Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  “I think this was some kind of accountant’s office,” said Ryan as he reached the landing.

  “That’s what I gather. There are two rooms facing the street. We can take up posts there and pick them off as they come through. Is there a side door to this place?”

  “East side’s got one.”

  “Good.” Alistair pointed two fingers at Kendrick and another man and said, “You two are going to guard our exit. Make sure the next house over is clear. Sooner or later they’re going to figure out where we are and we’re going to have to move quick. We’ll take up positions in the front rooms.”

  They nodded, faces flushed and eyes wide, a mixture of nervous and eager, and then rushed back down the stairs.

  Moments later, Alistair was sitting lookout with Ryan Wellesley. The desk was turned over on its side and placed up against the wall under the window. To its right and up against the wall they stood the bookshelf, bulky manuals still in place, thick and heavy oaken backboard standing as a shield against any bullets to make it through the wall. Alistair was sitting sidesaddle on the overturned desk, eyes scanning back and forth. Wellesley sat behind in one of the padded office chairs, his right knee bouncing up and down and his hands fidgeting with his gun. It was a large firearm, large enough that a smaller person might have used it as a rifle. Wellesley was repeatedly taking out the magazine, flipping the pebble-size round out of the chamber, replacing the round in the magazine, sticking the magazine back in and reloading the chamber. This he did to the rhythm of his bouncing right knee.

  “You’re likely to have an accident before the battle even starts,” said Alistair in a low voice without turning away from his post.

  Slamming the magazine back home one more time, Wellesley sighed and laid the gun in his lap. His knee did not stop bouncing. “I’m just sick of waiting.”

  “We’ve been waiting about three minutes. It’s OK if you’re nervous.”

  “I ain’t nervous.”

  “Of course.” After a pause he added, “But if you were, it would be OK.”

  Another moment passed before Wellesley said, “I think I’d rather be out in the street. We could fire and run. It’s too easy to surround us here.”

  A huge explosion somewhere in the vicinity of Rendral Way threw dirt and chunks of cement into the air. The fighters were close enough that shouts and the occasional scream could be heard.

  “The Civil Guard are retreating as fast as they can. The idea is to take a few of them out as they pass by and let our own forces overtake us. Out in the street we’d always be separated from them by a wall of enemy forces.”

  A few more knee pumps, then, “Do you ever get nervous before a battle?”

  “Always.”

  “You don’t seem nervous.”

  “You learn to control it. My first battle, I was fully half as nervous as you are right now.”

  Despite himself, Wellesley let out a single suppressed guffaw that sprayed saliva. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and his knee calmed down a bit.

  “If we were in serious danger I wouldn’t be doing this,” Alistair assured him. “They are already under fire; they’re not even going to realize they’re getting hit from our position. By the time they figure out what’s going on and where the shots are coming from, they’ll be by us. If not, we’ve got nice brick walls and this furniture as shields. We duck down, head to the side door and we’re in the next house.”

  “And what if we—”

  “They’re here!” Alistair hissed, his body now tense as he dropped below the desk. Wellesley fumbled for his gun, got it, and slid into place next to Alistair.

  A group of Civil Guard came running out of an alley to their left. They crossed the street and took up positions where Alistair and his men could not fire at them.

  “It’s a revolving retreat,” Alistair explained. “One group retreats and takes up covering positions. Then their buddies pass by and leave them in front.”

  No sooner did he say that than a larger group of Guard came pouring out of the alley. Alistair and Wellesley commenced firing, as did their two comrades. It lasted for just a few seconds and then Alistair grabbed Ryan and they both ducked down below the window sill. It was difficult to tell who had hit whom, but Alistair counted three fallen bodies during their assault.

  Crawling deeper into the room to make himself more difficult to see, Alistair surveyed their work. Two Guard were lifting a fallen comrade between them while two others lay still in the snowy street. There were several other trails of blood leading to the south.

  “They have no idea where they got hit from,” he said and Wellesley broke into a relieved smile. “But I think a tank is coming. Keep your head down.” A low rumble had been building for a few seconds and the desultory stream of Civil Guard had stopped. “Be ready to fire.”

  “At a tin can?”

  “At the Guard using it for cover.”

  A moment later Alistair’s prediction was confirmed. The massive yet flexible hulk of a tin can thundered onto the street, its treads tearing up the snow and gripping the pavement underneath. At each corner a small and swiveling automatic gun sat ready to douse a target with its rounds. In the center a larger cannon sprouted from a spherical turret that could point the cannon in any direction. Two Civil Guardsmen lay belly down on either side of the turret, firing their rifles.

  Alistair fired off three rounds at the nearer Guard and, after a quick adjustment of his aim, three more at the other. Both men’s bodies spasmed as the rounds entered their flesh but almost immediately went slack and stopped moving. The first Guard slipped off the back end of the tank and was crushed beneath the treads. At that moment the tank stopped moving, the mutilated corpse of the Guardsman trapped underneath it, and the abrupt stop caused the second body to slide off the end. Three great booms in rapid succession, accompanied by three fleeting but brilliant flashes of light, rocked the neighborhood as the tank’s cannon fired down the alley out of which it had just emerged. Looking out over the roofs of the neighborhood, Alistair saw one quake and then collapse.

