by Jay Allan
There had been talk of relief…of government convoys bringing food and medicine to the Cog neighborhoods, but Quinn hadn’t seen any sign of that yet. In truth, Alliance Gov was having enough trouble getting vital shipments to the upper classes. Any relief for the poor was going to be long in coming…if it ever materialized at all.
Quinn watched his people carrying boxes from the barge and loading them onto the cargo monorail that would whisk them north, across the radioactive wasteland of lower Manhattan to the walled bastion of the Midtown Protected Zone. They worked alongside half a dozen robots, all that were left of the forty or more they’d had when the crisis first hit. The Cogs were cheap labor, and the only way automation could compete was by skipping maintenance and working equipment well past its normal useful life. The robots at the Brooklyn docks were ancient; they required constant repair…and the parts needed to keep them functioning were no longer available. One by one they malfunctioned, leaving only 6 still working alongside the sweating Cogs.
His people labored ceaselessly, carrying boxes or dragging them on carts. The trucks and loaders were out of fuel, and there was no more coming any time soon. The Alliance was on the verge of war with the CAC, and the military had first claim on vital supplies…after the Political classes, that is. But the politicians and corporate masters, ensconced in their plush and heavily guarded neighborhoods, didn’t give a shit if Quinn’s Cog crew had to carry the cargo by hand. Not as long as they did it and the supply of food and other essentials continued to reach their wealthy enclaves.
Quinn’s people didn’t complain. They knew very well they were among the few residents of Brooklyn who had something to eat, and they weren’t about to risk their positions. They would work without argument, carry boxes until they dropped from exhaustion. Anything to keep their families fed.
A loud crack echoed through the cool morning air, then another. Quinn’s head snapped around, looking back toward the gate. He couldn’t see what was going on; his view was blocked by a cluster of warehouses. The communal screams became louder and the shots steadier. His crew had mostly stopped in their tracks, looking anxiously at the buildings between them and the gate.
“Get back to work, all of you,” Quinn growled. “I’ll go back and see what’s going on.” He jumped down off of the platform and started toward the main gate. He’d gone about ten steps when he heard a loud crash. He stopped in place, listening to the sounds of the angry mob getting closer. My God, he thought…they must have smashed right through the gate.
He started to turn back toward the loading dock when he saw them come around the end of a warehouse. There were hundreds of them, thousands. And they were screaming murderously. The ones at the front were carrying some kind of large objects, passing them back and forth. It took a second or two, but Quinn suddenly realized they were bodies. Bloody and mangled, but still recognizable. The guards, he thought, his blood running cold as he did.
He turned and ran back toward the dock. “Run…the mob’s inside the gates.” He shouted as loud as he could, but the crowd was on his heels, and their deafening shouts drowned him out. He got back to the dock and started to climb up when he felt the first hands reach out and grab him.
He screamed, begged for mercy, shouted as loud as he could that he, too, was a Cog. But the crowd was past listening to reason. It was a mindless creature now, an incarnation of pure rage…and Quinn was the enemy. Cog or no, he and his people had gotten preferential treatment. Their families had eaten while the others starved. It was pure elemental rage, and right now it was targeted at John Quinn and his loading dock crew.
Quinn felt hands grabbing him, the strength of 4 or 5 men pulling him down off the concrete pier. He was lifted above their heads, pushed back, deeper into the screaming, surging mass. Then he fell, pushed to the ground, while they beat and kicked him. Fear and pain drove everything from his mind. He knew he was going to die. The crowd was worked into an orgy of hate and anger. No reason, no pleas for mercy would reach them. He felt a hard kick to the stomach, then another. He coughed, and blood welled up out of his mouth, pouring down his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the enraged Cogs – his neighbors since the day he’d been born – beat him to death.
Hans Werner looked out over the cloudy waters of the Rhine. The river was one of the most polluted on an Earth that had been treated contemptuously for centuries. The once prolific life that had teemed in its waters was long gone, and the great river was a dead zone from 100 kilometers below its sources in the Southern Alps to its terminus at the North Sea.
Many things had changed in the past few centuries, the nations along its lengthy path to the sea combining and splitting and finally merging to form two great Superpowers. But one thing remained the same. For most of its history and much of its length the Rhine was a border between bitter enemies.
Werner looked back over his shoulder. The main battle tanks of his battalion were dug in along the rolling grasslands, with squads of infantry entrenched between the massive Leopard Z-9s. They were on a Red-1 Alert. Werner had been an officer for twenty-five years, and this was the first time he’d ever seen the CEL’s top alert level invoked. War is imminent. That’s what a Red-1 declaration meant. Not war is possible, or even likely. Imminent. The word itself suggested an inevitability…as if battle had already commenced.
The German-dominated Central European League and Europa Federalis had been enemies as long as the powers had existed. But for more than 100 years, both had adhered to the terms of the Treaty of Paris. They had fought half a dozen wars in space, mostly inconclusive feuds over the same few border colonies. But they’d maintained the peace on Earth. Until now.
The CEL had steadfastly insisted it had nothing to do with the destruction of Marseilles, but the Europans kept uncovering evidence, and most of it pointed right at Neu-Brandenburg. The RIC had tried to mediate talks between the two governments, but they’d gone nowhere…and had finally been abandoned entirely when the evidence against the CEL piled up. When the Russian diplomats gave up and returned to St. Petersburg, war became an inevitability.
Werner and his soldiers – and millions like them – were preparing to fight a conflict they had long trained for but never really expected. The Treaty of Paris had held for so long, the prospect of open war seemed somehow unreal. He knew his counterpart was somewhere on the other side, probably staring across just as he was. He wondered what was going through the Europan’s mind. He’s my enemy, Werner thought, but I wonder if he isn’t thinking the same things I am right now, staring across at me and wondering what war will be like.
“Colonel Werner, we have a priority communique coming in.” Captain Kohl was standing in front of the com tent and shouting nervously. The battalion was a front line armor unit, well-drilled but without combat experience. The prospect of actually fighting the war they’d trained for was daunting. No CEL tank unit had seen combat for a century. An infantry formation may, at least, have fired its weapons putting down civil disturbances, but the heavy armored units existed for one reason…to fight Europa Federalis. For over a hundred years they’d stood vigil, but they’d never really believed the balloon would go up. Now, that confidence had been shattered, and the soldiers of the 11th Heavy Armored Battalion waited for the orders they’d never expected to receive.
Werner jogged toward the com tent, his stomach twisted into knots. He ducked through the open flap and grabbed a headset, holding it to one ear. “Colonel Werner here.”
“Werner, this is General Beck.” Werner knew as soon as he heard Beck’s tone. “Invasion is imminent. I repeat…invasion is imminent.”
Werner swallowed hard. “Acknowledged, sir.” He croaked his reply, the best he could manage. His chest tightened, and he felt nauseous. It was unseasonably cold, but he could feel a trickle of sweat sliding down the back of his neck.
“Protocol C is in effect.”
Werner was startled. He’d expected to be purely on the defensive, but Plan C was a hybrid strategy.
It called for leaving the Rhine bridges intact and allowing the enemy to cross. His battalion would engage the invaders, driving them back and then counterattacking. When the Europans retreated Werner and his people were to invade Europa Federalis. Protocol C was no limited tactical response…it was a total war scenario. Whether the CEL was behind the destruction of Marseilles or not, clearly the high command had decided to solve the Europa Federalis “problem” once and for all.
“Understood, sir.” Werner clamped down on the fear welling up inside him. He had a job to do, and his peoples’ chance of getting through the next few days depended heavily on him keeping his shit together. “Enacting Protocol C directives.”
The line was silent for a few seconds. Finally, Beck spoke, his voice soft, tense. “Good luck, Colonel.” Then the line went dead.
Werner stood still for half a minute, breathing deeply and getting control over his emotions. Finally, he turned toward the com tech. “Sergeant, please advise all company commanders to prepare for imminent contact with the enemy. Protocol C directives are in effect.”
“Incoming!” The shout came from just outside the tent. Werner couldn’t tell who it was, but a second or two later the warning was repeated. Then he heard the first explosion…followed by a second, and a third. He ducked outside the tent and saw his soldiers running around, hurrying to their defensive positions.
It was a moment of tremendous historical significance. A century of worldwide peace had just been shattered, and the implications were almost unimaginable. But Werner wasn’t thinking about any of that. To him there was only one thing that mattered. Europa Federalis was coming.
Axe sat on the edge of the crumbling brick wall, staring out across the ancient buildings and pockmarked streets of Brooklyn. He had another name once, one given to him by a mother and father he’d almost completely forgotten. He had abandoned it years before…when he left behind the life that went with it. Now he was just Axe.
He’d been born a Cog, like almost everyone in Brooklyn, but he rejected the life to which his birth had consigned him. He possessed a level of initiative and street smarts that allowed him to break out of the life he’d been fated to live. He’d risen through the ranks to become the leader of the largest gang in Brooklyn, a man who was feared and respected by all the other New York gangs…and the half million pathetic Cogs who lived in the areas he controlled.
His people terrorized the Cogs and stole from them what little they possessed. The Gangs were predators, feeding on the helpless sheep, oppressing them more completely than the government could ever manage. The Cogs were afraid of the government, but they were even more terrorized by the gangs.
The gang members clashed with the police from time to time, but the law enforcement agencies mostly ignored what went on in the ghettoes. Major conflicts were usually limited to gang incursions into the upper class areas like the Protected Zone. The gangs ran the illicit drug trades, and the police waged a half-hearted war against their influence in the elite neighborhoods. It was all a charade of sorts…the wealthy wanted their drugs of choice, whether legal or not, and they relied on the gangs to keep the supplies coming.
Axe glanced at the small reader, his eyes moving slowly down the screen. Nothing. Still no response. He sighed, frustrated that he couldn’t get through to his contact.
The gang leader cultivated an image of course, one of uneducated brutality. But there was more to Axe than met the eye. He was extremely intelligent and quite literate. He’d taught himself to read, and he had a voracious appetite for knowledge. He planned the operations of his gang meticulously, considering its actions from multiple points of view. He was far from the typical gang leader.
The Cogs knew the gangs well, but there was one thing they couldn’t have imagined…a bit of knowledge that was known only to the highest ranking gangers. The gangs were allied with the government.
The liaison was handled through Alliance Intelligence, and it was a pragmatic arrangement. The government wanted the Cogs compliant and obedient, and the gangs were in a position to keep the working classes terrorized to the point of impotence. The gangs also siphoned off the likeliest leaders of any civil disobedience, giving the most aggressive members of the Cog class a route to prosperity that didn’t involve rebellion against the government.
The two sides allowed a certain amount of conflict to occur between the gang rank and file and the police, mostly for appearances, but the gang leadership was guaranteed safety in exchange for keeping the Cogs under control. It was a bizarre arrangement, but one that had worked well for decades.
Now, however, the tables had turned, and the gangs were seriously threatened by their former victims. The starving Cogs had taken to the streets, a surging, bloodthirsty mass, killing all in its path. Fear was a powerful tool, but its effectiveness waned when the victims lost the last of their hope. The Cogs were starving; they had nothing left to lose. Without the restraint of fear, generations of repressed rage emerged. The Cogs, so long downtrodden, now exploded in an orgy of violence and hatred. They swarmed into the streets, killing, burning, laying waste to everything in their path.
Axe had lost track of most of his people. He knew a lot of them were dead already, murdered in the streets by the masses of Cogs they had victimized for so long. He’d been staying out of sight, avoiding the vengeful mobs. That’s why he was still alive. He’d tried to reach his contact at Alliance Intelligence, but there had been no response. The Alliance was falling apart, its economy a shattered wreck and its armed forces on full alert, waiting for word that they were at war with the CAC. No one gave a shit what happened to the gangs. The Cogs were driven by justifiable hatred, and Alliance Intelligence had more important matters to handle. Now, Axe realized that the gangs had never had a real partnership with the government. He and his people been an easy means to an end for Alliance Gov, but they’d always been expendable.
Most of the gang members were like stupid, vicious children. They’d come from the ranks of the Cogs and gone feral, feeding on those whose natures were less predatory. But Axe was different. He was as savage as any banger, but he was a lot more intelligent than most…smart enough, at least to know it was time to get out. Loyalty was a quaint concept, but not worth getting torn to shreds on the streets of Brooklyn.
He would leave as soon as it got dark. He’d considered slipping away alone, but now he was thinking he should take a few of his people with him. He didn’t expect the roads outside New York were going to be safe. It was clear the entire Alliance was unraveling, and a couple extra guns could be the difference between getting out of a jam and ending up a rotting corpse along some abandoned highway.
Chapter 9
CWS Sulieman
Deep Space
Avalon System
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We’ve been sitting here a month, and we haven’t been able to reach Admiral Garret. Or General Holm.” Admiral Abbas sat at the end of the conference table, a frustrated scowl on his face. “Wherever the Alliance fleet is, they’ve gone deep, somewhere without Commnet access.” Or, he thought grimly, the brilliant Augustus Garret had finally been defeated. He kept that thought to himself, though he was sure Khaled was thinking the same thing. Abbas didn’t want to seriously consider the prospect, but a lifetime at war had taught him never to discount anything.
Ali Khaled sat on the side of the table to Abbas’ left. He’d been staring down at the polished metallic surface, but now he looked up, gazing at the admiral. “It is clear that Alliance space is experiencing some kind of extreme disruption. There has been fighting in many systems. We cannot even know the status of their Commnet chain. Perhaps the integrity of the system had been compromised. It is possible that our communiques are being blocked or intercepted at some point, even that we have been fed inaccurate data. Or, more likely, the system has simply been cut between us and the Admiral.”
“That is true, Lord Khaled.” Abbas leaned back in his chair, returning the Janissary commander’s stare. He
always addressed Khaled formally, as the general did him. The two had learned to work together battling the First Imperium, and they’d been pushed to ever closer cooperation by their joint escape from assassination, but they weren’t friends. In truth, neither man particularly liked the other, though they did share a sort of mutual respect. Each knew the other was skilled and reliable, and both subscribed to a rigid code of honor. There was trust between them but no warmth, admiration but no camaraderie. They were both gifted officers and, despite their differences, they made a highly effective team.
The two sat quietly, each deep in thought. They had to decide what to do next. For decades, Abbas and Khaled had been loyal Caliphate officers, but now they were fugitives, fleeing from a nation that had put them both on a proscription list and sent agents to kill them. The whole fleet and most of the Janissary corps had rallied to them, throwing in with their beloved and long-time commanders. They fled the Caliphate, leading their people to the temporary safety of deep space. They had no home anymore, no flag to follow, no place to go. But they did have their counterparts in the Alliance, long-time enemies now become friends of a sort. They’d fought the First Imperium War alongside Garret and Cain and the rest of the Alliance forces. Now those new friendships would be put to the test. Where they real…strong enough to erase years of enmity and war? Would their new allies stand by them now that they were renegades? Or had the cooperation between their forces been a passing expediency, a last-ditch necessity to fight off an overpowering enemy trying to destroy them all?
Finally, Khaled broke the silence. “I believe that we need to investigate what is happening to the Alliance. We must determine once and for all…does our future lie along a path of friendship and cooperation with Admiral Garret and his people? Or are we truly on our own?” He exhaled loudly. “From the communications we have intercepted, it is clear there has been considerable fighting, but we have no idea who it is they are battling…or who has the upper hand. We must find out exactly what is taking place.” He paused, thinking silently for a few seconds. “Is it possible they are experiencing a second series of rebellions?” The two renegade Caliphate officers had watched with considerable amusement as the Alliance had almost torn itself apart a few years before. They’d been enemies then, drawing satisfaction of a sort from their adversaries’ distress. But things had changed enormously in the years since. The Caliphate officers were themselves rebels of a sort now, commanding a powerful renegade fleet. They possessed a force of enormous capabilities, but with no support, no bases, no home.
