Sounders' secret resistance within the U.S. Air Force

The Sounders’ relationship with the United States Air Force was one of hidden opposition from within: they were career military personnel who had taken an oath to serve their country, yet came to reject the government’s invasion and colonization of the past. Their resistance operated inside the organization directing that campaign, placing them close enough to impede parts of it and help people caught in it, but not powerful enough to stop the invasion outright. The conflict between duty and dissent defines both the network’s purpose and its limits.

The Crisis Behind the Resistance

The Sounders emerged against the background of a future society facing severe environmental and resource pressures. Climate change had melted the polar ice caps and flooded low-lying regions; Lower Manhattan and much of Los Angeles were underwater, New Orleans was gone, and Pemberwick Island no longer existed. Meanwhile, population growth continued as livable land and farmland diminished. In Olivia Kinsey’s account, people in the past had been shown what the future might become but failed to change course: fossil fuels remained in use, safer alternatives were not developed at the necessary scale, and the food supply dwindled as the population grew.

That history provides the political explanation offered for the war, not a justification for it. Olivia describes decades of diplomacy between governments of different eras that failed to avert the future crisis. The future government later presented the Bridge and the unsuccessful negotiations publicly, cultivating hostility toward people of the past. Once leaders concluded that changing the past could not rescue the billions of diseased and starving people in their own era, invasion became a means of expansion. The plan was to conquer and colonize the past so that the future population could replace the population of the twenty-first century. The Sounders opposed this turn from attempted negotiation to mass displacement and killing.

Formation Inside the Air Force

The resistance began as a small, cautious exchange of concerns among Air Force personnel. Colonel Pike describes early conversations as quiet and secret; some took place in a basement, where people who shared doubts could meet without drawing attention. As the group found more allies, it grew into an extensive network within the Air Force, with members both at home and in the past, working alongside personnel loyal to the mission.

The name itself served a practical purpose: members needed a way to recognize and refer to one another without arousing suspicion. The network’s existence reflected a growing conviction among some career personnel that their institution’s policy had crossed a moral boundary. They still identified with their country and their military service, but rejected genocide as indefensible. For them, the oath to protect the country could not make participation in the invasion acceptable.

Members and Their Conflicting Roles

Olivia Kinsey illustrates how the Air Force used personnel whose private views did not match their assignments. She was sent to Pemberwick Island to report on SYLO’s movements when the invasion began. She says that, as her understanding of the plan deepened, she became disgusted and tried to conceal her opposition, fearing that the military had little patience for traitors. The Sounders approached her after recognizing her doubts. She intended to cooperate with them from inside the system, but her transfer to Pemberwick Island interrupted that plan.

Her assignment did not make her a willing supporter of the invasion. Olivia says she was watched and required to report regularly, including after the attack began and her group escaped Pemberwick. She had considered deserting and tried to avoid routes that might lead the invading forces to SYLO bases or survivors. She ultimately continued with her companions because she cared about them and because she remained committed to the Sounders. After witnessing destruction in Portland, Boston, and other places on the journey to Las Vegas, she wanted the network to understand what had happened and to act before more people from the past were executed. Her experience made the consequences of the policy immediate to her, rather than an abstract argument about the future.

Other members’ positions show that the network crossed ranks and assignments. Colonel Pike and Kenny Sokol explain its organization and its limited capacity, while Olivia describes the perspective of an operative sent into the past. Colonel Feit, whom Olivia knew from the Academy, was a capable officer directing the colonization effort; Major Bova was another officer involved in it. The Sounders’ opposition therefore existed alongside individuals who were not merely distant symbols of authority but colleagues within the same military structure.

Methods and Limits of Resistance

The Sounders’ actions ranged from quiet obstruction to direct assistance. Colonel Pike describes medical staff at the colonization base treating people whom Major Bova would otherwise leave without care. Drone pilots deliberately passed over targets, saving thousands of lives. Disruptions also hindered construction of secondary domes. These interventions did not dismantle the invasion, but they interfered with its operations and reduced harm to people living in the past.

The network’s restraint was also a measure of its weakness. Kenny Sokol says that members could resign or refuse their duties publicly, but the military campaign would continue; public opinion favored the invasion, and the Sounders remained a minority. They lacked the power to stage a coup or overthrow the government. Their quiet network offered a way to coordinate opposition and act where members had access, but it could not substitute for control of the institutions and forces carrying out the plan.

Olivia’s Testimony and the Network’s Significance

Olivia’s disclosures connect the Sounders’ hidden organization to the people resisting the invasion in the past. She explains that she had wanted to reveal herself to SYLO and provide what information she had about the Retros, though she never got the opportunity she had planned for. Later, after seeing the destruction firsthand, she sought to return to the Sounders with evidence of the invasion’s consequences. Her testimony turns the network from a covert affiliation into a group facing a concrete choice: remain a small internal opposition or find a way to act before the campaign advanced further.

The relationship between the Sounders and the United States Air Force is therefore neither simple separation nor open rebellion. The Sounders are formed from within the institution, depend on its positions and personnel to obstruct its work, and remain constrained by its greater power and public backing. Their efforts expose a divide between military service and obedience to a particular government policy. At the same time, the assistance they provide cannot erase the gap between limiting harm and stopping the invasion. That unresolved gap is central to their role: they embody organized moral dissent within the force responsible for the crisis, while the scale of their opposition remains smaller than the machinery they seek to disrupt.