Perhaps it was a need to fight something, and if they didn't fight each other, there would be no one else to fight.
So, they set out upon London, up the Mall between Buckingham Palace and The Strand. Burning cars clogged the historic road between poles that lifted tattered Union Jacks into the air. The oak trees that once made the streets and sidewalks such a beautiful vista had become skeletons. Having been blown off by the shockwave of a vicious explosion, their discarded leaves rolled on the ground, edges glowing with expiring embers.
Behind the squad, Buckingham Palace lay in ruins. The bomb that started the revolution with a flash had torn the roof off like a lid on a hinge. Rubble lay in the gardens like ancient, crumbled monuments. Smoke billowed like dirty cotton.
With the unification of all the countries of the world into New Earth and the birth of the New Earth Council, England's parliamentary government was no longer needed. No longer a country of its own, the state of England needed a single representative, and its people once again turned to the institution of royalty. Leaders were no longer sovereign, but they served in and used those facilities. At some point, the English simply couldn't let their traditions go, so they had continued to treat their Council representative like royalty.
None of that mattered anymore, though. It was the beginning of the war they'd all seen coming for years. Some of them had waited eagerly.
The heat was almost unbearable. Even so early in the morning, the summer temperatures and humidity were palpable, and around them, flames from burning cars licked the air, threatening to ignite the oxygen they breathed. Stellan tried to resist the flames with a raised hand, peering through the cracks between his fingers.
The whole city blazed, warming the dawning sky with an orange glow. Crumbling towers loomed like fingers reaching from the earth. Stellan couldn't believe the ruin. Simmering anger rose to a boil in his stomach. He couldn't wait to squeeze his trigger.
A bullet whizzed by his ear and buried into the dirt at the side of the road. He heard the crack of the gunshot at the same time, so he knew the shooter was close. He sprinted to cover behind a burned out husk of a car. The back seat still smoldered, and noxious fumes from the vinyl and cushioning clawed the back of his throat. Stifling a cough, he darted behind rubble from a crumbled building, glass crunching underfoot.
As he was trained, Stellan watched the high ground, optimal locations for snipers, tracing the rooftops with his deadly eye, the barrel of his rifle. He looked at the places he would be. The shadows of open and broken windows drew his attention. He skipped the ones with flames behind them.
A hand pressed his shoulder.
The gunshot prompted his whole squad to take cover. To keep moving toward their objective, Pierce ordered them to displace one at a time, the last man in their line sprinting toward the front and notifying the next man with a slap on his shoulder. They had greater numbers, and the sniper would have to be bold to fire another shot while they covered each other.
Pierce had either underestimated the shooter's mettle or overestimated his intelligence.
Charles "Chuckles" Torrington, the squad's SAW gunner and homemade whiskey provider, sprinted toward the front of the line. The back of his head exploded. His body shot up quickly and then lazed to the side, descending into the debris that cluttered the streets of the falling city.
With the second shot, the detection systems attached to their combat eyewear revealed the sniper's position. A grid system opened before their eyes and then closed by the side of the road at the edge of a terrace. A rifle barrel peeked over a concrete railing, and Stellan's squad fired upon the location, cracking the sky like thunder.
Pierce held up a fist, and the shooting ceased. The last echoes of their gunshots expired, and a deep silence crept into their ears. Only the pops of the nearby fires dared spoil that calm.
"Clear!" Pierce declared and walked to his fallen man, kneeled, checked his pulse, and removed his dog tags. "Dammit," he whispered. With the eulogy spoken, Pierce dropped Torrington's chain into a pocket in his vest.
"Let's move," Pierce said twirling his finger in the air. "We're not welcome here."
"We're not welcome anywhere," said Jesus Demenez, the squad's demolitions expert, clapping Stellan on the shoulder.
Leaving Torrington's body for retrieval later, they moved up the Mall and into the Strand and then across Trafalgar Square where Nelson's Column lay toppled and in pieces. The buildings surrounding the square were burned or burning, and Stellan thought the square resembled a furnace. The smoke blotted out the moonlight, and while it was hard to breathe, the squad could move easier under the cover of the black fumes.
They struck northwest into Piccadilly Circus. The walls of the buildings, which would normally play loud advertisements in an exciting spectacle, displayed pulses of broken and distorted images. A black hole sucked in the north wall as if some large cannon had shattered the building's facade. Anteros danced on the fountain in the center, having released his arrow, and they crossed the circle as if the god pointed the way.
More gunfire thrummed in the city, only these shots were deep and rapid, the unmistakable tapping of light machine gun fire. Demenez went down, taking rounds to the neck and upper thigh. Scott Whitman took a round in the chest, and Pierce dragged him by his collar into a nearby alley, Whitman's hands pooling with blood.
Stellan darted down the steps of a subway station and thought it perfect. The station would have multiple exits, far too many for the machine gunner to cover. Stellan would be able to flank the nest.
The lights in the station flickered, the cold tiles appearing to blink like thousands of eyes. Water from broken pipes streamed into a pool and then followed a staircase down farther into the station. The turnstiles all displayed red X's. All were locked down, and Stellan was sure no trains were running.
