Birth of the Alliance

by Alex Albrinck

  Will, who himself had survived—or would survive—just such an attack, was interested in their approaches as well. He gestured at the hologram. “Please continue. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “As I was noting to the team, Will, we do have an advantage in that we know how the Assassin and, where necessary, the Hunters choose to kill. They use blades and stab through the torso. They do not use firearms, and they do not aim for killing strikes below the waist or above the shoulders. Our intent is to build some type of body armor that looks like regular clothing. That armor will feature advanced technology that can protect the wearer in the event the Aliomenti attempt to inflict fatal wounds. There are recent human innovations which provided us with the initial basis of the idea.”

  Will nodded. “So, it’s something like a bulletproof vest, then?” The Alliance had made it a point to remain aware of news events and, more critically, innovations in the human world. They had no issue with borrowing ideas from humans, any more than they had concerns with sharing their own advances in their subtle manner.

  The Aliomenti would accept no such two-way innovation.

  “It is similar, but not exactly the same. You see, we want the attacker to believe that the murder attempt was successful. Creating a vest which would cause the blade to bounce away would be simple. However, if that happened, the Assassin would respond by going after the legs or, worse, the neck and head. We want them to believe that the stabbing effort produced the desired effect to discourage those extra efforts.”

  Will frowned. “I’m not sure I follow. How can you make that work? Some type of illusion?”

  Eva shook her head. “This team has created a new technology for working with metal. Historically, you heat the necessary quantity of metal until it is in liquid form. You then transfer that molten metal to a form, a substance able to withstand the temperatures. The mold provides shape to the liquid as it cools. This has been the approach for centuries. However, we are working with something that does not require all of those steps. Rather than heating metal and shaping it while it is hot and malleable, this technology allows them to create a mold for the metal which accepts room temperature metal directly. When this metal is pushed into the special molds, it shapes the metal just as though the metal had been heated until in a liquid state. The technique does not use heat, and would thus be safe to wear. It works by tearing the inserted metal apart at an atomic level and allows the atoms to reform themselves into the shape provided by the mold.”

  Will considered this. “So… basically this material will… eat the sword if the Assassin tries to stab you?”

  Eva smiled, and several of the engineers watching the exchange laughed. “That is not quite the analogy I would use, but it is accurate as it goes. The challenge we face is not the… consumption of the sword. We are able to do that today. The challenge comes from having the sword emerge on the opposite side in the correct shape and at the correct angle relative to where it entered.” Seeing Will’s confusion, she continued. “If the Assassin stabs you such that his entire sword enters your body in the area of the stomach, for example, it will enter at a certain angle. If the blow is delivered with sufficient force, as the Assassin seems wont to do, the point should emerge on the opposite side at a location and angle consistent with the entry. If the sword vanishes, he will become suspicious.”

  She pointed to the diagram. “We are attempting to turn this technology into a sword splitting vest. The vest would be one of the specialized forms worn as a thin layer of clothing outside the intended victim’s body. The first phase of the development of the product will be used to ensure that the vest will, as you eloquently put it, 'eat' the sword. The second phase involves making the sword point reemerge through the back, but always from the same spot. Our hope in that version is that the Assassin would be disinterested in the difference between the angle of entry and the angle of exit. And the third and final phase would further expand the technology such that the sword reemerges exactly where it should. If the Assassin stabs you through the heart, the point should emerge at a different location than if he stabs you in the lower regions of the abdomen. We can put these into the field at any point, though we suspect they would prove most effective when the second phase is complete. We suspect it will take thirty years before we advance the technology through the third phase of testing, however.”

  Will thought through that, and then nodded. “That’s absolutely brilliant. Will the material reform the sword when he pulls it back out of the victim?”

  Eva’s face clouded. “I do not understand.”

  “Typically, if one kills in battle with a sword, they will remove the weapon from the victim’s body. The sword would be soaked with blood and other bodily material. You would remove the sword from the victim so that you can use the weapon to kill again. What am I asking is whether the sword that is split to avoid actual damage will reform when the killer pulls it out of the victim’s body?”

  Eva’s face fell, as did the faces of the engineers on the team. “We… I fear we had not considered that detail. This will prove to be a setback. I fear we have failed with this effort.”

  Will shook his head. “I disagree. The most advanced phase of the technology is one we’d need to put on the intended human victims of the Assassin because he won’t expect them to be able to defend themselves. For Aliomenti caught in a fight, however, even the first phase of the technology would provide a tremendous advantage. The Aliomenti expect a fight from the Alliance; they’ll think we’ve just figured out how to use Energy to grab and hold swords. The sword eating version would be fantastic for us for just that reason.” Seeing the looks of confusion, Will explained. “If the Assassin watches one of us survive when his sword goes in and comes out the other side, they’ll realized we have advanced technology able to protect ourselves and humans. If our people sport sword eaters, they’ll assume it’s an Energy trick and won’t think to adapt their killing strategies for the humans, whom we’ll protect with the more advanced technology. It’s deception.” He grinned. “Plus, the sword eating technology would actually disarm those trying to stab us.”

