Editing Tales from the Aprior Sector (section)

==A Pacification Tale, or the Real Story of The Riotous Rebellion==

Alright so my story begins in the Aprior Sector, I was born here and raised here, and did pretty damn good in school, though that last bit was because my dad was a maths teacher, and he made sure I did good. Anyway as it turns out my genes were compatible with the gene-seed, but I couldn't handle the training, so I'm now an assistant with the chapter. As it turns out a friend of mine from way back in the day also was inducted, name's Saul Alinsky, oh yeah see his dad was a history teacher, which is how his dad knew my dad and anyway so he's named for this guy back on Holy Terra who did something important with protesting and housing rights and whatever about 38,000 years ago. 

Anyway back to the important part, see this was back in the day before Aprior was fully settled, and we were about to go and pacify one of the planets, I always forget which one, that was under the control of those chaos cults. So we're in orbit on our battle barge sitting there thinking what are we going to do? This planet is controlled by a small group of very rich nobles who wouldn't let us land if we had permission from the Emperor himself. The same small group who were worshiping all four of the chaos “gods.” So we're looking at the statistics for the planet and we notice about 80-90 percent of the people on this planet are living in the kinda poverty you don't see on the worst imperial planets, but they're all strangely loyal. Anyway after arguing about it for a couple of hours, one of the younger battle brothers, Nix I think his name was, ends it by slamming his hand down on the table and yells out, “if we openly invade they're gonna riot and we can't handle it” And that point we figure things have gotten a bit nuts so we all take a breather and calm down, I go get a cup of recaf, and we meet back about half an hour later. Saul starts things out real nice by asking a question very quietly, “what if they were already rioting?” we all look at each other and think about it. I'm the first one with a question, “How, by the emperor’s left bollock, are you going to swing something like that?” I said. 

He says back to me, “I'll work something out, could we restore order so long as both sides wanted us there?” 

“Sure” I said immediately, then thinking it out, “as long as both sides thought we were there to help them, we'd be welcomed as liberators”

“Alright then, I'll get the people good and stirred up, while Nix here can convince the nobility that we aren't there to kill them.”

“We're not going to kill them?” 

“Not if we don't have to.”
So the meeting's adjourned and I go back to my quarters on the ship to plan out where and how to land for best effect when I get a knock on the door, kinda quite, but I get up and answer it. I open the ten foot door designed for someone way bigger than me to see a rather lost-looking woman in power armor. “Can I help you, sister?”

“I'm not one of the Adepta Sororitias, but could you direct me to Captain Alinsky?”

“Oh yeah, he should still be on the bridge”

“Thank you”

“Not a problem” I went back to my planing and number crunching, then got some shut eye, nine hours later, I wake up, shower, shave, and get my report together. I walk onto the bridge to see that it's become a recording studio. Just as I'm about to go check and make sure I didn't make a wrong turn, I notice the woman from last night is sleeping in a makeshift hammock strung up behind one of the walls. I then notice Saul's currently at the mike giving a speech about the freedoms entrusted to the citizens of the Aprior Subsector, how basic these rights are, how transparency is needed from businesses, all good stuff, but these are things my 12 year old nephew could explain. I waited until he finished and put on some old music files recently recovered from Holy Terra. It had a nice beat and an angry tune about revolution, but I was still a bit confused.  Saul, thankfully seeing the confused look on my face, turns off the mike and says, “I've been recording and broadcasting since you went to sleep, we've already started and based on what the scanners pick up we are on our way to being the most wanted men on this rock.” 

“Good news, then?”

“Yup”

“Who's your new best friend?”

“Her name's Serano, She's a member of the Order of Reason's Light.”

“That's weird, when I talked to her last night, she said she wasn't a sister.”

“She isn't, she one of their mechanics, and a damn good one from I hear.”

“So why is she helping you?”

“She also holds a degree in music theory, and she knew some songs and movements that would be useful, she is also a powerful speaker.”

“Huh. That's handy.”

“Yeah, but you know what that means”

“Yeah” I replied recalling our time as kids, “We aren't going to get any more lucky breaks.” We then set about our assigned tasks for the day. I was on comm duty and got to listen as some of our men were assigned to stand guard over a meeting between a very weak, almost token, trade union and the nobility who owned the factories. It was interesting, and I could tell just by listening that what was once an organization with little to no power had been given a substantial amount of leverage by our new music channel. It wasn't enough for the nobility to agree to anything, they just repeat arguments that had been knocked over centuries ago. And then something happened which almost ended our plan. One of the noble's, in his infinite hubris, used a certain word which I won't repeat but suffice to say every marine in the company then did the best they could not to strangle the bastard. I think I might have stopped breathing to listen. After a full minute of absolute silence the meeting was adjourned, and I exhaled and looked over to see both Saul and Serano shaking with anger. I knew Saul was pissed, but he'd be fine. Serano, on the other hand, looked like she was about to turn whoever said that into a sack of meat inside a body-bag. Anyway I get to giving the orders and we regroup. The broadcasts had continued throughout the next day-night cycle, and it's at this point I'm growing worried. I had arranged to have a servitor monitor all the communications channels and then try to get some shut-eye. 

Good thing I'd set up those servitors though, because that idiot from the negotiations decided to take his little band of mercenaries and do the usual privileged, “preserve higher culture” BS you've seen too many times. And the moment he'd gathered up enough troops to be a problem, I'd been woken up my a servo-skull. As I fumbled into my pants and robes, I managed to rally a fire team to slow him down. I knew though that a slow gradual take over was now out of the question. I reached the bridge as fast as I could. On the plus side his timing lined up with the shift change, so I now had several fire teams. I decided the best thing to do was to try to end this before the noble idiot reached the nearest bunkhouse. On the downside there were three routes over an incredibly toxic river he could take and I had exactly three fire teams. If I did the smart play and divided things up evenly, it would put each team at risk, as that guy had a really well equipped army. Luck me, the fire team from before had retreated to one of the three bridges and had managed to call reinforcements. I was about to deploy all our forces there to end the fight before it got too ugly, and then what became know as the riotous rebellion happened. Yeah that one, the one everybody in Aprior knows by heart, or at least they think they know. You see the popular idea is that it was just the sight of all these people waving signs in protest that got what's-his-face to back down. In reality he was just about to order his men to shoot to kill when he sees three things. Thing one: Our marines drawing a bead on him. Thing two: Every single person under his control currently holding anything they can use as a weapon, seriously I have never seen a bottle of rotgut look so deadly. Thing three: Serano and Saul about 40 yards away from his front line troops armed with a flamer and two bolt pistols respectively about to wreck him like a det-charge. Also spray-painted on the flag attached to Serano's armor “T***y and proud.” I'm watching this from both the tac-map and a shoulder mounted camera feed from a marine, and I'm busting up laughing. The look on his face was the perfect mix of confusion, defeat, and stark raving terror. After that, the chaos cults were taken care of via a combination of hatred for the old ways and our new policies on religious freedoms. We were heroes and it's always nice to give bullies what's coming to 'em.

[[Category:Knights Inductor]]