That was the message that was recorded?
That was it. The minutes were still being taken despite the chaos of the moment. (Gives a half-smile.) I know most people believe I somehow contacted the Veech and begged them, but that never happened. Just a desperate plea in a madhouse of a meeting. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have contacted the Veech if I could have. What choice did we have? I know, I know, fight them to the last man, never give up, never say surrender. Better to die free than live on your knees. But say that to a mother who is desperately holding her infant baby. Say that to her and then come and talk to me.
Of course, the meeting’s content didn’t leak until after the Jhi showed up, and we were fighting back. Most of the world was too busy surviving or in shock, but mud-raking journalists would survive deep space. There’s no killing those guys. I think the headline ran (He makes air quotes with his fingers.) “Member of Parliament surrenders to Aliens.” (He shrugs.)
They published the story and then cried out that I was a traitor. It’s kind of ironic that a year before the attack, those same journalists were instrumental in getting private ownership of guns taken away in Canada. Oh yes, they somehow decided that fighting was now a good thing, and we should defend ourselves. Hypocrites!
I resigned immediately. I didn’t want to be a point of contention when we were fighting for our lives. But it wasn’t only that; there was a part of me that questioned myself. Was I a traitor? I knew why I said what I said, but was that the best for the people? I still don’t know… I probably never will.
How did Ken’s Conspirators come about?
(Gives a chuckle.) Well, you need context to understand. The city was coming apart. We had homegrown crime, Mad Max-style. Theft, rape, murder, arson. We had it all. The Veech were just getting to us about this time. Not a lot at first, only a few hundred that were dropped off from their shuttles. Those initial Veech were fought by local police and soldiers that had made their way to the city. It was a stalemate at best.
That’s about the time when I walked out of the capitol building and decided to fight. The story had come out the day before, see. I’m not proud of it now, but I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. Looking back, I think I just wanted to hide. Hide and fight. I ended up on the streets, completely unprepared, near a recently dropped squad of Veech. The locals had fallen back and were trying to organize. It was a mess, and that’s where I stepped in. I remember thinking I’ll show them. (Smiles.) Bit of a drama queen back then.
So, I enter a house, pull out a handgun, which I found on the street the day before, and fired at a Veech trooper who had just walked into the door. (Laughs contagiously) I’m lucky to be alive—blind, dumb luck. The Veech started walking after me, and I backed up, panicked at what I had just done. I turned, about to pee my pants and ran back through the house….
He is interrupted as the woman claps her hands twice, gets his attention, signs, then sits down in a chair next to him.
She says this is where her story picks up, so she’ll join us. This is Sky. She..
Sky snaps her fingers, and Ken laughs as she signs to him. He looks back at me.
I’ll interpret for you.
Ken makes a go-ahead sign. Sky looks at me as she signs.
My name is Sky, and I was there at the start of Ken’s Conspirators. I found this fool just as he ran out of a house and fell down the steps into the front yard. He got up and fell twice in just seconds. A Veech came out the door behind him and aimed at him when I shot it with my rifle. The alien shield took three rounds from my .30/06 Springfield. He (me, that is) stopped and thanked me as if I just gave him a Christmas present. I ignored him. We both ran to another house and got our bearings. That is how the Conspirators started. I saved his life.
Sky stops signing, then leans back in her chair and nods her head to Ken.
It’s true, she saved my life. I was a goner for sure. I had no business out there, but you learn quickly when your life is on the line. So, it was Sky and me then. I could already sign a little, so we were able to communicate from the start. We fell back and joined the defensive line that had formed. We fought for two days, really just continuing to fall back through the city, when we found the next members of the Conspirators.
I don’t remember what day it was, but I remember it was a beautiful morning. It was already cold in September, but for some reason, the weather that day was just incredible.
Sky snaps her fingers, then signs to Ken. He looks back at me.
She thinks I still talk too much like a politician. She told me to get on with it and stop talking about the weather. (Laughs.) That morning, Sky and I were tasked with heading South of our mainline to scout if the Veech were there. We did. We didn’t find groups of Veech, but we did come upon three enormous, hairy guys, shirts off, all fighting one Veech soldier who held a lightsaber. At first, we froze. It was an unusual sight, as you can imagine.
Another thing that made it so odd, and this might sound weird, was that there was very little noise coming from the fight. The Veech were quiet fighters to begin with, but the three men, who were fighting with steel pieces of rebar two meters long, weren’t yelling or screaming at all. They surrounded the Veech soldier, taking turns distracting it, then bashing it with their rebar. It was odd. The lightsaber would cut through steel, but it would take a few seconds of direct pressure. These guys didn’t give it the chance to do that. They moved extremely quickly and had uncanny coordination. It took a few minutes, but they eventually brought the soldier down and impaled its head with one of their rods. Even after years of fighting, it remains the most strange fight I’ve ever seen.
Sky signs to Ken.
She says it was the most idiotic fight she’s ever seen. Anyway, after they killed the alien, they noticed us. The biggest of the men turned to us and said, “Not a bad fight, eh?” (Slaps his leg and laughs.) And that’s how the Conspirators became five. The three men are brothers, and the oldest, Big J, coined the name Ken’s Conspirators after I told him my story. He got quite a laugh out of it.
Eventually, our group grew until we had about fifty men, and they made us into a platoon. Then we grew some more. As the Battle of Ottawa wound down, we stood 500 men and women strong. We were folded into the 4th division and fought the Veech for the rest of the war until their final stand at the Battle of Montreal.
Ken looks at Sky.
Anything else to add?
She signs.
She says I’m leaving a lot out, but for me, that’s a miracle.
Civilian Life
Reginald Kennedy
Los Angeles, California
I meet Reginald at LAX, working for a shuttle company. He is a survivor of the Great I-40 Traffic Jam. He agreed to share his story with me on his break time. We sit at a table outside the terminal.