Part 2, comments would be greatly appreciated.
Part 1 can be found here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic52225.html
******
After a great deal of arguing between Asil and Raz, Enko makes an improvised splint for my leg, which allows me to stand and move with relatively little discomfort. If it becomes necessary, I could fight with the splint in place.
“What made the D.M. decide they were better off without you?” asks Raz with a wicked grin as Enko tends to my leg, which turns out to be not as badly injured as I had feared, thanks largely to the armor I am wearing.
“Let’s just say I said and did a few things my comrades of the Militia didn’t approve of.”
“Such as?”
“Killed a brother officer in a fight, and told people it was his fault, which it was. People aren’t supposed to die in bar fights, though I suppose by the time he died, it was more of a back-alley brawl. He hit first, for the record. I was a better fighter. His friends didn’t like it, and here I am,” I conclude with a rueful but unapologetic grin.
“What happened?”
“To who? Me or my brother officer?”
“The officer.”
“Broken glass from a bottle of Terran ale across the throat. Very messy, if you must know.”
At this, Asil emits a rough bark of laughter. “I take it back. For militia, you aren’t that bad. But why, tell me, why were you drinking that shit?”
“He was, not me.”
“That explains a lot.”
Enko gives the cloth holding the splint in place a sharp tug and stands. “That should hold for awhile.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking Raz’s proffered arm and getting to my feet. I slowly shift my weight onto the leg. It still hurts, but not as badly, and the leg is usable now.
“How serious were you?” Raz asks.
“About what? Killing an officer?”
“The rebellion, though that too.”
“Perfectly serious about both.”
“Okay.” He is silent for a moment, digesting this. The kid seems almost innocent, fascinated by the ideas of what I have done and what I intend to do. “Why’d that officer want to kill you?”
“We had a… disagreement over some Domestic Militia policy.”
“Really, what happened?”
“I said that most of the patrols in the undercity were sadists, and that if they wouldn’t be so brutal, there’d be a lot less dissent. Sending at least a bit of aid during the Floods might help too.”
At the mention of the Floods, the faces of Asil and Enko grew hard. “He didn’t like that?” Raz asks.
“Not in the least,” I say with a wicked grin. “He seemed to think I was just some Upper Division moron with no field experience, who only got into the Elite Corps because of some rich or powerful family member, and said as much. I told him that I worked my way through the ranks, thank you, and that he should remember that he was an officer because he was the most brutal fighter of all the candidates, not because he was at all qualified to lead. He got a little offended at that point, and took a swing at me,” I conclude, holding up my bruised knuckles for effect.
“Then they jumped you?”
“Nah. Waited awhile. They had to plan, you know. After seeing me kill their C.O., none of them were going to come after me alone. And outside of the bar, I’d be armed. That’s why I had the stiletto in my boot, by the way. Shame I never got a chance to draw it. I figured that they would jump me in some alley and try and rearrange my face, not shove me off the edge.”
“And no one did anything when they saw this?” Raz asks, almost shocked.
“Nope. They had someone with a scrap of intelligence planning it. They shouted ‘he’s a traitor’ first, and from there, no one was going to do anything to help me. It was pretty slick, I’ll give them that much. But I’m still going to kill them.”
“We help you to get your revenge, and along the way, we get rid of some tyrants,” Raz summarizes. “Very nice. Count me in!”
I shake my head at the innocence of the kid, but it’s infectious, and I can’t help grinning. Enko goes and stands next to his brother in silent agreement, staring at and through me, deep in thought. Asil rolls his eyes, but says “I’m in. I like killing Militia.”
So this is the start of rebellion- a renegade Militia officer leading an innocent kid, his deep-thinking older brother, and a borderline sociopath. Wonderful.
“Do any of you know of somewhere safe we can go?”
“Sure! Every revolution needs a base of operations! I have the perfect place!” Raz chips in, grinning ear to ear.
