Men of Stone (The Faded Earth Book 3)

by Joshua Guess

  Parker chuckled. “I’m both flattered and insulted. Thanks for that.”

  “How are they protected?” Wojcik asked. “I mean, you can kill off a lot of Pales ahead of time, but weaker walls won’t stop a migrating herd of them.”

  Stein waved a hand at the group. “They’ll have us. The station will be almost an equal mix of Watchmen and civilians. It really will be a Rez in miniature, with a fabricator and supplies for suit repair, spare Bricks, all that stuff. The diaspora can’t really begin until we’ve eradicated enough Pales to make it feasible.”

  “So that’s what you decided,” Beck said, far more loudly than she intended.

  Stein’s eyebrows drew down. “I’m sorry?”

  “You said it yourself,” Beck replied, suddenly angry for reasons she couldn’t fully articulate. No. That wasn’t true. She understood where the fury came from, she just didn’t like it. “The Pales have become their own species, right? That’s what speciation means. They can reproduce and have young, and you’ve decided policy will be to cure them and kill the ones who survive the process anyway.”

  Stein’s eyes might as well have been diamond for all the softness in them. “Yes, Sentinel Park, that’s what I’ve decided. If survivors make their way to us after they make it through the cure, I’m not opposed to helping them. I’m not stupid enough to pretend we can hide the fact that Pales can have children forever, but for the near term people will assume any child Pales we find were just Remnants without immunity to the Fade who were turned young. The choice is obvious. We either move forward and help humanity spread back out across the world, or we decide to debate the ethics of the cure for years and fuck up the entire process. Are you willing to find out what happens when all the internal pressure we’ve been dealing with has that much time to build? Because I don’t. I’d rather not be the High Commander known for presiding over a civil war that kills off half our population.”

  And that was the crux of Beck’s fury. The basic humanity the Watch had never been able to scrub away recognized the change in the Pale population for the miracle it was. The Fade scrambled DNA so much it might as well have set the double helix on fire in terms of reproduction. Yet nature found a way. Terrible and violent a species as they might be, they were a species. Intelligent if not compassionate. The part of her driven by hope and curiosity wanted to give them every chance. After all, if the constantly fluctuating genetic changes caused by the Fade could make reproduction possible, why not a mutation reducing their violent tendencies?

  Her rage stemmed from the conflict this impulse endured when it encountered the bitter realism instilled in her by the Watch and her time as its agent. Aspirations were all well and good, but you did not pin survival of the human race on vague hope. That was what her people had done for centuries, and it led to disaster. To collapse.

  The only same choice was to not risk everything for the sake of a few. That was the central, driving force behind their civilization. Necessary though she knew it to be, a part of her settled into a deep and abiding self-hate for making the choice. For knowing she would always make the choice. She try to help save those she could—that much of a concession Stein would have to accept. The outpost would be Parker’s domain, and his curiosity was such that Beck doubted he would be able to turn away other Pale children.

  These were things she told herself to salve the guilt, but beneath it all Beck knew she would still make the hard call even if she knew none of them were possible.

  “Agreed,” Beck said. “If we can calm the factions and avoid the problems the cure raises, we should. So long as we never forget this was a choice, and that we made it. The last legacy any of us should want for a new world is a willingness to kill off anyone in our way without pausing to ask ourselves if it’s the right thing to do.”

  21

  “How much longer?” Keene asked the group arrayed in front of him. He and his lieutenants stood in the bay. Many of their meetings took place wherever he happened to be. Too much work to do for things like regularly scheduled sit-downs together.

  “We’re nearly there, sir,” said Santiago, his logistics chief and usual spokesman for the group. They learned early on Keene preferred his data funneled through a point man. “Two more days at most. It hasn’t been easy working through the power shortages. You may want to say something before we mobilize, boost morale a little.”

  Keene nodded almost absently. He was listening—taking in every word with sharp interest, in point of fact—but there were too many small wrinkles in his suit’s operation to iron out to give all his attention to the conversation. “I was planning on it anyway. They’ve done remarkable work considering how tight resources have been.”

  The understatement was not lost on any of them, Keene included. The lower available power had ripple effects he hadn’t considered. Even with vital functions like water reclamation given priority, spikes in other areas sometimes cut in to them without warning. The worst was when the potable water reserve ran completely dry because no one realized the system had gone into emergency shut down mode, a preset condition unchanged from the time the Block was a prison, due to a loss of power. The actual lack of electricity lasted all of ten minutes, but the reclaimer was offline for nearly ten hours.

  Not being able to cook food and living solely off meal bars hit hard. A man needed a hot meal now and then for basic psychological health if not nutrition. The lack of entertainment and every other convenience represented small cuts individually, but each bled away patience and calm.

  Santiago fidgeted in place, a rare show of discomfort. “Sir, there’s something else. Some of the men might need…reminding of why we’re doing all this.”

  Rather than react with curiosity or anger as the man might have expected, Keene smiled. “Wondering why we’re planning to wage a war when we have everything we need here to remain self-sustaining?” Santiago gave curt nod. “I expected that. It’s one thing to give people a purpose and tell them one day in the far future they’ll have to risk their lives for an ideal, and another entirely to see that day come. It’s a hard thing to leave comforts behind, even when they’re relative to what they used to have when this place was a prison.”

  It was the sort of thing he was supposed to say in the tone and pompous words he was supposed to say it. For the men assembled around him as he went through the list of check-offs needed to work out the last errors in his suit’s system, they were a reminder that Keene was the architect. The leader. The man whose plan was written on a scale so large it would alter the course of the human race.

  The job of any great leader was not to motivate the masses on his own, but the inspire fierce belief in a trusted few. Zealotry spread like a virus that way, from man to man. Inspiration was fleeting and often lost once the pretty speeches were over. Words from a true believer left deeper marks.

  “We can’t afford to push back the date any longer,” Keene said after a long pause. “I know you’re all thinking it. With a week, two weeks, maybe a month we could prepare more thoroughly. Maybe give our people a break without our scientists and engineers using up all the power.”

  Santiago, by far the most perceptive of his lieutenants, saw his point at once and shook his head. “No, you’re right. Some people would get complacent if we did that.”

  Keene nodded. “Far more important is the fact that we just don’t have the time. Our communications with the outside world are limited, but not completely closed off.” That was true in a technical sense, but the long-wave burst transmissions from his remaining agents in the Protectorate were a far cry from the comprehensive reports he was used to. Less information meant less detail to plan against. Still, it was enough. If only just. “My people on the outside are telling me the first settlement in the diaspora is already in the works. By this time next week the central elements will have been manufactured. Stein isn’t one for second-guessing once a decision is made. This cure is dangerous. It makes them see the Pales as less of a threat, which is all well an
d good right until a wave of the things appears from further west and overruns one of these new colonies. The Protectorate is not yet strong enough for this kind of expansion.”

  Santiago looked at Keene with the fiery eyes of a man who knew the rightness of his choice without doubt or qualification. “We’ll do everything we can to slow them down, sir. Give them a reminder that the world isn’t a safe place to move into.”

  “Yet,” Keene said with a sad smile honed to perfection from years of practice. “Remember the objective. Wound them enough to make them cautious.”

  Their solemn agreement could not help but amuse him in a dark, ironic way. Keene had ordered so many thousands to their death by creating blooms in order to harden the resolve of his people. To make them hold the line and ensure their eventual exodus to repopulate the badlands was done the right way. Now the tatters of the grand design lay all around him, reduced to this single Rez. The backup plan. He had no illusions about his current circumstances or what came next. This was nothing more or less than a final desperation play. A single move that would only be a delaying tactic even if perfectly successful.

  Keene knew quite well that the Protectorate—the world—had moved on without him. All he could do was maximize their chances by laming their progress.

  Who knew? Maybe the fight would make Stein and her people pause and truly consider the dangers. It was possible.

  Not likely, however. Keene resigned himself to one last blaze of glory, one chance to convince his people that his way was the only sane choice. Only the method was different. Subtlety was no longer an option. The fine chisel he once used to shape the Protectorate one light tap at a time was now a blunt hammer.

  One he was ready to swing.

  *

  They filled the bay in a sea of shining black. Keene stood on the makeshift platform in his own armor, fully functional even if the software patches were so fresh the metaphorical paint was still drying.

  There were fewer sets of old Deathwatch armor than he expected. Many had been recycled for resources to create the upgraded versions. Nearly four hundred soldiers stood in front of him. A fraction of the strength available to the Watch, and they knew it.

  “In half an hour, we will step outside these walls,” Keene said in a booming voice. It did not need to carry; every man and woman in front of him wore helmets capable of hearing a whisper at a hundred yards. “You know our goal as well as I do. Those running the Protectorate are pushing humanity on a path that will lead to its destruction. We’ve seen it before. We know it will happen again.”

  That was stretching the concept, but now was not the time for caveats and context. Like his counterparts in the Watch itself, Keene was a fair observer of body language read through layers of armor. Some were nervous, others excited. A dismaying number were either uninterested or actively unhappy about what was about to happen. In the face of that, only the truth would suffice.

  “This won’t be easy,” Keene said. “There’s no way around it. But we’ve got every reason to believe that in the end, we will succeed. Every one of you has trained relentlessly. You have better armor. Better weapons. More important, you are not bogged down by the divided focus and bullshit politics the Deathwatch will be distracted with. Our purpose is simple. We hit and we hit hard. We take the reins and refuse to let them go. They’ve driven the human race right to the edge of the cliff. It’s our job to steer them away.”

  He sent them off with a few more words designed to be rousing and realistic at once. Little changed as they filed off in different directions, no unit larger than a single squad. Few hearts had been won, but that was no cause for worry.

  The idea that he might take control of the Protectorate was ostensibly the end goal. How else would a group of criminals be willing to risk so much? The chance at living among the citizenry again, at having a chance for a normal life, was a drug too powerful to turn down. They might be reluctant, even resentful, but they would make the attempt.

  If history were a guide, that reluctance would end once the fight began in earnest. That was the hallmark of war, according to the histories. Once you were in it, there was no room for doubt or error. The human instinct to live was too powerful.

  Keene put on his helmet and stepped down from the dais. His internal HUD flickered to life with a blink, feeding him readiness data in real time. The automated portions of the first wave were of course all green. Those had been ready for ages. One by one squads moved across the rendered map, red dots slowly turning green as they reached their destinations. Ten minutes after the end of his lackluster speech, all units reported in as ready.

  “Santiago,” Keene said into his comm. “Give me the external feeds and route drone imaging through my HUD. I want to watch this.”

  “Yes, sir,” Came the reply. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  Keene considered it. “No, that’s fine. You’re on the button. You know when.”

  Santiago laughed. “I’ve drilled on it for weeks. I won’t jump the gun.”

  The countdown was maddening. Keene spent the remaining time running through the checklist of events happening outside these walls. In a front line soldier, that would have been idiotic. Better to focus on the immediate fight ahead. Keene, however, was a general if only by circumstance. His was not the battle, but the war.

  The dragonflies would be near their destinations by now, weeks of travel toward the Protectorate unseen by the Deathwatch. Spoofing the transponders to make the massive machines appear in their static positions building new Rezzes was simple. Planning their routes to keep them hidden much less so.

  In the Protectorate proper, his agents were ready to strike. In the badlands, the remaining teams moved into positions to maximize the effect of their own attacks. The armored soldiers locked into their transports did not—could not—know the full breadth and depth of Keene’s strategy. He could not risk that. If they had, the mood in the bay might have been lighter.

  He wanted them afraid. Hungry. Desperate men fought harder.

  “Sir,” Santiago said. “Here we go.”

  The countdown ticked away from ten. Keene focused his attention on the heat signatures looming in the distance past the walls of the Block. The hidden watchers moved for the first time in hours as their relief showed up. The guard was changing.

  Ah. How fitting, that image. It encapsulated the chaos in the world nicely.

  Keene lost interest in the count. He knew it was over when a thunderous boom issued from far overhead as a section of wall sloughed away from the Block to reveal one of his teams. He watched through their helmet cameras as they fired heavy weaponry at the distant shape of the comm array the Deathwatch sentries used to communicate back home. It burst into steel confetti, cutting off any calls for backup.

  Their window was now open. It would be small.

  “Drones away,” Santiago said.

  From the roof of the building, two dozen flying drones lifted into the sky and zipped away toward targets already acquired by the building’s sensors. The armored drones unleashed salvos of dense bullets toward the Watchmen, who scrambled to aim their own rare firearms at the terror in the sky.

  Only two managed to get off shots at all, and both of those missed. The changing of the guard meant unpairing the weapons from one user so the other could connect. They’d struck within that tiny opening to devastating effect.

  Keene opened his command line. “It starts now.”

  On the few external camera feeds they’d been able to secure by opening small breaches in the exterior wall, Keene watched the ground just outside the wall collapse in a series of neat, even squares. Huge portions of the undercity—or what had once been the undercity—fell away as the massive doors opened.

  A terrible whine filled the bay as engines cycled up, loud enough that the doors and walls separating him from them might as well not exist. He felt a species of wonder not experienced since he was a small boy as the transport erupted from the hidden tube in a plume of fire a
nd smoke.

  “The first bird is away,” Santiago said, a note of disbelief in his voice.

  A sense of bizarre, almost unnatural calm fell over him. This at least was a familiar experience. Keene felt it once before, on the night he’d run from the Protectorate. It sprang from the certain knowledge that the die was cast and no other option remained but to stay the course.

  Turning back was impossible. The only way was forward.

  Part Three: Human Nature

  22

  Remarkably informed as he might have been, Keene was wrong about one thing: the basic components for the first new settlement were not in production. They were already made. In a moment of foresight, Stein had ordered fabricators hauled from the warehouse in the badlands to Brighton and the other Rezzes in relatively close proximity long before the issue of the diaspora was settled. When the decision to send Parker and his team—including Remy, who volunteered for the trip—out into the world was finally reached, it was not a matter of months or even weeks before they were ready.

  The preparations took days. Every vital component in Parker’s lab at headquarters had to be easily transported, as the Movement had done so once already.

  As some of the few people who knew about Rose, Beck and her team were tasked with bolstering the guard detail for the transport convoy. Specifically they stood on the back of the truck carrying Parker, Remy, and Rose. Stein’s orders leaned more toward stopping people from asking questions than any concern about an attack. The corridor ahead was well patrolled by aerial and ground drones, and it would take a set of balls the size of a small planet to risk a fight against three full squads of Deathwatch agents.

  The convoy was the largest assortment of vehicles she had ever seen. A full dozen of the giant flatbeds trundled along through the shin-high dust, churning the powder into a haze stretching for hundreds of yards. She heard some of the others complain about the obscuring dust on the general channel and smiled to herself. They were from the Inners, where other forms of destruction had been visited on the Earth.