There was a light drizzle tapping against the clear glass windows of the skyline, one of the many towering structures erected on Liberty's eccentric hub of Manhattan. It certainly helped take the mind off of current events, the tabloids were so full of it in the headlines trying to make a buck off of sensationalising misery that it was almost disgusting. Terrorists had attacked a passenger liner inbound for the capital, and not just any passenger liner. The people onboard were all dignitaries sent from Kusari as a show of confidence that Liberty was taking its crime problem across the mutual border seriously.
So much for that.
Almost as soon as it was in Liberty, a ragtag group of poorly modified civilian ships hounded it and ripped away hull plating and reinforced glass, left the bodies along lanes while the Police struggled to respond in a timely manner. It was like they didn't really want to be involved, because by the time ships were on scene, all they could do was damage control. The dissidents had always been brazen, but they were never this bold nor successful. It wasn't as if the liner had come through without an entourage of escorts, but there just weren't nearly enough of them to stop anything. It didn't matter how many of those dirty and bronzed hulls were torn apart, they were hellbent on the objective of sinking their teeth into the liner, and they knew that for however many of them died, all they needed were the few necessary to do real damage and succeed. And succeed they did, swarming the escort group with unified and malicious intent soon after.
Naturally none of this was good news, perhaps it was for the rebels but not for the people who ran Liberty or had an understanding with the people who do. No, it attracted an awfully specific sort of attention, people who'd much rather keep to themselves and work from behind the scenes. But this was proving to truly test that methodology, because there was little in the way of feasible options besides direct intervention.
"Do we know what their motivations are?" The well dressed and grey haired woman enjoying the view of what was looking to be a brewing storm asked quietly. Like her peer in the room with connections to higherups in the Police, she exuded the distinct stench of wealth and influence. Almost enough to turn the back of the throat bitter with contempt for how much they were entitled to.
"No." He practically mumbled, causing the lady who had summoned him here to clench her jaw momentarily before moving on to something else that might prove important. "Who leads them?" There wasn't much hesitation before she had an answer. "We don't-" He was cut off this time, "No of course we don't."
"What do we know?" Perhaps inviting any and all possibilities of there being something rather than outright ignorance of facts would yield results, at least it would reveal how little of the surface had actually been scratched. "That they're far more organized, acting according to a consistent agenda in terms of who their targets are. Primarily foreign concerns, commercial or otherwise it doesn't matter. What this incident has made abundantly clear to me is that they're capable of mustering support on our end of the spectrum. Somebody told them where that passenger liner would be and when it would be there. Gave them the drop on us and pulled the wool over our eyes." It was like listening to a monologue of inadequacy, if only there was a punch line or two to bring it all home and perhaps slaughter the cows to boot.
She needed to sit down now, reaching a trembling hand up to the bridge of her nose. The shaking didn't seem born of weakness, the reasons for it were quite the contrary. "Of the two of us here, I'm the only one to blame. For years I've listened to you tell me that they would never amount to anything, that they were too poorly funded and ill equipped to be capable of real damage. And now here we are again, still talking about them almost a decade later. And I made the worst mistake I possibly could have. I knew what I was hearing wasn't true, but I wanted to believe it anyway. I wanted to believe that you and your associates in the Police were keeping a tight noose around this." She breathed in deeply, spinning around in her hand stitched chair to once again face the glass and find solace in the view of the city stretching out before her. Lights were flickering to life, starting a cascading ripple of warm glows and exuberant radiance.
"It's clear to me now, with the help of the cruelty of the present that you don't have this under control. You're relieved, I'll take it from here." She heard what sounded like the beginnings of a protest, cut off by the fact that automated doors had swung open to rid the room of its now redundant occupant. Knowing what the consequences of lingering when not wanted were, the relatively young man took the only opportunity he was being given to go back to whatever other minor role he could serve. At least his appointment hadn't been revoked, that would have entailed personal repercussions. The kind he was fortunate enough to avoid.
The same couldn't be said for the meddlesome band of creatures who had adopted a scarred and broken iteration of the Lonestar for a symbol. Was that their attempt at threatening the powers that be with a sign of things to come, or was there something more to all their barbaric ways?