I really hate to wreck this kid’s life, but he’s gotta grow up someday. This isn’t a game. Aloud, I reply “Great, lead us to it.” Raz proceeds to do just that, leading the strangest procession I’ve seen in a long time- a limping military officer with a stiletto in one hand and partially covered in goop, a pale, reticent twig, and a huge black man carrying a metal stick, grinning in anticipation of revenge. “Where exactly do you have in mind?”
“It’s an abandoned warehouse. Big, empty, and no one cares about it.”
“And if it’s such a great place, why’s it abandoned?”
“Last owner died, probably. I don’t know.”
“Is it near the river?”
“Not close enough to flood, but close enough that no one’s going to snatch it up as valuable real-estate.”
“And you would know about this place how?” asks Enko, breaking his silence.
“I hid from patrols in there.” Enko sighs deeply. Asil laughs. I roll my eyes, wondering how this kid ever avoided a patrol. Then I realize that if a patrol was in the undercity in the first place, it couldn’t have been comprised of very high-caliber units. “What?” Raz protests.
“If we have the misfortune to run into a patrol, I’ll deal with them,” I say. “I can bluff them, if nothing else.”
“Or we can just kill them,” Asil reminds me.
“If necessary. But I’d rather do that after we get established and plan out a course of action. Not that I don’t want them dead, but if we get killed, then our little rebellion is over,” I retort. “And we can’t kill Militia if we’re dead.” With a nod, Asil concedes the point.
Our journey through the city is long, with many back alleys, and despite the use of some of Raz’s best shortcuts. I was pushed out of the uppercity in the southern part of the city, near to the river, in hopes that I would somehow fall in, or be pushed in by someone on the ground. The warehouse, according to Raz, is near the center of the west side of the undercity. Slowed by my leg, but sped by the shortcuts Raz knows, we make it in a few hours. Along the way, I am reminded just how much worse the undercity is than the uppercity, or even the middlecity. I’ve been in the Upper Division for too long, I realize. I’d forgotten parts of the city where this ugly. It’s shocking that even with the Domestic Militia around, there was never an all-out rebellion. Then I realize that there have been rebellions. There was an uprising a few years ago, right after I got promoted to middlecity patrol. I remember that, I was guarding ascension points for a week! And there was one awhile before that, too… But they never work. Why? We reach the warehouse with me still pondering that question. It nags at me, the kind of question that’s never easy to answer and never goes away, but just stays in your head until you figure it out.
As promised, the warehouse is big and empty. Well, not that big, but it’s no minor storage room, either. “Excellent place, good job, Raz,” I say, looking around. The place is unoccupied, but not truly empty. Debris and opened crates and containers are scattered about, but no shelving, furniture, or anything else. Support columns hold the roof up, standing between the scattered remains of whatever used to be stored here. There is a large bay door that opens vertically next to the normal door through which we entered, which opens inward, strangely. The bay door looks as if it would be inoperable. There are a few windows high up on the walls, near to the roof, mainly for ventilation. They are mostly sealed shut and covered by some means, and the few that aren’t are cracked or broken. The place is dimly lit by light streaming in through the broken windows, provided by the dim lights that dot the roof of the undercity. It is possible, but not easy to see. It’s a shame my helmet got trashed- I might have been able to salvage some of the optics from it, or maybe even the communications system. It’d be good to know what the Militia is up to.
I examine the door in more detail, trying to figure out how much security it will give us. It once had a mechanical lock, which has long since been broken. An electronic locking system was once installed, but judging from the impact craters on the panel on outside the warehouse, it was destroyed. The panel inside the warehouse is less damaged, but no less useless. Most recently of all the attempts to secure the door, at least from the inside, a pair of metal brackets was mounted to the door, and a third on the wall beside it. Judging by the slight bending of the metal, there was a locking bar in use at one point, but the bar must have broken before the brackets did. Sure enough, a piece of a steel bar lies on the dusty floor less than a foot from the third bracket. All in all, the door would probably keep people out well enough, so long as someone remained inside to let everyone who left back in.
