"How old is this ship anyway? Is it a Titan X or a Mars T?" Nathan demanded as he looked around the confines of the ship's cockpit.
"What does it matter? It's a reconditioned model, and it's perfectly space-worthy," Jasmine said impatiently as she stabbed at the controls. Jasmine, as a former pilot in the Terran Federation battlefleet had operated the controls of a space fighter and a battleship for much of her career, but that was before she discovered she had once been a political demonstrator when she was younger and had spent 5 years protesting the harsh cruelty of the Federation after she had reached her majority after her father had told her of the cruelty of the Federation and how wrong it was before his death, and she had been a major player in one of the protest cells on Earth, moving from colony to colony, under disguise and various identities so the Federation's security forces couldn't find her.
And then she had been captured during a political rally, like so many others, and she was mind conditioned, brainwashed and given a new identity, that of Pamela Springer, and her brain was reworked so she would become a fanatical fascist, a voice among many who sought to transform the Milky Way galaxy into a twisted image of a human only galaxy, an image spouted by Earth for decades, and decried by people like Roj Blake, and so many other voices.
And she had followed it.
Jasmine was a talented pilot and fighter, and the Federation had twisted those talents for their own sick and depraved uses. They had sent her off to the frontlines to transform her into a loyal soldier. And to break what little of her old spirit existed.
She had gone into dog fights with other rebels.
She had led dozens of raids against alien planets and helped in the conquest of several worlds.
She had joined in the occupation armies of several worlds, and once she had taken great pleasure in dragging a young child out of their mother's arms, shooting them in the head and leaving the mother to howl in horror before she just turned her back, and walked away.
How did she come back? How had she come away from all of those atrocities?
Why, her old friend Nathan had been trying to find her for the last 7 years and he had, at last, found her, and rather than try to talk to her, seeing her in her Federation naval uniform, shot her in the back, knowing she was too dangerous to confront directly and knowing only too well trying to speak to her was a waste of time as she'd likely try to kill him or capture him for 'trial' and kept her locked up for a few weeks while he and his friends tried to reverse the brainwashing. It was a long, slow job; for 7 weeks, she had been promising them the Federation would make them pay for assaulting her and outright threatening him.
But slowly, little by little, Jasmine was coming back and Pamela was dying. It took Nathan's team a while, but eventually, they had overcome the worst of the conditioning; that was the whole Pamela Springer name thing, and the beliefs in the Federation being the best institution and the best for humanity, loyalty for the Federation, that kind of thing. But, Jasmine reflected sadly, much of her original personality was mixed too strongly with Pamela Springer. After spending a month with her mind back, Jasmine decided to lash out at the Federation in an act of revenge, and she came up with a plan.
Pretending to go back to the navy was suicide, but Jasmine had a lot of time to think. Going back to the good old days of political activism was not going to work.
The Terran Federation was evil. They had no respect for life, they didn't care about their own citizens and they would never brainwash them by using both drugs and technology. And if they were a noble organisation, they would never destroy whole fleets of ships before ending it by bombarding planets from space, blitzing them with plasma, fusion and antimatter weapons until the aliens were dead or regressed to the Stone Age.
Okay, Jasmine knew only too well she had made a brash, reckless decision to attack the Federation by hijacking one of the battleships and crashing it into a space station, since it forced her, Nathan, and several others to flee into deep space. But she was tired of talking, it was time to act.
if there was one thing she had learnt over the past 12 years, 5 as a political agitator, and the last 7 where she had lost nearly a decade of her life, the only thing the Federation truly understood was violence. It was that simple, so she decided to hijack the battleship and detonate an explosive charge in the weapons bays and destroy as much as she could.
After she had destroyed the space station, they immediately fled. Jasmine had been disgusted with her friends' lack of common sense; for years, Nathan and the others had dug themselves deeper into the canvas to hide from the Federation, not bothering to do much and only being forced to run. Jasmine had already been under enough of a tongue-lashing from the others, but she'd rebuked them, reminding them the more they talked, the more they were captured and brainwashed. That was no way to live, the only way to stop the Federation was to use violence.
It was an argument that hadn't won her many awards for popularity; Nathan had bluntly told her in a horrified tone she'd changed, but she had remarked she had. She also noticed Nathan and the others had come with her; they wouldn't have done that if they weren't on her side. Still, she was keeping watch over them; the horrors of the last 7 years had made her paranoid.
The best thing was, Jasmine, had chosen a ship that was relatively in good condition and would be enough for what they needed for now.
"But what are we going to do, Jasmine?" Nathan whined. "We can't run."
"But that's what we're going to do, Nathan," Jasmine gave him a smirk. "If others can do it, so can we."
"But going out into the galaxy, we're going to be hunted down forever."
"No, we're not. If we can find a way of getting back at the Federation, then we will. Think, Nathan, there are hundreds of planets out there, under the Federation's whip. I know, I've seen it," Jasmine bit her lip, deliberately not saying anything about her role in the oppression of hundreds of races. "But there are other rebels out there, and we have to find them."
"Do you think we can?" Nathan asked pessimistically.
"I hope so," Jasmine said. Deep down she knew it would be hard as they would likely have gone to ground.
