Relias: Uprising (27 page)

 The immigrants saw the incoming craft and moved away from its landing zone. The engine noise was dull and broke the silence with mechanical din. They covered their eyes as dust and dead wood blew into the air, wanting to retreat to less turbulent surroundings but curious as to whom it was in the newly-arriving Battlecraft. It was only a few people at first, but after a few moments the crowd thickened until nearly every person in the vicinity had congregated around the LZ. From the delayed arrival maybe it was somebody to save them, maybe Thompson and Ranjak. The Battlecraft set down gently, due entirely to Price’s unmatched skill, and the side doors opened.

 “This’ll brighten their day.” Morlo said amidst a chuckle. He gently nudged Sable in the side, a nudge which would still bruise, and got to his feet.

 The rest of the Ditrinity was gathered around the door ready to bail out. After giving Price a thankful slap on the shoulder Luke moved to the front of the group. Price moved across the Battlecraft’s control panels and hit all sorts of buttons before putting her hand on the black lever hanging on the roof to the right of her. She shook her head.

 “Hope their hopes aren’t up.”

 There was a hiss as the air pressure inside the Battlecraft equalized with the pressure outside. The lock on the door released and the door lurched before slowly sliding along its track and opening up, revealing the ragged crowd outside.

 The bright exterior was in sharp contrast with the dim interior of the Battlecraft. Luke was first to hop out, breaking into the sunlight and standing at the head of the Dark assembly. There were no comments, whispers, not even so much as a blink; they were all too tired for that. The glaring sun glinting off his glasses, Luke looked them all over.

 Most were women, children, though there was still a good number of males mixed in. All of them stood there looking at him, not talking, not moving. Dressed in filthy pajamas and their faces scratched and smeared with dirt, the immigrants watched Luke. Their red, bloodshot eyes focused on him but there was no strenuous thought; they had lost that capacity to utter exhaustion during the night. The bags beneath their eyes were dark and heavy. The children clinged to their mothers’ clothes, whimpering for some small bit of comfort while their mothers lied, assuring them that they would soon have it. Looking them over, Luke could sense their pain. Through their thoughts Luke saw the all night journey, the restless sprinting, hiding, evading, all without any clear idea as to where they would go. He saw the fathers watching their families dragged away screeching into the night by laughing Berserkers, by salivating Nightwolves, knowing they would never see their loved ones again. He felt the terrifying sorrow of mothers watching their infant children fall behind on short legs and swallowed up in the scorching flames of Legionnaire Helldogs. And the numbing grief was only the beginning of their distress. The anxiety over the imminent future loomed as none of them were entirely certain that they actually
had
an imminent future. But strength comes in numbers, and they all traveled in the direction they were because that’s where everybody else was going; the comfort they felt with company greatly outweighed the uncertainty they felt with having no place to go. They companied with complete strangers as, for many people, these strangers were the only company they now had.

 The Ditrinity landed on the ground behind Luke, impacting on the ground and bouncing into long strides. They lined up behind him and made the same observations that he had. They stood tall and strong. They were energized and alert and though the Darks didn’t show it, the Ditrinity knew it offended them.

 They were on the edge of the clearing and most of the men had stopped working, dropped everything they were doing to come greet the newcomers. They parted their ways through the somber crowd, squeezing past the tired people to reach Luke and the Ditrinity.

 The first person to emerge was the only person Luke cared to see. Alighieri, looking shabby with a blackened eye, grey stubble,  and a bruised head, looked at Luke with a flurry of emotions playing clearly on his face. Luke said nothing. He knew that he had to say nothing and he knew it without reading Alighieri’s mind. Alighieri knew that Luke was right. He knew that the Darks had become arrogant and over-confident and the payment for those mistakes was a spike through the heart. Alighieri had sacrificed the entire Dark movement, signed the death warrants of  over two hundred thousand Praemon citizens, and condemned the survivors to a life of seclusion. But all that was absolutely nothing compared to the fact that Alighieri had sent Luke’s daughter into the heart of Hell with the First Legionnaire biting at their heels. Alighieri knew why Luke was there. He looked at Luke with remorseful eyes and a quivering frown.

