by Brandt Legg
“She could bleed,” the doctor told Grandyn firmly. “If you’re out in the woods and she starts losing blood, she’ll be dead before you can get help.”
“It’s up to her,” Grandyn said.
“I’d rather die trying,” Fye replied.
Fuller begged Grandyn to help change Fye’s mind, but he agreed with her.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout the Doneharvest,” Grandyn said, “it’s that some things are bigger than we are . . . more important than a life.” He suddenly choked up for a second, not meaning to think of the baby they’d lost. “My father spoke of duty and loyalty, not to governments or institutions, but to ideas and truth. We have to go.”
“But where are you going?” Fuller asked.
“I would tell you if I could, but I can’t. And we need to leave now.” Grandyn was worried about Fye, but they had to get to the City, or, he believed, the world would end.
Fuller nodded. “Chelle Andreas authorized an escort. I’d like to be on it.”
“As long as you’re ready to go now,” Grandyn said.
“Five minutes is the best I can do,” Fuller replied. “It’ll take me that long to get your AirSliders and round up a team.”
“We’ll meet you at the entrance,” Grandyn said, knowing she didn’t understand the stakes.
Grandyn checked the time. It had been seven minutes since Fuller went to put everything together. He would have left on foot, but knew Fye needed the AirSlider, and it would obviously save them days of travel time.
“There are reports of fires,” Fuller said, running down the corridor toward them. “Sorry it took longer than I said, but I had to coordinate with PAWN Command.” She could see the impatient look on Grandyn’s face.
“Where are the fires?”
“They started in Washington Area. The Olympic mandated forest is burning.”
Grandyn shook his head, imaging all the trees they would lose just because the Chief was scared. “We’re not going that way.”
“PAWN Command wants our route,” Fuller said.
“They can’t have it,” Grandyn said.
Two men who’d been a few steps behind Fuller each carried a folded AirSlider. Fuller looked at them and then back to Grandyn.
“They want to protect you. Can you give us a little more detail?”
“No.”
“North eastern California Area,” Fye said.
Grandyn frowned.
Fuller brought up a VM and spoke the information into her INU.
“Can we go?” Grandyn asked, reaching for the AirSliders.
Fuller nodded. “We’ll get final orders in a few minutes.”
“We need to go.”
“Okay. We’ll cross a highway in about ten minutes. We can pick up Command’s flash then. She took an AirSlider from one of the men and handed it to Fye. “It’s armed.”
Grandyn took his. Another was handed to Fuller. Once outside, they found a team of five more PAWN members waiting. Each had an AirSlider. Grandyn was happy for the support, but worried about eight of them buzzing through the forest.
It didn’t matter. They needed the protection. Grunges were everywhere. He’d learned that the hard way, and the fires were coming.
Near the empty highway, they stopped for the promised “quick check-in” with PAWN Command.
“Okay, we’ve been ordered to take you as far as the Siskiyou Pass,” Fuller said. “And PAWN Command has coordinated with Parker. You probably know the TreeRunners are under PAWN Command, but you’ll like this. TreeRunners will meet us below the pass and then take you south of Shasta. But from there, depending on fire activity, you’ll have to meet up with another PAWN unit to go the rest of the way.”
“Sounds good to me,” Grandyn said. “Any help getting us to where we need to go will be appreciated.” He thought of the grunges they’d met along the Rogue River, and how close they had come to dying. How much it had cost them. “The help means a lot.” He bowed slightly to Fuller. “Sorry if I haven’t thanked you properly. I know you lost friends because of us.”
“It’s not because of you. It’s the damned grunges’ fault.”
Grandyn nodded.
“We owe you our lives,” Fye added.
“Don’t’ worry about it. Just make sure you get where you’re going and that you do what you have to do.”
Fuller knew they were important, and that their mission must be a big deal because of how much help PAWN Command was giving them. Help was coming all the way from the top. Grandyn asked her for the names of the ones who had died saving them. He repeated them, along with their ID numbers, into his INU, and also added them to his long mental list, trying to memorize them.
“Who are we meeting from the TreeRunners?” Grandyn asked, hoping it was one of his old clan.
Fuller checked her INU. “Someone named Zaverly Tandrum.”
Chapter 49 - Book 3
Every one of the ten AOI grunges surrounding Drast and Osc was aiming weapons. Drast felt the heat of so many lasers on him that it seemed he was being roasted for a meal as they were roughly searched and scanned.
“Torgon hell,” one of the agents said. “We hit the jackpot today, boys!”
Two of them crowded in to see the results of the scan.
“Lex Evren, better known as public enemy number four, Polis Drast . . . and his traitor prison guard Osc Burg.”
A few of them whooped.
Drast looked the men over.
“What’s the order?” one of them asked.
“The guard is to be terminated, but we’re to take Drast into custody. He’s to be put on a secure flight to Washington, DC. Looks like the Chief wants to eat him alive or some such.”
Several of them laughed.
Drast studied the faces of the ten men, looking for any opportunity.