“Someone bring me something to hold this thing shut,” I call, putting the stiletto away at last, but on my belt, not back in my boot, so I could reach it easily if necessary.
Raz promptly hands me a piece of wood, presumably from a shipping crate. Wooden crates? This place must’ve been stored imports, once. I can’t think of many places around here that use wooden crates. I shove the wood into the brackets, effectively barring the door. “Thanks, Raz,” I say, straightening up and turning around.
“No problem,” he cheerfully replies. I begin wandering towards the center of the warehouse, intending to have a better look around. Raz follows behind me, bright eyed and smiling. “So, we need a plan!” I lean against a pillar, then slide to the floor, giving up trying to hide my exhaustion.
“Have one?” asks Asil, walking over, still carrying his improvised spear. Enko follows him, silent.
“Not really,” I admit. I hadn’t realized just how tired I was until I sat down. Walking across the city with a wounded leg had drained me more than I cared to admit.
“Then let’s make one!” Raz exclaims.
I have to chuckle at his eagerness. “Okay.”
“You are still serious about starting a rebellion?” Enko asks, breaking his silence and coming very close to me. “This is your last chance to back out.” He crouches on my left, and whispers “If you start using my brother and you’re not serious about this, I’ll kill you.” All at once, I realize just how bad of a position I am in. I am truly alone, with no Militia at my back, no gun in my hands, no chance to get away. I do have a knife, though. Wait, what’s he holding? Damn, he’s got a gun. I don’t know how he got it, but Enko has a gun. Not even a stun gun or even a heat ray gun, but a real projectile-launching gun. Damn. And he will kill me if he thinks I’m going to get his brother killed. If he doesn’t believe what I say, I’m dead.
Asil mutters something to Raz and gently pushes him towards the other side of the warehouse, then steps between me and him. I speak very slowly, my eyes glued to the gun in Enko’s hand, partially concealed by the shadows. “I intend to lead an uprising of people from the undercity, this is true. I’m not doing it to be benevolent, though. I’m doing it because that’s the best way I can think of to get back at the Militia. That the oppressed might get liberated is a side effect, a bonus along the way.” I notice that Asil seems to relax as I say this. Raz doesn’t seem to hear this any of this.
Enko stands suddenly, taking a step back. The gun is gone from his hand, faster than I thought possible. “Excellent,” he says, with a ghost of a smile.
Asil catches Raz’s eye and motions him to come back, which he does, trotting over. Before he arrives, I ask Asil “why did you relax when I said that?”
“I don’t trust people who act like heroes and say they’re working for the good of everyone else. They never do anything. Its people who work for themselves that I trust. They’ll always keep going, because they want it for them, not for everyone else.” Setting aside the irony of the statement, I find that I agree with it.
Raz arrives and drops cheerfully to the floor without slowing, sitting cross-legged across from me. “So, we were going to make a plan, right?”
I smile at his boundless enthusiasm. “Of course.” I think for a moment. “We need to get the essentials for us taken care of first before we can move on. We need food, a decent stock would be nice, but a way to get a steady supply will do.” I look at Enko and Raz. “One of you, I’m guessing, has a way to get a hold of a decent amount of it. Neither of you looks starving by any means.”
Both of them nod, and Raz says “don’t worry about it.”
“Excellent. We also need information,” I continue. “I can tell you all about how the militia works, so that’s taken care of. But I haven’t been down here for quite awhile. Between the three of you, I assume you know pretty much all there is to know about the undercity?”
“We get by,” Asil says with a grin.
“Can we recruit people?”
“Definitely,” Raz says.
“Good. That comes later, though. More immediately, we need a better way to secure the warehouse, and probably some weapons of some sort. I lost my gun in my fall, and even if I could find it again, it’s broken. It got hit hard enough to open an ammo canister, thankfully not the acid one, which is why I have this stuff all over me. I figured it would cushion some of the fall. By the fact that I’m still alive, I assume it worked. So as far as weapons go, I have my stiletto, Asil has his pole…” I glance at Enko for a brief instant. “…and I assume that Enko is armed somehow.”
