by Jourdan Cameron
CC-BY-NC. Details here:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Chapter 2
In a forest of Markonis, not too far
from Ace's factory, two men were having a discussion.
“I tell you, she already pulled her
weight.”
“Which is precisely why she'll be
fighting.”
“No, she's done enough, I think that
now she needs a break.”
The larger man
sighed. “Vinny, I know she's young. I know she's already seen
enough. But think, man, we need her!”
“Casey” sighed
Vinny “I don't want to see her get hurt. She's my daughter.”
“And
I'll care for her like my own. But why don't you think about what we
means, why don't you?”
Vinny looked
around. They were mostly alone in the forest, but about a half mile
behind them lay the rebel encampment, made up of the strongest,
smartest rebels. It was a relatively small; about eighty people
inhabited it. It was mobile, made up of the massive, rolling
battle-tents. Each “tent” was made if titanium a couple inches
thick, and was like a massive centipede on treads, heavily armed, and
home to ten rebels, complete with hammocks strung from the ceilings
and refrigeration for perishable items. Each was gray, inside and
out, and was twice as tall as the soldiers they contained, though
they were also much wider than tall, thus they didn't usually tip
over.
Inside, they were
relatively bright, their control panels flashing and flickering, with
rows of simple, black, plastic seats, ready to load groups upon
groups of troops, taking them deep into the heart of battle.
Overall, it was a
machine to be feared. Several of a rebel army's finest were calling
it home.
These rebels were
mostly survivors of Paxcatia's invasion who escaped slavery chose to
fight. Many had been revolting against the crooked government in
Markonis. They'd chosen to run when Paxcatian forces attacked, rather
than stand and fight. Most had been rioting in the streets against a
government that no longer exists. Indeed, in a twist of poetic
justice, the former leader of said government now works as a slave,
mistreated alongside his corrupt police force and sham election
organizers.
“It's been five
years, Vin. She's grown now.”
“She's still my
daughter.” Vincent ran a hand through his dark, messy hair. Mr.
Sere was right, of course; Katy was a woman now. Decisions were hers
to make. He just didn't like the idea of sending her on such a
dangerous mission.
“And
we're still hiding, running, and scared at night, Vincent. Do you
think other daughters, other sons, deserve to grow up like that? Do
you think I want to spend the rest of my life
like this? Growing old, watching the young go to their graves before
I do?”
Vincent stared down
at his shoes. They were in shabby shape, and at one point they were
brand new running shoes, white and contoured. Now, they were barely
recognizable, a tattered pair of duct-tape tubes. The black tape that
held theme together was beginning to show its age, faded and brittle
in some spots.
In all, the two
men, in their beaten attire, were quite a sight. Their conversation,
however, was far more interesting.
“Tell me the plan
again.”
“We go to
Paxcatia, we spy on the land, find a weakness, and return with
results. We'll launch a full assault in a year.”
“You can take
her” said Vincent after a while. “Just bring her back breathing.”
Casey nodded, a
leaf falling from his greasy brown hair, deciding to change the
subject.
“So did you hear?
They found a stockpile of shampoo. It's great stuff from what I
heard, smells like coconut.”
“Doesn't that
stuff dry out your hair?”
“Really?
I could probably use that right about now” he lamented, rubbing a
hand against the back of his head. The two returned to their camp. It
was in a clearing, one large enough for the battle-tents to be hidden
safely, yet still small enough that the light coming in was somewhat
dappled, the dim light gently bouncing off the metal surfaces of the
tanks. Leaning against a tree was Katy. Her dirty blonde hair in a
bun behind her head, and she was wearing the standard rebel army
uniform. The simple dark green canvas shirts, pants, and shoes that
were practical, easily obtained, and relatively comfortable now
adorned Vincent's daughter. A single red band encircled her right
sleeve along the bicep.
“Well?” she
asked. She seemed slightly excited. Not entirely out of character,
really, though her level of enthusiasm wasn't exactly common among
the rebels.
“Just like when she was little”
thought her father. Markonis as it once was certainly had problems; a
bad educational system, however, was not one of them. The educators,
who'd spent most of their time carefully explaining things to other
children found that such cautious teaching methods weren't needed
with young Katy. She advanced at frightening speeds, excelling in
lessons requiring complex strategies, doing things and saying things
that seven year olds ordinarily wouldn't. Her teachers, quite simply
put, loved her.
