The Renegade

by P. M. Johnson

  Then just as suddenly as the creature had taken hold of him, it let go.

  Logan opened his eyes and gasped for air like a drowning man who finally breaks through to the surface. He saw the cave ceiling above him. Familiar hands held his shoulders and arms. He saw Beth’s face appear above him. She was speaking but her voice was muffled and indecipherable. He focused on her moving lips until he could finally comprehend her.

  “Logan! Are you all right?”

  He took her hand in his and sat up. Then he grabbed hold of Ravenwood’s extended arm and pulled himself to his feet. He stumbled along the stone wall then turned and pressed his back against its reassuring solidity.

  Beth followed him and placed her hands on his shoulders.

  “What’s happening, Logan? Are you all right?”

  Finally realizing that he was once again in the cave with his companions, Logan began to calm down. His racing heart slowed.

  “I’m okay,” he said after taking a number of deep breaths.

  He looked toward the entrance to the dimension door then closed his eyes.

  “I’m okay,” he repeated as he felt Beth’s arms around him.

  “It was one of my episodes,” he said.

  “It was more than that,” said Beth firmly, her voice full of fear.

  Of course it was, admitted Logan to himself, but even as the details of the communion quickly faded from his mind, Logan struggled to make sense of it. What had he seen and heard? He’d spoken with someone in the guise of his father about Suvial and his plans, but what had the man said? The harder he tried to recall the details of the communion, the more they eluded him. Like morning mist slipping across the water under a rising sun, they were soon burned away. All that remained was a vague sense of fear and the image of his father, but not his father – a Geth with burning red eyes.

  He reached out for Beth, holding her tightly and rejoicing in the strength of her embrace. But her love could not chase away the shadows that haunted him. She could not protect him from the dread feeling in his heart of what lay ahead. The communion had left him with the certainty that the nightmare he’d just experienced was more than merely a troubling vision, frightening images to be seen and then forgotten. The communion had carried the weight of providence, the promise of things yet to come.

  Chapter 29

  True victory requires more than simply defeating your enemy on the field of battle. You must also defeat his strategy. If you have not defeated his strategy, you have not achieved victory despite a hundred battles won or a thousand foes slain.

  - Baku Nestra (The Way of the Blade), Book VII.

  Attika sighed and dropped a seventy-five page report onto a stack of a dozen or so similar looking documents and slowly dragged her fingers through her hair, carefully avoiding the plate embedded into the side of her skull. The report was yet another uninspired study prepared by stiff-necked functionaries incapable of creative thought. Clearly, they had not embraced her vision for the future, whether out of contempt or stupidity she was not yet sure. She’d held long discussions with each of the ministry heads and laid out her plans for the newly constituted Federated States of America, but all she had received from them was a laundry list of excuses for missed industrial and food production goals and warnings about the dangers of her “radical” proposals.

  She glanced at a one-page summary of the latest economic data. It was dismal. Long on the brink of economic collapse, the nation was finally tipping over the cliff. Leading economic indicators were all down ten percent or more compared to the prior year. Flows of foreign trade were down to a mere trickle, and worst of all, the blight was expected to destroy at least fifty percent of the current year’s harvest. Fifty percent! Were it not for generous donations of corn, wheat, and other food from the League of Free Cities, people would be digging for tubers and boiling bark just to survive. Of course, the League did not provide this food out of the goodness of their hearts. They feared being inundated by refugees flowing west across the Mississippi in search of relief from poverty and famine. And to ensure that did not happen, the League’s relief shipments came with one condition attached; Attika must prevent her people from wandering west. Though somewhat disorganized, the League had a much stronger economy and higher standard of living than their cousins to the east, and they didn’t want to spoil a good thing. Attika complied with the League’s mandate by reinstituting internal checkpoints and beefing up border patrols along the eastern side of the Mississippi River.

  As disastrous as the food shortages and rapidly shrinking economy were, the main contributor to the nation’s woes was its currency, or lack thereof. The Guardians had managed a large part of the PRA’s monetary policy through a highly centralized “buy-card” program. Under this system every individual over the age of eighteen was issued a card in which was embedded a data chip containing the individual’s biographic and biometric information. Each month the Ministry of Growth and Prosperity would allocate credits to every card, which people could then use to purchase goods and services. There were seven types of cards, each with its own color and specific credit allotment depending on the needs of the bearer and his or her status in society.

  As unpopular and unfair as it was, the buy-card system was not an invention of the PRA. It was, in fact, a carryover from the early days of the prior regime with roots in Malcom Weller’s decision to convert food cards issued under the Nine Tyrants into purchase cards. He had done so as a necessary expedient to avert economic disaster following the ousting of the Nine, but like so many other short-term solutions, the buy-card system soon became deeply embedded into the fabric of the PRA’s social and economic structure. There had been several opportunities over the years to move from buy-cards to a proper currency, but the system’s benefits to the Guardians were too great to induce them to abandon it. With buy-cards and the integrated computer networks that supported them, they could monitor nearly every purchase, right down to the individual citizen. This treasure trove of information was then used for myriad purposes, ranging from large scale agricultural and industrial planning to intelligence gathering by the SPD. Indeed, it was commonplace for the so-called “undedicated” to be rooted out and cast into work camps based solely on analysis of their purchases. Of course, the credits were never efficiently allocated, and a barter-based black market soon emerged in response to the system’s shortcomings. But the Guardians preferred to expend their energies suppressing such activities instead of addressing their root cause, namely the inefficient and inequitable distribution of purchasing power.