  And then the turret swiveled and raised the cannon until it was pointed at their hideout.

  “RUN!” Alistair bellowed.

  He made it out the door and was vaguely aware that Wellesley was behind him when a concussive force hit him like a wrecking ball. Not for the first time, he was sent flying and lost all sense of up and down until his face scraped along the wooden floor of the hallway and his legs, above his head, slammed into the back wall of the building. He lay there as, by degrees, his hearing returned, bringing the familiar shouting and cracks of gunfire. Trying to move, he realized his right leg had broken through the plaster of the wall and required a strong tug to dislodge it.

  After righting himself, he saw Wellesley sitting in the middle of the hall and bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts. He was staring in amazement at the wall in front of him and breathing like he had just run a hundred yard dash. Rising unsteadily, Alistair looked for his gun, finally finding it under a pile of rubble. As he grabbed it a small stream of blood trickled off his nose and splattered on the firearm.

  Standing back up he called to his friend, “Ryan, get moving.”

  Wellesley slowly turned his head to look at Alistair, his jaw hanging open and an uncertain look on his face. A fire burned in the other front room where their two companions were. The cannon round having sliced through the front façade on its way to the other room, it took out the wall at the front of the hallway. Where once brick and mortar had been, he now was staring across the street at another box of a house. Alistair located Ryan’s gun and returned it to its owner who was just struggling to his feet.

  “Does everything work?” he asked, referring to Ryan’s body more than the gun.

  Wellesley’s lips moved in answer but the sound was buried under a barrage of cannon shots, though the tank was now moving away. Judging his friend to be in fair condition, he grabbed his shoulder and they hobbled down the stairs toget
her. When they reached the bottom, the front door opened to reveal the worried faces of their other companions who had been guarding their exit. They spared a moment to look relieved before Kendrick spoke.

  “Donny and Mike?”

  Alistair shook his head and the two absorbed the news with a sad, knowing nod.

  “Our forces?” asked Alistair.

  “They’re just catching up to us. The tin men are headed south.”

  “What do we do now?” asked the other.

  Alistair passed by them on his way out the front door. “You guys are free to do what you like. I’m on my way to Civil Headquarters.”

  Chapter 35

  It is difficult to distinguish between an urban area battered by fighting and one that, the forces which constitute its lifeblood having been strangled, has simply decayed, but this is true only when battle scars are old and settled. In the immediate aftermath of a battle, when the smoke still billows and the flames still angrily flutter; when men still soaked with adrenaline run to and fro shouting; when recently damaged structures suddenly lose their precarious struggle against gravity, there can be no question. Like muddy footprints on a white carpet, the retreating Civil Guard and their rebel opponents left an unmistakable trail through the city. It would have been as easy for Alistair to follow it backwards as follow Rendral Way itself.

  As he marched up the city’s main street, Alistair struck a contrasting image to the others he passed. They were a flutter of frenzied motion. Groups of rebels ran across the boulevard, destined for some pocket of resistance announcing its presence with gunfire. Once in a while someone would notice him and stop to salute, face flushed, eyes sparkling and mouth split in an exuberant grin. Unaware of just how dour his expression was, he never failed to return the salute but sent them off a bit less enthusiastic.

  Upon reaching the Civil Headquarters, he saw a building in ruins. Three of the four walls were standing but the façade and many stories inside had almost entirely collapsed. A fire burned somewhere in the back and let out a thick black smoke while, in the front, several men and women were picking through the rubble. He smelled the unmistakable odor of burnt flesh, and amid the blackened wreckage he spied the odd limb sticking out, or an entire corpse lying prone. Dark stains marked the places where many died.

  He left the icon in ruins and followed the boulevard to its terminus. No fewer than three tanks, two of them still burning, littered the rotunda and the courtyard on the far side. When Alistair finally entered the Mayor’s Palace, through the grand ornate metal double doors, past merry rebels singing and lounging around the reception chamber with goods stolen from the palace vaults, he caught a glimpse of himself in a large mirror and was startled out of his angry reverie.

  Staining his face was a layer of soot with crisscrossing tracks of sweat and water from his sore and bloodshot eyes. There were nicks and scrapes and bruises all about his visage, covering the older wounds not entirely healed, and the aggregate effect made him look like some sort of monster. Before the War Suit he had worn the standard helmet of the Aldran Infantry. After each battle he returned sweaty and disheveled but without grime. A reminder of the new territory I’m in, he thought to himself, leaving a smudgy fingerprint on the mirror before turning away.

  On the third story of the grandiose structure, he found whom he sought. It was rather like working one’s way to the center of a whirlpool. The bodies rushing around and through the palace emanated from a central point. As he got closer the bodies moved faster and grew in number until he burst through a door, nearly knocking over someone he never bothered to look at, and found Oliver Keegan at the center of it all.