“Who wants to do the guard?” the leader asked as he shoved Osc against the wall.
Another grunge volunteered. “I’ll do it. I need the points.”
“Wait!” Drast yelled.
They all turned to him. The leader looked incredulous. “Listen Drast, you may have been the head of the Pacyfik Region once, but that was a long time ago, and you don’t give the orders anymore. So if you don’t want to get shot next, you need to shut the torg up.”
Drast’s gaze went quickly from face to face.
The grunge who’d volunteered aimed a lasershod at Osc’s head. “Guess you picked the wrong side,” he said to Osc.
“Allies of innocence!” Drast yelled. “Allies of innocence!”
Lasers cut the air in a sudden burst of fireworks. Shouts and shots crossed in a blurred panicked scuffle. Two men hit the ground dead, the volunteer and the leader. Two more had dropped their weapons and had their hands held high.
Osc looked at Drast, confused.
While four grunges kept their weapons on the two holding up their hands, another approached Drast. “I’ll need the word,” he said quietly.
“Wolftrap,” Drast replied.
The agent handed Drast a weapon.
Without any hesitation, Drast shot the two men holding up their hands. “Sorry if they were friends,” Drast said to the man who’d handed him the lasershod. “We don’t have the luxury of taking prisoners.”
“We never got too close to any of the wolves,” the man answered. “Still, we served with them for a while. We all covered each other . . . it was better you did it instead of us.”
“What’s going on?” Osc asked, dazed.
“What’s the Vancouver headquarters look like?” Drast asked, ignoring Osc.
“I think it’s risky,” the man who’d given him the weapon answered. “There have been a lot of transfers during the Doneharvest, even more yesterday. I don’t think we have the numbers anymore.”
“Too many wolves, for sure,” another man said.
“Who are the wolves?” Osc asked.
Two of the surviving agents had taken defensive positions and were now c
overing both ends of the alley.
“Can we get in the air?” Drast asked.
“Negative.”
“What about the water?” Drast asked.
The man looked at one of the other agents. “Possibly,” he answered.
“Are we better taking you as a prisoner, or getting you a uniform?” the first agent asked, pointing to one of the bodies.
“Uniform. I’d draw too much attention as a prisoner.”
“We need to move.”
Drast started undressing one of the dead men. “You might want to switch out of that,” Drast said to Osc. “Any regular AOI agent will know it’s a prison guard uniform.”
Osc picked the body closest to him in size, and started the process. “What’s going on? Who are these guys?”
“There’s an AOI inside the AOI,” Drast said while getting dressed. “It’s the Allies of Innocence. “It’s kind of like PAWN, but it’s made up entirely of AOI agents.”
“Who are the wolves?”
“The wolves are the regular agents . . . the bad guys.”
“And what do you call the good guys?” he asked as they finished dressing.
“We’re known as the righteous warriors of hope and truth.”
“Really?”
“No.” He smiled. “We just call ourselves the ‘Allies.’”
“Let’s go,” the unofficial leader said as they moved out.
“Why wasn’t I in the secret AOI?” Osc asked.
“You’ll have to ask your mother that one. She may have thought it too risky for you, or maybe for the Allies. If anyone found out who you were, it would have blown the entire operation.”
“How many Allies are there?”
“Thousands,” Drast said.
Osc was impressed, but not entirely surprised. The AOI was not popular. They had filled the land with terror and tears. Peace came at a high price, and even among those supposedly loyal agents he’d known during his time in the AOI, many were discontented and remorseful about the brutal ways of the so-called “peacekeepers.”
“Where are we heading?” Osc asked.
“We’re heading to the Salish Sea,” the unofficial leader explained. “Hopefully we can borrow a boat.”
“And then?”
“Seattle,” Drast said. “It’ll be much quicker than trying to get there overland.”
“What’s in Seattle?” Osc asked.
“If all goes well and the stars are on our side, then we’ll find something in Seattle that has eluded us for decades.”
“What’s that?”
“Victory.”
Chapter 50 - Book 3
The Chief watched the fires spread. Teams had started in Washington State Area and then moved into Oregon Area. Another crew worked California Area.
The strategy presented many risks, as scientists were still trying to reverse global warming. Beyond climate concerns, the massive fires could make it difficult for AOI bombing flights over large areas affected by smoke drift. There would also be collateral damage – loss of life and property within the massive fire zones – but she wasn’t concerned about that. The fires would force PAWN out of their hiding places. Her best intelligence, and the Imps had agreed, showed the largest concentration of rebel bases to be within the zones she now targeted with the fires.
It was late in the day in the Pacyfik region when Chelle ordered PAWN into the air. The pause, caused by the DesTIn crash, which in turn resulted in the Trapcier shutdown, provided the opportunity, but it was the fires that gave added urgency.
