Message disc 3.
Elizabeth steps back from the camera. "Hello big brother. It's kind of hard to write letters and have them delivered, I'm taking advantage of this opportunity. You probably know by now Pat's dead. I don't know how much news you're getting on that side of the wall, but so are mom and dad...you might already know about dad, considering who you're with now."
behind her, is a panoramic view. "I made Jerzi, the Merchant, come with me, this is the view from the East edge of the Ia Drang plateau, you can almost see Nha Tranh, and you can see, down there, that gray smudge? That's Hue. Granddad's cabin is wayyy down there..." she reaches out and turns the camera, focusing on a tiny brown line winding between verdant greeen. "You can't even see it, but that's the Little Yangtze, the same river Grandfather warned us was deep enough to lose a battlemaster in. It looks like a creek from up here, doesn't it? even more in person. The cliff in this part, is two and a half kilometers of sheer basalt face. Sport jumpers parachute off it. Remember when you jumped off the condo on Pandora and broke your legs trying to be a superhero? because I do."
she picks the camera up, leaving her self out of frame. "This is Daphne, she's only a couple years younger than you, we met in Rehab, did my letters ever get to you, or did mom throw them away instead of forwarding them? I don't know. I guess you can tell me, say Hi Daffy!"
A blonde girl waves, "Hi Daffy!" she says, "Who's this for Liz?"
"My brother Henry, stuck in Clanner space." Liz half-explains, then adds narration, "Daphne drives her uncle's Marauder when she isn't being my official minder on behalf of the Archon." she pans the camera, showing others, a barbecue pit, smoke rising in thin mountain air. "These are my boys, Henry, They kind of took over the big brother duty when I lost you and Pat, the guy at the grill is Jimmy Qua, he's a team sniper and while loaned out to the Kell Hounds, he bagged a Khan with a bolt-action rifle, shot right through the broken windscreen at nine hundred meters, bang-and-dead. The chick next to him handing out the beers, is Linda Sithers, she's a rockjack, This is like her third trip to a planet at all. She led the capture assault that bagged the Belleau wood, took a Clanner Star Admiral prisoner with a shotgun. Say Hi, Seether!"
"That's your brother?" the girl handling the beer asked.
"Yeah."
"can I say what I'm thinking? no Disciplinary measures?"
"Sure, if it's too bad I'll just edit the disk."
what follows is a stream of invective in four languages, regardless of which, the meaning is a clear denunciation, accompanied by obscene gestures using a beer bottle and some pantomime.
"that everything?" Elizabeth asks.
"Yeah, I think I've said all I need to Your Grace. You want to film your test-shot tomorrow?"
"Oh, I don't think so." she pans away from the Rockjack girl. "This is Jack, and Nick. Jack and Nick, this is going to my brother in the Clan Occupation zone, it's not live or anything but you guys have anything to add?"
"We're her carers." the metallic being on the left said.
"We do her caring for her."
"So she doesn't have to."
"I'm Nick, I carry her Briefcase, and I'm with her brute squad."
"I'm Jack, I am Her Grace's brute squad."
"before you two go too far into the comedy routine?"
"Oh, right, we're citizens, free citizens. Not drones, not animatronics, not toys."
"We have toys though!"
"Shut up Jack. I'm making a point here." Nick says. "Our people fought to free ourselves from slavery, Elizabeth Ngo fights for the freedom of all beings, we fight for her, a free being with a righteous cause is worth a million slave-soldiers. your Clans will not prevail here. This is not programming, it is not dogma, it is inevitable."
"thanks guys, I got this now." Elizabeth says.
"anytime."
the image jiggles and jumps as she moves through the party. "You might not have known, but Pat got married on Tamar to one of ours." Elizabeth says, "Evelynn Mosovich, you know, Baron Mosovich's kid? They met in the service. I don't know if he told you or if we all thought you were dead first..."
Long black hair, and a face made inhuman by half-competent medical work. "Hello, Henry. I'm sorry you didn't get to see me when I still had my face. Then again, maybe it's better that you see this face, given what happened to you."
"She's my designated heir." Elizabeth says off camera. "She is a brilliant commander, an honest leader, her men respect her and so do mine."
The image jumps and jiggles, then stabilizes as the cam is put on a tripod. Elizabeth steps out in front. "You could have had this...but that door is closed. It will not re-open. Times are better here. It took a lot of work, a lot of deals, a little blood. I have had to kill for these people, with my own hands. I have stood before the Archon, and the First Prince, I have had to overcome the bar to enlistment, my age, and the knowledge that I won't live long, that my death will be painful, I wanted you to see, and hope you understand...You, and your Clan friends, will never take Kowloon. We will stop you. This is not Tamar, it is not Sudeten. It is in our blood to resist tyrants and invaders, it is in our souls to stand against the tide. We will fight you in the jump points, in the belts, in the atmosphere, in the fields and forests and mountains and beaches, in the hills, in the streets. You should know this Henry, if you care for your new friends, remind them of 2769 when our ancestors threw off the hated Rim Worlds, remind them of Elbar. Make them watch the file I've attached. Get it through their heads. Our people will never surrender."
[cut to Elizabeth's office]
"I am attaching files taken from our archives, included you will find, is a copy of the last conversation between my ancestor, Tran Truk Ngo, and one General Aleksandr Kerensky, formerly of the SLDF. you will also find a scanned image of the Elbar Declaration, General order 342-19, dated 2779 October 8. It has come to my attention that the Clans have been party to Genocide in violation of that order, including officers known to have been present, and at least one officer known to have witnessed the document. It is not my place to try or condemn that action, that is in the hands of the dead, and in the hands of history, but you ought to know what kind of 'civilization' you have aligned with. I have also included the documentary order of 2770, in which the Commanding General of the Star League Defense Forces promised to protect Kowloon's sovereignty and independence. We all know how that went-he bailed on us, and fled." she stands. "Honor is valuable, because it is hard to gain, and easily lost. Once lost, once your word is proven to be no good, once your promises are abandoned unfulfilled, once trust has been vacated for expediency-your honor is worthless."
she lays a book on the table, "The Clans are the descendants of the SLDF, the force that abandoned their duty and honor and fled, leading to three hundred years of genocidal war, disaster, and loss of...everything. WE still do not have names for all that we lost thanks to that act of treachery and perfidy. When I supported Asylum for Phelan Kell and his Clan wolf followers, I did not know this full history. I did not know of this 'clan wolverine' or the world of Londerholm-we thought Turtle bay was the act of a madman, not the deliberate act of a culture that enslaves and brainwashes its own people, whose warriors are little more than semiautonomous killing machines bred for domination and oppression, whose very social structure is a re-named version of the Rim Worlds Republic's social order, only instead of private ownership, the slaves are owned by a state that is in turn an instrument of a deranged, neotribal imitation of a military. I suspect, given how much awfulness is in these reports, that it is even worse than your former colleagues will admit. I suspect among the things we've lost, will be found, if we could find them, all of the technology your friends lord over us, stolen when their ancestors abandoned their people and nation to the fire."
"Stolen from THEIR people when they abandoned ours, Henry." she pauses, "We will resist, we will not surrender, no Clan will ever hold Kowloon."