  Brad Stanson was with him, seated at a desk recently relocated to the center of the spacious chamber. He was nearly hidden behind a pile of books and documents as he tried in his own way to get a handle on the situation, but it was clearly Oliver, towering above Stanson and gesticulating as he circled the desk, who was conducting the chaotic symphony. When one of Oliver’s gestures turned his body around so that he caught sight of Alistair, he acknowledged his friend with a grim nod tinged with uncertainty.

  “We’ve still got some pockets of resistance,” he said by way of greeting. “If you’re interested, we could use some help getting—”

  Alistair’s right fist smashed Oliver’s nose. Not a wild, arcing hook, it had the economy of motion that comes with training and was driven by many pounds of sculpted muscle. Oliver’s head snapped back and dragged his body with it, finally coming to a crashing halt on the carpeted floor, a landing which made the room rattle and a pile of papers on Stanson’s desk shift and slip to the floor.

  The din and movement ceased. The pen cap Stanson was chewing fell from his slack jaws. A pair of rebels, jubilant and laughing, came through the door only to halt and stare at the uncomfortably still scene before them. Oliver let out a groan and rolled to his side, his hands cupping his bleeding nose.

  Turning to Stanson, Alistair said, “We need to talk. Follow me out to the hall.” He turned to go and Stanson paused only to look at Oliver in disbelief before, half tripping over the chair, he took off to catch up.

  “Alistair, I don’t understand. We won. We drove the Realists out!”

  “I was lied to,” Alistair said in a low and hard voice. He moved a few more feet down the hall before he turned to confront Stanson, his voice ominous. “Were you in on the decision to blow the train, or did Oliver ever mention my plan?”

  Stanson’s look was confused and innocent. “What plan did you have?”

  “Never mind. I’ve got some advice for you; you can take it or leave it. And then I have a question.”

  “OK.”

  “Make evacuation plans. You’re not going to hold the city against the regular army, and there is no way they are going to let you keep the mines. Retaking this city will be their top priority.”

  “You haven’t seen our defense plans yet.”

  “I don’t need to. This isn’t an army; they’re guerrillas. You can’t fight a standard army on its own terms. Pack provisions and send them to our bases in the hills. Destroy what you can’t take with you. When they retake the city – and you’ll notice I did not say if – you want to leave them with an empty shell. Set charges in the mines, detonate and leave.”

  “Alistair, we’ve had these talks already. I’m sorry you weren’t there—”

  “You’ll want informants among those who remain. Obviously, each man can decide for himself if he wants to risk staying or head for the hills. That’s about it: blow the important parts and get out. Unless the entire government falls in the next fifty hours, any rebel left fighting in the city is going to be killed. That’s my advice, take it or leave it. Frankly, I don’t give much of a damn.”

  “You’re leaving us,” said Stanson with a tone of realization.

  “You and Oliver are a pair of fools. We’re not the first rebellion in history; there are lessons to be learned from the past if you care to study it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Alistair. Perhaps you didn’t know I went to University—”

  “That’s a sick joke. If you think you learned more in a State classroom— Oh the hell with it!” He threw his hands up. “I’m finished trying to be heard. I’ve given you the best advice you’re likely to get; take it or leave it. You, Oliver and Clever Johnny are never so dedicated to the rebellion that you don’t have the ultimate prize on your minds. You want to replace the State that’s going out, and you each have your own plans for running things.”

  “You’re wrong,” Stanson said, his eyes flashing anger. He leaned into Alistair and, his voice low, said, “Oliver and I have spoken of this. I’m the perfect man to be an advisor, with my education, and he’s the perfect one to be the leader. He’s already the face of the rebellion and people follow him naturally. Clever Johnny is out; Oliver and I have already talked about this. Now you can be a part of building a better State.”

  Alistair laughed because he didn’t want to cry.
It was a repressed and sickly laugh accompanied by a smile that was more of a grimace. “The lesson never gets learned. We keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. Is there no place I can go to escape the State?”

  Stanson drew back, offended. “You think we won’t do a better job of it?”

  “I think any man who wants the power government has is unfit to wield it. And I think even if it didn’t corrupt, it’s dangerous to create anything with that kind of power, something anyone might control.”

  “Alistair,” said Stanson with a shake of his head and a tone genuinely sad, “why don’t you try to help from within rather than cast yourself out?”

  “I hope you listen to my advice. Now, there is a fully equipped Civil Guard station here in the Palace. What floor can I find it on?”

  ***

  From the safety, if not the comfort, of a ship’s deck, Gerald stared over the waves at the city he had just abandoned. Not more than two miles away, it bled dark smoke from its many wounds, and the smoke slowly gathered in a pool above with only the slightest of ocean breezes to carry it away. Gerald solemnly contemplated the day’s significance as he watched the black pall and held a blanket tightly around him. There were other refugees with him on the small fisherman’s boat, but they had gone below deck for the comparative warmth there. Gerald, driven by a particular foreboding the others had no occasion to share, remained above. He did not turn when he heard footsteps nor glance aside at the man who sat down next to him.

  “Leland and Rosalind are going over the archived records,” the man said.

  “Find anything?”

  “Do you expect them too?”

  “Yes,” Gerald replied with a sigh.

  “Looks like Harcourt was surfing around the system, looking into some sensitive information. On a day when the Bureau was closed.”