by J. L. Lyon
21
“CRENSHAW?”
Grace pushed open the door to the general’s room, expecting to find him inside. He never left his door unlocked unless he was within, so it surprised her to find it empty. She turned to leave, but then froze in the doorway.
Always so secretive, she thought. Maybe I should…poke around?
The room was modestly furnished, with only a twin bed in the corner and a desk against the left wall. Papers were strewn haphazardly across its surface, the evidence of a man searching for something and likely abandoning the quest in frustration. Evidently, he intended to resume the search right where he left off.
She took a cautious look back down the hall. No one was there, and she didn’t hear anyone coming. Despite her inner warnings, curiosity got the best of her. She stepped over the threshold and strode to Crenshaw’s desk.
I won’t touch anything, she promised. But if I happen to see something lying there…
Not that it did her much good. The majority of it was written in code—messages from the operatives embedded within the World System, perhaps? She leaned close to one on top and saw a circled section with a line drawn to Crenshaw’s haphazard scrawl: Shadow Fall. A similar notation marked several of the other papers, each code identical and each translation the same.
Shadow Fall. What did that refer to? Crenshaw had never mentioned it to her. She studied the contents on the desk for several fruitless seconds, and then decided she had probably worn out her welcome. Crenshaw would probably be downstairs.
She turned and saw him leaning against the doorpost, watching her.
Grace froze, caught in that same desperate moment between fight or flight that she had experienced so often when her father had caught her doing something she shouldn’t have been. She braced herself for his eruption, for his chastisement at so brazenly invading his privacy.
But surprisingly, the general just smiled, “Find anything interesting, Commander? I knew this would happen sooner or later.”
“Crenshaw, I’m sorry, the door was open and so I just—”
“You just thought you would take a quick look around,” Crenshaw nodded. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with curiosity. I would probably do the same thing in your shoes. And I’ve taken certain precautions, as you can see.”
“Yes,” she said, allowing a bit of bitterness to creep in. “You keep your secrets well.”
“Comes with the trade,” he pursed his lips, the only sign that he recognized her tone. “But I presume you have a legitimate reason for being here. What can I do for you?”
Eager to stop feeling like the mischievous little girl with her hand in the cookie jar, Grace pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pants pocket and stepped forward to hand it to Crenshaw. The general took it and flashed a tepid look before he unfolded it. His eyes narrowed as he read, “Central Alexandrian Power Plant, Division One Transit Center, Division One Harbor, Fourteenth Army base…” He looked up, “What is this?”
“It’s a list of vital System installations.”
“I can see that,” Crenshaw said dryly. “What do you intend to do with it?”
“This is the next step,” Grace replied. “If the Right Hand won’t pass us more targets, it’s up to us to choose them. We plan our course of attack and strike hard, hitting each of these facilities to weaken the infrastructure of the city. Then, when we have the Great Army off-balance, we go for the golden egg.”
Crenshaw frowned, “The palace.”
Grace nodded, “That was my father’s plan. Open up cracks in the System’s defenses and then shatter them with a blow straight to their heart.”
“Yes, I spoke with Jacob about the possibility of an assault on the palace,” Crenshaw said. “It’s one of the ways I got him to endorse our mission with Elijah, by offering him a man on the inside. But that plan was a pipe dream, Grace. Even your father knew that the chances of getting there were slim.”
“Now they are, yes,” she insisted. “But if we hit more installations—”
“We are outnumbered,” the general interrupted. “We don’t have the strength or the resolve to engage in protracted conflict.”
“Who said anything about protracted?” Grace retorted. “We do this now, and quickly. The Fourteenth Army is decimated—”
“But the Ninth is not. They will pick up the slack until new conscripts are selected by the central computer and trained. And even if we could somehow crush the Ninth, the Second will be right behind them, and then more and more…it’s endless, Grace.”
“It’s not endless, not if we strike fast enough to shatter their center. If we take the palace—”
“Grace!” Crenshaw exclaimed, chuckling incredulously. “The palace can’t be taken with seven hundred men, no matter how great they are with a Spectral Gladius.”
“I realize that. But if the people—”
Crenshaw threw up his hands and turned his back on her with an exasperated sigh, “The same old arguments. You sound just like your father.”
“And why is that a problem?” Grace balked.
The general faced her again and crossed his arms, “Because it’s naïve. What you said in your meeting with the commanders was spot on, Grace. Your life in the Wilderness prepared you to assume your father’s role. It taught you how to survive, how to think like a leader. But unfortunately it also gave you a weakness…one that could be detrimental.”
“Drop the condescending tone, General,” Grace said. “You’re my advisor. So, advise.”
“You don’t understand the World System,” he replied. “You didn’t grow up in the cities and so you don’t have a clear picture of what it’s actually like. In the Wilderness everyone is destitute, and they all dream of a day when the System is no more. The same is not true here. The people of this city are not waiting for someone to save them, Grace. They don’t even think they need saving.”
