Your fingers fumble against the worn keys of your husktop as you intercept a signal from the dark reaches of the Alternian quantum network. Your signal is buggy, but functional thanks to the janky field goal receptor that your compatriates risked their lives to establish. The file plays automatically, largely composed of a web of distorted static and improperly sorted data, and your ear canals pay the price as the cheap panphones you were using wail with an unnatural, artificial corruption.
The feed ends almost as soon as it began, the signal lost and the file destroyed, but you know what you saw. That symbol. The eye. It was out there, and it was real. You don’t know if it’s friendly or hostile, but whatever it is, it’s sending encrypted messages across fleet-sensitive networks.
How public knowledge is the FreeBlood division? Would private companies be aware of their existence since it is a government program and it’s the company’s best interest to avoid messing with the empress.
The FreeBloods operate with a mindset that the less people overtly know about them, the better. However, as you mentioned they are a division of the fleet itself, so higher-ranking officials on Alternia will know of their existence. Technically, if Nataya really had to flash a badge because somebody was holding her up, she could- but I would imagine doing that too much is discouraged.
Trolls and rebels that are extremely observant could also figure out something is up- but posting brazenly on social media about it would be about as good an idea as posting any anti-empress content- but people would for sure have an idea about it.
“If I die, I’m making the formal decision right now to haunt you.” Luke chirped with a glare, his mind very aware of how slippery the icy line of rope felt in his gloved hands.
“Die then! You’ll have a good time and won’t worry so much,” the ever-cheery oliveblood quipped back without hesitation. Nataya grabbed her own strand of line adjacent to Luke’s and smiled at him, her stance as sturdy and confident as it always was. “It’s- how does Fritzl say it? ‘Nnnnot a big deal’,” she laughed. “You just grab onto it with both hands and let your momentum carry you. Visualize the landing and trust your body to do the rest! It would be silly to let go, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but as it were I wouldn’t have ever envisioned myself in the situation where I would need to be rappelling into an ice cave to begin with.”
“Really? You never would have imagined it?” She inquired in earnest as she readied herself for her own descent.
“Wh- Of course, I fucking haven’t.” Luke jittered as he tried to replicate her confidence, looking down at the path, and snow-blackened body, below.
“Jeez, lighten up, Luke! What did I tell you about trusting me?” She looked up at him, a rarity in and of itself considering she stood nearly a head taller, with olive eyes piercing into his.
“I’m all in,” He shrugged in reply.
“Cool! I’ll race you to the bottom, then!” Nataya said as she gracefully careened halfway down, her boots digging into the wall of frozen river-run and kicking up a gale of snow chips as a result. She stood there for a few seconds, enjoying the impossibility of the feat as her body walked itself to the ground at a 90-degree angle.
Luke let himself lean backwards over the edge, feeling the weight of Alternia’s gravity pulling down on his being as if the wide cave wanted to swallow him personally- with the only thing separating him from a rather slippery, jagged slope being the cold comfort of a sturdy, frozen rope in his hands.
‘It would be silly to let go, wouldn’t it?’ Nataya’s chipper words echoed in the back of his mind. It would be pretty silly to let go. It would be foolish to let go. It might even be fatal to let go.
But Luke had an idea, so he let go anyway.
Nataya had just reached the bottom of the icy ravine when she had the urging presence of mind to look up and see it.
With his hands free, Luke stretched his arms outward to gather as much wind resistance as possible before vanishing entirely. Nataya blinked, momentarily unsure of Luke’s plan in executing such a bold maneuver before she found herself sprayed with a healthy coating of ice chips and snow.
Where a previously undisturbed mound of frigid, snowy powder stood before her was now a splayed-out Luke Wilson, his body perfectly contorted into a snow angel with a small trail etched in the ground where the momentum from the fall carried him.
He looked up at her.
She looked down at him.
He cocked his head playfully, waving his arms and legs around to complete the picture.
“It’s a snow angel, Nataya.” He assured, his voice completely deadpan.
