Insurrection's End

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The radio blared with static and oppressive silence. Alice sat in the chair of her operations station and sighed. The headphones never felt so heavy as they did in that moment.
She needed news, updates, intel. How else was she supposed to coordinate the rallying point for a worldwide insurgency? Flicking through channels, nothing but the same hiss of white noise greeted her each and every time.
Bringing her hands to her face, her fingers worked at her tired eyes, rubbing away the ache that had settled behind them. She couldn’t even ask for a situation update from any of the other Liberty Bases. Who would she ask? Would she just be shouting into the void, hoping that the ships in orbit didn’t triangulate her signal?
The Liberty Base network was only ever meant to be listening posts and local hubs. Ramshackle patchwork radio stations meant to relay signals to specific operators through line-of-sight. They were never meant to be wideband broadcasters, that was how stations got raided.
And yet they always had a confirmation signal when tuned into. A hum, a piece of classical music, or someone reading numbers. Now, they were gone. The Liberty Delta numbers station was silent, the Echo Coordination Signal replaced by hissing noise, and the Rachmaninoff music that Major Bryan liked was missing.
She flicked through the channels once more, getting more and more paranoid each second. Something had to have happened, but she needed to know what. It was no longer a part of her duty as a Liberty Front operator, or her job as coordinator. Now, it was morbid curiosity. What could’ve silenced the entire Liberty Base network, and why was she so hesitant to accept that she already knew
“Alice?!” a voice called out from the empty corridors behind the command centre. She pulled her headphones off of one ear and listened again.
“Alice!” it repeated, so she turned around.
The door darkened as a silhouette of a man appeared. Alice knew him, his bedraggled face and grizzled scars along his left hand side. 
“Mark? What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, standing up off of the chair.
Her brother ran forward, wrapping her up in his arms and holding on tight. Alice was hesitant to return the affection, blindsided by its suddenness and its intensity. 
“Pack up,” Mark said, pulling away and turning around to leave. “We have to leave. Now.”
“Why?” Alice grabbed his wrist to stop him. “What’s going on?”
“They hit the base network,” he said. “They’re looking for us.”
A pit opened up in Alice’s stomach. “What?”
“They hit the Liberty network,” Mark repeated, shrugging his shoulders. “All of them, Bravo through Hotel. All of them at the same damn time!” he sagged a little, not quite believing the news himself.
Alice opened and closed her mouth repeatedly like a fish gasping for air. The pit became a yawning chasm that threatened to swallow her whole. She could only manage to whimper out one word. “How?”
“They’ve been planning this for months. The only reason this place hasn’t been shelled from orbit is because we haven’t been broadcasting,” he said. “But that won’t last long.”
“But none of the others were open channels. None of them were even incriminating!” she said, looking back at the radio station she was operating not moments before.
Scoffing, Mark threw his hands out. “Obviously it didn’t matter to the Oonskies,” he turned his head and spat at that last word. 
Alice’s face contorted into one of disgust and rage.“So for all they know they’ve shelled and assaulted civilian radio stations?”
Grinning a mirthless grin, Mark shook his head. “I guess the armed response kinda justified their paranoia, so they turned the raids into full-blown assaults.”
“Savages…” Alice whispered.
The man reached forward and gently grabbed her shoulders. “Now go pack your stuff,” he said. “They’re smart enough to realise that they haven’t hit Liberty Alpha yet, so that means they’re coming here.”
Looking around the room, Alice was lost for what to say. She felt like she was being grabbed by a riptide and swept out to sea, directionless and flailing her limbs for purchase. “Where will we go?”
“Offworld. We can join up with another cell, start over,” he said. 
“We can’t just leave!” she said.
Mark gripped her a bit tighter. “We can, and we will.”
“What about the planet?” Alice asked, motioning back at her headset. “We’ve fought for so long!”
“We can fight for another planet’s soul, but the point is we have to live to fight, first.” Shaking his head, he could do nothing more but shrug at her. “If we stay here, we won’t be living for much longer.”
“Wha…” Alice knew he was right, but the pit inside her wouldn’t close.  “What about a rallying point? There must be more of us left.”
Mark shook his head, a grimace on his face. “You don’t get it. This is the rallying point. This was meant to be our Alamo if it all went wrong, that’s why there’s a skeleton crew here. That’s why no-one else has shown up.”
“So…” ALice swallowed the lump in her throat, her mouth bone dry. “So everyone’s dead?”
“Dead,” Mark nodded, “or captured and being tortured for info as we speak. Which is why we have to go now.”
He turned to leave once again, but Alice remained rooted to the spot, swaying in a nonexistent breeze like she’d bowl over at any second.
Mark paused at the door to wait for her, but she wouldn’t move. She couldn’t move.
The man sighed and stepped back over to her pulling her in for another hug and resting his head on top of hers. “Alice, please. I know this is a lot all at once, I know you’re scared. But remember what the Major used to say.”
She held onto him for a while, just listening to his heartbeat. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t have to.
“We have a chance if we run,” Mark filled the silence. “We have no chance if we stay here.”
“Okay,” Alice nodded. “Okay. I’ll go get my things,” she said, pulling away and running her hands through her hair.
Mark turned and marched out of the room. “Use the back entrance,” he called back. “We can’t guarantee that they’re not already watching.”
Alice waited for a while, watching the door where Mark left the command centre. She was alone again, save for the static noise coming from her headset, and the beating of her own heart. She felt a twisting, gnawing sensation in her gut, and looked back towards her chair. 
All that time spent fighting to free Aeris from the jackboot of the UEG, and they’d been stomped out in one afternoon as easily as the embers of a campfire. Perhaps she was wrong to think that they could’ve ever taken control of the planet.
Balling her fists, she shook her head. It was easy to let the fear and uncertainty eat at her, what mattered was that she did something, and kept moving. Mark was right, as always. He’d always been the voice of reason. 
She wanted to be free, and so she did something about it. That was how it was since she’d joined the Liberty Front. Those who sat and stayed in one place—the naysayers and the critics—they were not free. She’d long ago decided to never be someone like that.
She turned and pulled the radio’s plug. The sound of the radio’s static faded out into a weighted nothing that pushed down on her shoulders. She had no need of news now that she knew what had happened.
Liberty belonged to the moving. Freedom belonged to the runners, not the stagnant.
So she ran out of the radio room, not looking back.
Category:Stories
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly