[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JfPbI8VQd8&ab_channel=R.P.C.LyricVideos[/youtube]
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"This here's David Wilcox's 'Riverboat Fantasy'. The story of my life, ladies and gentlemen, and here's hoping it's the story of yours too."

Marty Graw cracked a smile as the song came on, entirely unable to resist the urge to hum along and bob his head. The same tune could be heard playing all across the Bayou Wasteland, picked up on any working radio and listened to by kindred spirits from all five districts and beyond, pushing the Radio Fantasy agenda of free love and living life to the fullest. The broadcast's wide breath was made possible by the extremely powerful broadcast equipment on board the Cajun Queen, 'borrowed' from the French Revolution over twenty years ago. Those twenty years had been made all the more rockin' for it, though, and Marty doubted that Napoleon really minded a few deserted grunts and a nicked transmitter. Radio Fantasy was a useful propaganda tool, after all, eagerly informing the people of the abuses of the Order, and somewhat hesitantly giving favourable review of French Revolution—even though Marty wasn't much of a fan of them, either. Still, the Cajun Queen wasn't likely to keep afloat unless she had at least one major power on her side, and the Revolution seemed to be the lesser of two evils.

The Cajun Queen was Marty's vessel, a very wasteland-looking riverboat full of radio broadcast equipment, which served as the mobile broadcaster of Radio Fantasy. She looked simultaneously friendly and intimidating, welcoming kindred spirits on board with flashy decals and bright colours, and warding off troublemakers, human and beast, with defensive spikes and mounted turrets. The riverboat was also Marty's home, housing both him and a baker's dozen other kindred spirits, all of whom helped keep the Cajun Queen going and Radio Fantasy belching her tunes for all to hear. First among equals, besides Marty Graw himself, were Marie Rose and Eugene Zemurray. Both of them had been friends of Marty since before he stumbled across the Cajun Queen, and both served equally important purposes for the Kindred Spirits of Her Majesty. Eugene, going on sixty now, was a coffee skinned communications technician, in charge of keeping the Cajun Queen's engines running and keeping Radio Fantasy's equipment broadcasting. He was the oldest on board by a decade, and was generally treated as the man in charge if Marty was absent. Marie, of French extraction, blonde haired and blue eyed, was in her late thirties, and ran the part of the crew tasked with defending it against asshole raiders taking potshots at anything that moved. She was a crack shot with her customized gauss rifle, 'Joyeuse', and was probably responsible for more exploded skulls than everyone else on board the Cajun Queen combined. Her accuracy, and the accuracy of the other kindred spirits keeping the Cajun Queen free of holes, was enough that most of the wiser raiders didn't even make an attempt when they saw Her Majesty floating down the river. The Order usually didn't either; there were things they hated more than rock stations, evidently, but Marty and the rest of the Kindred Spirits usually made a point of avoiding them nonetheless. If the dissent that Radio Fantasy offered up wasn't reason enough for them to get shot at, the crates full of jet  in the ship's cargo probably were, so it was better safe than sorry.

As the song died down, replaced by a blues number, Marty felt a nudge on his shoulder, and turned around to find a visitor to the Cajun Queen standing there, staring at him. Perplexed for a moment, the gears eventually starting spinning in his brain again, and he smiled and laughed. 

"Shit, haha, right! Nearly forgot about that. Just a matter of..." Marty paused for a second, holding on that note, as he reached over and flicked a switch on a complicated looking machine to the left of his chair. A faint whirring sound filled the broadcast room, and Marty's eyes turned back to the controls in front of him. Grabbing a nondescript holotape off of the table, he set it into its slot, and then gave the man standing behind him the thumbs up. "...And that should do it." After putting a few recordings in the cue for Radio Fantasy, Marty stood up from his chair and turned back around to face the visitor again.

"Napoleon and I are square now, right? I'm not gonna get called in to 'assist the Revolution' any more?"

The visitor, standing tall in heavy riot gear, gave a simple nod. Marty then raised an eyebrow, looked the man over from head to toe and bellowed out a hearty laugh.

"You guys don't talk much, huh? Care for some jet? One of the kindred spirits is a hell of a chemist, makes that 'Ultra' stuff." Before the revolutionary had time to refuse, Marty had pulled out a jet inhaler from a pouch in his jacket and was huffing away, to the tune of Riverboat Fantasy.

On a test receiver in another room, the contents of the holotape were playing, and a handful of residents of the Cajun Queen were listening in. Radio Fantasy officially had no connection to the French Revolution, so some of those on board were skeptical of the wisdom of assisting the Revolution so directly. However, they knew that Marty owed Napoleon a favour, and he wasn't a man to go back on his word. Broadcasting all across the Bayou Wasteland, emanating from the secondary, medium range transmitter of the Cajun Queen as she travelled down the Mississippi, was the holotape recording Napoleon's emissary had dropped off. Before sundown, any revolutionaries in waiting with the correctly tuned special equipment would be able to hear the speech, in the words of none other than Napoleon V herself, in the traditional language of Orleans.

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[color=#66ccff]"Mes chers concitoyens, hommes, femmes, et enfants de notre ce ville! Ecoutez-moi attentivement! Car l'heure approche de lancer la campagne finale  qui otera le Roi et son cercle priviligie qui accable Notre peuple depuis bien trop long temps. Ce jour, attendu depuis tant d'annees, eat enfin proche. Prochainement, mes soldats, armes de foi et d'acier, prendra d'assaut les bastions d'ignorance et de repression que le Roi et ses chiens utilisent pour nos opprimer - la Bastille, dans la mort de la nuit - minuit. Vous joindre à nous, révolutionnaires, et nous allons détruire le symbole de l'oppression et la tyrannie qui sévit dans ce pays depuis si longtemps.

A mort le Roi! Vive le peuple!"

{My fellow citizens, men, women, and children of this fair city! Hear me now! For the hour is approaching where we launch the campaign to topple the King and his privileged circle who have weighed down our people for too long. The day, too long in coming, is upon us. Very soon, my soldiers, armed with faith and steel, will assault the bastions of ignorance and repression used by the King and his dogs to keep our noses in the dirt - the Bastille, in the dead of night - midnight. It will be a historic day. Join us, revolutionaries, and we will destroy the symbol of oppression and tyranny that has plagued this land for so long!}

{Death to the King! Long live the People!}[/color]
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Seemed the war was about to start in earnest. Not that Marty cared, so long as his Cajun Queen was spared the gunfire, and the chems kept flowing. A time of death and despair was all the better occasion to live happily, after all. Hopefully the men with guns mostly killed each other this time.