[INTRO — CAMERA DRONE / SPOKEN, SEA WIND] The camera drone moves to focus on a Gallentean woman of above average height, with olive-skinned clear features and cropped dark hair, walking along a golden shingle with a formal evening dress fluttering in the sea breeze, quite incongruous to the bare feet leaving footprints in the wet sand. She walks on for a dozen heartbeats, then pauses, turns and smiles a half smile, green eyes glittering darkly to the contrast of a wonderful sunset and the unmistakable features of New Eden’s notorious anarchist fighter silhouetted against the rays of a scarlet primary falling below the azure shadows of a luxuriant tropical ocean. [VERSE 1 — CLOSE, HAUNTED] Good evening, New Eden. You know the legend. You know the wars. You know the names we carved across the stars. Venal. The Bleaklands. Freedom. Fire. You know the victories. You know the desire. But history loves distance. Numbers make clean graves. Five million souls. Say it quickly enough and nobody has a face. So tonight I will not give you the safety of the aggregate. Ask me who followed. Ask who believed. Ask what a beautiful cause asked someone else to bleed. [PRE-CHORUS] Did I start the war? Yes. Did I prolong it? Yes. Did I persuade people to fight who otherwise would not have fought? Yes. Did I make the dream compelling enough that people accepted risks they otherwise would have refused? Yes. [CHORUS] Don’t give me millions. Give me one name. One face before the history, one life before the fame. Tell me who followed. Tell me who believed. Tell me what your beautiful cause asked somebody else to bleed. I can name him. Sébastien Delacroix. And if you ask me who else died— Jacqueline Vance died too. [VERSE 2 — WARMER, HUMAN] Sébastien Delacroix, thirty-one. Bridge officer, JFS Esprit d’Escalier, Thorax-class cruiser, opening days of the Venal war. Coal-black hair. Dark eyes. Quick to laugh. Cards and brandy, ridiculous costume melodramas, corsets and bustiers, plots nobody could follow. He believed in freespace. He came with me from plutonium runs into the war. At H-PA29 I moved the scouts badly. Enemy frigates found us at P-FSQE. And Sébastien died because my judgement was wrong. [CHORUS] Don’t give me millions. Give me one name. One face before the history, one life before the fame. Tell me who followed. Tell me who believed. Tell me what your beautiful cause asked somebody else to bleed. I can name him. Sébastien Delacroix. And if you ask me who else died— Jacqueline Vance died too. [HAUNTED TRANCE BREAK] And somewhere in that same fire— Jacqueline Vance died too. Burning scanner. Consciousness ending. Several light-years away another body opened her eyes carrying the final thoughts of a dead woman. And the terrible thing? She didn’t think of Sébastien. She thought about the next tactical problem. The next formation. The next command. The war had crossed death faster than grief could follow. [VERSE 3 — LOW, CONFESSIONAL] I declared a grand project in the outer worlds. It ended in tragedy, bloodshed, dissolution, chaos. There are systems in Venal where the ghosts of millions bear witness to the price of political idealism. I believed in what we fought for. Some of it I still believe. But conviction does not absolve me of the people who had to bleed. [BRIDGE — SUNSET / VERY CLOSE] So this is not a plea for mercy. Mercy asks you not to judge me. Judge me. Judge the cause. Judge the choices. Judge the bodies left behind them. I ask something harder. Grace. That after everything we did to one another, after the flags, the wars, the names we became, we might still meet face to face. [FINAL CHORUS — RISING, HAUNTED] Don’t give me millions. Give me one name. One face before the history, one life before the fame. Remember who followed. Remember who believed. Remember every beautiful cause has somebody else who bleeds. I can name him. Sébastien Delacroix. And if you ask me who else died— Jacqueline Vance died too. [OUTRO — SEA, BEAT FADING] The sun goes down. The water takes the light. My name is Jacqueline. My name was Jade. Before that— Jacqueline Vance. You asked me for one dead person. I gave you two. Good night, New Eden.