  With the fall of the Guardians, Attika had made it one of her highest priorities to replace buy-cards with a currency capable of trading on international exchanges. Sadly, the conversion had been badly mishandled and the new medium of exchange, the New Dollar, or “ND”, was not performing as hoped. As Attika had admitted several times to her closest advisors, the failure of the ND was the result of the Septemberists’ decision to yield to political pressure from industrialists and other elites and replace buy-card credits with NDs on a one-to-one basis, thus greatly benefiting the privileged few who had horded credits as well as those who had found ways to fraudulently accumulate multiple cards.

  Attika could have lived with the patent injustice of this result if the ND had gone on to function as envisioned, namely as the lubricant of a resurgent economy capable of creating jobs and putting food on people’s tables. Unfortunately, Congress’ initial ND stimulus packet resulted in currency hording; people simply refused to spend them and manufacturers refused to pump them into the economy. Subsequent infusions of NDs into the marketplace had been too aggressive and caused the opposite problem – high inflation.

  To add to the nation’s miseries, foreign governments refused to recognize the ND, thus making it useless for international transactions. They would only accept hard currency or precious metals, neither of which the Federated States of America had in abundance.

  As a consequence of these economic maladies,
Attika and her Septemberist supporters in Congress decided to return, at least in part, to issuing credits on buy-cards. Now, eighteen months after the failed currency reform, the economy was choking on a toxic diet of manipulated buy-cards and inflated NDs.

  Not surprisingly, all of this economic instability put people in a state of unrest. Attika and her Septemberists had asked the nation for patience when they came to power, but she had not been able to deliver on any of her promises. In fact, conditions for the average citizen had gotten considerably worse since the new Congress took over. Attika knew it wouldn’t be long before the people were clamoring for the return of the Guardians and the false security of the PRA.

  Picking up a pen from her desk, Attika wrote down the names of her department chiefs and carefully considered each one. Most of the men and women on the list had held senior ministerial positions under the Guardians, but rather than dismiss them right away she had kept them on because they had voiced their eagerness to work with the new government. And so, except for removing the very top levels of ministers and known threats to her Septemberist Revolution, Attika had left much of the bureaucratic structure in place. She had even promoted a number of people in hopes of avoiding the mistakes of past popular uprisings where ministries were gutted and filled with loyal, but incompetent, friends of the revolution. But now, as she sat surrounded by nothing but glum economic news, she wondered whether perhaps those past revolutionaries had gotten it right. Was it better to replace entire bureaucracies with loyalists and push through pure, uncompromising reforms? Whatever the wisdom of her past actions, the time had come for immediate, bold decisions.

  “You look tired.”

  Startled, Attika looked up.

  “Bishop,” she said without enthusiasm when she saw who stood at the door. “You took long enough.”

  “I came as quickly as I could.”

  The former Justice Guardian was standing at the entrance to Attika’s office, leaning against the doorframe with his arms casually folded across his chest.

  With a wave of her hand, Attika dismissed the two Constitutional Guards who had escorted Bishop to her office in The Residence.

  “That’s all,” she said to them. “You can return to your stations.”

  “Where were you?” she asked after the guards had left.

  “Going about the People’s business,” he said as his eyes flitted around the room, noting the new pictures on the wall and elegant window treatment. “You’ve settled in nicely, my dear Attika. You’ve given the Grand Guardian’s Residence a touch of warmth it desperately needed.”

  “Don’t call me ‘dear’!” she snapped. “And watch your attitude. I’ve lengthened your leash, but don’t think for a second that you’re free.”

  “Message received,” he replied with a pleasant smile. “How may I be of service?”

  “The time has come for a change in leadership in the ministries. The individuals I plan to remove are mostly harmless and will go quietly, but I want you to go over each and every name and assess the potential for trouble.”

  “And what shall I do if I have concerns?”

  “Just let me know who and why they’re a threat. I’ll take appropriate steps.”

  “A very good phrase, ‘appropriate steps’,” said Bishop approvingly. “Will there be new tenants in the Developments? Are there any fresh vacancies?”

  Attika leveled a cold, hard stare on Bishop. “Your flippancy annoys me. I’ve freed as many inmates as I could. You know that. As for the rest, turning the Developments into communes was the least deplorable of the miserable options available to me. Of course, unlike in your days as Justice Guardian, the fences and guard towers have been pulled down; residents can come and go as they please.”

  “You’ll hear no arguments from me. I think you’re doing a commendable job under extremely trying conditions.”

  Ignoring Bishop’s mockingly obsequious quip, Attika said, “You know better than anyone that simply sending third and fourth generation Development inmates into the world would be a disaster. Life outside the camps is alien to them. What’s more, this nation’s towns and cities are in no condition to absorb thousands and thousands of refugees. And they’d die of starvation or exposure within weeks if left to wander the countryside.”