 “I… Luke you know that I…”

 It took every shred of Luke’s restraint to keep himself from wrapping his hands around Alighieri’s neck. But seeing such honest penitence stayed Luke’s hand.

 “Just tell me how I can find them.” Luke said. He kept his remarks brief, reducing the chance of an outburst. Alighieri bowed his head and raised a hand and waved them all towards a set of Battlecrafts stationed on the other side of the new clearing.

 “This way. All of you.”

 Luke was surprised. Dealing with matters such as these was something Alighieri typically dealt with in private, yet here he was allowing the entire Ditrinity to come with him. There wasn’t any suspicion in Luke’s mind. He expected Alighieri to behave unusually after such a gut-wrenching failure with his oversights being the primary factor. The Ditrinity was more than happy to join along. It was a new thing for them too. It would be a pleasant change to get briefed by the initial briefer as opposed to Luke or Hendrick relaying the message on to them.

 The crowd parted for them to pass through; another surprise. There was no resistance or no visible animosity. As they passed through, in spite of his last encounter with them, they stood in complete silence.

 They broke away from the crowd and into the clearing, stepping over and around tree stumps on their way to the small fleet of Battlecrafts that had landed there.

 Shabby awnings and flimsy roofs had been constructed from canvas tarps and provided shelter on the sides of the Battlecrafts. Visible inside the cockpits of the craft were radio operators, all working frantically, pushing buttons and flipping switches in a flurry of activity.

 “We’re trying to communicate with surrounding Darks.” Alighieri said, straightening himself up and trying to dignify himself. “We’ve got operators working inside all the Battlecrafts trying to create a small network of communication but… “

 “Most people don’t have radios.” Luke said.

 “That’s the problem.” Alighieri continued with a sigh. “And when the Legionnaire’s hit us everybody ran in every direction and got scattered all over the place. The people who showed up here are just lucky they ran in the right direction. We have warriors everywhere trying to ring them all in and bring them here.”

 “And what exactly is here, Sam?” Hendrick said from behind them.

 Alighieri made a sweeping motion across the whole area. “Water, food, soon shelter. We’re in a rocky basin where Legionnaire communications are difficult and soon we’ll be able to get these people to Styne.”

 That revelation came as a surprise to Luke. After word came of their defeat in Praemon Luke automatically assumed that they had lost Styne as well. But then again, Styne had ten times the defense grid that Praemon had and nearly every battle cruiser that the Darks possessed. Once he considered that he realized that he should have known that defeat was most likely not the case. He took a second to rebuke himself for such a simple lapse of thought.

 “The International Army has never been the most effective military.” Alighieri went on.

 Of course it was the International Army. Luke hadn’t even considered the fact that the IA was still being utilized by the Commune. That might also explain why the Darks had such an easy time fending off the attack. Even with the Dark cruisers Luke expected there to be at least a heated battle. And Legionnaire strategy would have undoubtedly led to ship-to-ship combat against the Dark fleets, drawing them away from the city or breaking the line of sight with the city’s anti-air guns. Alighieri seemed fairly confident they’d be able to hold Styne. That confidence didn’t come as the least amount of comfort though; Luke had seen it before.

 They came to a Battlecraft that wasn’t set up like the others; there weren’t any makeshift roofs made from dirty canvas or random tools and objects strewn around it. Most notably though was that it was four times larger than the typical Battlecraft; it was a command module. It was as if it had just recently landed and nobody had touched it since.

 They stopped for Alighieri as he pulled the side door to the Battlecraft open. It opened several inches and stopped. Alighieri reached in even further and felt around for a switch. There was a loud hiss as the hydraulics disengaged and the door was resting on its bearings. The door opened with a clatter and they all climbed inside.

 The inside was different than that of a regular Battlecraft. Instead of having just room for ten cramped, sitting passengers it had spacious seats for twenty passengers with two additional rows in the center of the space sitting back to back. On the far side of the module there was a hallway that lead out of sight while in the other corner there were stairs that lead up to the cockpit. Alighieri moved his hand across the seats as an invitation to sit down. They obliged, though Morlo opted with standing as the seats were still too small for him.