Enko smiles slightly. “That is a correct assumption.”
“Raz?” I ask.
He produces a strange tool and holds it up. “Not armed, exactly, but there is a knife in this thing. And a cutter. There’s also enough juice to give someone a good shock, if I tinkered with the battery for a bit.” He says the last part with a grin that suggests that he has tinkered with the battery before, and knows exactly what he’s doing. “There’s also a bunch of wood around here. Those will work as clubs, if we need them.”
“True. But I’d prefer real weapons,” I reply.
“Not many of those around,” says Enko, making no indication that he possesses one.
“You didn’t say none,” I point out. “How do we get them?”
“Not easily,” says Asil. “It’s probably simplest to take them from someone… like the Militia.”
“Over their cold, dead bodies?” I ask. He grins in reply. “We already have a place to use as a base of operations, so what does that leave us with? You two can get food, we can procure weapons, I have all the information on the Militia we need, the three of you know all about the undercity, and we have a base. That just leaves manpower. We need recruits, but that comes after everything but maybe weapons. Raz, you’re charismatic. Can you bring in recruits?”
“Sure!”
“Great, but let’s wait before we move to recruiting. First, I think we should secure this place a little better than a wooden bar, and get weapons better than a metal stick and a knife. Suggestions?”
“I say we just take them from the Militia,” Asil says, again.
“I’d rather get real weapons, rather than fighting them on even terms with the same guns,” I say pointedly. Asil rolls his eyes.
“I might know a guy who knows a guy…” Raz begins.
“I don’t want to be working through a middleman,” I reply. “I want to work with the source. The more people we go through, the more people that might turn us in.”
“If my brother’s talking about who I think he’s talking about, we can do better than him,” Enko says disapprovingly.
“You know him?”
“That depends on who you’re talking about. If you’re talking about Osul, then yes, I do, and we can do better.”
“Who’s Osul,” I ask.
“He’s a guy in the middlecity that sells to people in the undercity a lot,” Raz explains. “He has a lot of connections. He’s a great guy.”
Enko rolls his eyes. “He might be nice, but it’s his contacts you don’t know, Raz. He’s just nice to you because he likes you.”
“But…” Raz begins.
“Enough,” I cut him off. “What kind of things can Osul get through these connections of his?”
“Just about anything,” Raz says cheerfully.
“Would he support us?” I ask.
“I don’t know. We’d have to bargain with him, probably. I don’t think he would for free, at least. But if there’s something in it for him, he probably would.”
“And what sort of something would have to be in it for him?” I ask.
“I don’t know…” Raz says slowly, with an uncharacteristically somber face.
“Can you find out?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, eager again.
“Excellent. As to securing this place, the wood bar will do for now, but I’d like something better.”
“I’ll try and find something on the way back. Don’t worry about it, Zee,” Raz says confidently.
“Zee?” I ask.
“Yeah, short for Zeno.”
“So my nickname has a nickname?”
“Yep!”
I can’t help but laugh. “Okay. But what do you mean on the way back?”
“I’m hungry, I’d imagine you all are too, so I’m going to go get us something to eat. And I’ll see if I can find Osul on the way. And I’ll also try and find something better to bar the door with,” Raz explains earnestly, customary smile in place.
He’s more like 10 or 11 then… 17, I bet his age is. But I like this kid. I really like this kid. “Can you do it safely?” I ask.
“Sure!”
“Take this, just in case,” I say, pulling the stiletto out and extending the hilt to him.
“I won’t need it,” he says confidently, getting to his feet. “Someone stay here to let me back in! I’ll knock six times!” he calls, already unbarring the door. “Be back in a bit!”
“Will he be alright?” I ask as the door closes behind him.
Enko stands, and bars the door, nodding.
“He’ll be fine,” Asil says. “He always comes through.”
I'm going to follow this! Sci-Fi writers unite XD.
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