A whimper echoed through the halls, and its alien sound startled him. It was higher pitched than a man, but it did not sound like a woman.
Part of him wanted to ignore it and move on the machine gunner. The other part, perhaps a paternal part, compelled him to search out the source of the cries.
As he rounded a corner into a narrow hallway, he found a boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, crouched into a ball with his head in his hands. A rifle stood between his knees.
Something split in Stellan's mind then. As he stood at the end of the hall, watching the boy sob, all sounds amplified. His breathing became too loud, so he held it. His heartbeat thumped fast and deep so that, at first, he thought it was the faraway barking of the machine gun, so he tried to calm himself.
He detached his rifle from the front of his tactical vest and leaned it against the wall, and before he knew what he was doing, his knees bent. He tried to be gentle and not appear threatening.
Killing people was easy because they had no say in the matter. Calming them was delicate work.
"It's going to be okay," Stellan heard himself say, and part of him, the soldier part that had split in his mind, admonished the other part. Neither part knew what he was doing.
The boy shot up with remarkable speed like he'd trained years to hone his reflexes. He probably had. The rebels turned away no soldier, and Stellan recognized the smoothness in the boy's pull of the rifle to his shoulder, the confidence in his grip, even though the barrel swayed and shook because he was far too young to hold such a weapon steady.
It reminded Stellan of himself at that age. He'd wanted to learn to shoot, but his father told him his body would dictate when he was ready. When he could hold a man's weapon, he could learn how to use it and what it meant to use it. This boy knew more about pain and death than Stellan had known at that age, and it was tragic because Stellan grew up to kill for a living. At that time, he feared for where this boy's life would take him, and at once, the soldier disappeared. Stellan wanted more than anything to make sure this boy got to a better place.
With an outstretched hand, he stood, still hoping to calm the boy, to touch somethi
ng within him that could see Stellan as someone who was not his enemy.
"I won't hurt you," Stellan said.
"You already have," the boy said.
"Kid, I've never seen you before."
"Why can't you just leave us alone!?" The boy's shake intensified, and Stellan understood it was from anger. He expected the gunshot, so when it came in all its deafening fury, rattling through the ancient tunnels of London's Underground, Stellan was ready; his hand was ready. It moved without permission from his mind, and even as his brain received the message from his shoulder that a bullet had passed through it and blown a hole out the other side, his right hand unholstered his sidearm and sent a round into the boy's chest like an automatic mechanism.
The exchange had been so fast that, before he was aware he had discharged his weapon, Stellan thought the kick of the boy's own rifle had sent him flying backward.
The child lay still in a heap, blood pooling beneath him, forming wings on the concrete floor. Stellan stood there horrified long enough to watch the boy's blood streak down the hallway to some stairs where it cascaded down into the tunnels below.
At the same time that Stellan felt he'd just killed a piece of himself, that he'd given the last drop of innocence to the Council, something burning within grew until, like lifting a veil from his eyes, he could identify it.
It was anger, as if it had passed from the boy to Stellan, and for the first time in his life, he questioned his beliefs. He wondered if the sins he committed to recast the world through fire were worth it. In an instant, he had not only lost his innocence but his humanity, and he understood that, while he had been thinking all the wars and fighting to bring peace to the world were necessary, if they ever achieved a perfect world, he would not be welcome there. And he realized, he might be cast out and eventually die, but humanity would always bear a mark of shame for the deeds he'd done. Like a black mark on some universal score card, his actions would be ever present to remind them they'd achieved perfection through imperfect means.
They could not kill humanity to be humane.
Stellan fell to his knees. He dropped his sidearm like a piece of trash, and the tears in his eyes welled but would not break and slide down his cheek, as if they, too, were so ashamed they would not dare touch his skin.
A hand pressed his shoulder.
"Damn," Pierce said. Stellan heard it faintly, far off, as if his mind were overburdened and could not accept additional stimuli.
A woman Stellan would come to know very well hurried in front of him, the soot on her fair cheeks drawing lines to her dark hair. When she flashed a hand-held device over the boy's chest and evaluated the 3D holographic X-ray, he understood she was the doctor they were sent to evacuate.
"Huh...huh...how?" Stellan was able to muster.
"How did we get her out so quickly?" Pierce asked. "We didn't. She was brought to us. It seems we were the distraction, pounding on the front door while someone else snuck in the back."
Another woman turned the corner, covering their rear with a pistol, and passively looked over her shoulder, her fierce green eyes flashing like emeralds.
"We have to move," she said.
"He's gone," the doctor said. She walked to Stellan and knelt beside him. "He's gone," she repeated. He did not flinch when she touched his hand.
They retreated back to the park. Along the way, they remained alert, but they met with no opposition. The way Stellan understood it, the revolution had paused out of respect for a lost child, and on some level, he appreciated it
As the Phantom descended upon the lawn, the grass trembled with the down-forced air. The rotor blades chopped like a drum roll. Stellan boarded last, unable to shake from his mind the image of the child he destroyed.
"We have men down in the field," Pierce said to the pilot.
"Guess it wasn't just a walk in the park," the young pilot said from the cockpit. His smile faded when he looked at Stellan and saw the oblivion forming in his eyes.