 Luke was last to sit down. Alighieri waited for that and he sat across from him.

 They waited in silence as Alighieri sorted through his mind to determine what he would say and how he was going to say it. At long last he took a deep breath, put his hands together and looked across the group.

 “Last year we started working on a plan that we had been considering for a long time and we… were hesitant considering a number of different factors. After we had made the decision final we started planning it and called it Operation Rush. When we thought about how important this operation would be and how dangerous it could potentially become we decided that we would need the best soldiers we could find.”

 “We decided to keep the group as small as we could while keeping doubly dangerous. So, after arguing over how many people we decided on eight members. We chose two ex-Legionnaires, a Monolith named Draken Muldoon and a Demolitionist named Trennen Van Kristik. The third member came as a surprise to us because we were sure that she had taken herself out of the war entirely. But whatever happened she came back to the Darks all the way from her home in Demondrak. It’s Serenity Blake.”

 Hendrick sat back in his chair and whistled. Sable lowered her head into one hand and Pontious looked over to Luke.

 “Wait, that’s Miles’s daughter isn’t she?”

 Luke nodded. “After Miles told his wife he wouldn’t stop fighting the war against the Commune she left and took Serenity with her. Trey stayed with Miles.”

 “Scarsborough?” Sable asked.

 Alighieri nodded. “When Trey’s mom remarried she took her husband’s last name and became a Blake. So naturally, Serenity is a spectacular, tough as nails fighter. A bit of a girly girl but dangerous just the same. Then we needed somebody who was good with electronics and remote, computer-based explosives and were lucky enough to find teenage prodigy named Warren Pitt who’s amazing with putting together anything he gets his hands on. And then we wanted somebody powerful. It was a hard decision to make but we knew that, if this operation worked then the Commune would disintegrate and the Darks would win. So we asked Thompson and Ranjak to head up the operation and they agreed. It was then that we decided that we would put as many Durants as we could into the group because, when you have that many Durants fighting without there being any Stabilizers then you really can’t be stopped.”

 “So you took Tess.” Luke growled.

 Alighieri gave a regrettable and apologetic nod. “Yes. We
asked
Tess and she agreed.”

 “She doesn’t even know how to use Elemental so what good was she to you.”

 “Calm down, Luke, calm down.” Alighieri said quickly. “She knows how to use basic Elemental and Ranjak and Thompson said they’d teach her how to create Chargers, Barriers, Decimators, the lot. And she
is
your daughter so we assumed she’d be a natural. A powerful one too.”

 “The mission, Sam.” Luke said.

 Hendrick nodded. “That’s all we care about.”

 “Where they’re at and where they’re going.” Luke completed. “It’s all we want.” 

 Alighieri rubbed his hand across his head and groaned. The next thing wouldn’t be an easy thing to say and Luke knew he wasn’t going to like it. Looking across the group Alighieri became visibly more discouraged. Acting as though he had given up, Alighieri sighed. 

 “We’re sending them to Pyre.”

 Luke’s breathing intensified as did his gaze. He was sending them to Pyre; the heart of the Commune and the most heavily fortified city in the world. He might as well have been sending them to a Legionnaire slaughterhouse. What did Alighieri expect this ‘Rush’ to be able to accomplish in Pyre? They wouldn’t make it past the outer wall, much less the tens if not hundreds of thousands of Legionnaires inside. They stand on every street corner. They patrol every sidewalk and they control the roadways like a supercharged police force. If the Legionnaire ever discovered that the Darks were attempting to infiltrate Pyre they would lock down the city and Rush wouldn’t make it two street blocks even if they managed to get inside. Knowing Luke well enough to know what he was thinking, Alighieri quickly went on explaining.

 “We wouldn’t be sending them in there unless it was for something extremely important and plausible. And considering what happened in Praemon this is probably the last chance we have before the Darks disappear entirely. If this doesn’t work then…” Alighieri rested his face in one hand and closed his eyes. With a pervading sense of hopelessness he became worked up, as though his ability to maintain positivity and strength had suddenly disappeared. “There’s nowhere for us to go! Brysdal, maybe, but that’s on the other side of the world and even then it won’t hold more than a thousand more people! It’s population is already-“