The Chief was correct; a large percentage of PAWN assets were in the fire zone. Nano-camo and other stealth methods had protected a small, but advanced fleet of PAWN fighter jets and bombers. They didn’t have Sonic-bombs, but they would be able to cause substantial damage to AOI bases and infrastructure if they could stay in the air long enough. Chelle had been lobbying Deuce for help from space by way of his StarFly corporation, but so far he’d been resisting.
She couldn’t wait any longer.
The fires surprised Miner. He saw it as a direct snub to the Council. And then he discovered that the center of a pandemic was now the area where the Council Chairman resided.
“She’s making her move,” Miner said to Sarlo.
“It’s a coup d’état,” Sarlo said, using the dead language phrase, as their Com language conveniently had no word to describe a military takeover of the government.
“I underestimated that dragon lady . . . both in her brilliance, and in her stupidity,” Miner said, flipping his silver dollar. “Damn,” he said quietly as it landed on tails.
Hidden in an air-conditioned warehouse on the outskirts of Prescott in the Arizona Area, Sidis, Charlemagne, and Galahad continued to monitor the war news even without the benefit of their implants, which had not been functioning for seventeen hours.
They were each in the throes of what could only be described as a migraine in hell. Pain tore at them, ravaging their nerves and clarity as their brains and nervous systems adjusted to no implants. The withdrawals had begun immediately after Blaise crashed the system, and the symptoms had continued to worsen as the hours passed. They had teams of people working to remove the bug Blaise had buried in each of them like a cancer. At that moment, writhing in pain, Sidis wanted to ditch all other efforts and concentrate on finding and slowly killing Blaise Cortez, but Charlemagne convinced him to keep focused on their original objective.
“The fires are a mistake,” Galahad said.
“How the torg do you know?” Sidis asked. “I can’t even think.”
“The Chief is creating a giant choking obstacle in the middle of a key region. She thinks it will paralyze the rebels, but it will instead shut down the AOI across the critical western section of the continent.”
“Many of the simulators agree with your assessment,” Charlemagne said, looking at VMs showing probability formulas run on non-DesTIn programs. “But she won’t listen to us while we’re unplugged.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Sidis said. “I don’t want to listen to anything right now. I don’t even know why the torg we’re involved.”
Galahad shook his head. “You forget your connection. You must remember all that you have seen. Our mission is vital to the future of civilization. Work through the pain, ignore the void of knowledge, make power where there is none.”
Fuller stopped again as they neared another stretch of civilization where she could get a connection. “The fires are now in California and Oregon, as well as Washington,” she announced while pulling up a VM so the others could see the report.
Grandyn looked at Fye. Their destination was still safe, but if they didn’t move fast, the flames would close in from all sides and either block, or trap them.
“We can’t stop anymore,” Grandyn said.
“It isn’t going to be just these,” Fuller said. “They’re still igniting all over the place. We’ll be caught in a firestorm if we continue! We need to evacuate.”
“You’re free to go,” Grandyn said. “I don’t want to put any of you in more jeopardy than we already have.”
“We’ll go a little farther,” Fuller said looking at Fye, who was clearly weak and pale.
Grandyn also looked at Fye, concerned. “Are you . . . ” he whispered.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, making her voice sound stronger than it was.
“Let’s go,” he said, squeezing the accelerator button. His AirSlider surged back into the air. Fye, Fuller, and the others followed. They were vigilantly watching for grunges as they navigated in and around the treetops.
A few hours later, while following a line of high tension powerlines up a ridge, Fuller was able to pick up another signal. She worked her INU while still soaring above the open range beneath the power lines. They were only about forty-five minutes from the Siskiyou Pass, and she provided their position to PAWN Command, who would relay their ETA to Zaverly. Once she’d completed the update, she flew up next to Grandyn and shoute
d across at him.
“PAWN is in the air!”
“They’re fighting back?”
“It appears the war might finally be real.”
“Hell yeah! More than a war, we got ourselves a revolution!”
Grandyn felt as if he’d been waiting for this moment since before he even knew PAWN existed. For more than three years he’d waited and worked for the revolution to begin, and now it had.
He could see smoke from distant fires as they raced toward them. Millions had died, proving they were on the right side, showing the Aylantik for what it was, the darkest side of evil ever to blight the Earth. Grandyn thought of his mother -she too had waited for this day- and his father. He smiled, knowing Runit would quote an author and knowing just the one, David Mitchell. His dad had always admired his book, Cloud Atlas. Grandyn recalled the exact words from the book, and his dad reciting them to him the day before he died.
“Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
Chapter 51 - Book 3
Twain sat cross-legged in a grove of giants. Redwoods towered around him, reaching heights of more than one hundred meters. The setting sun struggled to filter light to the soft forest floor where he sat, isolated and alone, no INUs or VMs to distract him. The Field did not penetrate, and yet he knew what was to happen.
He’d been in a near trance for seven hours, preparing his body, concentrating on his cells and, during that intense meditation, he’d been interrupted three times by visions. The first told him that AOI squads were burning forests in the northern Pacyfik region, including ancient redwoods. The Chief obviously had no rational sense of the consequences of her actions.