She loved them
back, and it showed in her work ethic.
“You're going to
have to be careful” said Vinny, watching his daughter grin for but
a moment, returning immediately being serious, intense.
“Under no
circumstances should you take any unnecessary risks, and if you feel
like you're in danger, you get out.”
She nodded.
“Understood” she replied.
“Casey, brief her
please.”
“Katy, you're
going to be an integral part of this mission. You need to perform
like you never have before. Here's what we'll need you to do...”
A mere few miles
away was a factory, the workers within manufacturing goods, primarily
putting together control panels for Ferroform surfaces, large ones
used in stylish restaurants, bars, and every so often by artists.
A group of these
workers sat in a gray, dimly lit room, hunched over a wooden table,
each with a slightly different piece of black plastic and glass.
These were their creations, their ideas for control panels; one was a
simple elongated box with a glass covered surface. Another was quite
similar, but it had rounded corners. Yet another was arch shaped,
something users would reach into.
Only one of these,
however, would be used by Ace as a design. The creator of the winning
design would receive the most coveted prize of all: a day off from
toiling beneath the machines! Instead of laboring, soldering pieces
of metal, one to the other, they'd have the opportunity to sit back
and watch their friends working to assemble their creation. Quite a
grand prospect!
“Do you have any
questions?”
“When do I get to
go to Paxcatia?” she grinned.
“In a mere few
days” replied Mr. Sere.
“Yes mom, I'll be
home on time tonight, you don't need to worry.”
The streets of
Paxcatia were among the safest in the world. David strolled down
them, heading away from his home to the nearest train station. Like
many things in Paxcatia, transportation was mostly free; a network of
trains, simple silent steel tubes criss-crossed the nation.
The street David
traveled along was peaceful and mostly quiet. The sidewalk was
simple, gray concrete; it never seemed to change, age, and almost
never seemed dirty. This was due to the rather high number of those
willing to clean it, maintain and upkeep it. The work was somewhat
challenging due to the amount of debris that tends follow gravity,
but the work was considered important and thus payed well. David
smirked whenever he thought about how seriously the job of keeping
concrete clean was taken. Sure, it looked nice, but there were
some bigger things to be cared for.
For starters, the
trails through Paxcatia's forests were barely maintained, and were
typically overgrown and impassible. Sure, they were barely used,
but David had a special affinity for nature, and he enjoyed
retreating to the forest from time to time. Unfortunately, much of it
was inaccessible. The thought of the forest was enough to make him
sigh; why didn't more Paxcatian citizens take interest in nature?
They all seem so preoccupied with the constant shipments of devices
everybody already seemed to own. Nobody really cared that most 'new'
gadgets were just repackaged, rebodied versions of old machines, they
simply consumed, seemingly stuck in an endless cycle of purchasing,
updating, mindlessly.
David wondered, but
never quite enough to put any serious effort into finding out who
owned the the companies that were always importing, never looking
past the highfalutin legal terms that enshrouded the terms of use of
so many tiny machines, the complex legal language that seemed in
itself a heavy padlock over the general understandability of the
nature of a device's existence.
David never
followed his curiosity quite far enough.
Soon he was walking
up a hill, flanked by bright, glassy, and supposedly 'modern'
buildings. He glanced into the window of one and could see brightly
coloured electronic wares contrasting heavily with the minimalistic
motif established in the shop. His view was suddenly blocked by the
back of an employee as he shifted his gaze back towards his goal. The
train station near, and he could just make out the faint murmur of
human voices on the air.
In what seemed to
be no time, he was standing in the shade of the large booth that was
next to the track. The train track was a simple, smooth metallic
surface, just as clean as the sidewalks. It was about one hundred
feet long in either direction, and at either end was a hole that lead
the train back underground. The track rose up through holes at either
end, where the train surfaced and picked up passengers.
David braced
himself as a telltale rumble made the ground beneath his feet
vibrate, and the crowd around him seemed suddenly prepared. Like a
massive steel earthworm, the train came into view, tunneling upwards,
headfirst. It was a simple, elongated cylinder, but broken into
individual cars, little joints where the train bent and twisted
through the subterranean tunnels.
