Imp Radio
 : [Good evening Indomitus. It's oh-four-hundred and I got nowhere to be, so it's time for another request. This one is from Cadet Albrecht, and... I don't know if we can actually play it. Oh well!]
The cadet nearest the radio lights up as some decidedly out of character music begins spilling out, while the others react with disgust- either at the music itself or her dancing.
 : [Are you kidding me? You?]
 : [Aw, yeah! I didn't know they actually took requests, I wrote this in as a joke.]
: [Of course they take requests, they announce it all the time!]
: [Yeah but it's always something super uptight and stuffy- I have trouble believing anyone would actually ask to have the Ocwirk March of all things played, let alone twice in one day. That's like, grandpa stuff.]
 : [What the hell is this?]
: [I dunno, something I heard at a club one time.]
: [A club?]
: [Let's see, how do I put it in terms you'll understand... It's like a mess hall only the beer is real, the lights are off, not everyone there is military, and the music doesn't suck.]
: [That last part's debatable.]
: [I don't know why anyone would waste their time with such a thing.]
: [Man, what do you even do when you're not on duty? Do you even have a change of clothes that aren't a uniform?]
One of the cadets taps the dancing one on the shoulder and points to the doorway, where Scorch is still standing.
: [Hey- look over there! That's the guy from the news!]
: [Aw hell, Warin was right.]
: [As usual.]
The girl waves to Scorch, trying to get his attention and beckon him to come over.
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 : [Say, Adrian, whatever happened to Dietrich? I heard you and him were serving on the same front for a while.]
 : [Dead, sir. Or in an Aesthian POW camp. So, dead. He went down over Koronovostok before the Aesthians leveled the city.]
: [I see. And Marcus?]
 : [Remember that video of the Sol blowing up that Aesthians posted on the internet to gloat? That was probably him.]
: [Damn.]
 : [And now the people responsible for killing them are waltzing around this very ship, and we're expected to trust them to watch our back in a fight?]
: [They defected and shot down several enemy planes already, you think Aesthia would devise a plot that involves having double agents kill their own to maintain cover? Actually, wait...]
: [Well, he is the guy that thinks Aesthia is being puppeted by a Porlaqi shadow government.]
: [They are!]
: [Huh? What are you two talking about?]
: [Oh boy, here we go.]
: [At the end of the Great War, when the Mercs were kicking down Kayezek, the supreme commander of Porlaq's armed forces committed Self Delete in his command bunker, along with several other high ranking staff members. The bunker was later destroyed by Mercanan bombs and shells, but the only *bodies* found in the rubble were clerks, common soldiers, and petty officers. They didn't kill themselves, they faked their deaths and fled the country to avoid a trial- obviously they couldn't go west, so they had to go *east*. Into Aesthia.]
: [You idiot, Porlaq invaded Aesthia! They would be arrested and put on trial anyway!]
: [Please, invading Aesthia is the closest thing you can get to a formal dialog with them. Porlaq rolled in, knocked some heads together, and asserted military dominance. They spoke Aesthia's language and showed them in no uncertain terms, "Porlaq superior, Aesthia inferior". Aesthia could have put the escaped brass on trial, or they could have offered them sanctuary in exchange for their guidance in turning their countries into war machines to rival the big dogs. Why do you think they were able to unify and modernize so fast, do you think they were able to go from a gaggle of disparate, third-rate nobodies into a superpower all by themselves? No! They must have had help.]
: [This is ridiculous.]
: [It's not ridiculous, it'll all make sense once I show you my sources. Ajka believes me, right Ajka?]
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