Grace shook her head, “But I’ve seen them, Crenshaw. In the streets, on the day you brought me back to my father…so pitiful, so downtrodden. How could they not want to be free of that?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that you saw in them what you wanted to see? That you remember the faces of the downtrodden because it reinforces your idea of being on the right side? Because that’s the easy way out—to assume you are right, and everyone else is wrong. Unfortunately the truth is much more complicated.”
“What truth?”
“That the System works,” Crenshaw said.
Grace winced. Hearing those words from an ally’s mouth felt like blasphemy—like a betrayal of everything they had fought and bled for. It implied that there was a chance they were in the wrong, a notion that offended her to her very core.
“Did it work for me?” she challenged. “When I was taken and sold into slavery, to serve out my days as a man’s plaything? Does it work for women like Elena Wilson, who are tortured and forced into exile for no other reason than bad DNA?”
“Of course not,” Crenshaw began. “But those are exceptions, not the rule. Slaves make up less than half a percent of the System’s total population, and the Wilsons’ case is an anomaly. Most of the citizens never encounter slaves, and those that do are scarcely aware. Oh they hear stories of the particularly bad cases, but stories rarely hit close enough to effect them, and fear is enough to keep them in line when they do.”
“But Systemics,” Grace argued, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. “Using a test to place people in occupations that they didn’t choose and where they will stay for the rest of their lives?”
“I agree it seems horrible, in theory,” Crenshaw replied. “But in practice, it has actually been remarkably successful. It is estimated that roughly eighty-five percent of the population finds placement in a self-actualizing occupation. Would it have been what they chose for themselves? Maybe, maybe not. But the algorithms in the central computer adapt as it learns more about human behavior, so it has gotten better at placements. It puts people where they can excel a
nd be good at what they do. Often, that leads to a sense of purpose—to happiness.”
Grace remembered what 301 had told her on the night she had been imprinted, …the OPE helps people find their perfect place in society, putting an end to needless things like unattained dreams, frustrated failings, and inept leadership. At the time she had dismissed it as a symptom of his brainwashed mind. “And family?” she went on. “Having to beg the government’s permission to marry or to have a child?”
“Formalities only,” he waved his hand. “Ninety-nine percent of those requests are granted. The System uses it not to control families, but to keep track of them. New births mean new citizens, and new citizens must be calculated into the algorithm. Marriages had to be licensed to be recognized even in the Old World.”
“Is this why you and my father could never see eye-to-eye?” she spat. “Because you think the System works?”
“Your father refused to see what was right in front of him,” Crenshaw said. “Despite all my warnings he held on to that romantic dream you just spouted, that the people would recognize Silent Thunder as their saviors and rise up to win the day. I knew that path would only lead to senseless war, and so I left.”
“But it happened once. Jonathan Charity nearly did it.”
“That was fifteen years ago, when the world still saw themselves in the grip of a tyrant. Now we fight not just against Napoleon Alexander, but against the accomplishments of Systemics. In the cities there is almost no poverty. Medical care is readily available, and free. Peace is the norm, for the most part. The people are fed, they have jobs, they have security. They do not see themselves as slaves.”
“Then we have to show them. We have to convince them!”
“You were bred to be a Silent Thunder operative,” Crenshaw said. “But these people are not warriors, Grace. They have no desire to fight. All they want is to live out their lives in peace. To fall in love, to raise a child, to grow old with whatever happiness they can find. They don’t want to die on the blades of those that feed them, heal them, and protect them. If you truly want to win this war, then you have to understand that.”
“Why do we fight, then?” Grace asked. “Why are you still here, if you believe the System is so wonderful?”
“Because it is all a very clever illusion,” Crenshaw said. “We can’t know for certain because of obvious limitations, but we think that for every three people who live in the cities, there is at least one in the Wilderness struggling to survive, hunted for sport by bloodthirsty Great Army soldiers.
“And even in the cities, Systemics does not work for at least fifteen percent of the population. They are beaten down, oppressed, and trapped. The System would call them the dregs of society, and attempts to purge them via the Failure Execution Laws. No matter how good or efficient a governmental system might be, there will always be people who exert their will upon it. There are tyrants in every form of government, because the power-hungry will always find a way to adapt to feed their insatiable appetite for control. People like Napoleon Alexander, like Premier Sullivan and his Council, and the grand admiral, who create situations like what we saw in Rome, or what is happening out in Alexandria at this very moment; who mold the Great Army into a monstrous machine and use it to wipe out all opposed to their worldview; who see themselves as gods in a world of insects.
“Our fight—our struggle—is not against a government, Grace, but against the few who control that government. Why wage a war that will cause untold chaos and bloodshed, dragging the innocent down to the grave along with the guilty, when there are better ways to engage the true enemy? Your father disagreed with me, and I couldn’t fight a war I didn’t believe in.”
“And yet you came back,” Grace said. “You returned to fight the very same war you abandoned years ago.”