The crowd eagerly
spread out alongside the thirty-foot serpent and waited, impatient
for the doors to swing open. Each segment on the train had a simple
door, rather silvery from the outside, but as they slid open, would
reveal a simple, comfortable seat made of some strange, silky black
material. As David sat in one at the end of the train, the door slid
shut as he stared back out at the buildings along the street; the
doors were transparent from within. In a few short moments, the train
began to move, and David relaxed in his seat as simple black walls of
the car began glowing a gentle black, and what appeared to be a row
of multicolored symbols made their way across the top.
“Ah, a classic”
he remarked, as he stuffed a hand into the right pocket of his jeans,
extracting a black device roughly the size of his palm.
“The Ardonap
Unleash” he mused to himself, opening the clamshell-styled machine
to reveal a keyboard flanked by flat black control pads on either
side. David loved this little device; it had been created by an
independent company on the other side of the country. Ardonap, the
company responsible, wasn't quite like the other faceless Paxcatian
megacorporations: its founder lived a relatively normal life among
the Paxcatian people, choosing to create among the masses rather than
for the masses. Needless to say, his devices weren't very
popular, but David didn't really care. He was just glad to know where
something came from.
He relaxed in his
seat as the jewel-bright invaders began converging on the car's door,
then blitzing towards him. He grinned, and with a few quick
keystrokes, was ready to play. Pointing his device at one of the
symbols shaped rather like the letter 'M', slid his thumb down the
right control pad of his device as a beam of light sliced the 'M' in
half.
“This never seems
to get old” he thought aloud.
A half world away
in Markonis, a small group of people trod through a forest, speaking
among themselves.
“So when did we
find out about the factory?”
“A couple months
ago. We'd have spoken about it sooner, but there's the matter of
the...”
“The slaves?”
“Yeah, that. We'd
only draw attention to ourselves if we overran the factory and cut
everybody loose.”
“I understand, so
you kept quiet about it as a preventative measure against
vigilantism. Completely logical.”
The group advanced
towards the factory, their practical black clothing contrasting
sharply against the greens and browns of the forest around them.
Their march was rather like a funeral procession, quiet and solemn.
Much like those marching in a black parade so were these people, mere
shadows of the loud, joyous Markonis natives who once roamed this
land, lived in it and loved it. Those people had been forced into
hiding deep within themselves.
Soon, they neared
the gray, concrete bulk of the factory. It was a simple, oblong block
full of misery, mistreatment and mostly hard labor. The flat roof
doubled as a docking station: when a transport arrived, it would
rise, the cargo being pulled into the belly of the ship by powerful
magnets.
After that, the
ship would shut its hull and fly back to Paxcatia. The process took
mere seconds, and involved no humans; it was completely automated.
“So why do we
have to climb the building, exactly?” A random rebel
dissented. “Wouldn't it have been easier to just use Flights?”
“Wouldn't have
been easier to just show up with a marching band?”
“But Commander
Sere, Flights are so quiet!”
“They also show
up as generating a massive electro-magnetic pulse, just the kind of
thing we don't want on a reconnaissance mission!”
“Can we just get
this over with?”
One rebel stepped
out of the crowd. He surveyed the wall, feeling it, smacking his
palms against it and considering it for a good thirty seconds before
he finally reached into one of the many compartments of his black,
heavy jacket and removed what appeared to be a handful of long,
thick, white nails, the type used for building things. Casey smirked-
he'd been to some of the more rural areas of Markonis where things
were still being built with wood. Wood.
“How times
have changed” he thought to himself, as his comrade loaded the
nails into what looked like some sort of small, orange pistol. The
rebel took a shot at the wall and a nail sunk itself halfway into the
concrete with little more than a click and a scrape.
The process was
repeated, and the man proceeded to stand on the two nails he'd
placed. He then created a pair of handholds above himself, climbed
onto these, and continued until he'd reached the top of the simple,
flat roof. Katherine could hear her heart pulsing in her head- this
felt different, definitely different from rushing into battle.
This was slow, deliberate and dangerous, and it didn't seem to sit
well with her. She glanced back into the forest, away from the
building- surely Mr. Sere would understand if she wanted to go home,
wouldn't he? The mission could continue.
“What's the
point of this miss-” Somehow, she'd managed to cut herself of
in mid-thought. She knew precisely what the point of the mission was.
A great injustice had occurred- it affected her, and her family and
all the already oppressed citizens of Markonis. This was not the time
for looking back in fear- it was the time for action.
“I'll go next”
she said, making quick strides towards the makeshift ladder.
