Men of Stone (The Faded Earth Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

  He woke just after noon feeling like living death. Muscles ached and his head was a thick morass of half-formed thoughts he could barely struggle through. A quick bite to eat and some water woke him up somewhat by the time he was summoned to Stein’s office.

  The place was a wreck. The dead men in their suits were gone and the debris from the long fight here swept away, but the damage remained. The wall was covered in new monitors, around which stood Beck, Stein, Lin, and half a dozen other grim-faced people.

  “Holy shit,” Jeremy said as he got a look at the images.

  “Yeah, that’s an understatement,” Stein replied without looking away.

  Every screen showed destruction. Some Rezzes were worse off than others—the ones attacked by the dragonflies were little more than rubble piles dotted with crushed and dying crops. He hadn’t been around when Beck finally managed to stop them. All he knew was that disabling the giant machines took a while and a fair amount of hacking through code installed by Keene’s men.

  The other Rezzes were not destroyed in the same way, but that wasn’t the same thing as being in good shape. All across the Protectorate, walls were breached in nearly identical ways. Gates were used as starting points where explosives could take advantage of the gap.

  Pales filled streets everywhere he looked. Not the thousands that would have poured in a few months earlier, but no Rez was clear of them. Hundreds in some, dozens in others, all needing to be cleared out. Building by building, room by room, and the Watch without functional armor to do it.

  He tried to calculate the time it would take and failed. Jeremy knew his limits. He wasn’t stupid, but neither was he brilliant. He could take command, yet knew his own leadership skills were rooted in the training he got from the Watch rather than the intuitive understanding people like Beck and Stein had to draw on. Jeremy believed in the need for change, for his people to grow in order to avoid death by stagnation, yet at heart he was not an innovator.

  He understood this about himself and decided to learn from others as best he could. Sometimes it seemed like fate that people so similar to him would happen to cluster around someone with a forceful personality like Beck.

  That illusion only lasted until he thought back to the beginning of their training cohort, when Reeves took him aside to suggest getting to know the young woman sitting all by herself and looking uncomfortable.

  *

  It took another few days for Beck to fabricate replacement motors for their suits and to install them along with new artificial muscle fibers. Calibration was frustrating, but only because he was eager to be back inside the armor and move on to the next phase.

  There was no going back to Brighton. Not for a long time. Destroying the tunnel entrance meant weeks of clearing, repairing, and reinforcing before any force of reasonable size could move in to retake the place. Personally, he was relieved the Rez was being prioritized down the list. He liked it well enough, but mostly for the people. The place itself was dusty and often inhospitable. Better to focus attention on settlements with less Pale infiltration that were easier to access.

  Only a few dozen suits were up and running. The stores of replacement parts were perpetually low in even the best of times. Every fabricator in the Protectorate was working at full capacity to make new pieces of critical infrastructure damaged during the battles raging across it. Those reserved for the Watch were only capable of producing so many parts, and the fibers couldn’t be fabricated at all. They required much more intensive and specialized processes.

  He was one of a rare crowd, though he didn’t feel it. Being chosen as one of the few given priority for repairs should have been an honor. Instead the ceaseless and bone-deep ache he carried since the attack begged for someone else to take the job. He would have much rather been among the support staff moving toward the nearest damaged Rez. Those unarmored Watchmen had the easier job by far. They would nest atop buildings once Jeremy and those with newly repaired suits cleared a path, then start shooting Pales.

  Jeremy sat in the Loop carriage and felt the thing begin to slow. For the first time he could remember, true dread welled up in his chest at the idea of doing the work.

  There were more than enough jobs to go around, but Jeremy wasn’t trained to install temporary sections of wall or assess the more subtle damage done by the attacks. He had no trained skills or education in the many areas needed to rebuild and move forward. All he could do was fight, kill, and defend.

  The reality struck him so hard it was almost physical. There was nothing else for him. He could not step out of his armor and resign from the Watch right this instant—not in a post-war scenario. A week earlier and it wouldn’t have been a problem. Now doing so would constitute an act of abandonment in time of emergency. This was not news to him, but the overwhelming weight on his chest grew heavier knowing there was no walking away. No options.

  He’d been less afraid and anxious walking the streets of Manhattan without armor. The memories were still fresh but jumped into sharp focus as his mind settled on them. He saw the terrified faces of enemies staring back at him from their armor tombs. The stink of their sweat widening eyes as they understood for the first time that death was only moments away. Unavoidable. Inescapable. No pleading could save them.

  The bright red of their blood stained his consciousness, unfiltered by the protective layer of his HUD and its screens. He had to stop a few paces away from the carriage. The suit started throwing warnings about his vital functions and there was no way to hide it from the rest of the team. All of them could see his biometrics in real time, so he didn’t bother trying.

  Instead he triggered the release and stepped out of his armor. It was a violation of protocol—there were Pales in this Rez, possibly able to access the Loop station. A half second of hard thinking later and he decided he just didn’t care.

  Jeremy leaned over with hands on knees and tried to control his breathing. Without warning, this turned to a desperate need to hold back vomit.

  The world spun. Blood pounded in his neck, at his temples. His vision spun as the very air seemed to tighten around him. Raw electricity coursed through his nervous system.

  And then a hand touched his shoulder. A human hand free of metal.

  “Let it out, son,” a voice said. Familiar and strange at the same time. There was a sadness in the words knit from compassion and understanding, emotions Jeremy had never heard from Reeves.

  As if permission was all he had been waiting for, Jeremy gave in to the overpowering urges clashing throughout his body. The worst was throwing up; he’d always hated that. It made him feel weak. Vulnerable. Ashamed. Knowing the other Watchmen would see—that was almost enough to make him curl into a ball.

  Except that when the first wracking wave was over, he looked up to see the others standing around him in a protective wall, facing out. Reeves waited close by. Watching, always observing, with those intelligent eyes.

  “Take your time,” he said. “We’ve got a long job ahead of us. We shouldn’t start until everyone is at their best.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Jeremy said weakly, spitting the sour taste from his mouth. Even speaking the words brought up a tide of panic. That was what it was, of course. A reaction to the attack and the horrific things he’d done in its wake. Images flashed through his mind again, stirring up his belly. Not as bad as the first time, but still potent.

  “I think you can,” Reeves said. “I’ve been where you are. I know it’s hard. Any veteran Watchman has lived through what you’re dealing with right now. It’s a nightmare, realizing you’re the one who has to do the worst jobs to make sure the world can keep on going. That the blood is on your hands so it won’t be on theirs. I can’t promise you it ever ends, but it does get better. I wouldn’t have joined the Movement if I didn’t believe we could change it.”

  He reached out a hand to help Jeremy back to his feet. The younger man took it and allowed himself to be hauled up.

  “Give yourself a litt
le time,” Reeves said. “Take deep breaths. Think about what’s next once you’ve calmed, then think about how you can make it better.”

  Jeremy closed his eyes for a little while and tried to visualize the job as Beck would have. Not as the overwhelming and often heartbreaking monumental task ahead. Just pieces and parts. Take one step. Finish one task.

  Move forward.

  Always move forward.

  34

  A funny thing happened. An unintentional side effect Beck had not expected, much less planned for.

  Because of the hearing when she was exiled, the entire Protectorate knew who she was. Then she had been a pariah. The villain in the story Keene told them. When she had returned, not much changed. Not until the attack and her broadcast.

  Seeing her fight the invaders, going so far as to step out of her armor and face the enemy without weapons or any sort of protection—that caused a shift. Through every undercity, the people witnessed one of the Deathwatch willingly cut off their access to the armor that gave them their power. Or so it appeared. Any Watchman would scoff at the idea. People were the weapons. The shields. Everything else? Tools to be used in the fulfillment of that duty.

  Beck, to her chagrin, became a hero. When the people were finally able to begin moving above ground and through the Loop network toward new homes, the newly-selected council decided a statement was needed. Not the empty words the citizenry might expect, meant to keep them docile and obedient, but a true statement of intent. Of how they as a society would move forward.

  Beck got the job.

  *

  When the light came on to let her know the feed was live, Beck felt her nerves jack up to levels she couldn’t have imagined. Silly, of course. She had faced down death countless times. What was speaking to an invisible mob compared to that?

  Logic, however, did not enter into it. For the first few seconds it was all she could do to maintain her calm. She searched for the quiet place inside and found it after several fumbling attempts.

  “Most of you know who I am,” she began. “You know I was exiled. That I am a Deathwatch agent.” She waved a hand at the insignia on her uniform. “You know my name. Rebecca Park. But you don’t know me. Beck. The person instead of the things I’ve become. You don’t know any of the Watch that way, and it’s not something we can continue doing. The line between us and you has to be erased. At first anonymity was necessary to protect us. The sometimes terrible things we did created anger and hate.

  “My own family was killed last year after contracting Fade B,” she said after a brief pause. “Think about that. You now know Jason Keene and the men who led his group of followers before him were responsible for those deaths. I joined the Watch for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I was broken. I needed something to hold me together. Because I—we—are just like you. We are people. Human beings. And it’s time to remind everyone of that fact. The days of anonymous Watchmen are done. The Protectorate has to change and move on, and we can’t do that with the current state of division and mistrust between citizen and Watchman.”

  She let the words sink in. As she had practiced them, the reality of what she was saying became more and more apparent. If she heard them before joining up, they would have shaken her entire world. And that was just the beginning.

  “This change is unavoidable, because we have to make others as a people. Much larger ones. The Tenets were meant to keep the nucleus of the human race alive, to push us away from the edge of extinction. It should be clear now that the system was flawed no matter how well-intentioned it might have been at the start.” Beck took a deep breath, the kind that made it obvious she was trying to calm herself. Fine. Let them see. It would do her case no harm to let them see she was just as prone to moments of weakness as anyone else.

  “The next few months will be difficult. As we rebuild our homes, we also have to rebuild our society. Not the Protectorate—the days of being led by an unaccountable few are behind us. The dangers are much worse than any self-governance. I’m here today to tell you that the kinds of changes we’re about to go through will be huge and sometimes painful. People will dislike them. And they’ll happen anyway.”

  Staring into the camera, feeling as if she was meeting the eyes of every man, woman, and child in every Rez, Beck said the words she had longed to speak but never dared hope would be true. “Using the examples given to us by the old world, the council plans to bring back a new version of their system of laws and governance. A better one, where the mistakes that led to the Collapse won’t be repeated. These changes are too complex for me to even list them all here, but know they’re coming. With your input.”

  She let some of the Deathwatch calm leech out of her voice, turning it a bit cold. “Along with freedoms many of us have hoped for all our lives also comes responsibility. The Watch is giving up a lot of its power, and that means the days of heaping blame for all the ills of the world on us are over. With the cure for the Fade, the world is open for us to settle. Our success or failure is no longer on armored shoulders. It’s on all of us.”

  *

  Later, the council debated the best way to implement the sweeping changes in a way that would not destroy society. That doing so would eventually remove their power seemed to bother none of them at all.

  Beck, Reeves, and Stein represented the Watch. The directors of each civilian division of government were there. Andres, Karen, and Scott had seats at the table as representatives of the Remnant population, with whom the new government would have to work closely in order to settle the badlands. Also in attendance were three leaders each from the Traditionalists and Diasporans. The discussion was less than ideal, in Beck’s opinion.

  “You shouldn’t get to decide for all of us,” said the most outspoken Traditionalist, a new face named Smith. Beck couldn’t be bothered to remember his first name. His bluster eroded most of her worry over his opinions.

  “Weird,” Stein said. “Isn’t your faction all about keeping things the way they were? In that case, and under the laws we’re technically still following, I’m in charge of the Protectorate. And since I’m saying we’re doing this, I guess we’re fucking doing it.”

  Smith turned deep red as his fury grew too strong to allow speech. To Beck’s surprise, Scott raised a hand placatingly. “He actually has a point, Fiona.”

  Stein turned her surprised face toward him. “Really? You’re the last person I’d expect to take his side.”

  Scott nodded sagely. “I can understand the misconception. Those of us who live outside have a different perspective. For us it’s not about choosing to live one way, but the freedom to choose how. You’re telling this man and all the people he represents they have to do things your way. I think there’s a compromise here you’re not seeing.”

  Beck leaned forward, frowning. “Which is?”

  “Self-governance,” Andres said, picking up the thread. He glanced at Scott. “That’s where you’re going, right?”

  Scott nodded. “If the Traditionalists really want to live as they have, let them. There are already empty Rezzes out there that can be sanitized and given to them. Draw up some kind of treaty or agreement and let them set up their own government inside one or two of them. Or however many they can fill. Give them the choice.”

  Smith and the other Trad council members were nodding enthusiastically at the suggestion, and Beck wondered how they could be missing the trap. It seemed obvious to her. The instant gratification of being given everything they wanted was clever, because it made Smith and the others overlook the deeper issues. One was that they would have to relocate, which she assumed was less of a problem for the Traditionalists in the room than it might be for some of their followers.

  The much larger and far more subtle problem was something they’d run into in the long term: governing. Would there be enough people with the right skills to keep a Rez going and self-sustaining? The inherent problem with going it alone was that people always forgot how much a society overall contrib
uted to the success and basic function of its constituent parts.

  If she were in Stein’s place, Beck would make sure to hammer out an agreement that seemed—and actually was—generous toward the Trads. Offer support in the form of training by specialists to make sure they could run their own Rez or even a handful of them. Not only would it create goodwill and reduce the chance of a conflict down the road, but slowly weaning them off help from the outside would certainly lessen the enthusiasm of some of their citizens when all the work was on them.

  Beck started in her seat, just enough to make Reeves glance at her funny, as she realized what just happened.

  She was thinking like one of them. A politician. A schemer.

  The meeting droned on for a long, long time as the council worked out the broad strokes of reshaping an entire civilization. Beck was bored with it within the first half hour. Not because of the subject matter—she found herself drawn to the scale and complexity of it like the machines she loved to tinker with—but the constant bickering and arguments wore her down.

  However much she wanted to, leaving was not an option. She and Stein had worked out a strategy to make sure Parker and his fledgling settlement would be left alone. The longer the population went without learning Pales could breed, the better. Beck was a fan of honest governance and transparency was a change she looked forward to, but there were limits. As Parker would say about deliberately causing chaos, there was no reason to rock the boat.

  When the day’s activities were over, Beck sent a message to her assistant asking the woman to bring her something to eat and traveled down to the basement of the Spire to her new quarters. She marveled at how quickly she’d grown used to things like having an aide at her disposal in the weeks following the attack. Almost as strange as seeing herself as something more than a Watchman.