Crenshaw grew silent, and his eyes betrayed some secret that he seemed hesitant to reveal. But as Grace’s eyes shifted to her list still crumpled slightly in his hand and back to his face, it finally clicked. Crenshaw was the leader of the third resistance cell, specializing in intelligence. Each cell contributed its own resources to the cause: the benefactors, money; Silent Thunder, force; and intelligence…strategy.
“No,” she whispered. “You didn’t come back here to fight a war at all, did you? You came to fight your kind of battle. So what are we, then? What have these missions been about? Using us as a distraction, a spear to shatter against the World System’s shield while you bring in the dagger from behind? What’s going on here, Crenshaw?”
“Every mission has been vital to what comes next,” Crenshaw replied. “You will know, soon enough.”
“There aren’t going to be any more targets from the Right Hand, are there?”
“Just one,” he said. “But it is not ours.”
“Tell me about Shadow Fall.”
Crenshaw’s gaze went briefly to the desk and then bounced back with a smile, “I suppose I didn’t cover my tracks quite as well as I thought.” The general’s expression softened, and for a moment Grace thought he might actually spill it all. It had to be burdensome for him, to hold in all of this information and have no one to confide in. She wanted to know what secrets lay behind those eyes, and yet at the same time she feared them. She had come to rely on Crenshaw in many ways…what if the things he told her cast him in a completely different light? What if he was not the man she thought he was?
But Crenshaw didn’t get a chance to say anything more about his plan or Shadow Fall, as Davian appeared at the door behind him and nearly lost his balance as he tumbled inside.
“Forgive the interruption, Commander—”
“Can you give us a minute, Davian?” she asked, barely registering his flushed skin and wide eyes.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” he said breathlessly. “But you’re needed in communications immediately. Center 3 is under attack.”
Grace’s concern over Crenshaw’s secrets melted away, blood thumping in her ears as she followed Davian out of the room and toward the stairs. Only vaguely aware of Crenshaw trailing them, she became lost in thoughts of worst-case scenarios and desperate denials. Surely the World System could not have found them. They were always so careful, so intent on every detail. Even the power for the communications systems in the room they entered at the base of the stairs did not pull from the main power lines, for fear the energy drain might reveal their presence. The Command Center used Solithium generators for the more energy-intensive military equipment. But if Center 3 was compromised, did it end there? Were the others in danger as well?
“Lieutenant!” she shouted upon entry. “Report!”
The officer at the communications helm did not turn from his duties as he replied, hands flying frantically over the console, “Assault underway on Center 3, Commander. Strength of opposition unknown; progression of battle unknown. We received a distress call from Commander Jordan and then…nothing. I am preparing to broadcast a signal to destroy their landline.”
Grace grimaced in momentary panic. If the World System took the facility—inevitable, even if they managed to stave off the first attack—they would find the communications cable leading back to the Command Center. And from there they could locate every other base and put an end to Silent Thunder. They could destroy the cable, but...
“When my father explained the underground web, he mentioned that the destroyed line may leave traces. Will they be able to track us back here?”
“If they know what to look for, then yes,” Davian replied. “The line will leave scorch marks after it is destroyed. The marks will be even more minuscule than the line itself, nearly undetectable in the dark. A soldier would have to be lucky indeed to find it…but again, it is possible.”
“How long has the center been out of contact?” Grace asked. She didn’t want to give the order until absolutely necessary. Only the commanders and a select number of their officers knew the path back to the Command Center. The rest didn’t have a clue. Once they burned the line, those operative
s would be on their own.
“Two minutes,” the lieutenant replied. “Frequency is calculated, Commander. Ready to broadcast on your command.”
Grace’s jaw tightened, “How many souls in Center 3, Davian?”
Davian did not pause before answering, no doubt already running every name and face through his head, “Eighty-nine operatives, some of whom brought their families with them from the Wilderness. Perhaps a hundred and twenty souls, Commander.”
She fought competing urges to curse and to cry. All those people…what would become of them? Would they all be killed or would the government take some captive as slaves? She shivered at the memory of her own capture, sitting hopeless and humiliated in that dark cage. She would go back in a heartbeat, though, if only to save another from that fate.
“I understand your hesitation, Grace,” Davian said. “But you don’t have a choice. Cut the line, and there’s still a chance they might escape to the Wilderness. Do nothing, and the Great Army will eventually find that cable and follow it back here. They will take us out and move on to the other centers—over a thousand people all told. You have to protect them now.”
Crenshaw placed a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned to look at him he nodded sadly, “Davian is right, Grace. There is no other way.”
Grace gritted her teeth in frustration. This is the World System I know, Crenshaw. Not one that works, but one that kills and destroys. The one that slaughters children and tortures the innocent. “I will make sure they all pay for this,” she hissed. “Cut the line.”
A loud beep sounded repeatedly from the main console, and the lieutenant turned back to them, expression grave. “Too late. The line was just burned from their end. But they…they transmitted a final message just ahead of the frequency.”
The room went very still.
“What does it say?” Grace asked.
When he hesitated to answer she stepped forward and gazed at the console, seeing the last request of the operatives in Center 3 flashing on the main screen:
