Welcome 2 the Freedom Galaxy

Maurice Broaddus is in the house this week to welcome those with the groove to the Freedom Galaxy!

~ Julian and Fran, June 15, 2025

For June, Sunday Morning Transport authors Sarah Monette (aka Katherine Addison), T. K. Rex, Maurice Broaddus, and C. C. Finlay bring you tales from near and (very, very) far. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

We are grateful to our paying subscribers, who allow us to keep rolling throughout the year. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up or giving a gift subscription.

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Welcome 2 the Freedom Galaxy

by Maurice Broaddus

I. Thee Astra Kidd was born in myth.

No one expected The Battle of Funk to erupt into a full-blown war. Camille Nevermind waded through the crowd at the Vault, a Kulture Bar, both club and stage. Considered neutral ground, it orbited at the edge of the event horizon between a black hole and a white dwarf. The bass rumbled the walls of the Vault like colliding tectonic plates.

Camille waited behind luminous conduits of velvet. She’d been in line for nearly three cycles, even waiting out a geomagnetic storm, before they let her in. Promotion of the concert was spread by word of mouth(s, depending on the species). This would be the twenty-first performance she’d attended. She hated the word superfan. It felt dismissive, robbing her of her identity. Yes, she was a proud member of the Beautiful Ones. That didn’t mean she couldn’t think for herself, as if she was little more than a brainwashed cult member. Theirs was a haven of dreamers, seekers of high vibrations.

She sought the fabled keynote, wanting to emerge into something new.

Gaudy glowing spheres floated about; when the lights switched colors, different species oohed and aahed as the wavelengths shifted into their perception range. Chiba smoke hung low over folks getting their heads up, preparing themselves for the performance. Between sets, a techno-shaman conjured beats, spinning ghosts of drum circles and whispers of ancestors within his backward masked tracks. Strictly a warm-up in anticipation of Thee Astra Kidd taking the stage.

Named for an obscure figure in Morawi mythology, she was their very own Star Child.

The lights dimmed. A hush swept over them. A lone spotlight sliced through the dark, chasing a figure through the shadows. A guitar wailed, not quite in protest, but in a plaintive cry. The beam caught a sequined boot. Bathed in an ethereal glow, Thee Astra Kidd stepped fully into the light.

Her face a masterwork of grace with her high cheekbones and sharp jawline. Her lips drew into a delicate pout of unsung melodies. Her eyeliner extended far beyond the outer edge, sweeping upward, echoing a bird’s wing. Every hair manicured. Her flawless skin practically glowed. She moved like a celestial body, with the precision of a jazz riff, fluid as space-time.

“What set you claim?” [X] the Funkstress’s voice cut like a gravitational wave, offering the standard opening greeting to suss out rival fandoms. It was a tight-knit music scene, full of rivalries and ambitions. A Pineran, the antennae protruding from her forehead, angled toward the stage. Red striations ran along the side of her bare midriff like keloids. A part-time musician, part-time dreamer, part-time hustler, she wanted the fame and fortune that accompanied stardom. Or at least stay in the orbit of those who had it, hoping to catch its rays, perhaps even reflect it like a bright moon on a dark night.

“A Beautiful One.” Camille was too self-conscious to dare leave her planet’s orbit with so much skin exposed. Preferring her golden vinyl jumpsuit and platform shoes, she wrapped herself in a pink frock coat, her matching nova glasses trimmed with glitter.

“She’s amazing.”

“She’s a star in ascendance.”

“A star fully arrived to hear her tell it.”

“It’s important to write one’s own story.” Camille suspected that she might be one of the Agents of Funk, a toxic fandom of Professor Bereft of Funk. He spun a story about having accidentally absorbed all known funk into himself, leaving the universe . . . bereft. Thus he toured to return it to the people. He was a black hole of ego. “His own fault. He only invited her to open for him because she’s attracting mixed crowds.”

“Her sound plays well across peoples,” [X] the Funkstress said.

“All he saw was publicity and opportunities.”

Camille scanned the stage wings. From the shadows—unmistakable with his towering height and his braids that swung when he turned—Professor Bereft of Funk watched Thee Kidd’s performance, as she did him during his set. They both felt the weight of their devoted fandom having both sprung on the scene as child prodigies. They had both released debut solo projects in the same year. They both viewed the other as having skills or assets their own act needed while neither admitted to any jealousy. She was younger, more experimental, pushing the boundaries of the sound, boundaries he established and helped define as the architect of the scene.

Their beef stemmed from two incidents. First, the Professor believed Thee Kidd had snubbed his mother by refusing to give her an autograph one time after a show; Professor Bereft of Funk allegedly waited on the dark side of the moon to try to blast Thee Kidd’s ship out of orbit. Second, Thee Kidd believed the Professor had sabotaged her set when they were invited to perform in front of their mutual hero, legendary funkateer Shakes Humphries. Thee Kidd dazzled the crowd with her spins and leaps. The Professor scrambled onstage, strapped with his guitar, stripped off his shirt, and sent the band up-tempo . . . throwing off her routine. It was hailed as a rare upstaging of Thee Kidd. The newslinks didn’t help, with the commentators’ often thoughtless comparisons pitting them against one another. Their decades-long rivalry built to this concert.