They flew above the rooftops of the high-rise buildings and between the skyscrapers, a blanket of smoke obscuring the ground, and Stellan looked over the cityscape. The sun crowned on the horizon and brought the first hints of gold to the ruined city and the snaking Thames. He wanted to stay a little longer. He wanted to watch as day broke and bore down upon the city with its full, relentless gaze.
He wanted to watch it burn.
Five
Ensign Cooper Evans remembered reading a statistic that estimated most people who witnessed crimes or knew information that could have prevented crimes never stepped forward. The study reached back decades, and the findings never changed. As far as Evans knew, the study had continued along with the Council's pleas for the people of New Earth to say something if they saw something. As far as he knew, that statistic would never change because it was a symptom of the human condition.
Whatever the reason, be it fear, negligence, or the assumption that someone else would step forward, people pretended to not see the bad things in their neighborhoods. They ignored it for their own sake.
He had promised himself years ago when he read the study that he'd never be one of those people. He told himself that if he ever saw anything or had any information that could help prevent something bad from happening, he'd stand up and speak out.
However, when his moment came, fear paralyzed him, and he could only do what he was told. He could only follow orders because he lacked the courage to stand up for what was right.
As Agent Adelynn Skinner watched the rescue from the surveillance feed on the bridge, it took everything Evans had to keep from shaking in front of her. Until he was in a room alone with her, he didn't know just how much she scared him. She didn't have to tell him she could do whatever she wanted without threat of recourse, and even if she wasn't thinking that, he couldn't keep it out of his mind.
There was something about her facial expression. He had trouble looking at her for fear he'd see her ghost eye looking back.
She watched surveillance footage of the events that transpired in cargo bay forty-nine, and she looked like she enjoyed it. Out of the corner of his eye, Evans thought he could see her smile. It didn't occur to him that her face was a blur to him and that the smile could have been his imagination.
"Go back," she said.
Evans commanded the Atlas to rewind the recording.
"Stop. Zoom in."
She examined a close-up of Captain Pierce carrying a distraught Daelen Lund. Evans wondered if she saw the heartache as Daelen was torn away from him.
"Follow them," Skinner said, and Evans commanded the Atlas to show the feed behind the bulkhead door. Daelen collapsed without her husband, convinced he was gone, cracking to her very foundations.
Evans wondered if Adelynn understood Daelen's pain. He wondered if she even could, if she ever felt love or yearned for the support of another.
A notification displayed on the screen that informed them the event record had reached its end.
"That's all there is," Evans said. "There's nothing left."
"Indeed," she whispered so softly the sound barely reached Evans' ears.
Six
When Stellan's conscious mind regained control, it measured reality by the searing pain throughout his body. His shoulder blade throbbed with warmth, a familiar sensation that he knew meant bruising. His neck and lower back felt like broken glass. His hand burned from the cut he'd sustained from the scrap metal. The bandage squeezed his fingers.
Margo must have dressed it; Daelen would never have wrapped it so tightly.
He opened his eyes, and the light washed over his corneas like bleach. Though everything was a pure, burning white, he could see enough to know he was in a private treatment room on the medical deck.
Distant, foggy voices leached through the walls. He couldn't make out the words, but he could tell it was a man and a woman. Their voices pushed and pulled, spiking in volume and tone. They were angry.
He worked his way off the table
and onto his feet, his body fighting every movement with stabbing pains. His eyes regained some of their ability to focus, and he saw the examination table he had just stood from. The walls were white and clean. A diagram of the human anatomy adorned the wall opposite the foot of the examination table. The adjacent wall was a closed door surrounded by frosted glass. On the other side, he could make out two blurry figures. The argument continued until he opened the door and found Captain Pierce and Daelen in the hallway.
"We just can't do that, Gordon!" Daelen raged, and Stellan's hand missed the doorframe for support. He crumpled to the floor, and both Pierce and Daelen reached to catch him and missed, the redness draining from Daelen's face and leaving the pallor of fear.
"Can't a guy get some sleep around here?" Stellan asked, his eyes still blinking to adjust.
"What are you doing up!?" Daelen said. "You're going to injure yourself worse."
Pierce wrapped his arm around Stellan's back and hoisted him up.
"I'm fine," Stellan said.
Pierce helped Stellan back to the table where he sat on the edge, legs dangling, rubbing the back of his neck.
"How's Edward?" Stellan asked.
Daelen and Pierce glanced nervously at each other, and neither answered. Daelen grasped Stellan's arm, and his vitals expanded from the face of her link.
"Lie back," she said, and he did, grunting in pain. "What hurts?”
"It feels like I was torn in two at my waist." Daelen placed her hand over his stomach, and her link displayed an X-ray of his abdomen. She searched the image with a furrowed brow, and then she took her hand away and looked at him with glassy eyes.
"You're extremely lucky you weren't."
"Edward," he said.
"You need to take it easy," Pierce said.
"Will I live?" Stellan asked.
"If I have supervision," Daelen said.
"Then tell me about Edward."
An uneasy silence filled the room like a gas, and with each breath, it became more unbearable.
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