  Eva chuckled. “Now that could prove entertaining. I would enjoy seeing the faces of the Hunters or Assassin when they find themselves disarmed in such a fashion. I do suspect that our people would ensure they depart from a fight long before a sword could hit them.”

  Will shrugged. “You can never be too sure. All variations of this technology will save lives. And with the uptick in Aliomenti abductions via the Hunters and executions by the Assassin… we need this technology.” He glanced at the engineering team. “Good work, everyone.”

  They nodded, their faces showing their eagerness to move forward, and Will left the room.

  The Hunters had grown more aggressive over the past few decades. That was, in part, because they’d become more aware that the Alliance was “stealing” their people away—and Arthur wanted his minions back. After a decade or more inside the Cavern—after first being carefully and safely separated from their tracking chips on the Outside—the escapees would go Outside in Alliance-style roles in human communities. They’d be spotted there by Aliomenti spies. The spies would report their findings to the Elites, and Arthur would direct the Hunters to set up reconnaissance. All of their best efforts to protect the escapees from recapture were thwarted; the defectors would inevitably be seized by the Hunters and taken to the new Aliomenti Headquarters building located on a private island inside the Bermuda Triangle.

  To address the ongoing efforts by the Aliomenti to enslave those freed, and to murder innocent victims in the process, Will had suggested the idea of an Alliance force to counter the Hunters. The Hunters weren’t capable of identifying all Alliance members, just those who’d defected. Porthos was frighteningly accurate tracking defectors when prompted. But he didn’t seem to be able to identify and track direct Alliance recruits. Their strategy from the very beginning—having new recruits remain in the safety of the Cavern until they we
re able to Shield the Energy from any detectable emissions—was proving sound. Will wanted to use a team of direct recruits to monitor the defectors sent back outside for a period of years, standing ready to defend them from Hunter attacks—but more critically, to defend the innocent humans targeted for execution through their association with the defectors.

  Will was somewhat surprised when Eva insisted upon leading that group. She’d been working on recruiting field agents for the team, and spent much of her time in the Cavern talking with top Alliance researchers about technology to enhance their ability to succeed in the mission. The sword eating technology was the latest idea in that effort.

  Will had resisted the idea of Eva leading the team, primarily for selfish reasons. Eva’s work planning the necessary tasks for the next five decades was critical to the overall survival of the people most dear to him… including Eva herself. In the end, he’d relented, not that Eva had waited for his approval before seizing the role. But Will had no memory of direct encounters with Eva in his time in the distant future, and had seen no reference to her by his children, the future Adam, or in the communication from the diaries. It was entirely possible that Eva had taken on this warrior’s role… and suffered the same fate as her brother.

  In the end, though, it was her choice to make.

  The formation of the defense squad had an unexpected but positive impact. Eva and Adam had significantly increased the amount of time they spent in the Cavern. In the first two years after their reunion, the two had visited roughly every three months, and would stay for about a week before returning to their other tasks and activities. The approach left Will feeling anxious. Their schedule wasn’t terribly different than most of the Alliance members; few cleared for Outside work stayed in the Cavern full time, including both Hope and Will. But Will had a general idea of what everyone else was doing in their time Outside. Not so with Eva and Adam. When he pressed them, both stayed silent. He’d learned to stop pushing, struggling to trust that their secrets were kept for the good of everyone.

  With their more frequent stays, Adam and Eva had moved some of their belongings into the Cavern and taken up more permanent lodging. Adam applied himself with great fervor to the task of planning the future. His efforts had shamed what Will and Hope had done, scribbling down ideas in bits and pieces as they’d thought of them. The elder Adam had sought to compile the notes into something of a diary, mapping dates and the known events that would occur.

  The younger Adam took a far more thorough approach. The walls of his Cavern room were covered with timelines, identifying where each of the key figures of the future events were at each moment. He highlighted what he dubbed "assurance gaps," where there were unknown factors at play that might prevent necessary actions from happening as remembered. From all of this, he kept a list of the vast amount of preparatory work that needed to be done. Those tasks were separately collated by decade, by year, by month, and by day, depending on the proximity to the actual event and the amount of time needed to complete the task. By the time they reached Will’s thirty-fifth birthday, the nexus of all of the activity, tasks were grouped by the minute.

  Will was happy they had over half a century left until it all happened.

  Adam had made it a point to include the names of the humans likely to be caught in the crosshairs. Will, searching his memory, struggled to pull out the names of those who would be so greatly impacted. He knew there were two guards on duty at the time; one was engaged and one was married with a young child. He remembered an elderly neighbor being injured, but couldn’t recall who it was or whether the injury was the direct result of the Hunters’ actions or an unrelated accident. And he wasn’t certain what would happen after his removal from the twenty-first century. Others might be affected afterward, people whose names and roles he couldn’t recall.

