the scene and turned off.
The video feed ended with other text:
Kiseda Tjkufd
YC105-02-05 + YC126-01-01
“one as many, please ignore.”
Blood pressure low, salts required.