When everything got funked up.

Thee Astra Kidd’s hands slid up and down the neck of her guitar, wringing notes that curled the hair on the back of Camille’s neck. The audience raised their hands in worship, their bodies swaying like welcoming palms. Thee Kidd’s voice crept into their secret places, stirring their spirits. Part of the show was “gravity optional.” Camille leapt, dancing in zero gravity. It allowed her to truly let go, dancing for herself in her personal universe of rhythm.

“If you want to meet me, come to the Angwen platform after the show,” Thee Astra Kidd cooed into her microphone. Her last note lingered, a lovers’ kiss good night before she disappeared. She did that. A lot. That was her way. Leaving her people thinking she’d come back until they slowly realized she wouldn’t, that they’d been dismissed. Not in a bad way; she was just off to her next thing. It was like everyone simply . . . slid from her mind.

Camille had long made it her mission to meet Thee Astra Kidd.

She understood the keynote, the fundamental vibration that underlies—and connected—all things. That cosmic frequency that aligned the soul with the deeper harmonics of the Universe.

“Are you going?” Camille didn’t have her pilot rank yet, so she’d have to hitch a ride.

“I just wanted to be accepted, but I never found a place where I fit in.” [X] stared at the stage in rapt attention. “You Beautiful Ones may have something . . . more.”

“Everyone is so kind, so caring about what each other’s going through . . . all because of our connection through her. It’s almost spiritual.” Camille described them as best she could. “The Professor wrote hits. Thee Astra Kidd wrote her life.”

#

At the Angwen docking station, from the bay of her ship, the Starfish & Coffee, Thee Astra Kidd performed an acoustic set before chatting with her fans. She was the sweetest, humblest person Camille had ever met. So grounded, talking to each of them like a long-lost friend. A tension rippled through the fringes of the crowd. The Agents of Funk cultists infiltrated the station, proselytizing their brand of psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop theology.

“We’re all fierce dreamers. Though we can’t seem to dream of a reality where we can all be successful,” Thee Astra Kidd announced. Though no one took their eyes from her, somehow she vanished. Her perfume lingered like a lost ghost. Her disembodied voice said, “May you live to see the dawn.”

No one remembered who fired the first shot.

II. Thee Astra Kidd girds for war.

The Beautiful Ones. Agents of Funk. Cult of Tupac. Keepers of the Belt.

It was easy for the faithful to get caught up in their passion and excitement, supporting what they loved. What was once common conflicts over trivial things—from number of hits to who made better music to who had the most impact on culture—now slid into a morass of competition and hostility. Opposing opinions demonized to the point where they could no longer hear each other.

War was inevitable. And the war demanded a soundtrack.

The newslinks covered the Funk Wars across media, in tacit encouragement of the violence since any skirmish led their feeds.

Knowing the level of her commitment, Thee Kidd assigned Camille to front one of her side projects. She wanted to find the hidden structures of interconnection, the melody of the interplay of gifts, starting with the welcoming chord of hospitality. She believed all musicians should own their own master recordings—which put her at odds with Babilim, the capital of the system’s Corporate Zone—and hoped to restore community control by amassing them. She dreamt of protecting the wealth of her culture, using it to establish their own schools, form bonds with each on their own terms. She sang of empowerment and equality. Camille loved her.

Barely in her twenties, Camille was going to officially be a Band Leader, the youngest producer in the quadrant. Her purple high command cape shimmering like crushed stardust, she assumed Band Leader authority by linking to the Memory Librarian, the Ancestral Intelligence running her ship: a self-contained AI, gated from the community-linking AI to guarantee her security (it was rumored that Professor Bereft of Funk once lifted a melody of Thee Kidd’s after a show and produced a hit song from it). The command deck of the Starfish & Coffee was trimmed in gold, with plush velvet lining the control panels. Camille manned the directional turntables. The hyperdrive disengaged, the falsetto harmonies faded. The floor thrummed, a vibration at the edge of perception.

The starfighters of the Beautiful Ones descended as a stellar bloom, a shimmering wall of pastel and vengeance. Between twin nacelles sculpted like a guitar neck, their iridescent hulls refracted starlight into kaleidoscopic flares. Their sublight boosters emitted a purple haze. It was said that in the Agents of Funk’s flagship, their research lab studied the devil’s interval, the tritone. A combination of notes with unsettling dissonance, a powerful weapon once properly harnessed. They fired harmonic disruptors. Crystal plasma cannons fired in syncopated bursts.

Agents of Funk sent twin obsidian dreadnoughts, Fire and Desire, their prows emblazoned with a golden crest—a fist clutching a microphone—to initiate their Cold-Blooded Protocols. Their engines, a steady rhythm section pulsing their energy thrusters, warped space and time. Stinger ships launched retaliatory percussion torpedoes producing a chorus of detonation.