“Are you serious?” Nataya asked, her hands moving to rest on her hips. “Where’s the halo? You messed up the halo- it just looks like the angel has a really long head!”
“Well, you know, actual angels are supposed to look pretty strange, right? Let’s say it’s something like that.” The human winced, picking himself up from the ground and dusting the snow off of his uniform.
“Sure, I guess you’d know something like that,” the troll leaned back, looking at the height that Luke had essentially teleported himself from and then back down at the ground. “A pretty gutsy play. Not bad, not bad.”
“I could have been smarter about it. I should have just done it from the beginning.” He said in admittance.
“Yeah, but that’s not as fun. This was fun.”
“You were still quicker, though.”
“Damn right, I was.”
“I’m not sure what I did to deserve you as a partner for this assignment considering we’re here to examine a corpse.”
“Thank your stars, Luke,” Nataya said, moving over to kneel down by the partially-buried corpse in question. “This is just one of a long series of very lucky circumstances in your life.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t argue there.” He conceded, withdrawing a small tool from his jacket to brush away the patch of snow that covered the nameplate on the corpse’s battered fleet uniform. Loktah Rydier.
“Hey, did you see me walking on the wall, though?” Nataya whispered, examining the neck and its surrounding area for any tags or identification.
“Yeah, I did. That was cool.”
“It felt pretty cool. We should have taken some video of that.”
The Summoner’s Rebellion has been quashed. A new era of resource allocation and decentralization dawns across the Alternian Empire. To prevent all future uprisings against the authority of Her Imperious Condescencion’s rule, the subsequent galactization of all troll life ensues, pioneering the controversial process of banning all adult life on Alternia and the automatic drafting of trolls, upon reaching a certain age, into the royal empire’s fleet. New laws are drafted and new organizations formed to carry out the execution of this decree- and thus, born forth, was the Freeblood Division of Homeplanet Security of Her Imperious Condescencion’s Empire.
A simple idea. A collection of those most dedicated to ensuring the continuity of Alternian life as it were. To dissuade rebellion, to cull the opposition, to influence culture, to monitor, maintain, and pioneer Alternian society into its most ideal state. A collection of trolls with exceptional recorded skill and ability and those simultaneously with loyalty to the cause of planetary stability. These select few would be allowed continued residency on the Alternian homeplanet in the execution of their duties as an equivalent unit.
Yet unprecedented in its founding was the idea of a discrete society of empire agents operating together outside of the hemocratic system. A division in which a rust-blooded agent was hypothetically free to execute their duties regardless of influence or manipulation from other castes. The Freeblood division, founded on the principles of raw ability and loyalty, would be free from the deadlock of hierarchy that normal fleet sectors would experience. An experiment by all accounts, but one that would see remarkable efficiency in its members.
The division would be free to monitor even the smallest events occurring on the planet, operating under the all-seeing eye of its quantum network capacities and guided by the directive of the Condesce herself, should she be bothered. Alternia’s economic, social, and cultural development would be extensively scrutinized and tailored to the deliberations of the Freeblood division in the name of security and stability.
While the headquarters of the division located in the historic metropolis Gravilos, several other branches across the planet would also be founded in time. These branches would pioneer sectors based on necessity, with mainstays in:
General Intelligence
Bioengineering
Anomalous Materials
Engineering & Technology
Socioeconomics
Cultural Organization
In many respects, members of the division would be policed by themselves, their actions scrutinized by their own division’s administration. Members would carry out their services on the homeplanet until their services were either required elsewhere or terminated, the latter of which would result in thorough and unequivocal execution. Reasons for termination are few outside of treasonous behavior, or the compromising of the division itself.
The Freeblood experiment would operate in secrecy, leaving only small traces where necessary to ensure the most natural evolution possible. Today, there are simultaneously many members and none at all- the only veritable and pervading trace of their existence found in their bold symbol, marked by the letters “F” and “B” in the shape of an eye. Experienced members of the resistance know the eye as danger, though it is difficult to impossible to truly understand in what capacity.
The only thing one can know for certain is that somebody is out there and watching.