  Adam called the quartet together to summarize what he’d compiled. “This will be an immense undertaking, and what I need to understand from this group are parameters. What’s acceptable? What’s not acceptable?” At the blank looks, Adam elaborated. “Our primary focus is to ensure that Will is captured by the Hunters but not killed. Hope must be attacked, Josh must be attacked, the house must be set ablaze, but they must not be grievously injured. We cannot alter those parameters to this effort. What I need to understand is this: how many other people are we required to protect? For each additional person we try to save from the direct attack and the aftermath, we’ll need to involve additional members of the Alliance. Each additional person we involve is one more person who will know the secret of your origin, Will, and one more person who might reveal that secret to the Aliomenti. In order to plan all of this out, I need to know who else, outside of Will, Hope, and Josh, I need to account for.”

  Will cringed. What Adam was asking, in reality, was who he was allowed to sacrifice to the cause. They couldn’t save everyone. And he hated the fact that he knew it was true.

  Wincing, Will replied. “I’d really like to make sure that the humans directly in harm’s way are protected in some fashion. But in some cases, I know they weren’t. At least not that I could tell.” At the looks of confusion, Will elaborated. “The two guards on duty were dead when I arrived at the front gate of the neighborhood. That means, in my memory, we didn’t save their lives. That doesn’t mean we didn’t, it just means that I know there were two dead bodies there.” He shook his head. “I’d like us to protect their families, though.”

  Hope glanced at Eva, puzzled by the comment.

  “OK. We will make sure that the humans are unaffected, where possible, without affecting the overall mission, realizing that the two guards are unlikely to be protectable.” Adam jotted down a note. “Understood. There are the two guards—who we suspect we will lose—along with the injured neighbor, and then the fiancee, wife, and child of the two guards.”

  “What?” Hope looked startled. “I don’t understand. If they aren’t even there that day, why would we need to protect them?”

  “The Aliomenti are very thorough,” Eva replied. “Adam’s right. We must assume that they will decide that those assigned to protect Will at his home could be aware of his true identity. Any of those individuals or relatives could be located and executed. Or they may go after none of them. We cannot know for certain, but we can watch.”

  Hope shook her head.

  “For that matter, we’d need to watch all of the neighbors as well,” Will added. “The Hunters can’t be expected to know—or care—that Hope and I had little association with the other residents, so they may choose to think I’d slipped at some point, or tried to recruit some of them.”

  “Just a thought,” Hope said. “But could the neighbors be Alliance members? There’s nothing that says that the people living there aren't part of the Alliance.” She looked thoughtful. “That’s a win for us—we don’t need to assign Alliance members to protect them, and they can help out as well.”

  Will closed his eyes, trying to remember. “If they were part of the Alliance, they were very well disguised. My memories, faint though they are at this point, tell me that all of our neighbors were quite old—”

  Hope snorted, and Will chuckled. “Okay, okay. All of our neighbors looked quite old. Not the usual appearance for Aliomenti or Alliance. That doesn’t mean that we won’t have Alliance members there, however. I wasn’t in a position to recognize the tell-tale signs when all of this happened to me the first time.”

  Adam nodded. “Those are helpful points and excellent ideas to get me started. I suspect I’ll have more questions as I start to add more detail to the plan. I’ll start looking for volunteers to move to that area of the country. If there’s interest, they’ll need to start becoming successful business people, let themselves visibly age in the process, and make sure that they’re in position to live in the neighborhood. By the way, did any of the neighbors have any children?”

  Will thought again. “I don’t think so, though we weren’t close with any of them. I guess that means
we can’t rule out a neighborhood full of the Alliance, can we?”

  “No, we can’t,” Adam agreed. “It just means that we’ll need to be sure that we either own and occupy those homes, or that we’re in position to watch them.”

  “Along with the homes of the other humans directly involved, and their families," Hope added as a reminder. She nodded at Adam. “May I suggest adding a note to ask Will to try to remember names once a year until he’s successful? If it doesn’t happen, we’ll start watching those who move in or are hired near the neighborhood to figure who is at risk. One way or another, we need to be sure that we take care of everyone. Or as many as we possibly can.”

  Will nodded, but he felt useless. He needed his memory sharp, but it was failing him. He understood that the human brain wasn’t meant to recall memories from nine hundred years earlier, but it didn’t lessen the regret he felt over his inability to name the people involved. That failure would delay Adam’s ability to protect them, and it might mean people that could be saved—not counting the two guards—would perish as a result.

  Eva headed out to work with her defense squad members, mentioning that they were going to interview three people who had witnessed Hunter attacks during their last journey Outside. All three were direct recruits from the human population, and they’d been uncertain how to react when the Hunters and Assassin began the process of abducting and executing a combined dozen people. Eva’s team wanted to understand the tactics that were employed to track and subdue the defectors. They could analyze the approaches used by the Hunters and Assassin, look for weaknesses to exploit, and devise training and technology—like the sword splitter—to help Alliance members thwart those efforts.

  If they could thwart detection efforts, they could save the lives of countless innocent humans caught in the crosshairs.

  Will sulked for a moment, feeling sorry for himself over his inability to contribute, and then stood and left the room. Adam followed. The men heard a commotion near the beach, and walked in that direction.