Nanalis, new Council President and Unity High Chancellor. Her booming voice addressed the crowd from the speakers built into the floors of the balconies.
“Greetings, citizens of ReDawn,” Nanalis said, her voice proud and confident.
“What is this?” I muttered to Rinakin. “Unity is taking out endorsements now? That’s not allowed, is it?”
“They’re supposed to give us equal time,” Rinakin said. “But the Council recently decided to waive that requirement so long as the message isn’t overtly political.”
I wasn’t sure Nanalis was capable of a message that wasn’t overtly political. She continued to speak—no doubt this message was prerecorded. Many Council members attended the games to see and be seen, but the Council President was often too busy.
Nanalis thanked the pilots for their hard work and preparation. “You represent the best of us, and it is because of you that our future is bright.”
I supposed it wasn’t out of line for the Council President to congratulate athletes. But then she went on.
“We call ourselves Unity and Independence, but we all enjoy the benefits of both freedom and peace. The real enemies are those who seek to divide ReDawn, who threaten our peace, who put the prosperity of all denizens in jeopardy.”
Unity was always calling us divisive for disagreeing, as if they weren’t doing the same by disagreeing with us. But of course, as they liked to say, the opposite of division was Unity. As if their choice of a name left us no other option but to fall in line with them. “She called us the enemy,” I said. “How exactly is that apolitical?”
“That’s why I argued against this in the last session,” Rinakin said. “Who is to determine what is ‘overt’ and what is not?”
As Nanalis made her final remarks, pennants waved all around the stadium, both blue and yellow. Everyone seemed to agree with her, Independence and Unity alike.
Everyone but us.
“Progress for ReDawn!” Nanalis declared. “May her enemies be swiftly silenced for the good of us all.”
Hairs rose on the back of my neck as voices sang out from all around the stadium, joining in a great rumbling chorus. They were cheering for pretty words that would destroy us.
Progress for ReDawn. It was what we all wanted, of course.
But some of us thought it mattered what we were progressing toward.
I knew which enemies she meant to swiftly silence. “I didn’t realize the miasma had gotten so thick,” I said.
Rinakin stared up at the hologram, which had cut away to feature the ships as they lined up for their next bout. “The wind has shifted,” Rinakin said. “I fear it grows more toxic all the time.”
The ships flew across the field for the next bout, but all I could see were the waving blue pennants, each one representing a person who should have been ready to fight for our planet, for our home, but was instead allied with Unity, who wanted to give it all away.
“I think we should leave the match now,” Rinakin said. “I don’t know how many will believe we are the enemy, but I would rather not be caught in the crowd.”
Cheers went up again, and yellow fireworks filled the air—Unity was gaining on us now.
I didn’t want to watch the match turn on us. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We stepped onto the stairs that wound down the branch, passing more private balconies and some larger ones crammed with families—children riding on parents’ shoulders, waving yellow flags. When we reached a crook in the branch we followed it down the stairs to the platforms around the trunk, descending beneath the playing field to Rinakin’s small transport ship, made of dark metal mined from the core of the planet.
I was still bitter about the loss of my own ship, which had been effectively stolen by the humans. I’d put in a request for another, but the order was taking time to process. Normally I would have been granted one instantly due to my status as a cytonic. But the Unity officials must have wanted something to hold over my head until I told them where I’d been and what I’d learned while I was gone. By law, they couldn’t force me. I would have been happy to report to the previous Council, but now I would be facing a room full of Unity officials with very few friendly faces.
I guessed they were growing tired of me putting them off.
I climbed into the copilot seat, preferring to sit beside Rinakin rather than on the cushier seats behind us. Rinakin flew us away from the Stadium tree through the purple and red swirls of gas in the miasma. Somewhere far below us was the core of the planet, noxious and uninhabitable, visited only by the mining corps in heavy protective gear. We were in a day cycle—and still a few sleep cycles away from the fall of night—so the ambient light was fairly bright.