And Then Everyone Clapped

[Petitioner]

Jepsen leaned with his back against the riveted metal wall just next to the main entrance of Bruchsal's assembly hall. His heavy brown leather coat—real Stuttgart leather, not the corporate Synth stuff—was somewhat stifling in the crowded room, yet in recent years the few comrades he had worked with regularly never saw him without it unless it was immediately before or after a flight operation. Jepsen kept his focus on the speaker, doing his best not to miss a single word or recoil at the vitriol in Klugmann's tone, instead taking in the famed activist's body language and posture as a critical part of the message delivered on par with his infuriated verbiage.

The former mercenary couldn't help but frown. He chewed on his lower lip for want of a cigarette, one hand in his coat pocket fiddling with an old platinum coin. Jepsen couldn't deny that most of Klugmann's words were right, but some of them incited more curiosity than shame. A desire to do better and be better, even if it meant shedding such an impulse.

"Liberators don't fucking exist!"

A strange sentiment. It seemed almost counterintuitive to the Party's very goal. To embody the will of the Rheinlandic people and to liberate themselves from the shackles of corporate and authoritarian oppression, was that not to be liberators? Yet through nigh on two centuries of armed political struggle, it was hard to argue that the Party had much to show for their efforts beyond simple name recognition throughout the galaxy as having their hearts in the right place.

"Is that really what it all comes down to?" He wondered to himself as the hall slowly cleared, eventually to the point he felt comfortable lighting up a cheap Cambridge smoke. "Being known as the perennial underdogs, puffing up our pride by looking like good-hearted moral crusaders... we've got little to claim beyond that and the help we provided during Nuremberg. I didn't sign up just to feel good."

Jepsen took a short puff from his cig as he pulled the coin out of his pocket. It had a square hole in the center, and a simply-serifed letter V on both sides. A damning reminder of earlier times, much like Klugmann's speech. "Maybe I can catch up with him in the halls somewhere," he thought. He put his cigarette out on the heel of his boot, tucked it behind one ear, and set out to look for Klugmann somewhere within Bruchsal's corridors.