Source: The Manifesto Of Self-Defense

We who live among you have decided to take another course.

You have destroyed our homes, our families, our businesses and our lives. The most peaceful of transactions must be carried out in hiding. Those who create find jail as their reward, while you leave our buildings to fall, our food to rot, our wives to die in childbirth.

Bandits roam our streets while your patrols check for passports and arrest the innocent.

Those of us who know there is a better way to live must choose another course.

We will not come to you to break down your doors and drag you away or kill you. But when you come on that mission, you will die.

For, while it is wrong to begin the use of force, only the disarmed or the fool will fail to resist with everything in their power. Thus we have added to our power, and you will find some of us have weapons, whether you allowed them or not. And then, some of you will die.

A time will come when you will have a choice.

A choice to leave every man alone to live as he chooses, so long as he uses force only in his own defense.

A choice to recognize that life without property is no life at all. That a man must keep and dispose of what he creates, or he is nothing but a slave.

A choice to produce rather than steal; to make rather than take.

A choice to think or to die.

When that day comes, you will know it is our day, that yours is over, and you will run and you will try to hide from the light. But you will not be able to run far enough or fast enough that your crimes will not be found.

On that day, we will declare our independence of you, and of each other.

On that day, we will be free and our lives will begin, and what you have done will be gone.

The Declaration of Gaillac

Linitar, 1867

The door lies on the floor, and Lan, exhausted by a long day after a short sleep, stares at it, for a moment unsure of its meaning. Incautiously. he steps through the door, further surprised to see a young Latakian rummaging through his closet.

"Hey!" he yells.

The kid is tall and skeletal, with a yellowish tinge to his skin, his head shaved and revealing only a stubble of pale hair. Lan notes this in the second he has before the teenager is on him, punching him in the ribs. It is a further fraction of a second before he reacts and starts to strike back, but his hands hit nothing but air - the burglar has stumbled past and out the door. Lan stagger-turns to the door and starts to pursue, just as the burglar crashes into Taskov at the top of the stairs.

Taskov reels backward and shudders down a couple of stairs, barely catching his balance on the railing.

"Stop that guy!" Lan yells, but Taskov is just staring as Lan runs past and down the stairs.

The door at the bottom explodes outward, but Lan is right behind him as they emerge onto the street, pushing through offended pedestrians, trying to cross against the cacophany of endshift buses and people.

"Stop him! He broke into my place!" Lan yells. But the workers only glance incuriously as the burglar distances Lan.

Finally, Lan stops, panting, hands on his knees. An old man, passing by, smiles gently. "It happens to everyone nowadays. Soon, the thieves will outnumber the patrollers." Then he laughs, and whispers. "Soon the patrollers will join the thieves and double their numbers."

Then he merges with the crowd and is gone.

"I hate this!" Lan snaps. He hits the doorframe with the flat of his hand, but it hurts, so he glares at it, and then at the door. Taskov, standing by the closet, peers over the rim of his glasses.

"Well, is anything missing?"

"Just the door."

"You're standing on it."

Lan looks down and grins ruefully. "So I am. Question is, how are we going to fix it?"

Taskov sighs. "I think I saw a plastic door in the alley. We can probably crib something up."

"Things are getting worse." Lan sighs.

Taskov pushes his glasses up. "Third one this block this week. But who knows, kid? It's not like anyone keeps statistics. Now, you've got to start to remember who we are. You can't go running out of here like that. You need to think for a little while about getting the patrol interested."

"I know."

"You didn't have the pamphlet here, did you?"

"No, it's at the printer."

"That's good. We have to wonder. I've heard the Council is using things like this as a way to do searches."

Lan snorts. "As if anyone could stop them. It's not like they need our permission, after all."

"No, but they are starting to get demanding about those surcharges, aren't they?"

"For what?"

"Power and water. Haven't you been reading the notices?"

Lan raises an eyebrow. "I don't think I've been getting them."

"Figures. I'll give you my copies. It isn't pretty. I think its a deeper sign that we're having utility problems."

Lan sighs. Then he looks down."Well, let's get this done. Then I'll worry about the Electricity Board."

Lan sits, as usual, in the back of the room for the Block Committee meeting. Taskov sits across the room, hands folded, looking interested as the older heads debate an obscure point of Biranic doctrine. The lights flicker occasionally, and a distant rumble of thunder can be heard from beyond the walls. Lan yawns, but quietly, and his eyes thicken with the weight of only a few hours of desperate sleep. He tries to settle into the rigid chair and find comfort, but the poorly designed shape digs into his anatomy painfully. Somehow, he slides into sleep.

A painful nudge awakens him, as his seatmate grins toothily at him. "Exciting stuff, isn't it?"

A meteor slips across the sky. Lan sits on the edge of the roof, hunched over his knees, clinging to the neck of the reused bottle. Another meteor scratches the stars.

"Pretty, isn't it?" asks their brewmeister neighbor. "Been going for three nights now. They say its from that space battle."

"Space battle?"

"Yeah, you know, that woman who stole a ship and got in a firefight. That's it" He points upward. "They say she was trying to get away. You suppose there's somewhere to get away to?"

"There's always Prometheus."

The man laughs. "That kids' story."

Lan shrugs and takes a pull from the bottle. "Good batch this time. The last one tasted like moldy barley."

"Yeah, it's a lot better all right. Thanks for that yeast. Man, that stuff is great!"

Fifty miles above, a fragment of Haris Rannart's vehicle heats, burns, vaporizes, in a track seen across continents.