  Bishop studied his fingernails as Attika spoke then looked up.

  “I agree with your enlightened policies. We certainly don’t need more Travelers scrounging through the forests or stealing from our fields. In fact, I’m told that some of the Developments have become happy little communities. That brings me back to this list you’re compiling and the ones you’ve already provided. I would not place any of the nasty fish I catch for you in those tranquil little ponds you’ve created. I recommend putting them in the old fashioned Developments, the ones with razor sharp fences and dedicated, I’m sorry, devoted Septemberist guards keeping a watchful eye on things from their tall towers.”

  Attika’s cheeks flushed red with anger, but before she would respond there came the sound of footsteps hurrying down the passageway to Attika’s right. A young woman with dark shoulder-length hair with corkscrew curls appeared at the open door. In her arms were twenty or thirty files.

  Bishop quickly appraised the new-comer. He smiled and said, “I imagine those are for me.”

  The young woman paused when she saw Bishop.

  “Never mind him, Tyana,” said Attika. “Bring me the files.”

  The young woman crossed the room and set the files on Attika’s desk. She turned to face Bishop, returning his predator gaze without fear.

  “Tyana…Tyana,” said Bishop in a musing tone. “Where do I know you from? No, don’t tell me.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re the little one Kane, the Traveler King, found outside of Columbus, yes? The one whose name appeared on the SPD’s cleansed list but who later popped up here in the Capitol District on the Day of Daggers when the mob settled old scores and righted many wrongs.”

  Tyana did not respond. Instead she glanced at Attika and said, “There’s something I need to tell you, Attika. It’s confidential.”

  “You were there that night at the Capitol Building, weren’t you,” continued Bishop, enjoying the effect he was having on the young woman. “Of course you were. Tell me, did you hurl any of those poor bastards from the balcony? Did you slice off any tongues or gouge out an eye or two? That’s what they did to the High Court Chief Judge, you know. I hear the poor soul now spends his days panhandling over in Union Square near the statue of the People in Victory. How the mighty have fallen, eh?”

  When Tyana didn’t respond, Bishop gave a casual shrug. “Oh well. Maybe we can discuss it another time.”

  “No you won’t,” said Attika. “You’ll keep your damn mouth shut.” Looking at Tyana, she said, “Bishop is playing one of his little games with you. The trick to avoiding his traps is to always remember that he is a filthy snake. Words are his fangs, his poison is doubt, doubt in your comrades, doubt in your cause, doubt in yourself. And with each successful bite, he gains power over his victim.”

  Bishop did not respond to Attika’s less than flattering description of him. He merely smiled and winked at Tyana.

  “Now pay attention, Tyana,” said Attika. “Watch how I defang this snake.”

  Attika stood up from her desk and slowly approached Bishop. “Orson Bishop, you are a conniving, cynical creature. You function by drawing on your inexhaustible supply of lies, distortions, and secrets. Those tactics may have served you well in the dark days of the PRA when survival depended on the ability to destroy your rivals. But those days are behind us. We are at the dawn of new age of equality and justice. The light of the coming day will expose creatures like you for what you truly are - serpents, toads, worms. You hate the light, don’t you, snake? You hate it because it prevents you from slithering freely in the shadows. So now, as the sun rises over this poor, broken nation, you and your kind hide in your filthy burrows or under rocks. But I know all your hiding places, B
ishop. It would be nothing for me to turn over your rock and let the light of justice set you on fire.”

  As Bishop listened to Attika, his smile began to waver ever so slightly. His confident gaze lost its intensity.

  “I spy on my spies, Bishop. I know all about you. For example, I know that the other prisoners abused you when you were in that Development Harken threw you into. They may not have known your name, but they recognized you for what you were - a disgraced servant of the Grand Guardian. They took every opportunity to kick, claw, and gouge you, didn’t they? You didn’t dare close your eyes at night out of fear that they would murder you in your sleep. Desperate, you sought the protection of the guards, but they mocked you. It was only after the other inmates nearly bludgeoned you to death that Guardian Harken ordered your transfer to another Development. That’s when you were plucked from your cage by Lena Castell, the daughter of your former rival.”

  Bishop’s eyes narrowed to thin slits as he listed to Attika describe the details of his time spent in a manufacturing Development and subsequent extraction by Lena on that cold winter night three years prior.

  Attika took a step closer to Bishop, her eyes twinkling with pleasure. “Now tell me, toad, do you think the abuse, murder attempt, transfer, and liberation were all just coincidence?”

  Bishop did not respond, though the wheels were clearly turning in his mind.

  “I’m the one who orchestrated the attacks on you and I’m the one who set you free,” continued Attika. “I did all this when Harken’s fingers still clutched this nation’s throat. Imagine what I can do now! So the next time you think you’ve got the upper hand, remember that I’m the one who permits you to walk the streets. I will allow it as long as it suits my needs. The only reason you are still alive is that you serve me by slinking from hole to hole, rock to rock, flushing out evil creatures such as yourself into the light. But cross me once, just once…”